Mysticism,Migration and Clerical Networks: Ahmad al-Ahsaʾi and the Shaykhis of al-Ahsa,Kuwait and Basra

Ahmad al-Ahsa?i (1753–1826), the spiritual father of the mystical strand of Twelver Shiism, known as the Shaykhiyya, became an important religious figure in Iraq and Iran. But the Shaykhiyya also spread in his birthplace in Eastern Arabia and among migrants from al-Ahsa in Kuwait and Basra. The quietist and apolitical teachings of al-Ahsa?i suited the Shia in Eastern Arabia, who periodically suffered from political insecurity and religious persecution. Several scholars from al-Ahsa studied with al-Ahsa?i and with his successor as leader of the Shaykhiyya, Kazim al-Rashti. Thereafter, they returned to al-Ahsa or moved to Kuwait and Basra and set up hawzas to spread Shaykhi teachings. In the early twentieth century, the Shaykhis of al-Ahsa developed closer ties with the al-Usku?i, a family of maraji? of the Tabrizi School of the Shaykhiyya. The al-Usku?i also resided in al-Ahsa and Kuwait throughout the twentieth century. The Shaykhis of Basra, on the other hand, became followers of the rival Kermani School. In both Basra and Kuwait, migrants from al-Ahsa retained strong group identities because their common geographical origin was coupled with the Shaykhiyya.     

Reliability estimation from field return data

In this article statistical inference for the failure time distribution of a product from “field return data”, that records the time between the product being shipped and returned for repair or replacement, is described. The problem that is addressed is that the data are not failure times because they also include the time that it took to ship and install the product and then to return it to the manufacturer for repair or replacement. The inference attempts to infer the distribution of time to failure (that is, from installation to failure) from the data when in addition there are separate data on the times from shipping to installation, and from failure to return. The method is illustrated with data from units installed in a telecommunications network. Our collaborator on writing this paper, Ed Lisay of Alcatel-Lucent, passed away suddenly in October 2008. As a tribute, we can state that Ed had an energetic and vigorous charisma in the application of his skills. He brought a sense of fun to his many interests, such as his achievement of becoming a master electrician. Ed is sadly missed by his family, friends and colleagues.     

An outlier problem in the determination of ore grade

Data from recordings of ore assays from the Western Australian goldfields provide motivation to devise new tests for outliers when observations are distributed with the same mean but diff ering variances. In the case of equal variances, tests for a single outlier reduce to well-known tests of discordancy. A block discordancy test for k outliers is also described. The question of whether or not one should omit any observation(s) in the calculation of the mean recoverable gold content is addressed in the context of whether or not the data contain outliers, as judged by a normal model for the 'logged' ore assay values. The given data suggest that models with 'logged' values that follow long-tailed approximately normal distributions may be appropriate.