Abū Isḥāq Tha‘labī Nayshābūrī is an outstanding Iranian exegete of the fourth and fifth centuries LH. Tha‘labī has been so skillful in various Islamic sciences such as Arabic linguistics (including morphology, syntax (grammatical inflection), vocabulary, and rhetoric), Ḥadīth, exegesis, and qur’ānic sciences that numerous students from many near and far places attended his classes. Tha‘labī’s c...

Most of us, scientists and laymen alike, are deeply fascinated by old-growth forest. We travel to places like the Tongass National Forest in Alaska or the Biatowieža National Park in Poland to enjoy the sight of forests left to their own devices, with their majestic trees, intriguing structure and rare wildlife. For us, the fascination arises from a mixture of interest, aesthetic pleasure and m...

Hieroglyphs dominated the landscape of the Egyptian civilisation. These elaborate symbols were ideal for inscriptions on the walls of majestic temples and monuments, and indeed the Greek word hieroglyphica means 'sacred carvings', but they were too fussy for day-to-day scribbling, so other scripts were evolved in Egypt in parallel. These were the 'hieratic' and 'demotic' scripts, which can crud...