The middle of the 14th century offers a convenient dividing-line in the study of Islamic metal work. Few distinguished works were produced after that date and practically no new motifs were added to the artists' repertoire. In a passage of his Topography of Cairo, Maqrizi exposes the decadence of inlaid metal work in the latter half of the 14th century and explains some of the reasons which led to it. In view of the importance of this contemporary account, I am translating it in full in an appendix to this paper (pp. 228–31).

In Ḥaḍramawt, it seems, there have been constantly reiterated attempts at creating effective sumptuary laws limiting expenditure at marriages and other social activities, especially in respect of the extravagant demands of women for dress and other forms of ostentation where their rivalry leads their male relatives into expenditure beyond their means. The sentiments of the Hadrami man are admirably expressed in a qasīdah by the shaikh Aḥmad Barakā of which one line may be quoted here:

One of the outstanding examples of the degeneration of the Ottoman administration in Palestine in the eighteenth century was the situation in the military field. Army units were stationed permanently in those towns which were important to the Ottoman régime. The locations had been determined in the very early stages of the Ottoman conquest, but the same criteria were still being applied in the eighteenth century, without being re-examined. This does not mean that the system was entirely inflexible: army units were brought to man those new strongholds (Haifa, Jaffa) which the supreme authorities decided to establish in order to strengthen the security network. But it appears, as these examples show, that this was done mainly in the coastal towns. It was there that the Ottoman régime felt itself to be exposed to the greatest danger, since it was, in one way or another, threatened by the uncertain whims of the Christian pirates. It should be noted that from the objective point of view their fears were greatly exaggerated, if not unfounded, in the eighteenth century, since the pirates did not even try to expand their activities beyond the harassment of merchant ships sailing along the coast. But according to the Weltanschauung of the Ottoman rulers this constituted a grave threat to the Muslim state. When the construction of these strongholds was ordered an additional reason for their establishment was given: the need to prevent Bedouin attacks. There was a certain amount of truth in this story but, again, it should be regarded in correct perspective: the Sublime Porte recognized the need to curb the Bedouin raids which constituted an acute problem in the eighteenth century. But if this had been the main reason it would have been necessary to establish new strongholds, or strengthen existing ones, in inland regions and on the border of the desert rather than in Haifa or Jaffa. This was not done since the Bedouin were, after all, Muslims, and according to the concepts of the Ottoman régime, could not seriously threaten the existence of the empire, at least not to the same extent as the Christian infidels. In retrospect we see that the damage which the Bedouin wrought to the Ottoman state in this period was undoubtedly greater than that caused by the Christian pirates; but, as has been stated, this was not recognized at the time.

The following loan-words are taken from two newspapers, the Kheḍā vartamān of 5th December, 1928, and the Gujarat Times of 1st January, 1929.

The editors are both Hindus and the readers were for the most part Hindu also. The newspapers contain only a few words in English characters, perhaps eight or nine in each number. The proportion of English loan-words to the total may be about 2 per cent, but this is inevitably only a rough estimate.

The words have been transliterated faithfully with two exceptions—

(1) Inherent a of final consonants is omitted.

(2) Inherent a (not final) is omitted, if not pronounced. In such cases it is indicated by a dot. In Gujarati, however, there are certain consonants which do not alter their form when conjunct, such as “ ka ”. For practical purposes, this is of little importance, as conjunct consonants are often not used, when permissible.

In preparing the list some very uncommon words and transitory political expressions like “Sāyaman gobek” have been omitted. There are one or two words included, which are not English, e.g. peseṭā and Mādrīd, which have been included for their interest. Peseṭā has probably been taken for the English version of the Spanish word, as the t is retroflex. It is not clear, however, why the dental d is used for Mādrīd.

The articles in which few, if any, loan-words occur, are the political leading articles, a notice of a meeting of Brahmans, and a serial story about old Rajputana.

In 1983 Monika Höhlig published a pamphlet (reprinted in 1990) setting out her ideas for producing a romanized script for (North-West Caucasian) Circassian. Since the bulk of the Circassian community lives not in the Caucasus but in Turkey (or elsewhere in the Near East), her basic tenet was that, where necessary, the roman characters should have the same values that obtain for the purpose of representing Turkish—so that, for example, the letter c would represent the voiced palato-alveolar affricate []. Two further principles which guided the creation of this script were: (a) that any attempt to provide one totally independent character for each phoneme of the language would lead to an unwieldy number of new letter-shapes, and (b) that no diacritic should be employed that is not available on a Turkish typewriter.