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Magna Carta was first published in 1948. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.This important study in English constitutional history is the story of the Magna Carta from the end of the reign of Edward I to the dissolution of parliament and the completion of Sir Edward Coke’s Commentary (1300-1629).Miss Thompson surveys the various ways, practical and theoretical, in which the Charter was used by groups and individuals in English society. She examines the pertinent sources and finds that the Charter was never eclipsed in the later Middle Ages or even in the Tudor period and that its reinterpretation in the early Stuart period was not an abrupt and novel phenomenon. The statesmen who transformed a charter of feudal “liberties” into a charter of “liberty of the subject” were using a document with a long history and a reputation already made in plea rolls and Year Books, parliament and statute rolls, law treatises, and even chronicles.Miss Thompson provides considerable background material to support her emphasis on this process of interpretation, and she clearly interprets the character and motives of successive sponsors of the Charter.The value of Miss Thompson’s study is in the unusual thoroughness of her treatment of Magna Carta and in her corrections of misconceptions about the role the Magna Carta has played in the making of the English constitution.

In the long-debated transition from late antiquity to the early middle ages, the city of Ravenna presents a story rich and strange. From the fourth century onwards it suffered decline in economic terms. Yet its geographical position, its status as an imperial capital, and above all its role as a connecting point between East and West, ensured that it remained an intermittent attraction for early medieval kings and emperors throughout the period from the late fifth to the eleventh century. Ravenna’s story is all the more interesting because it was complicated and unpredictable: discontinuous and continuous, sometimes obscure, sometimes including bursts of energetic activity. Throughout the early medieval centuries its flame sometimes flared, sometimes flickered, but never went out.

The Arabic Language was first published in 1969. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Arabic, with its rich literary heritage, is one of the major languages of the world. It is spoken by about one hundred million people inhabiting a wide and important area of the Middle East. Yet the language and its significant role in history are little known in the English-speaking countries except among specialists. This book will, it is hoped, help to introduce the language and demonstrate its importance to a wider audience.

Professor Philip K. Hitti of Princeton University writes in the foreword: "Until recently Arabic studies in this country had been limited to the graduate level and confined to a few universities. Since World War II they have inched their way to the undergraduate curriculum of a small number of universities. But they are still top-heavy and anemic. They will so remain unless they send their roots deeper down into high schools and enlist the interest of a widening circle of nonspecialists.

"Hence the value of this work by Professor Chejne. It is a commendable attempt to introduce the Arabic language, with its features and problems, to students and nonspecialists, to tell the story of its dramatic evolution from a tribal dialect to one of the few carriers of world culture, to indicate its unique relation to the religion of Islam and its role in the development of modern Arab nationalism. The book, written in a language intelligible to the layman, sums up what is already known and presents the contribution of the author."