the shiites role in the general genealogy in which they have engaged to all arabs genealogies, all of the northern (adnanids) and southern (qahtanids), koreyshite, talibids, abbasids and omayyad, is basic. they were pioneers of this science and started to write genealogies through sources like early genealogists, interview with scholars and elders of the tribes, predecessors’ books, inscription...

This paper concerns the genealogical structure of a sample of chromosomes sharing a neutral rare allele. We suppose that the mutation giving rise to the allele has only happened once in the history of the entire population, and that the allele is of known frequency q in the population. Within a coalescent framework C. Wiuf and P. Donnelly (1999, Theor. Popul. Biol. 56, 183-201) derived an exact...

The overall theme of this current issue is encapsulated in the title of the first paper by Patrick Cadell, former Keeper of the Records of Scotland. ‘Building on the Past, Investing in the Future through Genealogy and Local History Services’ is the title of Mr Cadell’s keynote address to the Glasgow meeting of the new IFLA Section on Genealogy and Local History. The paper points out that, while...