The 203rd Third Meeting of the American Oriental Society

The annual meeting featured panels on the Ancient Near East and ArtHistory; East Asia; Islam, South, and Southeast Asia; The Ancient NearEast; and Linguistics. In this report the sessions on Islam are covered.The first day deaJt with Islamic history. Khalid Blankinship (TempleUniversity, Philadelphia, PA) explored "The Background of Sayf ibn'Umar (d.c. 180/796) and the Nature of His Sources." Sidney H. Griffith(Catholic University of America, Washington, DC) spoke on "Muhammadand the Monk Bahira: Reflections on a Syriac Apologetical Text fromAbbasid Times." Tayeb el-Hibri (Columbia University, New York, NY)spoke on "The Regicide of the Caliph al-Amin and the Challenge of Rep­resentation in Medieval Islamic Historiography." Christopher Melchert(Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC) explicated the religious ...