The Turkish Yarkand documents

1984 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Erdal

The land sale contracts of the late eleventh century published here are important for several reasons. First, they are the oldest known legal documents written in Turkish. Very many Uighur-Turkish civil documents were found in the more eastern parts of the Tarim basin, but none of those appear to be older than the thirteenth century. On the other hand, there are Central Asian legal documents in several non-Turkish languages from as early as the first centuries of our era. After the Turks had penetrated the area in alternately warlike and peaceful manner and become owners of land, they may have gone on using the local vernaculars for such purposes, as they adopted many other facets of local life. The present texts have a fairly rigid structure, but this should not be taken as an indication that they were preceded by a Turkish legal tradition: the Persian text of A.D. 1107 published by Minorsky (1942) shows a rather similar form, which may simply have been borrowed by the Turks. Formally, our documents differ from the non-Muslim deeds of land sale in Turkish, which appear to follow Chinese models; this also speaks against a common Turkish tradition. There is nothing surprising about this: the Turks were probably relatively new both to the area and the occupation.

Author(s):  
Artem V. Mesheznikov ◽  

Introduction. The collection of Sanskrit manuscripts of the Lotus Sutra is a richest one in the Serindian Collection of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts (RAS, 27 call numbers). Most of the fragments of the Sanskrit Lotus Sutra from the Serindian Collection belong to the Central Asian edition, including the famous Kashgar manuscript by N. F. Petrovsky that is the most extensive version of the Sutra (about 400 folios) and the core of the Sanskrit manuscripts containing the text of ‘Saddharmapuṇḍarīka’. Most of the Sanskrit manuscripts of the Lotus Sutra in the Serindian Collection were compiled in the southern oases of the Tarim Basin and made in poṭhī format. The texts of these manuscripts were written in Southern Turkestan Brāhmī in black ink on paper. According to paleographic data, these manuscripts can be dated to the 8th–9th centuries AD. Goals. The article seeks to introduce into academic circulation a new fragment of the Sanskrit Lotus Sutra from the Serindian Collection of the IOM (RAS). The new unpublished fragment of the Lotus Sutra stored under call number SI 6584 has been identified relatively recently. It is an excerpt from Chapter XVIII of the Lotus Sutra (‘The Chapter Describing the Religious Merit [Obtained through] Joyful Participation [in Dharma]’, ‘Anumodanāpuṇyanirdeśaparivartaḥ’). According to paleographic and codicological characteristics, the new fragment is very close to another previously published manuscript of the Lotus Sutra stored in the Serindian Collection under call number SI 1934. The article describes the external features of both manuscripts (SI 1934 and SI 6584), transliterates, translates and compares fragment SI 6584 to the other well-known texts of the Lotus Sutra. The paper also contains a facsimile reproduction of fragment SI 6584. Conclusions. As compared to other texts of the Lotus Sutra, fragment SI 6584 belongs to the Central Asian edition of ‘Saddharmapuṇḍarīka’, and its text is almost identical to that of the Kashgar manuscript by N. F. Petrovsky (fol. 335b–337a).


Traditio ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 299-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence O. Tunberg

The intensification of intellectual endeavour which characterises the twelfth century is manifested in the art of rhetoric no less than in the other fields of learning. Two new types of theoretical manual represent the trends of twelfth-century rhetoric: the artes dictandi, which apply rhetorical doctrine to the composition of letters and documents, and the artes poetrie, which are primarily concerned with the writing of verse. This creative momentum continued after 1200, particularly in Italy, where dictamen underwent rapid development. There the ars notarie emerged as a semi-autonomous discipline, which was exclusively devoted to the composition of legal documents. Moreover, Italian dictatores of the thirteenth century began to turn their attention to secular speeches, creating a new offshoot of dictamen which is sometimes called the ars arengandi. Boncompagno of Signa's Rhetorica novissima (finished in 1235) is by far the most ambitious of these new treatises on public speaking. Most of the early works on oratory are collections of models, consisting either of exordia or of entire speeches. The Rhetorica novissima, however, not only provides models, but attempts to lay out a completely new theoretical foundation for the art of speech-making.


1950 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 474-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Yanada

In Japan, since the eleventh or twelfth century, when teachers and students of the tanka (, a short poem) recognized the importance of the teniwoha for expressing thoughts or feelings, its study became a vital part of kagaku (, the study of verse-making). One of the earliest books on the matter, the “ Teniwoha Taigaisyô ” ( ), was said to have been written by Huziwara-Sadaie (, 1162–1241), a well-known poet of the thirteenth century. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the study of the teniwoha made further headway, the reason being that the gap between the written and spoken language which had been developing since the eleventh century had widened so much that people found it difficult to understand the tanka of earlier times. There were at this time two groups of people who studied the teniwoha for the art of verse-making; one group was concerned with the tanka, and the other with the renga (, a linked poem) which was then very popular. Although these studies of the teniwoha could be called the origin of the grammatical study of the Japanese language, they were very naive; all that the scholars did was to compile glossaries or reference book for verse-making.


Author(s):  
Peter Coss

In the introduction to his great work of 2005, Framing the Early Middle Ages, Chris Wickham urged not only the necessity of carefully framing our studies at the outset but also the importance of closely defining the words and concepts that we employ, the avoidance ‘cultural sollipsism’ wherever possible and the need to pay particular attention to continuities and discontinuities. Chris has, of course, followed these precepts on a vast scale. My aim in this chapter is a modest one. I aim to review the framing of thirteenth-century England in terms of two only of Chris’s themes: the aristocracy and the state—and even then primarily in terms of the relationship between the two. By the thirteenth century I mean a long thirteenth century stretching from the period of the Angevin reforms of the later twelfth century on the one hand to the early to mid-fourteenth on the other; the reasons for taking this span will, I hope, become clearer during the course of the chapter, but few would doubt that it has a validity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 799-826 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hadyu Ikrami

Abstract On 19 June 2017, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines launched the Sulu-Sulawesi Seas Patrol (SSSP), a framework of maritime security cooperation aimed at protecting the Sulu Sea and Sulawesi (Celebes) Sea from maritime crimes. The three nations had announced that their cooperation might be modelled on the Malacca Straits Patrol (MSP), a similar form of cooperation between Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand to safeguard the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. This article primarily compares both cooperative frameworks, and argues that the SSSP should be modelled on the MSP, subject to certain conditions. Where there are insufficient best practices in the MSP, this article contrasts the SSSP with other similar cooperative frameworks, including the Combined Maritime Forces and the ECOWAS Integrated Maritime Strategy. In addition, this article also discusses the relationship between the SSSP and MSP on one hand, and the ASEAN maritime security mechanisms on the other hand.


De Jure ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Haman ◽  
◽  
◽  

The difference between intent (dolus) and negligence (culpa) was rarely emphasized in codified medieval laws and regulations. When compared to the legal statements related to intent, negligence was mentioned even more rarely. However, there are some laws that distinguished between the two concepts in terms of some specific crimes, such as arson. This paper draws attention to three medieval Slavic legal documents – the Zakon Sudnyj LJudem (ZSLJ), the Vinodol Law and the Statute of Senj. They are compared with reference to regulations regarding arson, with the focus being on arson as a crime committed intentionally or out of negligence. The ZSLJ as the oldest known Slavic law in the world shows some similarities with other medieval Slavic legal codes, especially in the field of criminal law, since most of the ZSLJ’s articles are related to criminal law. On the other hand, the Vinodol Law is the oldest preserved Croatian law and it is among the oldest Slavic codes in the world. It was written in 1288 in the Croatian Glagolitic script and in the Croatian Chakavian dialect. The third document – the Statute of Senj – regulated legal matters in the Croatian littoral town of Senj. It was written in 1388 – exactly a century after the Vinodol Law was proclaimed. When comparing the Vinodol Law and the Statute of Senj with the Zakon Sudnyj LJudem, there are clear differences and similarities, particularly in the field of criminal law. Within the framework of criminal offenses, the act of arson is important for making a distinction between intent and negligence. While the ZSLJ regulates different levels of guilt, the Vinodol Law makes no difference between dolus and culpa. On the other hand, the Statute of Senj strictly refers to negligence as a punishable crime. Even though the ZSLJ is almost half a millennium older than the Statute of Senj and around 400 years older than the Vinodol Law, this paper proves that the ZSLJ defines the guilt and the punishment for arson much better than the other two laws.


1961 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 42-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. M. Metcalf

The Byzantine coinage in the twelfth century was of three kinds. There were gold nomismata, with a purchasing power which must have been a good deal greater than that of a present-day five-pound note, and also nomismata of ‘pale gold’—gold alloyed with silver—of lower value; at the other extreme there were bronze coins, smaller than a modern farthing, which were the coinage of the market-place; intermediate, but still of low value, there were coins about the size of a halfpenny, normally made of copper lightly washed with silver. The silvered bronze and the gold were not flat, as are most coins, but saucer-shaped. The reason for their unusual form is not known. Numismatists describe them as scyphate, and refer to the middle denomination in the later Byzantine system of coinage as Scyphate Bronze, to distinguish it from the petty bronze coinage. Scyphate Bronze was first struck under Alexius I (1081–1118). Substantive issues were made by John II (1118–43), and such coinage became extremely plentiful under Manuel I (1143–80) and his successors Isaac II (1185–95) and Alexius III (1195–1203). After the capture of Constantinople in the course of the Fourth Crusade, the successor-states to the Byzantine Empire at Nicaea, Salonica, and in Epirus continued to issue scyphate bronze coinage, although in much smaller quantities, until after the middle of the thirteenth century.


Author(s):  
Iosif Florin Moldovan

The matrimonial regime represents the entirety of the legal provisions concerning theproperty relations between spouses during marriage, as well as the legal documents theyconclude with other people, governing a (measurable) patrimonial asset.In addition to the legal community regime, with the adoption of the new RomanianCivil Code two new matrimonial regimes were introduced, namely the regime of propertyseparation and the regime of the conventional community.Where the two spouses opt for one of the other two regimes, instead of the legalcommunity regime, it is necessary that they should sign a marital agreement.


1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 573-579 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Rywkin

Kazakstan is both part of former Soviet Central Asia and yet stands apart in many respects. Its geographic position, past history and present development are unique for the area. It is significant that Soviet-era writings treated Kazakstan distinctly from the other four Central Asian republics. This essay is devoted to these differences.


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