Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003), 141209.

Printed in the United States of America

BOOK REVIEWS
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803210072

PAUL M. COBB, White Banners: Contention in
Abbasid Syria, 750880 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001). Pp. 248. $59.50 cloth, $19.92 paper.
JACOB LASSNER, The Middle East Remembered: Forged Identities, Competing Narratives, Contested Spaces (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000). Pp. 445. $65.00 cloth.
REVIEWED BY M ATTHEW S. GORDON, Department of History, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
A significant overlap of subject matter explains the decision to review these two books together.
Paul Cobbs study concerns itself with the political history of Syria in the late Umayyad and
early Abbasid periods. Jacob Lassners book is more far-reaching, but nearly all of the eleven
essays in his book deal with the history and historiography of the early Islamic period. The
longest chapter considers the ninth Abbasid caliphate during the Samarran interlude, and in
this case he and Cobb are on shared ground.
These are otherwise quite different books. White Banners, Cobbs first monograph, is based
on his 1997 doctoral thesis at the University of Chicago. It is clearly written and thoroughly
researched (the book relies heavily on Ibn
Asakir), and at no point that I could discern does
Cobb seek to pass judgment on the motivations and conduct of the actors treated therein. It
should find a ready audience among scholars of early Islamic history and instructors of both
graduate and upper-level undergraduate courses.
Cobb argues that as a result of the Abbasid coupan episode rooted in Umayyad internecine
struggles that began in 744 with the murder of al-Walid IISyria entered a period of identity
crisis. Once the Umayyad metropolis (p. 125), it was now obligated to accept the less exalted
status of an Abbasid province with all the burdens (taxation, foreign governors, military
conscription) the transformation entailed. Cobb analyzes four socio-political formations, each
of which sought to assert a claim on the central Iraqi state. Cobb views these disparate currents
of discontent as representative of a single phenomenonnamely, contention. Born of Syrias
necessary dependence on the Abbasid house, demands upon the imperial administration, however varied in social origin, were manifestations of a common political impulse.
Cobb defines the four groupings broadly. Provincial governors come first. Nearly all were
closely associated with the Abbasid house but for only a short period, under al-Mansur, were
Abbasid family members included. A troublesome lot, they were replaced by other categories
of imperial servants. Following the reign of al-Mutawakkil (d. 861), nearly all of the Abbasid
governors to Syria were of Turkish extraction; thus, Cobb provides useful evidence regarding
the impact of Samarran patterns on the provinces. He then turns, in separate chapters, to three
localthat is, Syrianformations: Umayyads and their elite partisans; the ashraf, or Syrian
tribal leaders, and their respective factions; and the disparate lower strata of Syrias cities and
towns. The first of these retained the ability to make life difficult for the Abbasids well after
750. Thus, Abu al-
Umaytir, a direct descendant of Mu
awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, led the last direct
Umayyad uprising as late as the early 9th century. As for the tribal ashraf, Cobb stresses that
demands on their part on the Iraqi caliphate had more to do with factional competition for
imperial attention than lingering rejection of Abbasid authority. The final chapter concerns nonelite actors about whom, as Cobb points out, little information exists. He has unearthed some
2003 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/03 $12.00

142 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

new material regarding the Zawaql, however, and offers perceptive comments regarding the
quiescence of the Syrian peasantry in this period.
In a brief comment, Cobb identifies contention as a concept developed by historians of
pre-modern Europe and argues for its applicability to the case of early Islamic Syria. In his
view, Syrias political expression was unlike that of Egypt and Khurasan precisely because of
Syrias centrality under the Umayyads. In other words, it seems, the concept suits conditions
of early Islamic provincial history in general but in the final analysis works best for Syria. A
more concerted look at contentiona comparative analysis using the work of Europeanists,
though difficult, would be helpfulwould have lent greater depth to the book and so done
more to reach a broad readership. It might also strengthen the case that, in the political activities
of Abbasid Syria, a shared impulse was in fact at work.
Lassners book is neither easily described nor digested. The essays in the book, with the
exception of three, first appeared as lectures or articles over the past fifteen years but have
been reworked for the present volume. The only wholly new material appears in Chapter 7, on
Samarra; the accompanying Chapter 6, on Islamic urbanization; and Chapter 11, devoted to an
analysis by Joseph Sambari, a 17th-century Jewish historian, of Islamic origins and the life of
the Prophet Muhammad. The essays are best read as a coda to Lassners previous writings on
early Abbasid politics and historiography, as well as his last full-length study, Demonizing the
Queen of Sheba (1993). Several of the essays, notably that on Samarra, are discursive and rest
on a thin number of references. The value of the essays, particularly those concerning Islamic
historiography, is diminished even further by Lassners reliance on sweeping characterizations
of Islamic thought and cultural production.
The book is divided into three sections, two under the rubric Islamic Themes and the third
under Jewish Themes. The last section includes the chapter on Sambari alongside three other
essays on, respectively, JewishMuslim relations, the Babylonian Exile as glossed by Saadiah
ibn Joseph (a late Yemeni scholar), and a largely speculative discussion on related Muslim and
Jewish themes in Ibn Ishaqs Sira.
The material covered in the sections on Islamic topics finds Lassner on often familiar ground:
the Abbasid movement, the foundation of Baghdad, and Islamic historiography are all areas in
which he has long evinced deep interest. His approach and arguments seem largely unchanged:
on the Abbasid movement, for example, Lassner continues to insist on its predominantly Arab
composition and remains as disdainful as ever of Daniel and others who hold to a prominent
Iranian element (the debate continues in recent articles by Agha, Crone, and Elad). The chapter
on Samarra is certainly welcome, given the relative lack of scholarship devoted to its history
and politics. Lassners comments on al-Mutawakkils building program, though lightly annotated, are useful, but readers will find a good deal more in the articles of Alastair Northedge
(one expects a full study to appear soon) and the essays edited by Chase Robinson in A Medieval Islamic City Reconsidered (2002). Absent from Lassners bibliography is the recent edition
of al-Sulis Kitab al-awraq (1998) that contains valuable material on the Samarra period.
The essays are held together loosely by a conceptual thread introduced in the first section. In
Lassners view, the conduct and worldview of Muslims (Lassner alternates among traditional
Muslims, believing Muslims, and Muslims of the Near East without any sort of clarification) have always been and remain informed by historical memory. An appeal to the past
specifically, the period of the Prophetic mission and the Medinan communitywould seem
benign enough. Surely the same pattern can be identified in Jewish and Christian writings, as
wellpre-modern and modern alikeso there would seem to be no surprises here. Lassner
sees the appeal, however, as having principally a dilatory effect and in at least two arenas of
Islamic culture.
The first is the writing of history by pre-modern Muslim scholars. In Lassners view, the
reason that al-Tabari, for example, failed to develop a critical historiographic methodology (that

Reviews 143
is, to write like the modern historian) is that he insisted on configuring the present to fit patterns
of the paradigmatic early Medinan example. The result, Lassner tells us, is that writing early
Islamic history is problematic to an extreme since, at every turn, one confronts this highly
artificial sense of symmetry (p. 30). But in writing his later chapters, not to speak of his earlier
works on Abbasid history, Lassner seems to find the task considerably less challenging. There,
it turns out, premodern Muslim authors offer a good deal of reliable information on the Abbasid
period. It is not simply that Lassner seems inconsistent but also that the effects of an appeal to
the early paradigms seem less onerous, in fact, than he would have us believe.
The second arena is the actual conduct of Muslims, both in the Abbasid period and in the
contemporary Islamic (or is it Arab?) world. In all cases, the present is lived to conform to
paradigmatic renderings of a received and familiar past (p. 31). Thus it seems, the greatest
obstacle confronting Islamic societies of the region is not the colonial legacy, stifled economic systems, authoritarian modes of leadership (so carefully nourished by Washington and
Moscow), and collapsing public education, but the burden of historical consciousness (p.
119). The charge reappears in Lassners comments on the struggle over Palestine: Muslim
historical consciousness, or, here, Muslim triumphalism, explains the refusal to come to
terms with the existence of Israel. The poverty of this explanation is underscored by the absence
of any mention here of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and its dire effect on
Palestinian society and efforts to secure a peaceful future alike. On at least four occasions,
Lassner seeks to distance himself from what he characterizes appropriately as discredited constructs of the Orient (see pp. 2, 14, 28, 31). To this reviewers mind, the distance in question
seems slight.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803220079

JOHN WALBRIDGE, The Leaven of the Ancients: Suhrawardi and the Heritage of the Greeks,
SUNY Series in Islam (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999). Pp. 323.
$28.50 cloth, $27.95 paper.
REVIEWED BY ROXANNE D. M ARCOTTE, School of History, Philosophy, Religion, and Classics,
University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
In the Leaven of the Ancients, John Walbridge studies the appropriation of nonPeripatetic
philosophical ideas by an antiAristotelian Islamic philosopher, Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi
(d. 1191). He proposes a comprehensive explanation of the origin of Suhrawardis philosophical
system, a revival of the wisdom of the Ancients and its philosophical affiliations grounded
in Greek philosophy (p. xiii). Walbridge attempts to uncover the reasons for Suhrawardis rejection of the prevailing neoAristotelian synthesis in Islamic philosophy, Suhrawardis knowledge
and understanding of nonAristotelian Greek philosophy, the ancient philosophers Suhrawardi
was attempting to follow, the relationship between Suhrawardis specific philosophical teachings (logic, ontology, physics, and metaphysics), and his understanding of nonAristotelian
ancient philosophy and the relationship between Suhrawardis system and the major Greek
philosophers, schools, and traditionsin particular the Presocratics, Plato, and the Stoics (p. 8).
Positing that Suhrawardi is to be understood first and foremost as a philosopher and that his
thought must be understood primarily from a philosophical point of view, in the same manner
as Empedocles who embodied the unification of philosophy, mysticism, and magic (p. 40),
Walbridge argues that Suhrawardi was a Pythagoreanizing Neoplatonist in the tradition of
Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus (p. xiii). Walbridge presents a novel interpretation with his
Pythagorean filiation, and he explores the political implications of such notions of demonic
or divine men, the divinized (mutaallih) individuals of the Illuminationist tradition and
their role in human affairs.

144 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

The work is divided into three main sections. The first section deals with Suhrawardis general philosophical position as a non-Peripatetic, with his view on the problem of philosophy
(chap. 1); his life and works (chap. 2); the main features of his philosophy (chap. 3; cf. John
Walbridge, The Science of Mystic Lights: Qutb al-Din Shirazi and the Illuminationist Tradition
in Islamic Philosophy, [1992], chaps. 2 and 3); and his account of the history of ancient philosophy (chap. 4). The second section reviews a number of Greek authors as they were, most
probably, understood (or misunderstood) in 12th-century Aleppo: Empedocles as mystic and
magus (chap. 5); Pythagoras and the brotherhood of the lovers of wisdom (chap. 6); the divine
Plato (chap. 7); Aristotle and the Peripatetics (chap. 8); Plato versus Aristotle, the critique of
Peripatetic logic, and Platonic epistemology (chaps. 9 and 10); and the Stoics as heirs of Platos
esoteric teachings (chap. 11; cf. John Walbridge, Suhrawardi, a Twelfth-Century Muslim NeoStoic? Journal of the History of Philosophy 34 [1996]: 51533). The third section proposes
two studies on politics, Platos Seventh epistle, and the failure of Suhrawardis political ambitions (chap. 12), and the philosophical heritage of Suhrawardi (chap. 13).
Suhrawardis antiAristotelian positions serve to re-emphasize the mystical elements of ancient Greek thought, especially the mysticism of Pythagoras and Plato. Similarly, it brings to
light the inherent complexity of Suhrawardis thought and the difficulty of defining Suhrawardi
primarily as a philosopher, albeit in an Empedoclean sense, while de-emphasizing the centrality
of his mystical recitals (pp. 10912; no mention is made of the Bustan al-Qulub). It also raises
the question of the Islamic nature of Suhrawardis brand of mysticism, with its Quranic and
Sufic references.
Walbridges study is a major contribution to our knowledge of the rich Greek heritage that
underlies Suhrawardis philosophical system that presents and reviews an impressive collection
of works that circulated (or may have circulated) in the 12th century. A number of assumptions
are also made by the author. One of these is that Arabic sources available to Suhrawardi were
more numerous than those that have survived (p. 8)hence, the reason to investigate the Greek
tradition and to include a number of works that may have provided some of the material for the
construction of Suhrawardis philosophical system. I do not think we are justified in presuming
medieval Islamic philosophers to be ignorant of Greek views unless proven otherwise through
unambiguous philological evidence (p. 9). The author can then argueas is the case for large
portions of the Pythagorean systemthat Suhrawardi reconstructs or perhaps reinvents elements of Greek philosophy (p. 9). Such a position appears to be the antithesis of the stance
adopted by people such as Walzer.
Walbridge suggests that aspects of Illuminationism may also find their sources in the non
Peripatetic ideas of the Stoic tradition. The claim appears to rest on a philological analysis
rather than on an analysis of fundamental Stoic doctrines that would provide a better indication
of possible historical filiation. Walbridges tentative reconstruction of the development of
Suhrawardis view of his relationship to stoicism is, at times, highly speculative (e.g., step 6,
p. 195), especially in view of the indirect and often incorrect views that were circulating at the
time regarding Plato (p. 99), let alone regarding preIslamic Greek philosophical traditions.
Attempting to prove that Suhrawardi considered himself a Stoic (p. 196) based on any or all of
Suhrawardis oral tradition that would have been known to the commentators (p. 195) and on
Mulla Sadras use of the derogative term of Stoic for any ideas that were nonPlatonic and
nonPeripatetic in Suhrawardis Illuminationist system (p. 193), constitutes a methodologically
risky enterprise. In addition, in a number of instances, the author concludes that a particular
intellectual heritage did not have any influence on Suhrawardi. Such discussions could have
been omitted without affecting the authors main arguments (e.g., p. 96). Walbridge also assumes that Suhrawardis works and their intellectual context were correctly understood by two
of his earlier commentators. This is perhaps more true of Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi than of Shams
al-Din al-Shahrazuri, at times, a Peripateticizing Illuminationist.

Reviews 145
Walbridge presents a too often neglected period of the history of philosophy that should
interest classicists; historians of philosophy, especially of the Neoplatonic Arabic tradition; and
medievalists and scholars of Arabic and Islamic philosophy. Although it deals with specialized
philosophical issues, the work is accessible, clearly written and argued, and augmented with
examples. This is a work that raises a number of important issues and that should be studied
together with the equally important ancient Iranian historical and philosophical backgrounds of
Suhrawardis Illuminationist philosophy (cf. John Walbridge, The Wisdom of the Mystic East:
Suhrawardi and Platonic Orientalism [2001]).
Minor details that in no way diminish the quality of the work include the ever-so-confusing
death of Suhrawardi in 1194 (p. 5) or, according to Ibn Khallikan, in July 1191 (p. 14) or
January 1192 (p. 211). A number of footnote references are absent from the bibliographyfor
example, al-Qifti (pp. 8586; 8990; 247, n. 21 [the Lippert edition], n. 35, n. 38; 246, n.18,
n. 39; for other works, cf. p. 270, n. 13; 247, n. 27; 257, n. 12, etc.), making this work difficult
to use. The work includes an appendix (pp. 22324) that proposes a sound critical review of
Corbins pioneering studies on Suhrawardi, necessary for any scholar of the Illuminationist
tradition, and an appendix (pp. 22529) that presents a full translation of Suhrawardis dream
of Aristotle that is found in his al-Talwihat (previously translated by Hairi and Amin Razavi).
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803230075

MUHSIN S. M AHDI, Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2001). Pp. 281. $37.50 cloth.
REVIEWED BY DIMITRI GUTAS, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Yale
University, New Haven, Conn.
This volume does not distill more than four decades of research, as its jacket blurb asserts,
but brings together eleven articles on Farabis political philosophy by Muhsin Mahdi published between 1963 and 1999. They are arranged in the book in three parts. The first, introductory part contains two general essays titled The Political Orientation of Islamic Philosophy
and Philosophy and Political Thought, and a historical study on The Foundation of Islamic
Philosophy. The second and third parts contain seven articles, which present detailed readings
of eight selections from Mahdis canon of Farabis political writings: Enumeration of the
Sciences (chap. 5), Book of Religion, Virtuous City (second half), Political Regime (second
half), Attainment of Happiness, Philosophy of Plato, Philosophy of Aristotle, and the second
part of the Book of Letters (some of Mahdis renditions of the titles are misleading; see later).
Another general essay on Religion and the Cyclical View of History, roaming from Plato to
Nietzsche, concludes the collection.
These articles are not reprints of the originals but later versions of them, as Mahdi informs
us (p. 247). The few spot checks I made comparing the two revealed that they have been
slightly revised, but unfortunately the revision appears to be mostly cosmetic or stylisticfor
example, the word men in the earlier versions, referring to mankind, has been changed to
human beings, an occasional sentence introducing a paragraph has been added or removed,
etc. This is a pity because inaccuracies of fact and outdated scholarship have been left standing
in the book and new errors were introduced in the presumably fresh Introduction. For example,
Mahdi accuses historians of Islamic philosophy of neglecting to ask what Muslim philosophers did with th[e] translation literature (p. 47), citing the major Arabic Neoplatonic works,
the Theology of Aristotle and the Liber de causis as examples of such neglected literature. This
overlooks the seminal work done on these very texts by Cristina dAncona in numerous articles
from the 1990s to the present. Several fantastic statements by Mahdi concerning Farabis life
have absolutely no evidence to support them (cf. Encyclopaedia Iranica 9:20812)namely,

146 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

that Farabi traveled to many strange and wonderful lands (p. 60; actually, it is recorded that
he traveled only to Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, and Aleppo); that he went to Byzantium to
study in one of the Arabic-teaching institutions across the border(!); and that he had Christian
clerics as teachers in Central Asia (p. 1). Platos Laws never became the basic textbook[s] of
Arabic and Judeo-Arabic political philosophy (p. 35); Farabi knew and slightly reworked only
Galens synopsis (cf. my article in The Ancient Tradition in Christian and Islamic Hellenism,
ed. R. Kruk and G. Endress [1997], 10119). Furthermore, it was not Farabi who initiated in
Islamic philosophy the tradition of returning to the works of . . . Plato and Aristotle (p. 3), but
Kindi, of course, and Farabi was not, as Mahdi claims, the first major philosopher to take up
the challenge of studying a religious-political order based on revelation or how the city is
patterned after the cosmos (pp. 1, 10). Eusebius among the Christians and Iamblichus, Julian,
Hierocles, and Ammonius among the pagans had grappled with the same problems (cf. L.
Siorvanes, Proclus, [1996], 610).
For these reasons, this book is not for readers who are interested in the historical circumstances of the development of a political philosophy by Farabi, or, for that matter, in a serious
study on the subject that would take into account all recent advances in scholarship. For
Mahdis concern is not with bibliography. He lists only four (!) items on Farabi in his secondary
sources (p. 245): two by Strauss, one by Madkour, and one by Mahdi. None of the bibliography
of the past fifty years, which could have been easily located in H. Daibers Bibliography of
Islamic Philosophy, has been consulted. Is one to attribute this disdainful attitude toward the
work of fellow scholars to the fact that Mahdi thinks he is the only rightly guided one?
Mahdi thinks he is right at least about two major positions that form the gist of the book.
First, he sees political philosophy as prominent in classical Islamic philosophy (p. 65)that is,
from Kindi to Averroesand second, he defines political philosophy as concerned with the
study and interpretation of revealed religion (pp. 23). Classical Islamic philosophy, therefore,
is predominantly concerned with the study of religion. The first position, apart from being in
itself outlandishwith the arguable exception of Farabi, there is no other philosopher during
this period who could with any stretch of the imagination be called political in any senseis
also refuted by Mahdis own statements within the same article. In one place, he acknowledges
that political philosophy is absent from the works of Farabis predecessors, Kindi and Razi (p.
56), and in another he says that it is a mystery that his followers did not carry forward the
brilliant beginning that he bequeathed to them (p. 61). With predecesors and successors eliminated, this leaves only Farabi as a political philosopher, even according to Mahdi. Furthermore, the whole notion that Islamic philosophy is primarily about the relationship between
religion and philosophy is an Orientalist notion that dates from the 19th century and that was
introduced into the study of Arabic philosophy, as its chief hermeneutical principle, by Strauss.
It also happens to be invalid, as I have discussed at length elsewhere (see British Journal of
Middle Eastern Studies 29 [2002]: 1215, 1924).
Mahdis second major position is that Farabis political philosophy, which dominates and
colors his entire philosophy, consists of his study and interpretation of revelation and the divine
law. The political philosopher sees a bewildering variety of opinions about human things held
by individuals in a society governed by a revealed law. This makes it necessary for the philosopher to investigate these things and the revelation in order to replace the opinions about these
matters with knowledge of them (p. 41). To gain this knowledge, the philosopher studies the
political writings of Plato and Aristotle. The political philosopher does this in order to improve
public understanding of the nature and purpose of public life (p. 61); in other words, Farabi
had an activist agenda. Farabi, Mahdi claims (pp. 12324), did this by publishing as models of
political science, to be taught to future princes, his two books, the Virtuous City (this is a
misleading abbreviation; the title actually puts the emphasis on the Principles of the opinions
of the inhabitants of the virtuous city), and the Political Regime (this is a tendentious mistrans-

Reviews 147
lation; al-Siyasa al-madaniyya actually means Governance of Cities. Its alternate title is Principles of Beings).
This could be a plausible interpretation of Farabis work, and Mahdis close readings of these
treatises, constituting the bulk of the book, would be useful (if one disregarded their tortured
argumentation and occasional degeneration into numerologye.g., on pp. 6768), had he not
left unanswered certain objections to this view. First, in trying to understand and explain revelation, Farabi had recourse not to Platos and Aristotles political writings but to Aristotles theory
of the soul, the intellect and imaginationa subject that Mahdi touches on only cursorily (pp.
13436, 15766; but cf. F. Rahman, Prophecy in Islam [1958], also not consulted). Second,
and because of the first, political philosophy cannot be forced to mean study and interpretation
of the revealed law, however this study is conducted (which explains the quotation marks in
my references earlier). If it did, all the exegetes of religious traditions would be political philosophers. And third, there is absolutely no indication in any of Farabis or anybody elses writings
that he had an activist agenda and that he intended those two books as mirrors for princes
(or that they were actually taken as such), like their contemporary work known as the Secret of
Secrets (Sirr al-asrar).
But in the final analysis, the refutation of Mahdis interpretation comes from the philosophical tradition in the Islamic world itself. No philosopher ever saw Farabis work as described by
Mahdi, and even worse, Ibn Khaldun, the real founder of political philosophy in Islamic civilization, expressly denied such an interpretation (Muqaddima II, 138 Rosenthal). So it is not a
mystery that Farabis followers did not continue with his allegedly activist political agenda:
there was none there to begin with. What there wasprophecy and revelation explained in
terms of the Aristotelian theory of the soulthey adopted. This does not mean that Farabi did
not deal with political issues, but these were details (though necessaryFarabi was nothing if
not meticulous) to the main body of his work, details that were disregarded by all subsequent
philosophers and that reappeared, as mere lists of forms of government, in the ethical literature
of later centuries, starting with Tusis Akhlaq-e naseri (cf. Encyclopaedia Iranica, 9:22122).
All these elementsunrevised older articles and outdated (or non-existent) bibliography indicating disinclination to take differing views seriously, speaking ex cathedra in authoritarian
voice and in terms of a grand theory divorced from historical context and verisimilitude, and
the hyperbolic and orientalist claims of the prominence of political philosophy (in the sense
given by Mahdi) in the classical period of Arabic philosophymake the book an antiquated
curio, of interest only to historians of American intellectual currents in the middle of the 20th
century.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803240071

FRITZ MEIER, Essays on Islamic Piety and Mysticism, trans. John OKane, Islamic History and
Civilization: Studies and Texts, ed. Ulrich Haarmann and Wadad Kadi, vol. 30 (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1999). Pp. 772. $195.00.
REVIEWED BY TODD LAWSON, Montreal
Of the four or five names one associates with the founding of the modern study of Islamic
mysticism, Fritz Meiers is perhaps the least appreciated in North America because most of
his seminal contributions to the subject have remained in their original German, and since the
end of World War I North Americans have been not inclined to give Islamicist scholarship in
this language its due. Such foundational works as Noldeke and Schwally and Goldziher in
Quranic studies, Ritter on
Attar, and the present author on Kubra and Baha al-Walad, remain
untranslated and insufficiently studied or even referred to by recent generations of scholars and
specialists.

148 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

It is perhaps, in this instance, a case of Muhammad going to the mountainor, at least, being
transported there through the diligent and expert translation of fifteen of Meiers articles by
John OKane. The articles appear in the volume in the order they were written, spanning the
forty years between 1954 and 1994. Both the translator and the editor are well known to
specialists in Islamic mysticism for their previous efforts, individually and as a team. Bernd
Radtke was a student of Meiers and was therefore able to draw the author himself into the
production of the book. We are told that Meier, who died on his birthday in 1998 at age eightysix, approved the entire translation (having added comments and bibliographic references) just
days before his death on 10 June.
The scholarship gathered here is of course exemplary. The articles deal with a vast array of
topics, exploiting a bewildering variety of sources in numerous languages to describe, analyze,
interpret, and in some instances offer editions, in their original language, of primary texts for
the study of Sufism. There is a conspicuous absence of theorizing about the big picture apart
from one or two instances, such as Sufism is very multilayered and despite numerous common
features cannot be made to conform to one pattern (p. 63). The articles deal with Sama
, Sufi
adab, or suluk (here we have the Arabic text of Qushayris Tartib that Meier first published in
1963); a detailed discussion of an important manuscript anthology; a study in the periodization
of the history of Sufism; the life of a statement attributed to the Prophet forbidding mourning;
an edition of the Persian text of a correspondence between a shaykh and his disciple of the late
12th century; a study of the genealogy and practices of the Damascene branch of the Qadiryya
known as the Sumadiyya; Ibn Taymiyya on Sufism and predestination; a simply thrilling philological and historical study of the Almoravids and the institution of the ribatw ; the description
of a forgotten work on Muslim saints in the west during the 12th century; the study of Suyutis
ideas about the postmortem life of the Prophet; the tradition of invoking blessings on the
Prophet; the Muslim-cum-Sufi teaching of usn-i zw ann, thinking well of others, as an efficient
force for good in the world; and finally a study of the relationship between a text and a specific
social practice, the institution of the mahya communal night prayer vigil.
In addition to the articles, there is a Preface (pp. viiix) describing the genesis of the volume,
a full bibliography of Meiers work (pp. xixx), a useful Introduction by the editorial team
(pp. 121) in which each of the articles is summarized, and several indexes (pp. 681750).
There is no room here to look at each one of these miniature monographs separately. They
are all the product of a certain faith in the so-called philological method of textual scholarship,
and the conclusions and analyses arrived at reflect this. At a time that this kind of research
may be thought old-fashioned, the publication of this book will demonstrate to the reader just
how lively and pertinent (not to say daunting) it actually is in the hands of such a highly
cultured man as this master. There are unavoidable longueurs, and there are some surprising
absences in the critical apparatus and the authors additions at the end of most of the articles.
For example, both of the editors and the author take the trouble to proclaim the importance of
Sulamis tafsr (pp. 11, 186) yet make no effort to alert the reader to Bowerings edition of
Sulamis Minor Quran Commentary (1997). The same scholar is ignored again on page 472.
And of the vast array of subjects covered, Shi
ism is not one of them (cf. the index where the
word Shi
a has one entry). It is unclear, incidentally, what is meant by an unsuccessful
Sh
te adth (p. 555); nor is the work of French Islamicist Henry Corbin ever mentioned by
the author in the course of his articles. This, of course, indicates a dramatic difference in
scholarly tastes and preoccupations, pointing up the truth of Meiers statement, quoted earlier,
that Sufism is not one thing. But it is mysterious why the recent work on Sirhindi by ter Haar
is not referred to at the appropriate place (p. 597). There are other omissions, as well.
Glimpses of the personality shine through the text. Meier does not like Luther (pp. 315, 546).
He is either altruistic or sarcastic: since de Beaurecueil was at the time engaged in looking
after orphans in Afghanistan, it is understandable that he was not familiar with my preliminary

Reviews 149
study. He has feet of clay, actually citing Wehrs dictionary (p. 445), whereas the usual lexicographic authorities are frequently manuscripts of the classical works.
It would be impossible to praise this publication too highly, and all involved should be
congratulated on a job exceedingly well done. The editors remind us that books have their own
fate. Let us hope that in this case, part of that fate will include its use in the preparation of
undergraduate courses on Islam.
Naturally, in such a complex publication, which is remarkably free of errors, there will be
lapses and mistakes. Some of these are matters of English usage, although it is recognized that
the original German can be eccentric, as the editor points out (p. 4). In such cases, it might
have been useful to supply in a footnote the distinctive phrase or sentence in the original.
Questions thus arise from the following: eliminating decisions of the self (p. 9) could be
eliminating consciousness of the self. Gradation (p. 10) does not seem to be the correct
translation of tartb in this context; progress or pedagogy, or simply the stages, might
have been better, even if this is not a literal translation of the title of Qushayris work. Another
feature of the text (passim) is what will appear to an English readership as an overuse of etc.
(e.g., p. 18, l.4 forward); presently known should be now known this adverbial lapse
occurs throughout the book (e.g., pp. 23, 136, 503, but cf. 254 for the correct usage); inwardly
as well (p. 25) should be withdrew inwardly as well; still know (p. 56) probably should
be now know; shammer (p. 74) should be sham; tiro (p. 99) should be novice;
commentary to (p. 149) should be commentary on; usufruct (p. 179) is much too legalistic in diction to translate the Quranic muta
/ enjoyment; his face on the shaykh (p. 205)
should be either his eyes on the shaykh (unlikely) or, best, his face toward the shaykh; in
short a kind of Prussians (p. 214) should be in short, an Iranian equivalent of the Prussians;, moribund person (p. 232) should be dying person; the sentence In Documents
translated as couvents cloisters which does not fit with diyar misriyya (p. 339) is unclear;
inconsistencies in translating German quotations are found on pages 347 and 403; eye sockets
free (p. 400) should be eyes uncovered; Grimm Brothers (pp. 536, 693) should be Brothers Grimm; for our ideas (p. 564) should be in our view; the Arabic language disposes
over (p. 590) is unclear; his two-hundred-year-earlier predecessor (p. 596) should be his
predecessor by two hundred years; Already Muhammad (p. 605) should be Even Muhammad; work himself into the attributes (p. 646) could be work the attributes into himself;
artfully (p. 650) should be artistically, and for artful stylistics should be as an artistic
stylist; from l. 2 forward, the possessor (p. 656; as a translation of sahib or the like) should
be the occupier; text-form (p. 667) could be textual tradition; friendly communication
(p. 679) should be personal communication.
A few of the several typographical errors are: on the inside dust cover, no. l.11, de, should
be the; on the contents page (p. v), Mourning of the Dead should be Mourning the Dead
(this is corrected on p. 221); text edition (p. 1) should be edition; ideologists (p. 4) could
be ideologues; al-Safad and Arab-ic (p. 17, passim) should be al-Sadaf and Arabic;
the word is multilocatio (p. 18, l.20); the last sentence on page 21 appears to duplicate, in
error, the first part of the last sentence beginning on page 20; Trimignham (p. 29) should be
Trimingham; ecstaty (p. 38) should be ecstasy (although it is not clear that one must
know how to spell it correctly before experiencing it); Tabars (p. 68, passim) should be
Tabris ; ad-aptation (p. 183) should be adap-tation; the plan of the rest of the book is
abandoned on p. 267 in the absence of an actual heading announcing an addition by the author
at the end of an article; words and letters are irregularly spaced (p. 349, ll. 13, 14); a number
of Latin phrases (p. 355) need italics (these are inconsistently applied in foreign words and
phrases throughout the book); existing one (p. 398) should be existing ones; navity (p.
409) should be navety; homoioteleuton (p. 445) should be homoeoteleuton; aready (p.
458) should be already; error in page layout (p. 510); Kuln (p. 517, passim) should be

150 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

Kulayn ; raptus (p. 525) should be raptus; Paradies (p. 544) should be Paradise;
suppliction (p. 555) should be supplication; innumberable (p. 556) should be innumerable or unnumbered; hmself (p. 558) should be himself; efficacity (p. 561) should be
efficacy; vizualizing (p. 578) should be visualizing; respone (p. 588) should be response; Cigar, Nevill 353 (p. 689) should be deleted, and Cigar, Norman 370, 480, 606
should be Cigar, Norman 353, 370, 480, 606.
In the cause of domesticating German scholarship to the English language, an abbreviations
key might have helped the reader decipher the frequent acronyms, including WKAS,
WZKM, ZDMG, and ZNTW, as well as the French BIFAN and JA and the British
BSOAS. It is difficult to know what scheme guided the editor, here since many of the titles
of journals and reference works are given in full.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803250078

KLAUS SCHIPPMANN, Ancient South Arabia: From the Queen of Sheba to the Advent of Islam,
trans. Allison Brown (Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2001). Pp. 181. $39.95
cloth, $18.95 paper.
REVIEWED BY ODED BOROWSKI, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Program in Mediterranean Archaeology, Emory University, Atlanta
Klaus Schippmann, who teaches archaeology at the University of Gottingen, has participated
in several archaeological excavations in southern Arabia. As he states in the Introduction to the
book, very little is known on the subject of the history of ancient southern Arabia, and he
outlines the reasons for this. His aim is to present to a broad audience, including Orientalists,
historians of ancient history not concerned primarily with this region, archaeology students,
and the general reader, a consolidated overview of the current state of knowledge on topics
related to the history and culture of South Arabia. The book was originally published in German
in 1998; corrections and updating were introduced in the English edition.
The book is divided into ten chapters covering a broad range of topics. Chapters 1 (pp. 37)
and 2 (pp. 917) are devoted to geography and sources and the peoples of southern Arabia. In
addition to the geography and topography of the region, the author recounts the development
of the terms Arab and Arabia through a brief survey of ancient sources. He evaluates the
possibility of population estimates in the present and in antiquity and presents information
concerning the history and make up of the local population. Chapter 3, a very short chapter
(pp. 1922), deals with the different dialects and languages extant in ancient southern Arabia
and with the history and different forms of writing there, and Chapter 4 (pp. 2330) describes
the exploration history, devoted mostly to the collection of epigraphic material.
The meat of the book is in the next chapter. Chapter 5 (pp. 3169), which is divided into
several subchapters, covers the history of southern Arabia from the prehistoric period to the
7th century A.D. The main discussion here is about the ancient southern Arabian civilization of
approximately 1400 years duration, from the 8th century B.C. to about 600 A.D. A brief discussion is devoted to the 10th century B.C., including the episode of the Queen of Sheba (pp.
5354). Schippmann also describes at length the multiple problems related to the early chronology, taking into consideration factors such as paleography, C-14, historical records, numismatics, and more. Perhaps it was felt beyond the scope of the present book, but the author does
not bring into the discussion the development of the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet and the abecedary
from
Izbet Sartah, which might tip the scale in favor of what he terms the Long Chronology
of southern Arabia. Following that is a discussion of the different kingdoms that occupied the
region, including the kingdoms of Saba, Ma
in,
Ausan, Qataban, Hadramawt, and Himyar, with
attention paid to chronology, inter-relationships, and geographical location.

Reviews 151
The next two chapters deal with broad subjects. Chapter 6 (pp. 7177) is concerned with the
social structure during the Bronze Age and the (proto-)Sabaean period, while Chapter 7 (pp.
7985) describes the economy, including overland and maritime trade and agriculture. Overland
trade, which involved basically the transportation of incense (myrrh and frankincense), was
very lucrative until the discovery of the monsoon-winds pattern. At this point, during the Roman period, overland trade dwindled. Maritime trade reached as far as India and China. Agriculture, which was the primary aspect of economic life, was based on irrigation for growing
a variety of crops and also involved livestock breeding.
The military is dealt with in Chapter 8 (pp. 8790) and religion in Chapter 9 (pp. 9194).
These chapters are brief because very little is known about military activities, offensive and
defensive, in southern Arabia, and not much more is known about religion before the rise of
Islam. The closing Chapter 10 (pp. 95118) includes a discussion of architecture, sculpture,
smaller works of art, coins, and pottery.
Following the endnotes (pp. 11958), the author presents a detailed chronology (pp. 15963),
a list of abbreviations (pp. 16568), and a chapter-by-chapter bibliography (pp.16974). The
book concludes with three indexes: of people, place names, and subjects. A map of southern
Arabia with pertinent information is provided at the beginning, and the book includes sixteen
black-and-white photographs, some of which are not very crisp.
On the whole, this book is written in a descriptive and non-argumentative style, and it provides a very useful introduction to ancient southern Arabia for the non-specialist, highlighting
differences of scholarly opinion only with respect to matters of chronology. Although the book
covers an expansive body of material, the relative scarcity of archaeological and other data so
far uncovered for southern Arabia does not yet allow for any definitive conclusions to be
reached. The author does not try to impress the reader with fancy terms and theories, and with
very few exceptions (e.g., Sanherib instead of Sennacherib) he follows the accepted spellings. Because the work was originally written in German, it relies extensively on German
sources (as one might expect in a work written with a non-specialist German reader in mind).
The current translation therefore has the advantage of making European scholarship on the topic
more widely available in English and, at the same time, presenting a representative summary of
current knowledge of a field that will be of interest to archaeologists and historians of the pre
and postIslamic period.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803260074

DEVIN STEWART, Islamic Legal Orthodoxy: Twelve Shiite Responses to the Sunni Legal System
(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1998). Pp. 289. $40.00 cloth.
REVIEWED BY BRANNON WHEELER, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization,
University of Washington, Seattle
Devin Stewart has written a thoroughly researched and closely argued analysis of how Twelver
Shi
i legal theory developed in response to the institutionalization of Sunni law. He contends
that the origins and history of Twelver Shi
i law, sparked by the vacuum in authority brought
about by the Occultation of the twelfth imam, was motivated by the need to communicate and
debate with Sunni jurists.
Stewart focuses primarily on how the Sunni concept of consensus (ijma
) was viewed by
Twelver Shi
i jurists. He outlines three main Twelver Shi
i responses to this concept. The first
is represented by Shi
i scholars who appear to have accepted outright the Sunni concept of
consensus and thus identified themselves with the Shafi
i school of law. Stewart treats this
response in Chapter 3, providing a thick overview of the major historical figures, schools, and
texts of these so-called Shi
iShafi
i jurists. Most of the chapter is prosopographical, drawn

152 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

from Shafi
i and Shi
i biographical dictionaries, but Stewart also examines some of the more
general social and intellectual implications of this Shi
iSunni affiliation at the end of the
chapter. Readers may wish that the sections on schools and textbooks explained in more detail
the development of legal theory represented in the 16th- and 17th-century commentaries on the
standard Shafi
i commentary on the Maliki compendium of Ibn al-Hajib.
The second response was for Twelver Shi
i scholars to modify the Sunni concept of consensus to the Shi
i legal tradition and thus found a Twelver Shi
i school of law that was separate
from but parallel to the Sunni schools of law. In Chapter 4, Stewart examines this from historical and theoretical perspectives. The first part of Chapter 4 provides a useful overview of early
Shi
i attempts to distinguish themselves and their legal theory from that of the Sunni schools,
including an excellent outline of the major text produced during this period. Stewart also shows
how Twelver Shi
i scholars adapted the Sunni concept of consensus to be both broader than
only that of the Sunni jurists and hold a special position for Shi
i jurists.
The third response is that of the so-called Akhbaris, who rejected the Sunni concept of
consensus along with other rationalist methods and thus the authority of the Sunni jurists altogether. In Chapter 5, Stewart explains how the Akhbaris focused authority in the Quran itself,
rejecting any juristic authority other than that based on expertise in hadith and Quranic interpretation. By emphasizing the Akhbaris as an anti-madhhab movement, Stewart successfully
counters some of the conclusions of earlier secondary scholarship on the Akhbaris and Twelver
Shi
i legal theory more generally. He points out, in particular, how the anti-madhhab focus
of the Akhbaris skewed not only their view of Sunni legal theory but also the history of Twelver
Shi
i legal theory.
After having detailed these three responses, Stewart provides a systematic comparison in
Chapter 6 of Twelver Shi
i and Sunni law, focusing primarily on issues of juristic authority, the
legal curricula, and judicial hierarchy. Stewart is careful and clear in his citation of sources
and the ascriptive categories used by the Twelver Shi
i jurists, but he does not always reflect
on the larger descriptive terms such as orthodoxy and Sunni employed throughout the book.
In part, this may be due to Stewarts theory, expressed but not fully examined in his Introduction, concerning the minority status of the Shi
i and their motivation in adopting or rejecting
Sunni epistemologies and methodologies.
Overall, the value of this book is in providing a thorough examination of the theoretical
foundations of Twelver Shi
i legal theory and, in the process, offering both a synthesis of and
a number of correctives to earlier secondary scholarship. Stewart has succeeded in redirecting
the study of Shi
i legal theory and underlining numerous issues for further study.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803270070

ABBAS AMANAT, Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar and the Iranian Monarchy,
18311896 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). Pp. 554. $55.00 cloth.
REVIEWED BY THOMAS M. RICKS, Center for Arab and Islamic Studies, Villanova University,
Villanova, Penn.
Irans monarchs have had a special place in the historiography of that country. Before the
197779 Iranian Revolution, Iranian and nonIranian historians devoted hundreds of pages to
the lives, habits, courtly life, wars, and customs of Irans kings, from the ancient Archaemenians
to the recent Pahlavis. Following the recent revolution, a spate of works on the late Muhammad
Reza Shah filled the bookshelves. Moreover, during the past decade, researchers revived earlier
passions for the Safavid family, their financial, commercial, and agricultural practices, foreign
policies, and historiography in both article and book form.
Amanats extensive research into Britains 19th-century diplomatic records, along with a very

Reviews 153
careful reading of more than two hundred published and unpublished 19th- and 20th-century
Persian and Arabic chronicles, biographies, and newspapers, as well as Qajar documents at
Yale Universitys Sterling Memorial Library, goes well beyond the usual kingly historiography.
Not only is the present work original in its first-ever study in English of Nasir al-Din Shah
Qajar; it is also the first study of the Qajar court in the context of contemporary domestic as
well as foreign crises. Amanat has provided the specialist and general reader with the unusual
historical treat of Qajar courtly intrigue, a study of two epic-size prime ministers, and a series
of ongoing diplomatic confrontations with Britain and Russia anticipating the World War I
domestic and international struggles within a constitutional Iran.
The thesis of the work is twofold: that Nasir al-Dins reign was the beginning of monarchical absolutism in [the] modern sense (pp. xiii-xiv), and that the forty-eight years of his reign
(184896) in many respects epitomized the transitional nature of Qajar rule from the Safavid
period to that of the 20th-century Pahlavis (p. 1). The transitional nature, according to Amanat,
was political and culturalthat is, adaptations from the political culture of the earlier kings of
the Safavid, Afshar, and Zand reigns while adapting to the Wests pervasive ways similar to
Pahlavi Iran. Overall, Amanats tireless research proves the thesis with a cornucopia of other
issues. In a real sense, the strength of the book lies in that cornucopia of historical sidetracks,
giving graduate students and faculty unintended insights into mid-19th-century aristocratic Iran
while undoubtedly overwhelming the general reading public.
The work is divided into four parts, all set within the first twenty-three years (184871) of
Nasir al-Dins long, forty-eight year reign: (1) the early years of young Nasir, from 1831 to
1848 (pp. 188); (2) the early crisis of the Babi uprising and Taqi Khan Amir Kabirs ministerial challenges to Nasir al-Din from 1848 to 1851 (pp. 89199); (3) the Herat, Marv, and
Bushire military failures against British and Russian incursions, a flurry of courtly intrigues
centered on Mirza Aqa Khan Nuris ministerial challenges to Nasir al-Din, Malkum Khans
secret societies, the 186061 Tehran womens bread riots, and the soldiers mutinies (pp. 200
387); and (4) the 186171 years of consolidation of Nasir al-Dins absolute rule (pp. 387405).
The Epilogue completes the subsequent twenty-five years of European land and resource concessions; the monarchs European travels and impending bankruptcy; and the explosive protests
of the Tobacco Regie (pp. 40548). On 1 May 1896, Nasir al-Din Shah was assassinated by
Mirza Riza Kirmani in the shrine of Shah
Abd al-
Azim south of Tehran, ending the longest
reign of a monarch in Irans history since the 16th-century Safavid King Tahmasp I (152476).
In part, the author succeeds admirably in this thoroughly researched and exceedingly detailed
study of mid-19th-century Iran and Persian kingship in transition. The reader will be amused
by the strategies of the Queen Mother, Jahan Khanum Mahd Ulya, and Nasir al-Dins very
enterprising favorite courtesan, Jayran. The impact of the 184851 Babi uprising; the 1848
antiArmenian riots in Tabriz; and the series of military defeats in Transoxiana, Afghanistan,
and the Persian Gulf are well explained and documented. Although several maps of the military
campaigns and more attention to connecting the continuous diplomatic tinkering by Britains
envoys in Tehran and the British forces in the field would have tied up some of the loose
historical ends, the focus of the work remains solidly on the lives and times of Tehrans Persian
and foreign nobilities.
At the same time, Amanats excursion into the life and times of Nasir al-Din Shah produces
a surprising quantity of detailed descriptions of courtly rivalries, pettiness, and intrigues along
side the pesky 19th-century British and Russian competition for Iranian land, waterways, and
mineral resources. In the age of European imperialism, one would not expect less from Britain
and Russia; their kings and queens became appropriate symbols of the financial and industrial
power that their societies and economies were generating. Nasir al-Din, however is more typical
and even symptomatic of his times. He represents a number of 19th-century Asian monarchs
in their incessant dabbling in the oddities and amusements of industrial Europe without serious

154 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

investigations into the origins of European financial or industrial power. Not unlike Egypts
Khedive Ismail or Indias Bahadur Shah II, Nasir al-Din Shah saw little reason to fathom the
European successes other than adopting their stylish dress, their ceremonial lifestyles, and an
occasional industrial toy. For Iran, Nasir al-Dins toy was the politically useful telegraph
company and lines that carried provincial gossip, warnings of uprisings, and ministerial intelligence in lightening speed to a curious but benign capital and court. Seeking first and foremost
the political attributes and symbols of power, Nasir al-Din failed more than his Middle Eastern
contemporaries to grasp the financial and industrial roots of the new imperialism, and with
it, the implications of Europes global reach.
Overall, unlike the promise of the books cover page, the years 184861 form the core of
the books historical narrative, accounting for more than two-thirds of the works text and notes.
The study, unfortunately, focuses so entirely on Nasir al-Din, the Qajar court, and the diplomatic and military meddlings of British and Russian powers that we learn little about 19thcentury Iran other than its strategic geographical position and the geological riches that insured
its fragile independence. Amanat implies in his own narrative that the Qajar king and his court
were less responsible for Irans 19th-century escape from the new European imperialism than
the resilience of the Iranian social, economic, and cultural structures and its principal provincial
elites. While gathering the power of the monarchy into his own hands, Nasir al-Din failed on
the one hand to galvanize Iran into a rationally defined legal entity similar to a European
nation-state, but on the other precipitated the process of so-called modernization. Indeed, Nasir
al-Dins courtly centralization of political and cultural power allowed for certain levels of provincial social and economic experimentation on the part of the merchants, tradesmen, intelligentsia, and pastoral lords, with greater favors bestowed on the European merchants, financiers,
and tradesmen. In maintaining the traditional kingly political culture of Irans past, Nasir al-Din
inadvertently facilitated the rise of constitutionalism and republicanism, all of which emerged in
rapid order following his 1896 assassination.
What we do learn from Amanats exhaustive research into the shahs life, his harem, the
politics of the women of the court, the men of the ministries, and the foreign diplomats is very
little about the volcanic social and economic eruptions in European, American, and even in
nearby Ottoman lands that had little traces of an impact on the rhythms of the Qajar court and
regal behavior. Even after three major trips to Russia and to Western Europe, the shah, his
advisers, and his court returned to Iran with little more than material oddities to show for their
efforts. The mid-century political fencing between the king and his two imaginative prime
ministers, Taqi Khan Amir Kabir and Mirza Aqa Khan Nuri, were intense but brief challenges
to the kings absolutist reign. However well intentioned these ministers were in advocating
reforms, they, too, failed to seek out the best and brightest among the Persian intellectuals
within and outside the Tehran court to search for reforming and progressive changes to Irans
mid-century economic and social ills.
As an exemplary research account into the Persian and foreign diplomatic records, Amanats
work will remain a treasured reference for all seeking insights into Irans 19th-century administration and court politics. Although it tends to be anecdotal in certain chapters and fails in
part to expose the underlying relationships among court intrigues, local uprisings, diplomatic
intrusions, and a handful of military misadventures, Amanats close attention to details and his
willingness to narrate the doings of a host of enchanting, if not irritating, court personalities
nevertheless will please the graduate-level researcher and Iranian studies specialists. Having
tackled the first two decades of the Nasir al-Din reign, we might expect Amanat to look more
deeply and tenaciously into the social and economic backgrounds of Irans leading merchants,
ulema, and intellectuals in the later two decades of this under-researched Persian century. Turning his prodigious research skills to such a task will surely assist us all in understanding better

Reviews 155
the shape, as well as the speed, of Irans fin de siecle radicalism in the street demonstrations,
secret societies, and rural militancy of the constitutional period.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803280077

M. SUKRU HANIOGLU, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 19021908 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001). Pp. 554. $75.00 cloth.
REVIEWED BY M ICHAEL ROBERT HICKOK, Department of Warfighting, Air War College, Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.
In Preparation for a Revolution, M. Sukru Hanioglu has brought together extensive research
into the working of the Young Turk political-opposition movements against the rule of Sultan
Abdulhamid II to create a work that is likely to become a benchmark for historians of late
Ottoman history. Moreover, the author has meticulously mapped out the path by which modern
intellectual idealism was transformed into actual political transitiona progression largely
under-studied for the Ottoman state.
Hanioglu argues that previous studies of the Young Turks and of the Committee of Union
and Progress (CUP) have focused largely on determining the ideological foundation of the
opposition in relation to such issues as national identity, religion, imperialism, social science,
liberalism, or elitism, and on explaining the apparent failure of the CUP to pursue policies
consistent with its alleged ideals following the revolution of 1908. He convincingly posits that
the success of the CUP revolution in 1908 and the key to understanding CUP rule until 1918
both can be found in the process where the Young Turk movement began to translate itself
from an intellectual milieu into a movement of political opposition (p. 316).
The authors main point in this study of political revolution is the difficulty of showing
linkages between ideas and actions. The proliferation of political journals and newspapers in
the final decades of the Ottoman state has made the analysis of intellectual debate between
defenders of the Hamidian regime and opposition relatively easy. The foreign reporting and
official histories of the early Turkish Republic have likewise made an examination of the events
of the 1908 revolution and the final end of the Ottoman state possible for scholars. However,
the very nature of secrecy surrounding the exiled opposition leaders and the clandestine struggles between them and the agents of the Ottoman security services have made the period from
1902 to 1908 a problematical topic for historians, as the internal workings of the CUP and
other factions of the Young Turk opposition remained understandably opaque.
The research into this shadowy world is the strength of this study. Hanioglu has scrutinized
private papers from the CUP leadership, archival holdings from more than eighteen countries,
thousands of Young Turk publications, and various scholarly works. He has synthesized and
cross-referenced the information into almost two hundred pages of footnotes. The compilation
of these sources alone makes Preparation for a Revolution a critical reference tool for any
historian or university library interested in the Ottoman Empire or the emergence of the modern
Middle East and of the Balkans.
The first five chapters discuss the rupturing of the various Young Turk factions following
the First Congress of Ottoman Opposition Parties in 1902, held in Paris. Hanioglu looks first
at the attempt by Prince Sabahaddin Bey, the sultans nephew, to generate interest in a coup
detat with the patronage and support of CUP members and of foreign officials. The author
shows how Sabahaddins clumsy attempt to grab leadership of the opposition through bold
and direct action against Sultan Abdulhamid undermined the princes standing with foreign
governments and marginalized his majority support within the CUP. The book then lays out
in Chapters 3 and 4 the efforts made by long-time CUP intellectuals such as Ahmed Riza

156 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

and other minority factions to revive journals and newspapers for spreading anti-Hamidian
propaganda that would, they hoped, provoke an evolutionary change in the Ottoman state and
society.
Hanioglu is able to use the CUP papers and archives to develop these two chapters into rich
stories. The CUP minority factions struggled with each other over such issues as the clash of
ambitious personalities; proper ideological orientations; the need for alliances with Armenian,
Jewish, and Christian opposition groups; the requirement for foreign intervention as a catalyst
for political change; Ottoman policies in Macedonia and Yemen; and a variety of other political
concerns. The available sources allow the author to make a strong argument that all the intellectual debate and academic posturing recorded in the various Young Turk publications and found
in the correspondence among the opposition groups amounted to little real progress toward
revolution in the years 1902 to 1905.
Chapter 5 highlights the point that ideological posturing, intellectualism, and empty political
alliances achieved little for the Young Turks by describing Sabahaddin Beys transition from a
leading opposition figure to a marginal contributor in the 1908 revolution. Sabahaddin, who
became interested in the theories of Edmund Demolins and social science, failed to consider
the real political significance of calling for decentralized control of the Ottoman provinces.
Hanioglu demonstrates how Sabahaddins efforts to organize the League of Private Initiative
and Decentralization and to spread his ideas for social change to eastern Anatolia and the
Black Sea coast influenced local uprisings between 1905 and 1907 and why this provincial
resistanceunlike the CUP efforts in Macedonia in 1908failed to generate a popular revolution. The author demonstrates how the inability to match propaganda with political organization
and activism led to Sabahaddins ultimate failure. Failure helped the prince to become a political
opportunist, oras quoted from a British intelligence officers reportin the bankruptcy of
his own political fortune he is willing to join any and every party which offers him a temporary
advantage (p. 129).
In Chapters 68, Hanioglu reverses his argument, examining how from late 1905 to 1908
Bahaeddin Sakir was able to use ideological flexibility but astute political alliances to reorganize the CUP into an opposition party capable of direct action. Sakir relegated many of the
older CUP ideologues to the margins of the movement while reorganizing the central committee. Hanioglu is at his most provocative in these three chapters. He makes a convincing argument that the CUPs efforts under Sakirs leadership to lay the political groundwork in Macedonia and western Anatolia were key to the success of the 1908 revolution. It was the CUP,
according to the author, that co-opted the junior officers of the Ottoman Third Army in Europe
to provide the manpower for a successful challenge to the Hamidian regime. This contradicts
earlier scholarship that saw the officers taking control of the CUP to provide political cover for
what amounted to a military coup. Hanioglu also makes the critical point that clandestine CUP
political activism in western Anatolia among soldiers and in Albania prevented the sultan from
using reserve forces to quash the Macedonian revolt quickly. The sources strongly indicate that
the CUP was willing to espouse or promise any ideological and political agenda necessary to
secure the tactical alliances critical for success.
The years from 1902 to 1905 chronicled the inability of the antiHamidian opposition to
achieve anything when the efforts were focused on goals of idealistic social change and not on
the mundane tasks of organizing political activities to provide the means for transformation.
Not until the reorganization of the CUP in 1906 did the focus shift to creating the means for
revolution and for gaining control of the state. Hanioglu drives this point home in his concluding chapters, where he illustrates the desire of the CUP to replace Sultan Abdulhamid as tyrant
but to keep the authoritarian state. The author argues that the CUP experiment with political
liberalism was unsuccessful in the decade following the end of the Hamidian regime, because
those elements of the CUP that actually believed in social transition for Ottoman society had

Reviews 157
been pushed aside in the preparation for revolution. A search for the ideological foundation of
the CUP government from 1908 to 1918, according to Hanioglu, is largely irrelevant, given
that the basis for the revolution was to gain power over the extant state and that the call for
the restoration of the constitution was but an appealing cover for action.
In an otherwise skillfully argued and brilliantly researched book there are two small frustrations. Hanioglu is too intimate with his topic, and the book is specialized to the point where
even readers familiar with this period of Ottoman history may wish for a broader historical
context. The narrative looks only at a brief segment of the history of the CUP without giving
a sense of the events prior to 1902 or problems of the CUP government and the end of the
Ottoman state. In a sense, this would be workable if the author did not assume the reader came
to the book with in-depth knowledge of the personalities under consideration. Moreover, Hanioglu raises significant unanswered questions about the trend in late Ottoman and modern Turkish politics to sacrifice idealistic goals for social and economic change at the altar of political
expediency in the pursuit of authoritarian power. He acknowledges this problem in his conclusion without speculating on the potential implications of his well-supported thesis.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803290073

CHRIS P. IOANNIDES, Realpolitik in the Eastern Mediterranean: From Kissinger and the Cyprus
Crisis to Carter and the Lifting of the Turkish Arms Embargo (New York: Pella Publishing,
2001). Pp. 523. $30.00 paper.
REVIEWED BY JOSEPH S. JOSEPH, Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of
Cyprus, Nicosia
This is a welcome addition to the literature on American foreign policy, the Cyprus crisis of
1974, and the implications the crisis had for American politics and the triangle of American
GreekTurkish relations. It provides an in-depth analysis of the events that led to the Turkish
invasion of Cyprus in July 1974 and examines how the Watergate scandal prevented the United
States from playing a constructive role in the eastern Mediterranean. The author argues that,
while the White House was virtually paralyzed and President Richard Nixon was preoccupied
with his struggle to stay in power, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger mishandled the Cyprus
crisis. Ioannidess thesis is that the absence of presidential leadership and authority affected the
conduct of foreign policy, with grave consequences for U.S. interests in the region.
The crisis on Cyprus, the danger of a GreekTurkish war, the mobilization of the Greek
American lobby, and congressional assertiveness in foreign policy led to a bitter fight between
the executive and legislative branches. On 8 August Watergate reached its climax, Nixon resigned, and Gerald Ford took over amid a political crisis that had undermined presidential
decision-making. Six days later, on 14 August, the crisis in the eastern Mediterranean was
culminating in a second Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The book looks at developments on both
scenes and provides a detailed presentation of the sequence of events and U.S. failures during
the hot summer of 1974.
In October 1974, in the aftermath of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the U.S. Congress
imposed an arms embargo on Turkey, an important North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
ally. This was an unprecedented decision taken against the strong objections of President Ford
and Kissinger. The reasoning of Congress was based on the argument that Turkey had used
American weapons for offensive purposes in violation of U.S. law. The Ford administration,
with Kissinger playing the role of the protagonist, tried hard to persuade Congress to lift the
embargo, but without success. Kissingers Realpolitik of power calculations and old-fashioned
national-interest considerations was not persuasive enough for the Democratic-controlled Congress, which insisted on the supremacy of law.

158 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

In November 1976, Jimmy Carter was elected president following a successful campaign
emphasizing trust, integrity, ethical values, and human rights. Like many other Americans,
Greek Americans put their trust in Carter, who promised to pursue a foreign policy based on
principles and the rule of law. In January 1977, when the Carter administration took over from
the Ford administration, efforts to repeal the embargo were intensified. Carter himself, to the
disappointment of the Greek American lobby, dedicated time and effort to lobbying Congress
to repeal the embargo. In August 1978, eighteen months after Carter took office, Congress lifted
the embargo. One of the major objectives of this book is to examine the political dynamics of
the process that led to the lifting of the embargo (p. 14). In doing so, it explores issues related
to Carters trustworthiness and policies toward Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus. The author also
compares Carters handling of the GreekTurkish conflict over Cyprus with the handling of
the ArabIsraeli conflict, which led to the Camp David accords in September 1978. He also
looks at the embargo issue in the context of U.S.Soviet rivalry and Cold War policies and
polemics in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. He concludes that the main justification of the Carter administration for lifting the embargo revolved around cold war geopolitical arguments and two critical developments in the Middle East, the Iranian revolutionary turmoil and the ongoing preparations for the Camp David talks (p. 305). The Carter
administration also argued that the embargo had failed to bring about any changes in Turkeys
policy toward Cyprus. It was, therefore, prudent to follow the logic of Realpolitik and pursue
the major strategic objective of maintaining good relations with Turkey, as well as strengthening
stability in that country and the southeastern flank of NATO. The author presents ample evidence that the policies of the Carter administration in the region were guided by Realpolitik
and not by the principles of idealism, human rights, and democracy that Carter had articulated
when he came to office in January 1977 (p. 409).
This is a well-researched volume that sheds light on some interesting aspects of American
politics: the rivalry among government branches and agencies in policy-making, and the interplay of domestic and external factors and pressures in the formulation of foreign policy. This
study also shows in a convincing and documented manner that the foreign policy of a superpower cannot simply reflect ethical values and idealistic rhetoric and leave out geo-political
realities and interests. Carters foreign policy of morality and human rights was put to the test
by the harsh realities of the eastern Mediterranean and proved unsustainable in the long run.
The embargo itself was too rigid and ineffective as an instrument of foreign policy in a region
of changing circumstances and great challenges to American interests during the Cold War.
Ioannides believes, however, that Carter could have done a better job with Greece, Turkey, and
Cyprus by balancing idealism and pragmatism and using the same sense of justice, fairness,
and morality that led to the Camp David accords.
This is an original study and a valuable information source that provides a thorough analysis of U.S. politics and policies at a time of domestic and external crises. The reader will find
the ethnically colored analysis interesting and occasionally provocative. As expected in a
book dealing with ethnically and emotionally charged issues, the reader may see the authors
biases creeping into the analysis and interpretation of events. Ioannides, a scholar of Greek
Cypriot origin, does not hide that his heart and feelings are with Cyprus and the Greek world,
but he does his best to stick with scholarly methodology and fairness. His deep knowledge
of the issues serves him well in researching a complex theme, providing insights, and drawing
conclusions that can be of interest to anyone interested in the dynamics and complexities of
U.S. foreign policy in the eastern Mediterranean and the troubled triangle of GreekTurkish
Cypriot relations. The many appendixes, extensive bibliography, and diligently prepared index
add to the value and usefulness of this carefully researched, well-structured, and nicely written book.

Reviews 159
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803300078

URI KUPFERSCHMIDT, Henri Naus Bey: Retrieving the Biography of a Belgian Industrialist in
Egypt (Brussels: Koninklijke Academie voor Overzeese Wetenschapen, 1999) Pp. 155.
REVIEWED
Seattle

BY

ELLIS GOLDBERG, Department of Political Science, University of Washington,

Uri Kupferschmidts study of Henri Naus is a welcome addition to the material for the study
of Egyptian inter-war politics and economics and to the very sparse biographical material on
members of the Egyptian elite during the 20th century more generally. Naus, a native of Belgium who was intimately connected with the Egyptian sugar industry in the first three decades
of the 20th century, was one of a rather large community of expatriate businessmen in Egypt
at the time. Theirs is a story that, as Kupferschmidts copious and intelligent comments on the
existing literature make clear, has been told from a variety of viewpoints other than their own.
Robert Tignors State, Private Enterprise and Economic Change is a large overview of Egyptian business. Robert Vitaliss study When Capitalists Collide focuses on the business community through its Egyptian-born rather than foreign members.
Kupferschmidts slim volume provides a first glimpse of how the cosmopolitan world of
business looked when viewed from the vantage point of a foreign-born businessman. The six
chapters of the book deal essentially with three main topics: sectoral production (the sugar
industry), associational politics (the Egyptian Federation of Industry), and policy discussion
(the industrialization debate). Naus played a significant role in each of these areas and, as the
book argues along the lines of Tignors study, the expatriate community was far more deeply
and positively engaged in Egyptian development than has often been realized.
The three chapters on the sugar industry sketch out, through the details of Nauss life, what
is now often called the first era of globalization in the second half of the 19th century. Naus
entered Egypt from a background of globe-trotting political and economic entrepreneurs. His
father had been a government minister in Iran, and he himself had a technical background in
sugar production in Java before reaching Egypt. In Egypt, Naus played an important role in
introducing technological improvement in the production of sugar cane as well as providing
administrative expertise in running a large and complex production set of factories that crushed
cane, produced raw sugar, and refined it. The Societe Generale des Sucreries was the most
important industrial enterprise in Egypt until the mid-1930s, and it is therefore not surprising
that Naus, its head, played an important role in founding the Egyptian Federation of Industry
(EFI). Kupferschmidt devotes a chapter to Nauss role in the EFI, which he calls a interestgroup association of the period before World War II.
As Vitalis has observed, Egyptian businessmen required significant support from the state,
and it is not surprising that they spent significant time trying to influence policy-makers. It is
therefore also not surprising that they were deeply engaged in debates about the countrys
economic policy. Nor is it surprising that expatriate investors and administrators were quite as
avid as their locally born colleagues to urge industrialization policies. The coalitions they
formed around investments, Vitalis has shown, were sectoral rather than ethnic in composition
and policy preference.
Hewing closely to the available documents on Naus, Kupferschmidt extendsand, to some
degree, refinesour picture of Egypt in the first half of the 20th century. It is regrettable that
he did not allow himself to drift a bit more from his historians mooring in documents. At
several points he would have found more support for the picture he draws, and its impact
would have been more easily generalizable in ways that would show how much further we
need to go along the trail Kupferschmidt has opened of prosopograhical study of the Egyptian

160 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

elite. Two details will suffice. Kupferschmidt argues, against Vitalis and Beinin and Lockman,
that the impetus for creating the EFI came originally from King Fuad rather than as a response
to labor pressure. He has some documents on his side. Had he recalled that the khedival family
in general, and Fuad in particular, were quite avid about forming such groups, he could have
strengthened his argument. It was, after all, Sultan Hussein Kamil who formed the nucleus that
became the Egyptian Agricultural Union as well as the Ministry of Agriculture. In fact, the
patronage of the royal family was far more crucial to the political and cultural life of the
country than is usually admitted, and it was (at least in the early 20th century) far from negative.
Kupferschmidt notes that Naus entertained close relations with many members of the Jewish
elite in Cairo, that his wife was of Javanese descent, and that he was generally believed by
contemporary observers to have been Egyptian at heart. In the world of contemporary nationalisms, we find it hard to place much credit in the kind of bourgeois cosmopolitan spirit that
Naus seems to have embodied, but we should, I think, pay closer attention to it. Naus was not
alone in his ability to transcend his national origins in his search for companionship as well as
profit; similar valuesoften self-consciously heralded as showing the possibility of overcoming racial consciousnesswere expressed among participants in the international cotton industry. Naus, after all, came to Egypt from a European world that, even as he lay dying in 1938,
was descending into an orgy of war and murder based on the crudest racism and ethnic hatred.
Living as we do in another age of globalization and the extension of markets, we would do
well to recall that many impulseseconomic and emotionalpush us in the direction of evergreater connections, and equally many threaten to push us apart. This charming albeit slender
biography of Henri Naus provides some insight into a vanished world, not all of whose values
it reflects well on us to reject.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803310074

DAVID W. LESCH, 1979: The Year That Shaped the Modern Middle East (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2001). Pp. 200. $65.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.
REVIEWED BY FRED HALLIDAY, Department of International Relations, London School of Economics
This is a brisk, refreshing book that helps all of us look at the Middle East in a different way.
There are many points at which, it can be claimed, the modern Middle East was formed. One
obvious candidate is 1967, the date of the third ArabIsraeli war, and of the effective demise
of the conflict between Arab radical nationalist and conservative forces. Another turning point
would be 1991, the year of the last Gulf War and of the collapse of the USSR. An earlier
conventional starting point for the history of the modern Middle East is 1918, the collapse of
the Ottoman Empire and the formation of the states system that has, more or less, endured to this
day. David Lesch, a historian working at Trinity University in San Antonio, takes 1979. In his
view, there are three major, somewhat inter-related, events that together marked this as being the
decisive moment for the ensuing decades: the Iranian Revolution in February, the EgyptianIsraeli
peace treaty in March, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979.
The case for such an approach to 1979 involves three distinct arguments, two of which are
evident in his text and the third of which is implicit. The first argument is a general one, about
the possibility of taking a particular date as of special international importance: Lesch compares
work on other dates in world history that have particular significance: 1776, 1789, 1914, 1919,
1941, to name but some. In these times, not only were there dramatic events in specific countries, but the character of the international system itself changed in significant ways. The year
1991 would, on a world scale, certainly count in this category. The year 2001 may now also
be such a candidate.

Reviews 161
It is this process, which Lesch terms annualization, that provides the analytic foundation
of the book. His first chapter aims to justify such an approach. It could have been strengthened
by discussion of the concept conjuncture, used in some writings of the Annales school and
in Marxist history. Equally, he could have explored further the question of how far the unity
of a particular period, or year, is given by the inter-relationship of forces operating against
states, from below, or by the crisis of the state system itself: 1914 was an example of the latter;
1789 and 1991 of the former. The Middle Eastern 1979 had elements of both.
The second, explicit argument concerns the significance of these events. Here Lesch makes
a strong case, showing how much that followed, be it the cold peace between Egypt and Israel
and the gradual approach to the Oslo Process, stemmed from 1979. Equally, the Iranian Revolution led to a new polarization in the Middle East, to the IranIraq War of 198088 and, through
the crisis provoked by the unsatisfactory end of that war, to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in
1990. Afghanistan marked a turning point both in Arab and Muslim sentiment about the USSR
and in relations between the United States and the USSR.
The third, not stated but present assumption concerns the very concept of the region:
writers on the Middle East frequently invoke this term to suggest not only a geographic entity,
but also some enduring political or social inter-relationship of different states and crisesfor
example, as between the Gulf and the ArabIsraeli question. Exactly how this inter-relationship
works, and where rhetoric starts and real interaction begins, is hard to define. That the region
is not, however, just a turn of phrase is evident enough: more important, however, is the fact
that the parameters of this region have themselves changed over time. Arab North Africa was
earlier largely excluded from the workings of the Mashriq. Now it is a relevant player. Turkey
and Iran have also been drawn into the region. It is arguably here that one of the important
dimensions of 1979 becomes clearer, and in two ways, that, as the author points out (p. 119),
the center of gravity of the Middle East moved eastward. For the first time, Iran made a direct
impact on the domestic politics of the Arab world; at the same time, Afghanistan, hitherto very
much beyond the range of Middle Eastern politics, became integrated with it, with long-term
consequences that became evident twenty-two years later. Far from involving Balkanization (p.
3), the trend was for a greater degree of integration of different crises and subregions.
Lesch, therefore, makes a strong case for annualization, in general, and for the Middle
Eastern 1979, in particular. Indeed, in at least two other ways that he does not discuss, 1979
could be seen as decisive for the region: the interYemeni war of February 1979 marked the
end of the attempt by these two contrasted states to defeat the other through conflict and opened
the process of negotiated accommodation that was to end with their unity in 1990; within Iraq,
1979 was the year in which Saddam Hussein took effective power, ousting President al-Bakr
and purging the Ba
th party of putatively proSyrian rivals.
At the same time, there are ways in which his argument can be questioned. His central claim
is that 1979 marked, in each of the three cases, the loss of promise, a realization that old
ideals could not be adhered to. In the case of the EgyptianIsraeli treaty, this was certainly the
case, even if, from the vantage point of 2002, this change, a recognition of reality, was not as
permanent on either side as at it first appeared. With regard to the other two cases, the opposite
argument can be madethat the events in question were accompanied by a sense of idealism
or illusion: export of Islamic Revolution in the first case; the defense of pro-Soviet communism
and the construction of socialism in the second. Of the three processes running through the
book, the discussion of the Afghan case is the weakest and misses something too easily forgotten after the end of the Cold War: that Soviet intervention and the very project of Afghan
communism rested on illusions about the spread of communism. It was to be another decade,
at least, before these forms of promise, like that of Islamic revolutionary internationalism,
were to be confounded.
A more wide-ranging question concerns the link between regional and global politics that

162 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

1979 represented. Here, Lesch, concentrating on three major but separate regional processes,
may miss the greatest significance of 1979namely, that in the Middle East in the sense of
the Arab world and Iran that year marked not only a shift among regional states but an international change, the effective end of the Cold War as a whole. If the Cold War had overshadowed
the regional conflicts for decades and constituted the main dividing line along which regional
states acted, be it in the ArabIsraeli, Arabian peninsula, or IranArab dimensions, this ceased
to be the case from the end of the 1970s. It has been argued by authors such as Allen Lynch
that the Cold War ended in Europe in the early 1960s, with the resolution of the Berlin crises
and the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the Middle East, it ended later but still a decade before the
overall conclusion of this global conflict. After 1979, the USSR was no longer a factor in EgyptianIsraeli relations, and in the IranIraq conflict, as Lesch observes (p. 70) Soviet and U.S.
policies converged in support of Baghdad. Afghanistan remained in this context peripheral to the
region as a whole. Leschs concluding words may therefore have an import greater than he himself
suggests. The Middle East, indeed, the world, had changedwe just didnt know it yet.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803320070

JUSTIN MCCARTHY, The Ottoman Peoples and the End of Empire, Historical Endings (London:
Arnold, 2001). Pp. 244. 15.99 paper.
REVIEWED BY WILLIAM L. CLEVELAND, Department of History, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C.
This work is part of Arnolds Historical Endings series and is presumably intended for university students. However, the book has some inherent limitations that may restrict its usefulness
in the classroom, especially for courses on the Middle East.
The first such limitation is chronological coverage. Although the work includes two introductory chapters on the 19th-century Balkan and Asian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and one
on the reforms emanating out of Istanbul, the main period of concentration is from the outbreak
of the Balkan wars in 1912 to roughly the late 1920s. The second limitation is geographical
coverage. Of the seven chapters on the years from 1914 on, only one is specifically devoted to
the Arab successor states. Egypt is not included at all, an omission that may be historically
justifiable but one that may also be problematic for some instructors.
McCarthy opens with a sympathetic account of the Tanzimat reforms and the rise of the
Young Turk regime. His emphasis is on the increasingly interventionist activities of the central
state on behalf of its subject peoples. The author then examines the devastating effects of
competing nationalisms in the 19th-century Balkans, arguing that the dislocation of peoples
was the salient feature of Balkan nationalism. McCarthys chapter on Ottoman Asia devotes
roughly equal coverage to Anatolia and the Arab provinces. The Ottoman response to Armenian
nationalism, and the disruptive impact of that nationalism on the settled Muslim population,
figures prominently in this discussion and receives detailed emphasis in subsequent chapters.
The authors treatment of the Arab regions is sketchy, though he does offer a concise analysis
of the general absence of political nationalism among the Arab elite on the eve of World War I.
The remainder of the book is a demographic study, backed by statistics, of the mutual atrocities that the Ottoman peoples committed against one another. McCarthys recounting of the
territorial disputes in the Balkans and the horrific effects they had on the civilian populations
offers insight into the violent passions aroused as long-standing animosities became enshrined
in the rhetoric of modern nationalism. He is particularly intent on showing the suffering of
Muslims and thus on countering the one-sided perspective that some historians have adopted
when studying MuslimChristian relations in the Balkans. This intent is further evident in

Reviews 163
McCarthys account of the Turkish war of independence, in which Greek atrocities receive
more attention than any that the Turks may have committed.
The post-war chapters attempt to examine the Balkans, the Arab Mandates, and the Turkish
republic in the light of their efforts to recover from war-time devastation and mortality. In this
vein, McCarthy offers a unique perspective on the Arab mandates. He endeavors to compare
the living standards of the Arabs under British and French rule with their status during the late
Ottoman years. Employing such indices as life expectancy, economic development, and numbers of students, he finds that the record of the Mandatory powers was sadly wanting, while
that of the Ottomans was better than is usually recognized. This statistical approach reveals
much that is fascinating, but it also has certain drawbacks. By reducing the Mandates to comparative statistics, McCarthy robs them of any political, social, or cultural identity.
Indeed, it is McCarthys approach that constitutes the books weakness as well as its strength.
His history is demographic, not political. Through population statistics he documents the mutual
horrors of the 191222 years, with their forced migrations and eventual population exchanges.
But these important developments often unfold in a political vacuum. People rarely exist in
this world of demographic trends, and post-war Balkan state structures, for example, receive
no attention. For these reasons, the book would be most valuable as supplementary reading for
senior-level courses in which students have already acquired the basic political framework
needed to benefit from a work such as this.
The book has a two-page bibliography and several excellent maps, which, to the publishers
credit, are never smaller than a full page.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803330077

THEOHARIS STAVRIDES, The Sultan of Vezirs: The Life and Times of the Ottoman Grand Vezir
Mahmud Pasha Angelovic (14531474), The Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage: Politics,
Society and Economy (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001) Pp. 459.
REVIEWED BY VIRGINIA AKSAN, Department of History, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ont.
Theoharis Stavrides has produced an exhaustive study of one of the founding fathers of the
Ottoman grand vizierate, the second-in-command and deputy to the sultan, an office that
acquired most of the duties and obligations that characterized its imperial version with the
conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The work is divided into three parts, consisting of ten
chapters, as well as an Introduction, a brief Conclusion, extensive footnotes, three appendixes,
a bibliography (pp. 41832), and an index.
The Introduction reviews the sources available to the author concerning the life and times of
Mahmud Pasa, servant, confidant, and son-in-law of Sultan Mehmed II (145181) for some
twenty years, from the 1450s to 1474, when he was executed by his master. The reign of
Mehmed II is one of the better-represented periods in Ottoman history, both in primary and
secondary works, as acknowledged in Stavridess historiography. The plethora of sources makes
for much contradictory evidence and considerable controversy over various aspects of Mahmud
Pasas biography. Stavrides leaves few stones unturned in that regard, resulting in much heavy,
though lucid, reading in some parts of his biography. As a summary of the original sources and
subsequent historical studies concerning Mehmed II and his grand viziers, Stavridess book has
assembled a remarkable record.
Part 1, chapter 1, introduces Ottoman imperial ideology after the conquest, and the vizierate
itself, a useful survey of the literature on an important office of early Muslim bureaucracies.
The Turkic dynastiesnotably, the Seljuks and their successorscreated a palace hierarchy of
command that gave the vizier unprecedented power equal to, and potentially challenging, the

164 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

power of the sultan himself. Stavridess essential theme is the ambivalence of such power,
which could lead, as with Mahmud Pasa, to the untimely death of the officeholder. Chapters 2
and 3 trace the life of this most influential of all of Mehmed IIs grand viziers, stressing his
genealogy, arguing with all the assumptions and myths about his origins and ethnicity, his role
in consolidating the sultans power in the Balkans, his dismissal in 1468 and reappointment in
1473, and the possible reasons for his eventual dismissal and execution in 1474.
Stavrides returns to these themes in Part 2, Chapters 58 (pp. 187326), under the rubric
Contribution to the New Empire. Each of the four chapters has a theme: Conquest, Diplomacy, Pious Foundation and Architectural Patronage, and Literary Patronage and Divan.
This reviewer found these four chapters the most informative in the book, evoking the circles
of power surrounding Mehmed II, relationships and alliances developed and exercised by Mahmud, the kinds of charitable institutions he established and patronized, and his literary circles
and achievements. Notable among his endowments were the main mosque of Sofia; the village
of Haskoy; his personal holdings; and his large contribution to the rebuilding of Istanbul, evident in the survival of the Mahmud Pasa section of the present-day city, which originally
included a mosque, baths, school, and soup kitchen, as well as the Han. He was clearly a
towering figure as military commander and adroit diplomat but especially as a generous patron.
(He is compared favorably [p. 285] to the charitable activities of Mehmed IIs other grand
viziers. Stavrides also includes an appendix with a summary of the good works of several of
Mahmuds rivals and contemporaries.)
Part 3 tries to make sense of the man, his contributions, and his downfall. Stavrides rehearses
exhaustively, as elsewhere in the volume, the various theories adumbrated in primary and secondary sources. Chapter 10 (pp. 356400) is especially interesting, as it explores in depth the
Menakb-i Mahmud Pasa-i Veli, a legendary hagiography of Mahmud Pasa, one of very few
such literary manuscripts on historical Ottoman figures. Stavrides not only includes the text of
the legend and comments on the extant manuscripts (six full and one partial version); he also
speculates on the possible reasons for the emergence of the cult around this particular influential official. Clearly, his generosity to the city of Istanbul, as well as the later popular perception
that he was executed unjustly, played some role in the creation of the legends. Stavrides refers
to anti-imperial (antiMehmed II) sentiments of later historians, especially members of the
ulema who suffered because of the sultans confiscations and reorganization of many of the
citys foundations, as another possible reading of the exaltation of the figure of Mahmud Pasa,
considered in a well-known phrase by one of them, to have had power so great that it was as
if Mehmed II had entrusted the sultanate to him (p. 358).
Therein lies the probable reason for his downfall, and the ambivalence of power reflected in
the title of the study. In his Conclusion, Stavrides sums up the man by calling him the most
exemplary expression of the new Ottoman order, whose achievements justify the label founding father (p. 400). It is a little disappointing that Stavrides did not expand on that observation
to wonder at the influence of such a model on the development of the grand vizieral office in
later centuries. Surely there is both a historical example and a cautionary tale here, which the
legends meant to convey. The grand viziers power was based on the precarious relationship
with the sultan but also on the ways in which he embodied the moral attributes deemed a part
of the profile, as set out for Mahmud in chapter 10, tropes about justice and wisdom that
persisted in the biographies of Ottoman statesmen well into the 18th century. For the general
reader, who will find the copious detail, occasional repetition, and cautious conclusions drawn
by Stavrides a bit daunting, such a generalization would have answered the question, Yesbut
what does it signify? That modest criticism aside, the author is to be commended for persisting
in getting it right in an academic environment that favors the grand theory over translation and
analysis of increasingly inaccessible texts. Ottoman history still needs both.

Reviews 165
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803340073

BENJAMIN STORA, Algeria, 18302000: A Short History (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
2001). Pp. 298. $35.00 cloth.
REVIEWED
Istanbul

BY

BRADFORD DILLMAN, Department of International Relations, Koc University,

Offering a useful survey of historical developments in Algeria since 1830, Algeria, 18302000
focuses on persistent problems of historical memory, struggles over identity, and the (until now)
failed effort to create a state based on law and secular-republican principles. The book consists
primarily of English-language translations from three books written by Benjamin Stora, a noted
French historian of Algeria, in the early 1990s.
Stora is at his best in providing a concise, if not always comprehensive, history of French
colonialism in Algeria after 1830 and of the upheavals during the 195462 war of independence. He examines the growth of the pied noir community and the dispossession of native
Algerians. By the end of World War II, there was a well-developed nationalist movement composed of rival factions focusing on radical nationalism, Islamic reformism, and assimilation.
French reluctance to reform dramatically a system of social exploitation and political exclusion
of Algerian Muslims helped lay the foundation for the anti-colonial war starting in 1954.
The analysis of the 195462 Algerian civil war is the strongest part of the book. One gains
a concise understanding of the struggles between Europeans and Algerian Muslims, as well as
the major divisions within each side. By 1957, fighting was generalized throughout the country.
The French resorted to wide-scale torture, a policy that has recently been a subject of considerable public debate in France. Within the Algerian camp, supporters of the FLN and Messali
Hadjs Mouvement National Algerien (MNA) fought each other throughout the war, leaving
more than ten thousand dead and twenty-five thousand wounded in France and Algeria. Beginning in 1958, when the French established nearly impenetrable borders with Morocco and
Tunisia (the Maurice Line), the FLN and the Armee de Liberation Nationale (ALN), based
outside Algerias borders, asserted dominance within the nationalist movement. By the end of
the war in 1962, the author estimates, some five hundred thousand had been killed on all sides.
As the French left, there was a mini civil war among various Algerian political and military
factions that was won by Ahmed Ben Bella and his associates in the FLN, allied with the army
of the borders under the command of Houari Boumedienne.
Stora offers a useful overview of economic and social developments from 1965 to 1982. In
this period, Algeria adopted a capital-intensive economic strategy that meant large investments
in hydrocarbons and heavy industry. While the gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an average annual rate of 6.4 percent from 1971 to 1980, low productivity, high debt, and neglect of
agriculture led to a crisis of the production system in the 1980s. Although mass education
expanded rapidly, by the early 1980s there were still a number of problems, including a lack
of emphasis on technical training and a reliance on foreign teachers (especially Egyptians influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood) to fill one-third of primary-school positions. A very high
birthrate exacerbated problems of urbanization and unemployment, while forced modernization
compounded problems of identity. After 1965, state, military, and FLN elites systematically
tried to purge Algeria of its French legacy while reconstructing a fictional history that was
imposed on the people to legitimize power holders. Arabization, instrumentalization of Islam,
and official historiography de-legitimized pluralist accounts of the nations history and made
youth ignorant of much of their countrys history.
The attempt by the army and FLN elites to monopolize culture and the economy produced
social contradictions that led to identity conflict in the 1980s. Until 1988, official ideology

166 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

aimed to fabricate forgetting and spread a state-controlled, conservative vision of Islam. Berbers first challenged cultural and political unanimism in the spring of 1980. President Chadli
Benjedid broke up state enterprises and encouraged the private sector, but the economy
worsened in the face of falling oil prices and rapidly rising foreign debt. Riots in 1988 led to
the collapse of the FLN and the rise of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in a context of multipartyism and democratization. The author argues that, across the Arab world, Pan-Arabism had
lost its appeal. People in the 1980s were troubled by a queasy sinking sensation and the
certainty that the collapse of values would ineluctably be punished (p. 201). Political Islam
provided a popular alternative. The FISs emergence as such a powerful force, Stora argues, is
due to the failures of the one-party system, weakness of secular democratic parties, and difficulties in shifting to a market economy. Most important, the FIS appropriated the populism of the
FLN, promoting a nascent neo-nationalism with a religious coloring.
There are several weaknesses in Storas analysis of Islamism. There is little effort to analyze
the significance of the 1990 and 1991 elections, in which the FIS trounced other parties. There
is a tendency to describe all Islamists in Manichean terms as rejecting democracy, demonizing
the idea of the autonomization of the individual, and permanently demonizing the West.
Conflating the FIS with Islamists in general, Stora fails to acknowledge considerable divisions
between FIS leaders and the fact that there are many Islamist organizations in Algeria (whether
legal or illegal, armed or non-violent), which makes it problematic to generalize about all
Islamists. The FIS leaders Abassi Madani and Ali Belhadj are only mentioned several times,
with no effort to explain their background and beliefs or the divisions between them. Other
important FIS leaders such as Abdelkader Hachani, Rabah Kebir, and Anouar Haddam are
barely mentioned. Similarly, Mahfoud Nahnah is mentioned in passing, with no effort to explain
his views or the role of his party, the Mouvement pour la Societe de Paix (MSP), in the political
process. Another significant Islamist leader, Abdallah Djaballah, is never mentioned. One
comes away with a limited understanding of who the Islamists are, what specifically they
believe in, and what their political calculations have been in the past decade. It is hard to
interpret Algerias recent history without knowledge of these issues.
The author provides a quick account of the violence that racked the country from 1992 to
1995. Islamist radicals, particularly members of the Armed Islamic Groups, massacred ordinary
civilians and assassinated intellectuals, journalists, and foreigners, while the military regime
stepped up repression, torture, and executions. The regime of President Liamine Zeroual tried
to shore up its legitimacy with a presidential election in 1995 and legislative elections in 1997.
Yet Stora is a bit disingenuous in accounting for why the civil war started. At the beginning of
the book he states that civil war began in 1992 as Algerian Islamists rebelled against the state
(p. xi). It is hardly that simple, and the author makes little effort to emphasize that the military
annulled the results of democratic elections and jailed thousands of members of the FIS before
Islamists started engaging in wide-scale violence. A balanced portrayal of why the civil war
broke out certainly requires a better analysis of the actions of the self-serving military and of
some of its cheerleaders among hypocritical democratic parties.
In his Conclusion, Stora rejects the idea that Algeria in the 1990s is experiencing a war that
is almost identical to the war of independence from 1954 to 1962. But he notes a certain
similarity in that todays protagonists dress in theoretical garments borrowed from the past
(p. 233). The falsified history since independence makes actors today unable to see beyond
ideas of Arab Islamism, armed struggle, and communitarian nationalism. Importantly, the author notes that nested within the war between the military and Islamists are many other decisive and indistinct wars between a variety of protagonists with a variety of motivations. Due
to the culture of secrecy in Algeria, the lines between forces are incoherent, obscure and
apparently incomprehensible. However, to explain rather than just to describe Algerias immediate history (as Stora emphasizes he is trying to do) requires a historian to wade through the

Reviews 167
nested conflicts and make sense of them. This Stora does not do, and the book suffers as a
result. At the end of the overview of Algerias history since 1988, the reader still has very little
understanding of the divisions among Islamists, the role of the military in corruption, the rapid
rise of the Berber movement, or the dramatic struggles over economic resources in the last
decade.
The book would have benefited from more careful editing, better organization, and a less
literal translation from the French. The book haphazardly converts most universally used
French-language acronyms to English. As a result (to state just a few examples), the Front
Islamique du Salut is referred to as the ISF instead of the FIS, and the Rassemblement National
Democratique is labeled as the NDU instead of the RND. A sketchy, twenty-sixpage chronology at the end of the book is not particularly useful. There are some factual mistakes, as in the
statement that the NDU (RND) won an absolute majority of seats in the National Assembly in
the 1997 parliamentary elections. In fact, it won 156 out of 380 seats and only 33.7 percent of
the popular vote. More important, despite its title, the book essentially ends its history in 1995,
with only a couple of pages devoted to explaining the difficult and dramatic changes since then.
For those readers seeking a more comprehensive account (in English) of Algerias very recent
history, Luis Martinezs The Algerian Civil War, 19901998 and Phillip Naylors France and
Algeria: A History of Decolonization and Transformation are better bets. Nevertheless, as a
concise and thoughtful overview of Algerias colonial experience and struggle to modernize
before 1988, Storas book is recommended.
DOI: 10.1017.S002074380335007X

CHRISTOPH WERNER, An Iranian Town in Transition: A Social and Economic History of the
Elites of Tabriz, 17471848 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000). Pp. 419 $51.00 cloth.
REVIEWED BY WILLEM FLOOR, Bethesda, Md.
This book, the authors dissertation, is an excellent contribution to our field and should be held
up as a model to university professors and Ph.D. hopefuls of how to be engaged in Iranian
studies. Werners objective is to demonstrate that the history of Iran can also be told by using
Persian archival materials. In fact, he wants to present a methodological alternative to counter
standard perspectives originating from the reliance on Western sources, and to offer a different,
often microscopic view of the social and economic history of an Iranian town in transition.
To do so he has made use of unpublished decrees, sales contracts, waqf deeds, and other legal
documents as well as an unpublished manuscript of a local history in addition to under-used
published Persian sources. He also has used Western sources, but only as additional material,
seldom (he claims never) to base an argument entirely on such a source out of fear that it would
dominate the study. To focus his new approach, Werner has concentrated his study on the role
of the elites of the city of Tabriz during the period 17471848, mainly because this period
represents a black hole in Iranian history.
The book is divided into six chapters. The first chapter provides an excellent description of
the political vicissitudes of Azarbayjan in general and Tabriz in particular between 1750 and
1850. The author shows the changing nature of power held and exercised by the various contenders during the Zand and early Qajar periods. He highlights in particular the transformation
of tribal commanders into local sovereigns of clearly defined territory. In chapter 2, the physical
layout of Tabriz is detailed. In particular, the citys water supply and building activities and,
above all, the emergence of the Qajar city after the 1780 earthquake are discussed. The chapter
concludes with a section on population size and economic activities. The real meat of the study,
apart from its appendix, is the remaining chapters. Chapter 3 deals with the question whether
waqfs may be used as a mirror of social change and provides a wealth of information on donors

168 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

in Tabrizwhat they did or intended to do with their property and the changes therein over
time (waqf as trust for heirs and the ensuing quarrels; ta
ziyeh trusts). I disagree with Werner
that the role of the ulema regarding waqfs often is nebulous. What he states about the subject
is old news. Chapter 4 is a very interesting one and details the transformation of Tabriz from
an autonomous urban society to a town subservient to the provincial Qajar court. This is further
reflected in the depreciation of the role of the function of beglerbegi and kalantar, for example.
The chapter on the ulema shows their role as urban notables, who, because of the incorporation
of the secular elite into the central bureaucracy, remained the main, sometimes powerful, local
voice and opposition in town. The last chapter offers a view of landowning families and landowning patterns in two villages. The book ends with a critical text edition and translation of
selected legal documents, which shows the authors familiarity with the difficult handwriting
of old Persian documents as well with siyaq, the old system of shorthand writing of numbers.
The art of reading manuscript documents, let alone siyaq, is rarely taught at universities offering
Iranian studies, and this book shows how necessary and important such skills are for those
interested in furthering the study of the history of Iran.
I hope that other students will follow Werners example and that teachers will create the
environment that will stimulate them to do so, although the approach touted by Werner has
limitations. He rightly chose the micro approach, because a limited number of legal documents
offers a particular kind of information. If you want to map changes in landownership, building
activities, officeholders, and the like, European sources usually lack the necessary detail. However, if you want to write about economic activities, the Persian sources are often deficient.
Therefore, one should not sacrifice one for the other. Werners own treatment of economic and
commercial affairs is telling in this regard. Werner had to rely exclusively on Western sources
to outline the trade and commerce of Tabriz, despite his statement that he would not do so.
Also, the subtitle of his book is incorrect, because he does not really offer an economic history.
The index does not even list agriculture, the most important economic activity (although it
is referred to in the text). Landownership, which is discussed, is not a substitute. He also would
have benefited from having read Russian travelers such as Korf and Berezin; the consular
reports, mostly from Tabriz, published by Kukanova; and Ataevs book on Russo-Iranian trade
and economic relations in the 18th and 19th centuries. Leaving these and other issues aside, I
strongly recommend that this book be added to everybodys library and to the teaching syllabus
to challenge other students to do the same or better.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803360076

JONAH BLANK, Mullahs on the Mainframe: Islam and Modernity among the Daudi Bohras
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). Pp. 416. $40.00 cloth, $22.50 paper.
REVIEWED BY M AZYAR LOTFALIAN, New School University, New York
Mullahs on the Mainframe is an ethnographic account of Daudi Bohras, an Ismaili sect in India,
and a rare subject of research. It has both the blessing of the community and the reflexivity of
the author. The title of the book promises an interesting exploration of the intermingling of
religion and new media. But the interesting vignettes are more protoInternet glimpses than
solid analyses of the subject. However, the book has other things to offer. It is about the history
and ethnography of a Shi
i community, and it examines questions concerning their encounter
with modernity.
The book consists of an Introduction and two parts. Part 1 (chaps. 15) develops the ethnography of Daudi Bohras, first through a historical account of the sects genesis, then through
participant observation. Part 2 (chaps. 610) analyzes the data discussed in the first part. The

Reviews 169
Introduction sets the thesis of the book as the study of the Daudi Bohrass uniqueness in being
both modern and traditional. The author argues that most Muslim reformers, such as Sir Syed
Ahmad Khan and Muhammad Abduh, tried to refashion tradition in the encounter with colonial
forces, to accommodate to Western ideas. Conversely, in the most recent experience of Muslim
revivalism, we can see a total rejection of the West. The Daudi Bohras have avoided both
wholesale acceptance and rejection of what is Western.
The first chapter consists of an informative and accessible account of the Daudi Bohras from
preFatimid historical moments to the present-day community of Daudi Bohras in India. This
well-written section of the book is particularly useful for teaching introductory courses in the
history of Shi
ism. Chapter 2 focuses on lifecycle rituals that are similar to the other variant of
Islam, with a specificity that the Daudi Bohras emphasize the presence of the Syedna (religious
leader) in all aspects of personal life. The third chapter charts year-round religious rituals,
which resonates with other Shi
i groups. In this chapter, the author offers his participant-observation accounts of various rituals. In chapters 2 and 3, the author provides examples of electronic communication in naming ritual and greeting the Eid.
Perhaps the more salient ethnography of the Daudi Bohras is offered in the fourth and the
fifth chapters. In the fourth chapter, the Bohras domestic life and kinship structure are described. The author offers case studies through which the reader can understand the variations
and deviations in the experiences of women. Chapter 5 focuses on the royals, the cherished
descendent and the family of the fifty-first da
i, Syedna Taher Saifudin. The author charts the
organizational structure of the da
wa, (pilgrimage) and important events associated with elite
families.
In Chapter 6, the author argues that a high level of spiritual authority is attributed to the
Bohra da
wa. There is a sharp distinction between zw ahir and batw in (surface and depth of knowledge). This distinction translates into the structure of da
wa. Compared with both the Sunnis
and other Shi
is, Bohras do not rely on either hadith or tafsr; instead, the hierarchy of knowledge depends on how it moves up from zw ahir knowledge to deeper batw in knowledge along
the hierarchy of da
wa. The da
i al-Mutlaqs guidance is taken as normative rule by the community. Given this situation, the Bohra community looks for signs,
alamat and du
a, administered
by the da
i. In recent times, the growth and spread of the community across a vast geographical
area has caused problems regarding easy access to the da
i
s
alamat and du
a. But with the
advent of communication technology, this obstacle has been overcome simply by using fax,
express mail, and e-mail to reach the da
i. In addition, along with the communication technology, the modern invention of I.D. cards allows the da
wa to maintain their hegemony over the
community.
The author asserts that Bohras, unlike any other Muslims, embrace technology. He argues
that, although most Muslims use technology, they regard it as a necessary evil. For Bohras, by
contrast, technology not only is necessary; it can be incorporated into everyday life as part of
modern living. Two things are not clear in the authors argument. First, how does this attitude
differ from Salafi and Neo-Salafi views on Westernization? The author treats Islamic responses
to education and technical appropriation vis-a`-vis the West singularly and monolithically.
Ample historical evidence points to different responses situated in particular historical moments. Second, is it sufficient to point out a positive attitude toward technology among Muslims
(which is an index of opposition to earlier rhetoric that Muslims are backward), or do we need
a critical evaluation of technological incorporation and appropriation in nonWestern cultural
settings? Recent works in the field of science studies have focused on how technology shapes
socio-cultural processes, and vice versa. The author situates his argument not in the latter but
in the frame of acceptance or rejection, where technology is rendered neutral.
Chapter 7 provides two material examples of moral codes: dress codes and economics. First,
the author argues that the dress code has been reintroduced in recent decades to enhance the

170 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

uniqueness of the Bohras. An anti-assimilationist measure, the dress code is a part of the larger
Islamization initiatives of the 1980s. Although this chapter does not make a connection to the
previous one, the question of identity and the Internet is foreshadowed. The question is what
to make of the visibility (dress code) in the public sphere as compared with hyper-visibility on
the Internet? Another measure of the orthodoxy of the Bohras concerns their ideas about Islamic economics. Although there are similarities between the Bohras economic ethics and
those of Western capitalism, the Bohras emphasize communal interests rather than individual
interest. Moreover, the author discusses the principles of Islamic economics as they relate to
the Bohras interpretations.
Chapter 8 is concerned with the Bohras education. The author argues that the Bohras have
encountered what he calls modernity in a manner that appropriation of the Western curriculum
and scientific discovery is not avoided. In fact, the Bohras have required their children to be
up to date and competitive as far as international criteria of education are concerned. This
raises the century-old question about the Muslim reformers who tried to build a bridge between
modernity and tradition, schools and madrasas. The author demonstrates that the Bohras have
been able to instruct their children in both schools and madrasas, avoiding the problem of
reconciliation through bifurcation of education.
Chapter 9 charts the phenomenon of dissent in the context of the da
wa structure of orthodoxywhat do dissidents say, and what is their relationship to the da
wa? The author argues
that the dissidents are grounded in the modernist assumption that there is a distinction between
the spiritual and secular spheres. The authors ethnography shows that some of the arguments
advanced by the dissidents are also theologically grounded. Should one then understand that
the author assumes that the Bohras religious thoughts are only legitimate within the da
wa
structure, and that the rest is secular?
The concluding Chapter 10 argues that, based on ethnography and analysis advanced in the
earlier chapters, Daudi Bohras are both modern and traditional. In this chapter, the author
discusses the lack of violence among the Bohras. Although, it is clear that by violence he
means communal fights between Hindus and Muslims, the category of violence is used uncritically. Specifically, he uses violence this way: the Bohras provide a case in which Islamic
orthodoxy has not led to any violent fundamentalist praxis. Among others, he mentions two
problematic reasons: first, the hierarchical and top-down structure of the da
wa does not allow
any violence similar to that advanced by Muslim fundamentalists, whom the author calls selfstyled; and second, modernity can be appropriated and accommodated differentlythat is, the
Bohras have adopted some parts of modernity and not the others. The author seems to argue
that modernity is a set of values, not that each culture can produce its own modernityfor
example, the Bohrasmodernity can be different from British modernity. Nor does he argue that
modernity is different from modernization. In fact, it appears that modernity is a new dress
code for modernization theories. Moreover, the author argues that the Bohras have the right
attitude toward using technology. There is virtually no socio-cultural analysis of technology.
How have the Bohras ways of looking at the world changed? The author offers only suggestions concerning the utility of the communication technology, such as the Internet, fax, and
phone. What is also missing in the Conclusion is a link to what was developed in Chapter 6
on the Bohras use of the Internet. As the title of the book promises and the earlier chapters
exhibitinteresting intersections between Internet use and the Bohras cognitive stylethis is
left under-developed in the conclusion.
Mullahs on the Mainframe is an interesting account of the Daudi Bohra community. The
critical points made here speak to the fact this is a provocative and stimulating work and can
satisfy a wide range of readers, from scholars in the field to non-academics who will read the
book out of curiosity. Blanks lucid writing is specially rewarding.

Reviews 171
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803370072

HOWARD M. FEDERSPIEL, Islam and Ideology in the Emerging Indonesian State: The Persatuan
Islam (Persis), 1923 to 1957 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001). Pp. 377. $114.00 cloth.
REVIEWED BY M ARTIN VAN BRUINESSEN, Department of Oriental Studies, Utrecht University,
The Netherlands
Among Indonesias movements of Islamic reform, Persatuan Islam (Islamic Union, or Persis)
has been the most puritan in doctrine and practice and the most polemical opponent of traditionalist Islam and local religious practices. Although much smaller than better-known movements
such as Muhammadiyah and Sarekat Islam, Persis has had an influence far out of proportion
to its modest size because of the intensity of its message and the forceful personalities of its
leaders. Its leading intellectual, Mohamad Natsir, became one of the first prime ministers of
independent Indonesia; went on to lead the largest Muslim party, Masyumi, until it was banned
in 1960; established the Indonesian Council for Islamic Predication (da
wa); and was for many
years one of the vice-chairmen of the Islamic World League. As the most rigid and literalist of
the reformist currents, as well as the most polemical, Persis often set the terms of the debate
with traditionalists and syncretists, and the numerous fatwas issued by its ulema were often
used as a reference by the followers of other reformist currents.
Whereas the countrys first reformist association, Muhammadiyah (established in 1912), devoted much effort to modern education and health care along with the reform of ritual and
beliefthe Muhammadiyah commands a vast network of hospitals and schools, from kindergartens to universitiesPersis concentrated on the struggle against all bid
a and established
few schools. It was also decidedly less political than the modernist and nationalist Sarekat
Islam (Islamic Association, also founded in 1912), the countrys first modern mass movement.
Initially, Persis rejected nationalism as incompatible with Islam and looked unfavorably on
politics, too; after independence, some prominent members became politicians but often had
antagonistic relationships with their nationalist colleagues. The association that Persis resembled most closely in reformist spirit was Al Irsyad, which, however, was exclusively active
among Indonesian Arabs (and also had a significant impact in Hadramaut and throughout the
Hadrami diaspora).
Persis has received much less scholarly attention than these other associations, which is a
reason to welcome Howard Federspiels new book. It is a reworked version of his 1969 Ph.D.
thesis (published in 1970),1 which has long been the only book-length study and, apart from
the important observations in Deliar Noers authoritative history of Indonesian Islamic reformism,2 the chief reference work on the subject. Federspiels book is more voluminous than the
earlier study but does not add much to it. The time frame remains the same, ending in 1958.
The author carried out two additional interviews in 1996 and read only a handful of relevant
Indonesian publications that have appeared since 1970, but in the present book he makes explicit comparisons with Egyptian and South Asian reformismmostly
Abduh, Rida, and Mawdudi. It was probably thought that these comparisons would make the book interesting to non
Indonesianist readers.
Persis and Al Irsyad have recently attracted attention because some of the leaders of the
radical Laskar Jihadthat is, engaging in jihad against Christians in eastern Indonesiawere
educated in their schools before traveling to Arabia and Afghanistan, where they linked up with
transnational Wahhabi networks. The recent radicalization of a minority of Indonesian Muslims
does not appear to have had an impact on Persis itself, but the organization has always propagated a brand of reformist thought that is most consonant with Wahhabi thought. It is a pity
that Federspiel has not thought of making comparisons with Wahhabi literature, but his summaries of the polemics in which Persis engaged make clear the extent to which its thought resem-

172 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

bled that of the Wahhabis. This resemblance is the more surprising because, as Federspiel
claims, there appears to have been little direct influence from Middle Eastern developments on
the thought and practice of Persis. These appear to have developed almost independentlyat
least, during the period under consideration.
The book is divided into two parts, which cover the final decades of colonial rule and the
first decade of Indonesian independence, respectively. For each period, there are chapters discussing the general political context, developments in Persis as an organization, and Persis
thought as expressed in print media. Federspiels content analysis of its journals suggests that
Persis was perpetually involved in passionate polemics. Persis authors polemicized against traditionalist Muslims, syncretists, Christian teachers, and deviant sects such as the Ahmadiyya
(of Qadian) during the colonial period, and against communists as well as secular nationalists
of various shades in the 1950s. They rejected all religious beliefs and practices for which they
found no basis in the Quran and hadith, and they opposed, more strictly than the other reformists, the jurisprudence of the traditional schools (madhhab). Minor details of worship, such as
whether the niyya, the declaration of intention that precedes the prayer, should be spoken aloud,
became the subject of fierce debates that divided the entire Muslim community. Rituals surrounding death and burial, the belief in saints and visiting their graves, all sorts of mystical
and magical practices that had great currency in Indonesiaall were unrelentingly attacked,
not only in print, but also in face-to-face public debates.
Federspiel rightly pays much attention to the intellectual heavyweights of the organization,
Ahmad Hassan, Mohamad Natsir, and Isa Anshari, who were most visible in such public debates. Hassan was the chief religious authority, with whose name Persis came to be most closely
associated. An unassuming and largely self-educated man born in Singapore of Indian parents,
Hassan issued numerous fatwas on matters of daily belief and practice that were distinctive for
their strict dependence on the Quran and hadith in matters of ritual and their rationality in
other matters. Hassan always remained aloof from practical politics (although in the last years
of Dutch rule there was a famous exchange of letters between him and Sukarno, and he supported the declaration of independence). In 1940, he moved from Bandung to Bangil in eastern
Java, far from the political turmoil of the capital, where he established what became the major
Persis school, the only one that taught no other subjects but religion.
After independence, Natsir and Anshari became leading lights of the Muslim party Masyumi,
and the latter especially polemicized fiercely against communists and secular nationalists. Natsirs criticism of Sukarno, by contrast, sprang less from a religious rejection of nationalism than
from his dismay with the presidents increasingly dictatorial attitude. Unlike some other Masyumi politicians, who relied on patronage politics, Natsir firmly believed in Western-style democracy and professional and accountable administration, and he was in this respect more
inspired by the socialistshe collaborated closely with the Socialist Party of Indonesiathan
by Islamic political thought.
Federspiel duly summarizes what he finds written in the Persis media, but the study is weak
in analysis, and the author does not always appear to understand the implications of what he
read. When he describes the numerous polemics in which Persis personalities took part, he
summarizes the arguments of only one side of the debate. With one or two exceptions, the
arguments of those against whom Persis polemicized are not presented at all or only in the rephrasing by their Persis critics. It is as if one overhears a person quarrelling on the telephone:
we get a good idea of the subject of the conversation but may well miss the essence of a
disagreement. One would have liked to hear what the other side said.
Federspiels quaint translations of Arabic and Indonesian terms and expressions also raise
doubts about the carefulness of his readings. He translates al-Fatwa (the name of a journal) as
the Legalist; al-Lisan as the Voice; al-Furqan as the Criterion; and Aliran Islam as Islamic Alignment (instead of Islamic Current). In lengthier passages that he summarizes, I

Reviews 173
often wondered what the original said, for they made little sense to me. Frequent errors in the
translation of Indonesian book titles in the bibliography make one wonder how well he knows
that language.
His comparisons of Persis leaders with Muslim thinkers elsewhere remain under-developed.
Having summarized some of Ahmad Hassans general teachings on Islam, for instance, he
concludes that these are closely related to standard Sunni teachings as expressed by the classical theologian al-Ash
ari, by the modernist Muslim thinker Muhammad
Abduh and by the neofundamentalist activist Abdul A
la Mawdudi [sic]. Leaving aside whether the latter two can
be said to have expressed standard Sunni teachings, Federspiel does not make clear what the
similarity with these thinkers consists ofapart from the belief in the uniqueness and perfection of the Quran, Muhammads genuine prophethood, and some other generalities. He does
not attempt to attest any of the ideas specifically associated with these thinkers in the writings
of Ahmad Hassan or any of the other Persis-affiliated authors. Nor does he make any serious
effort to discover where Persis distinguished itself doctrinally or in attitude from other reformist
currents.
What is of lasting value in this book, then, is a useful overview of the activities and especially the literature produced by an important but neglected Muslim movement in Indonesia. A
more profound analysis, and a study of developments since 1958, both worthwhile, will have
to wait for another scholar.
NOTES
1

Howard Federspiel, Persatuan Islam: Islamic Reform in Twentieth Century Indonesia (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Modern Indonesia Project, 1970).
2
Deliar Noer, The Modernist Muslim Movement in Indonesia 19001940 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1973).
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803380079

MEIR HATINA, Islam and Salvation in Palestine, Dayan Center Papers, no. 127 (Tel Aviv: Moshe
Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, 2001). Pp. 186. $14.95 paper.
REVIEWED BY M ARION BOULBY, Department of History, University of Nebraska at Omaha
This work charts the political, organizational, and ideological development of the Palestinian
Islamic Jihad movement from its birth in the early 1980s through to the era of the Oslo Accords. Hatina examines the movements growth in three stages: first, a period of political indoctrination (198183) in which the organization was established by a group of Gazan academics
led by Fathi Abd al-Aziz al-Shiqaqi, a medical doctor, which spread the message of militant
Islam through mosques and universities and also built a network of underground cells; second,
a phase of armed confrontation (198487), when the movement shifted to a policy of military
struggle, undertaking a series of attacks against Israeli military and civilian targets; and third,
the Intifada and the transfer of the movements center to Lebanon and Syria as the mantle of
leadership in the Islamic camp in early 1988 clearly shifted to Hamas (p. 39) and the Islamic
Jihad leadership was expelled by Israeli authorities.
A major theme dominating this book is the ideological distinctiveness of Islamic Jihad in
the Muslim world. The author states that the cornerstone of Islamic Jihads ideology was the
belief that Palestine was the focal point of the historio-cultural struggle between the Muslims
and their external enemies, the Jews and Christians. The liberation of Palestine by a holy war
was a prerequisite for the unification of the Muslims and the restoration of Islamic superiority
(p. 85). In presenting the battle for Palestine as an existential struggle for the Muslims,

174 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

Islamic Jihad sought to emphasize the Islamic essence of the conflict with Israel and also to
spearhead the struggle.
Hatina states that the Islamic Jihads ideological distinctiveness lies not only in calling for
an immediate armed struggle against Israel but also in a new outlook that projected the Jewish
presence in Palestine as a western bridgehead in the heart of the Muslim world (p. 21). In
this regard, the author refers to the failure of Islamic trends both traditional and radical to
make the Palestinian cause a top priority, with the Muslim Brotherhood and the ulema viewing
Israel as a vexing problem whose origins lay in a more general problemthe absence of the
caliphate (p. 50). Confrontation with Israel could occur only after the establishment of a PanIslamic state.
The contradictory Islamic Jihad perspective is that, as Palestine is a vital spiritual and geographic center of the Muslim world and focal point in the struggle against Western imperialism,
its liberation should be the first stage in the creation of a Pan-Islamic state. And, claims Hatina,
It is here that the Islamic jihads ideological innovation lies, i.e., raising the flag of jihad in
Palestine involves a commitment to two interrelated goals: the liberation of Palestine and a
pan-Islamic revival in the region (p. 51).
The author shows how Islamic Jihad stands apart from other Arab Islamist organizations in
two other major respects: in its almost exclusive stress of armed struggle and in its close ties
with Iran. In the first case, the Islamic Jihad is noteworthy for its sublimation of civic activities or the development of a populist structure to the primary goal of building an efficient
apparatus for military jihad against Israel (p. 35). This position reflects the movements ideological conviction that an excessive focus on communal development was unacceptable because
it left the oppressor and tyrant in place (p. 31).
From a more practical perspective, the author also points to the elitist nature and small size
of Islamic Jihad as factors in their prioritization of armed struggle. The smallness of Islamic
Jihads membership reflects in part its relative isolation in the Arab world because of its loyalty
to Iran.
The Islamic Jihad has viewed the Islamic Revolution in Iran as a major historic link in
the Muslim struggle (p. 33), adopting an ecumenical approach to downplay SunniShi
i differencesan approach that, as the author sagely points out, has remained largely an intellectual exercise that only alienates potential Sunni allies (p. 55). It should be noted in this regard
that a significant section of this book is devoted to a detailed analysis of the relationships
among Islamic Jihad, Iran, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Hamas. The author sheds
some new light on these relationships, especially regarding the movements occasional recourse
to political pragmatism and flexibility in spite of its reputation for ideological dogmatism.
In assessing this work overall, it must be said that its major flaw is theoretical and lies in
its over-emphasis of the ideological distinctiveness of Islamic Jihad. The argument in support
of the movements innovativeness is rather weak, giving insufficient attention to both the primacy of the struggle for Palestine in Islamist circles and the diverse positions taken on this
issue within particular organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
That said, this work makes a useful and much needed contribution to the extant literature,
which has largely ignored the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in favor of Hamas. It is well documented and readable and will be accessible to audiences outside academe.

Reviews 175
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803390075

CAMILLE AL-TAWIL, Al-Haraka Al-Islamiyya Al-Musalaha fi Al-Jazair: Min Al-Inqadth ila

Al-Jama
a (The Armed Islamic Movement in Algeria: From the FIS to the GIA) (Beirut:
Dar al-Nihar, 1998). Pp. 337.
KHALED HROUB, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2000). Pp. 343. $29.95 cloth.
QUINTAN WIKTOROWICZ, The Management of Islamic Activism: Salafis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and State Power in Jordan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001).
Pp. 216. $55.50 cloth, $18.95 paper.
REVIEWED BY MOHAMMED M. HAFEZ, Department of Political Science, University of Missouri,
Kansas City
The study of Islamic movements has taken on a special relevance since the tragic events of 11
September 2001. More than ever, people inside and outside of academe are inquiring about the
origins, motivations, and consequences of Islamic activism around the globe. The three books
under review contribute to our understanding of Islamic activism in three countries: Algeria,
Palestine/Israel, and Jordan. Camille al-Tawils Al-Haraka addresses the rise of armed movements in Algeria since 1992 and their justification for violence, especially anti-civilian carnage,
in the mid-1990s. Khaled Hroubs Hamas covers the origins, strategic orientation, and ideological evolution of one of the most controversial and militant Islamic movements in the Muslim
world. Quintan Wiktorowiczs The Management of Islamic Activism sheds light on a moderate
Islamic movement in the Middle East and the mechanisms of social control that foster such
quiescent Islamism. These three works speak to the diverse nature of contemporary Islamic
movements and the importance of political context in shaping Islamic strategic orientations.
Each offers original empirical and theoretical insights that will surely enhance the discussion
of Islamic activism in years to come.
Arabic literature on Algerias Islamic movement has, generally speaking, lacked the sophistication and resources of its French and Anglo-Saxon counterparts. Tawils Al-Haraka is a refreshing departure from this trend. Tawil, a journalist with the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper, has covered the day-to-day events of Algerias Islamic insurgency since 1992. His empirical
work is not only on par with French and English scholarship; in many ways, it surpasses some
of their best works because of his unique access to primary Islamist materials and dissident
leaders in Europe.
Al-Haraka consists of nine chapters that are organized chronologically, beginning with the
formation of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in the late 1980s and concluding with the 1997
cease-fire declaration by the Islamic Salvation Army (AIS). His historical narrative, however,
does occasionally digress from its time line to shed light on specific episodes of violence, such
as the kidnapping and subsequent execution of seven French monks in 1996.
The central claim of Tawils book is that the armed groups in Algeria developed in competition with one another, more so than in response to predatory state repression following the 1992
coup that ended the electoral drive of the FIS. Tawil convincingly argues that the formation of
the AIS, which became the armed wing of the FIS, was intended to help the latter regain
credibility in the armed movement after the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) monopolized the
military arena in 199394. The AIS not only sought to win back its militants; it also tried to
offer an alternative to total war advocated by the GIA. Al-Haraka captures the dialectical
relationship between the armed groups and the inherent tensions that tore them asunder in the
mid-1990s.
The core of Tawils book is his investigation of the near genocidal violence that took place
in Algeria during the 1990s. Tawil goes beyond mere descriptive analysis of events to show

176 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

how patterns of anti-civilian violenceparticularly, massacres in and around Algiers in 1997
can be attributed to a particular ideological predisposition on the part of the GIA, which he
blames for the carnage. Tawil painstakingly details how the radicalization of the GIA contributed to the justification of gruesome crimes against journalists, intellectuals, public workers,
and ultimately ordinary civilians opposed to taking sides in the conflict.
In analyzing the dynamics and internal contradictions of the armed movements, Tawil provides a powerful explanation to all the conspiratorial, who is killing whom? conjectures. For
any scholar seeking a close look at the tensions and struggles that produced some of the fiercest
internecine violence in Algeria, Tawils book will not disappoint.
In covering Algerias civil war, Tawil has had access to nearly every communique that was
issued by the armed groups and came in possession of underground pamphlets and videotapes
that depict the conferences and ideas of the most hardened militants of the armed movement.
He also interviewed activists associated with the FIS and ideologues of the GIA. Consequently,
his book is rich with footnotes that depict events from the inside as portrayed by Algerias
militants. The empirical richness of Tawils book and his unique claims regarding Algerias
armed Islamic movements will make his work an indispensable resource for scholars and interested readers on Algerias Islamic activism. It certainly merits translation into English and
French to benefit our Franco-Anglo-Saxon scholarly communities.
Similar to Al-Haraka, Hroubs Hamas is an inside look at a movement that in a relatively
short time has inspired militant activism against occupation in the West Bank and Gaza and
solidified its place as an opposition force in Palestinian politics. Hroubs book consists of five
chapters, plus an Introduction and Conclusion, organized thematically with an emphasis on
Hamass ideology and political relationships with the broader Palestinian liberation movement.
The book also contains a valuable appendix of original Hamas documents and communiques.
Hroub argues that Hamas, which was born out of the first Palestinian uprising (intifadw a) in
1987, went through at least two phases. In its formative phase (198790), Hamas was free
and spontaneous (p. 146) in its political critique of Israel, the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO), and Arab leadership in general. In this phase, Hamas relied on a conspiratorial imagination and antiZionist (and often anti-Semitic) rhetoric that reflected its political immaturity. It
criticized the impotence of the Arab leadership in challenging Israel and equated the leaders
weakness with treason.
The appeal of Hamas in this and subsequent phases is its capacity to serve as an outlet for
resistance against the occupation and with its ability to secure a minimally reasonable level of
satisfaction of Palestinian rights (p. 5). This was especially true given the failure of the PLO
to achieve any of the aspirations of the Palestinian people since its emergence in the mid1960s.
In its growth and consolidation phase during the 1990s, Hamas became more sophisticated
in its analysis and increasingly sensitive to the needs of the Palestinian leadershipthat is,
Yasir Arafatand Arab governments. Several factors contributed to the maturity of Hamas
as a political movement, including the development of a Hamas leadership abroad, which
obliged it to respect the governments that offered these leaders safe haven, and open dialogues
with the Palestinian Authority (PA) after the Oslo Agreement in 1993. Cognizant of the potential for a Palestinian civil war, Hamas made it a point to avoid sparking armed clashes with
the PA or Palestinian civilians (with the exception of collaborators).
Hroubs book also makes the interesting claim that, despite its religious overtones, Hamas
is a nationalist movement. It seeks to mobilize the umma (Muslim nation) for the service
of Palestine, not Palestine for the service of the umma. Indeed, it is part and parcel of a
larger Islamic current that swept the Muslim world in search of Islamic solutions to national
problems.
Hroubs book addresses the perennial accusation that Hamas was aided by Israel to counter
the influence of the PLO. He convincingly debunks this claim, arguing that Israel, much like

Reviews 177
the Arab world in general, was befuddled by the rise of Islamism in the 1980s. It could not
react with repression, because the movement at that time was not violent. Israel could not
suppress simple expressions of Islamism for fear of infusing a religious element into the Arab
Israeli conflict.
The main strength of Hroubs Hamas is his reliance on Arabic primary sources, including
interviews with Hamas representatives, communiques, and pamphlets from the underground.
Such a contribution is invaluable to scholars seeking to go beyond superficial coverage of an
increasingly controversial movement. Hroub is relatively objective in his analysis of the movement, even when he admittedly presents Hamas as Palestinians view it (p. 4).
Hamas also has weaknesses that deserve mention. Given the explosive nature of the movement (figuratively and literally), there is hardly any discussion of Hamass military wing,
Azzedin Qassam. Understandably, such information is not easily accessible, but readers seeking
to make sense of the recent conflagration in the Occupied Territories will be disappointed by
the omission. Furthermore, Hroubs largely descriptive account neglects to assess the success
or failure of Hamas in advancing the cause of the Palestinians. Have its refusal of the Oslo
framework and militant actions against Israel aided or hindered the success of the Palestinian
cause? How has its violenceparticularly, anti-civilian suicide bombingsharmed or helped
Palestinian national aims? These limitations notwithstanding, Hroubs Hamas is an indispensable resource for scholars seeking to understand Islamic activism in Palestinian politics.
Wiktorowiczs Management of Islamic Activism departs from the descriptive focus of the
first two books and offers a theoretically informed analysis of a relatively moderate, non-violent
Islamic movement in Jordan. The explicit aim of the book is to bridge the gap between socialmovement theory and Islamic studies. The former has mainly focused on North American and
European activism and neglected Islamic movements, and the latter tends to be the exclusive
domain of area specialists who express little interest in theory.
Wiktorowiczs book is organized thematically and consists of an Introduction, four chapters,
and a Conclusion. His central claim is that political liberalization in Jordan is intended to
manage Islamic activism in ways that do not demand overt repression of dissent. As Wiktorowicz puts it, [S]ocial control is projected through an array of legal mechanisms and manipulated administrative regulations, which are systematically applied to limit dissent, opposition,
and associational life. Legal and bureaucratic instruments have become the new weapons of
repression, hiding brutality in a complex web of laws and regulations (p. 149). Interestingly,
whereas in Eastern Europe and Latin America democratization reflected a desire to change the
status quo due to political pressures from below, in Jordan democratization was driven by the
need to maintain the status quo from above.
Formal political inclusion, argues Wiktorowicz, contributed to two tendencies in the Islamic
movement. The Muslim Brotherhood, which historically has dominated the movement, saw an
opportunity to consolidate its loyal opposition within the monarchy through electoral contestation and formal social-movement organizations. The conservative strategy of the Brotherhood
facilitates the states goal of channeling opposition through established institutions and bureaucracies, where the traditional elite dominates, while marginalizing more critical voices within
the Islamic movement. The result is a symbiosis in which the regime allows the Brotherhood
to organize and promote its objectives, while the movement upholds the regimes right to rule
and refrains from challenging Hashemite Islamic legitimacy (p. 93).
The second tendency that emerges out of the states social-control strategy is the rise of
informal Islamic networks. The Salafi strand of the Islamic movement has been forging these
networks as a form of anti-regime activism. The Salafis, argues Wiktorowicz, tend to be more
critical of the governing regime and radical in their goals. Decentralized informal networks
serve their orientation best, because they make repression more difficult and co-optation, as in
the case of the Brotherhood, less likely.
Wiktorowiczs main contribution is his original research into this largely uncharted field of

178 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

informal networks in Jordan. He interviewed many Salafis and inquired about the structure of
informal associations and recruitment strategies within these networks. As a result, Chapter 4
provides much needed empirical findings about the ideas and mobilization capacity of Salafis
in Jordan. Moreover, Wiktorowicz directs our attention to the importance of studying informal
networks as a type of social-movement activism. His work, in this regard, complements other
works on Algeria, Iran, the West Bank and Gaza, and Egypt. Interestingly, in all these societies,
militant Islamism had its start in informal networks and associations.
DOI: 10.1017.S002074380340007#

BASSAM TIBI, Islam between Culture and Politics (New York: Palgrave, 2001). Pp. 288. $68.00
cloth.
REVIEWED
Cairo

BY

EMAD ELDIN SHAHIN, Political Science Department, American University in

Bassam Tibi has produced yet another impressive and thought-provoking book that addresses
problematic dimensions in the understanding of the interaction between culture and politics in
contemporary Islam and the relationship between Islam and the West inside Europe and in an
increasingly globalized world. He revisits and expands on several of his themes in previous
works on Islam while placing them within an elaborate and sophisticated cultural analysis that
painstakingly attempts to define concepts, elucidate relationships, and propose solutions for the
dilemmas at hand.
Tibi takes pains to make distinctions among Islam as a religion, a cultural system, and a
political ideology. He equally attempts to distinguish among the different varieties of Islamic
reassertion: fundamentalism, orthodoxy, reform, and modernism. However, the intellectual nuances within each category are not clear, and at times it is difficult to know whether Tibi is at
odds with Islamists, Muslims, or Islam. One really doubts the usefulness of Tibis reference to
Watts hypothesis that the Quran must have been edited (pp. 5960). This goes beyond the
issue of just being critical of Islamists and fundamentalists.
Tibi sees Islam as a religion and a cultural system, not a political ideology. Accordingly, the
crisis of contemporary Islam is the product of the deliberate blurring of these distinctions on
the part of Islamic fundamentalists and the oscillation of Islam between culture and politics.
The Islamists use the cultural symbols of Islam and reproduce them as a political ideology that
eventually undermines Islam as a religion and puts it into confrontation with the West. Such
calls, as for the establishment of al-Nizw am al-Islam (the Islamic system), the implementation
of the shari
a (Muslim law), and the Islamization of knowledge, are post-Quranic constructs
or inventions. These calls serve political, not religious, ends, for the Islamistsor the neoabsolutists, the Warriors of Allahare men of politics, not of ethics.
At another level, Tibi explains the crisis of modern Muslims as emanating from the disparity
between Islams universalistic worldview and the frustrating realities of contemporary Muslims.
Through their politicization of religion, Islamists wage a jihad against the modern secular nation-state, secularization, and Western hegemony. This politicization creates faultlines between Muslims and other civilizations. To break this impasse, Tibi calls for a cultural dialogue,
democratic peace, cultural modernity, and international morality. He advises Muslims to deessentialize Islam and decouple politics from religion. This process should include reconsidering the concept of umma, reforming the shari
a, reforming the educational system, and abandoning claims to universalism and absolutism. Muslims have to come to terms with the basic
values of modernity: individual human rights, reason-based knowledge, and secular democracy.
The Islamists dream of semi-modernity, or accepting the instruments of modernityscience
and technologywhile rejecting its universal values is doomed to fail, because these instru-

Reviews 179
ments are socially and culturally constructed. For Muslim migrants in Europe, Tibi prescribes
a Euro-Islam, a new interpretation of Islam that makes it compatible with the European values
of laicism, individual human rights, democratic pluralism, and civil society (p. 226). Europe in
turn should abandon Eurocentrism and integrate Muslim migrants into its polity. However,
Europeans should beware of cultural relativism and self-denial, because Muslims, and not only
Islamists, do not respect people who display self-denial (p. 202).
Tibis methodology and proposals may raise concerns for ordinary Muslims, not to mention
Islamists. In his approach to Islam as a cultural system of meanings and symbols, he insists
on going beyond religious doctrines (p. 29). This has led Tibi to make inaccurate inferences
and undifferentiated generalizations, perhaps reflecting his philosophical preferences. A case
in point, and a main theme in the book, is his emphasis on the classical Islamic worldview,
which he asserts has never been revised (p. 220). This worldview, which according to Tibi is
shared by all Muslims, divides the world into two camps: the abode of Islam and the abode
of war. Muslims view themselves as the best nation because they are the bearers of the final
revealed message and the followers of the seal of the Prophets. Therefore, they are the superior
community (umma) and have a universalistic message of Islamizing the entire world (p. 185).
Tibi certainly knows that the traditional classification of the world into Dar al-Hw arb and Dar
al-Islam is also post Quranic and human-madenot an essentialistIslamic doctrine that has
indeed undergone changes, even during classical Islam. This view may be shared by some
particularly, militant Islamistsbut it certainly is not shared by all Muslims. His assertion that
the Islamic worldview of the world is bound to the belief that humanity will become a unified
monotheistic community under the banner of Islam (p. 58) is simply wide of the mark.
Tibis discussion of the Islamic shari
a and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) certainly needs to be
more differentiated. Surprisingly, Tibi confuses the two. Shari
a is divine, whereas fiqh is not,
contrary to Tibis inaccurate translation of fiqh as sacred jurisprudence, and his reference to
the shari
a as purely human interpretation (p. 154). Fiqh, not shari
a, is human, not sacred,
and therefore mutable. It is this very nature that allows the mutable parts of the shari
a to be
adaptable and flexible to accommodate to changes in time and place. This process of adaptation
has accounted for the legal diversity (the legal schools) and intellectual pluralism within Islam.
The fact that the shari
a is mentioned only once in the Quran does not make it a postQuranic,
human construct. An equally significant word,
aqda (doctrine), was not mentioned once in
the Quran, but similarly this does not make it a human, postQuranic construct.
A related, yet extremely important, issue is de-essentializing Islam. Tibi believes that Islamic cultural identity, if de-essentialized, is not in conflict with modernity (p. 109). This is
possible, according to Tibi, because, there is no such thing as an essentialist or monolithic
Islam. It follows that there exists no such thing as an immutable Islamic identity, as Islamists
contend (p. 202). Tibi would agree that this issue cannot be adequately addressed, while insisting on going beyond the Islamic doctrines, at least to determine the constituents of an Islamic
cultural identity, the parts that are essential and those that are not. If belief in the Quran as
revealed and unaltered, and umma, Islamic order, shari
a, and Muslim education are not essential, what then remains of Islam? Here, I recall a comment made by Lord Cromer on the efforts
of Islamic reformers of the 19th century: Islam reformed, Islam no more. I would slightly
modify this phrase as Islam de-essentialized, Islam no more. Tibi knows the implications of
de-essentializing Islam. He himself, when addressing Europeans, warned, chipping away at
ones own values and standards through cultural relativism is a recipe for disaster, leading to
self-surrender in the civilizational conflict (p. 229). Meanwhile, he urges European Muslims
to give up their standards. [A] Muslim will not become a European without abandoning, or
at least revising inherited orthodox Islamic worldviews (p. 226). Although Tibi believes that
Islam could be de-essentialized, he does not seem to accept that modernity could equally be
de-essentialized.

180 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

These criticisms should not undermine the importance of Tibis work. It certainly takes the
discussion of political Islam to a higher and a more sophisticated level. Tibi successfully underscores the importance of understanding the role of culture in international relations. He convincingly presents an alternative course to the clash of civilizations and insightful perspectives on
the meaning and impact of globalization. His call for the promotion of international-civilizational morality covering human rights and democracy ought to be heeded.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803410076

ANNA WURTH, As-Sari
a fi Bab al-Yaman: Recht, Richter und Rechtspraxis an der familienrechtlichen Kammer des Gerichts Sud-Sanaa, (Republik Jemen) 19831995 (Berlin: Duncker
and Humblot, 2000). Pp. 284.
REVIEWED BY GABRIELE
African Studies, London

VOM

BRUCK, Department of Anthropology, School of Oriental and

Allan Christelow once remarked that court documents have the potential to provide a more
thorough and unbiased picture of society than most other sources. Anna Wurths study of
judicial procedures at a court in a poor San
ani neighborhood would appear to give credence
to this observation. The book covers an important stage in Yemeni post-revolutionary history
embracing republican state consolidation, unification of the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) and
the Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), and the Islamist challenge. It is based
on more than one hundred fifty court cases, legal manuals, and unpublished draft statutes;
participant observation at the court; historical chronicles; newspaper articles; and interviews
with jurists and petitioners. Echoing the work of Mir-Hosseini and Messick, Wurth conceives
of law and legal practice as mutually constituting rather than separate domains. The book is
divided into two main parts, each subdivided into two or more chapters. The first part deals
with the norms governing the application of family law by the courts, describing court procedures during the period of Ottoman rule and the Hamid al-Din dynasty. Most chapters are
devoted to an analysis of legal reform as part of state transformation from the 1970s to unification in 1990. Readers are offered a valuable overview of the diverse family laws of 1974, 1978,
and 1992, their political objectives, and the debates surrounding them. The second part centers
on the administration of justice at the court between 1983 and 1995.
The authors analysis of the recent history of the Yemeni legal system challenges the common
assumption that unified law and the existence of appeal courts were alien to traditional Islamic
legal systems and derived from adaptations of European law. From 1911 until the 1970s, the
ordinary jurisdiction comprised courts of first instance in the provinces and a court of appeal
in San
a. Under Imam Yahya (190448), in the Zaydi areas, judges were obliged to adhere to
the ZaydiHadawi doctrine. In distinction to previous imams, he submitted his personal rulings
(ikhtiyarat) to the judges in the form of rules divided into twenty-eight sections. In the authors
view, this policy constituted a precursor to codified law. The establishment of an academy
where jurists were trained (al-madrasa al-
ilmiyya) and a new code of civil procedure introduced in 1936 both reflected the imams aspiration to centralize and reform the system of
administering justice.
Wurth offers a detailed analysis of the training of judges and the development of Yemeni
family law since the 1970s, drawing special attention to the codification that became the flagship of President al-Hamdis program of legal reform. Al-Hamdi (d. 1977) saw codification as
a means of overcoming the social and political fragmentation of the country after the civil war
and a prerequisite for Yemens integration into the world market. Codificationonce described
to me by a Zaydi scholar as his last act of ijtihadwas the product of local legal developments
rather than a compilation of provisions of several legal schools. Some politiciansnotably, the

Reviews 181
current Minister of Interior Rashad al-
Alimihave argued that the unification agreement in
1973 between the YAR and the PDRY was the reason for this procedure. Codified law retained
many elements of fiqh, and gender equality was neglected. For example, in contrast to other
republican states in the region, particularly the PDRY, in the law of 1978 marriage and divorce
remained mens private affair. Although the Personal Status Act of 1992 incorporated some
sections from a draft proposed by the Womens Association and the Arab League, it was based
largely on that issued by the YAR in 1978a bad omen for the unification of two countries
with greatly diverging ideas about gender relations. (Jurists of the PDRY judged this legal
policy as a re-Islamization generated by specific constellations of power.) The 1992 law
deviated from that of 1978 in regard to the prohibition of marriage by minors younger than
fifteen, the mandatory registration of marriage, polygyny, and womens claims to maintenance.
Following a mans absence for more than a year and his failure to support his wife, she can
ask for a divorce, make use of his property, or take a loan in his name. Men wishing to contract
a second marriage are obliged to inform both women of their personal circumstances. The
authors assessment of these legal amendments is largely negative. The distribution of rights
and duties of spouses remained unequal: women owe their husbands obedience, and husbands
in turn must offer financial support to their wives. In Wurths view, the reforms envisioned by
the Womens Association were doomed to failure because the 1992 law combines fiqh and
modern Arab family law, to womens detriment. For example, provisions in favor of women
remained insignificant, as there was no procedural mechanism to insure their application. Thus,
needy women who were divorced through no fault of their own do not gain access to the
compensation they are entitled to without making a claim. (In 1998 amendments were made
aimed at overcoming such obstacles.)
The second part of the book provides a rare insight into the lives of the urban poor, a subject
thus far neglected by students of Yemeni society. The book situates disputes within the complex
array of gender and class relations, demonstrating how women of diverse social background
become sites on which various versions of convention, law, and tradition are elaborated. Wurth
documents the intricacies of the litigation process with great acumen and sensitivity. The majority of litigants and witnesses are low-income immigrants from provinces south of the capital;
a third of the men work for the army or the security forces. Most men seek to enforce their
wives obedience. A high percentage of the cases brought by women (of whom few are employed) are about maintenance; others seek divorces because of their spouses proclivity for
unconventional sex and alcohol consumption. Womens petitions reflect a desire to be provided
for and to end unbearable marital relations rather than to rework gender relations. Women win
about 80 percent of their cases; men only half that.
The author shows how the dispensation of justice is shaped by the social background of the
parties to the proceedings and the judges cultural preconceptions about gender, marriage, and
the family. It is interesting to note that university-trained judges place emphasis on both the
ethical and contractual nature of marriage. Thus, a judge argued that a woman whose husband
had been absent for eight years was not only entitled but also obliged to dissolve her marriage
in order to maintain propriety, since nobody guaranteed her moral integrity, provided for her
and looked after her (p. 160). Rulings in matters of residence are less clear-cut. One womans
claim to an independent residence was rejected although she was beaten by her husbands
brothers. However, women living in polygynous marriages are usually granted this kind of
request, even though in most cases it exceeds mens financial means. According to Wurth,
judges wish to reinforce the ethical limitation on polygyny that the law mandates, thereby
restricting its occurrence in this social stratum.
Decisions that are influenced by class-specific norms of the family come into play in other
areas, too. Women of traditionally high-status families such as the qudw at are more likely than
others to obtain a divorce motivated by hatred (karahiya) without having to provide proof of
domestic violence. (The qudw at are among those privileged by the judiciary, many of whom are

182 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

members of the same social category.) In this context, it is not immediately obvious why ascriptive labels of status categories are used in some cases and not in others.
One of the books central points is that legal praxis must be analyzed in relation to the social
location of all parties involved. Wurth argues that the social nature of family law and its
application is contingent on legally enshrined gender inequality as well as social inequality,
both reflected in and perpetuated by the judiciary.
This well-researched study will appeal equally to academic lawyers, anthropologists, historians, political scientists, and scholars of gender relations. Readers will welcome the comparisons
with legislation in other Arab countries, but some might feel that contestations between Sunni
Islamists and more liberal jurists deserved more elaborate treatment. (The attempt by the Islamists to introduce the concept of Bayt al-Tw a
a [House of Obedience] into family law, rejected
by Parliament after President
Ali
Abdullah Salihs personal intervention in 2002, was the latest
in a series of such disputes.) The book offers a significant contribution to the study of law in
the context of state formation and transformation, the use of law as a means of political validation, and the social contingency of the administration of justice. Above all, it demonstrates that
experience is gendered not just in marriage, but also in the courts.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803420072

AIDA ADIB BAMIA, The Graying of the Raven: Cultural and Sociopolitical Significance of
Algerian Folk Poetry (Cairo: American Institute in Cairo Press, 2001). Pp. 151. $22.95
cloth.
REVIEWED BY AMY ELIZABETH LEVINE, Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Aida Adib Bamias book is a significant study of folk poetry as a form of literary resistance
and social critique in colonial Algeria just before its war of independence from France (1954
62). Bamia examines the work of Muhammad ibn al-Tayyib
Alili (c. 1894c. 1954), an Algerian folk poet whose compositions provide a personal and historical documentation of the social
concerns of rural Algerians. The poet
Alili worked as a nomadic sharecropper in northeastern
Algeria during the final decades of colonization. In a small body of ten poems, he documented
rural Algerian traditions and social conflicts, critiquing them from the position of the oppressed.

Alilis poetry was first recorded and collected by his friend and patron Mohammed HadjSadok, a prominent educator and folklorist. The moving story of Bamias contact with
Hadj-Sadok (and thus indirectly with
Alili), as well as her own pioneering work in folklore in
1970s Algeria, informs her argument that understanding the lineage of folk poetry in terms of
its inspiration and patronage is essential in determining its multiple meanings. Although the
attention to provenance is not unusual in literary study, what is unique here is the perspective
from which history is observed. Bamia elucidates the connection between the poets personal
experience and the larger socio-political context of colonial Algeria.
The chapter
Alilis Repertoire contains careful structural analyses of six poems with respect to meter, scansion, language, and metaphor. The author skillfully and richly interprets
the poets quotidian encounters in light of his, at moments, subtly embedded social and political
critique. Without Bamias interpretation, the poets period-specific allusions and allegorical
mode of writing about national and international political battles would be difficult to decode,
even for an informed reader of Algerian folklore. From the poets internal landscape, the author
extracts important literary and social analyses of a nation in formation.
The heart of the book lies in its argument that folk poetic traditions shape linguistic and
cultural patrimony in Algeria. The authors thesis is that the cultural production of folk poets
such as
Alili is essential to understanding Algerias history under colonialism. She further
contends that folk literature assumes a special function as it bypasses colonial manipulation

Reviews 183
because of its dialect-based tradition and its oral rather than written dissemination. According
to Bamia, folk poetry answered three major needs of the Algerian people under French colonial
rule (18301962): (1) forging a national identity through cultural resistance (pp. 1214); (2)
expressing resistance to domination through its status as cultural messenger (pp. 1517); and
(3) documenting social history while bypassing censorship under colonial rule (pp. 1822).
Bamias argument that folk poetry is a significant instrument in expressing national identity in
pre-independence Algeria remains an important concern for the country today.
In an interesting and informative chapter, The History of the Malun, she discusses the
North African poetic form, malun, an early poetic tradition based on variations of classical
Arabic, as well as rai, a twentieth-century song tradition composed in French and dialectal
Arabic. The Maghribs historically diverse ethnic demography gave rise to the malun tradition,
which has been composed since the 8th century by nonArabic-speakers who lived under Arabic rule. Muhammad ibn al-Tayyib
Alilis poetry is part of this poetic tradition, in which rigid
grammatical restrictions are broken to give voice to a popular and, in
Alilis case, a disfranchised, rural Arabic culture. Bamia contends that malun poets colloquial use of language
released them from formal Arabics linguistic restrictions and registered a movement of resistance by the oppressed (pp. 2324). The author could have developed this thesis into a more
complete realization of its rich potential. To this end, she might more strongly have connected
folk literatures cultural path with the works of modern Algerian novelists, such as Mouloud
Feraoun, Mohammed Dib, Mouloud Mammeri, and Kateb Yacine, and even further to the
current literary moment with the works of Rachid Boudjedra and Assia Djebar. She does discuss these modern novelists use of multiple languagesFrench, Arabic, Berber, and colloquial
Algerianin the context of political-language debates in post-independence Algeria (pp. 85
86). However, the political stakes of resistance literature have been raised, once again, as it
has engaged the devastations of the past decade, a period in which Algeria has undergone what
some call a second civil war. Algerias current crisis still concerns cultural and linguistic patrimony and has its roots in the effluences from the anti-colonial struggles of the past century.
Moreover, the problem of Algerias divided heritage among multiple ethnic and religious groups
is as present today as it was in the time of the folk poet
Alili. Inasmuch as Bamia seeks to
situate folk literature in a significant socio-political and cultural line, she would have enriched
her study had she elaborated on the contemporary cultural moment in her discussion of such
writers as Boudjedra, Djebar, and Mammeris use of multiple linguistic forms as a continuation
of resistance literatures rich tradition.
Bamia presents well the difficult problematic of colonial manipulation of pre-existing ethnic
and religious divisions. She writes persuasively about the Algerian and colonial confrontation
expressed in
Alilis poetry. According to Bamia, his poetry reflects two important cultural
scissions in pre-independence Algeria: (1) the conflict between reformist and traditional religious brotherhoods; and (2) the struggles between Arabic and Berber populations for legitimacy
in Algeria. As Bamia notes,
Alilis poetry indicates that the French leveraged both groups
politically to divide and conquer. As she lays bare the colonial machinations regarding the
reformist and traditional Muslim orders, she demonstrates that
Alili has a significant critique
of their internal struggles for material gain (pp. 5355, 7984). These mystical brotherhoods
were, in some instances, spurred on by the colonizer to achieve social status by humiliating
the faithful. Bamia effectively presents
Alilis satirical verse about these corrupt groups and
their exploitative behavior toward peasant Algerians, such as the poetic narrator, who approached them for counsel (p. 82).
The books discussion of Arabic and Berber relations requires more careful attention. Although the book makes brief mention of the vast literature of Kabyle (Berber) folk poets (p.
27), it does not treat in any extended fashion the significant tradition of Berber folk poetry and
its separate problems of collection and publication in either French or the original Tamazight
(pp. 45, 33). Neither does it adequately address the political repression of Berber heritage

184 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

and, thus, the importance of its cultural revival in the literature of Mammeri, Feraoun, and
Kateb Yacine (p. 86). Most important, the author neglects to mention the institutionalized antagonism to Berber culture as manifested in the policies of past and current governments in their
claims that Arabic is the dominant national language. To wit, in a discussion of contemporary
political debates on national culture in Algeria, she cites, without challenging, the claims of
the literary editor of a well-known daily newspaper, al-Jumhuriyya. Bamia paraphrases the
editors mission for the preservation of folk heritage as follows: [all] Algerian folk heritage,
Arab and Berber alike, was a part of the national patrimony, and the acknowledgment and
appreciation of both did not threaten national unity (p. 4). She qualifies his doubtful assertion
as follows: [t]his point was in response to claims made by Berber groups questioning the
legitimacy of the presence of Arab Algerians in the country (p. 4). The reverse is in fact the
case: it is the Berber population that does not have legal, religious, or linguistic legitimacy
within modern-day Algeria. Further problems with Bamias presentation of Berber culture lie
in her unelaborated comments that colonial policy showed favoritism towards the Berbers and
[it] is doubtful that the Kabyles were aware of the colonizers true intentions and motivations.
Nonetheless, by continuing to copy the mannerisms and style of the French, they set themselves
up as fair game for jeers and jibes (p. 91). By framing the analysis in this fashion, Bamias
voice appears to join, in an undifferentiated manner, with that of the poet
Alili. The books
sections on Arabic and Berber conflicts require a deeper explication of the context of the
Berbers struggle for political legitimacy to appreciate fully the consequences of colonial domination and the subsequent meanings of
Alilis poetic references.
The books otherwise strong case for folk poetry as a mode of popular resistance is weakened
by linking folk literature with psychology, and further by placing this literature in the domain
of nostalgia in the etymological senses of nostos (return home) and algos (pain) (pp. 67).
There is no need to cite Jung on the subject of the compensatory aspect of a return to a better
(imagined) past to handle the problems of a troubling present in a national consciousness. I
think the folk poets and their modern descendents do a fine job of sorting out the complicated
strands of the requisite ingredients of a past and future patrimony.
Bamias book, on the whole, is a valuable one for literary scholars of both the Maghrib and
the Mashriq. Her project of reading folk poetry in a socio-political context is critical for interpreting colonial history through literary resistance. She succeeds admirably in her project to re-examine Algerias colonial history and its cultural conflicts through the voice of an observant poet.
Bamias book is also an important extension of folk literary studies as a lens for interpreting a
national ethos in the wake of colonial rule. This project makes a strong case for future studies
of folk poetry as a socio-political signifier of critical moments in national cultural histories.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803430079

ANNE-EMMANUELLE BERGER, ED., Algeria in Others Languages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002). Pp. 255. $45.00 cloth, $18.95 paper.
REVIEWED BY M ARY JEAN GREEN, Department of Fench and Italian, Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.
Languages are still a source of conflict in the former French colonies of the Maghrib. Despite
official commitments to Arabic as a language of education and international communication,
French remains an important presence, and neither written language has succeeded in displacing
the regional dialectal Arabic and Tamazight (Berber) as the idioms of home and street. Only
in Algeria, however, have these linguistic differences arrayed themselves along the political
and economic fault lines of an increasingly disrupted society to become, in themselves, incitements to violence. These Algerian linguistic battles, which Djamila Saadi-Mokrane aptly de-

Reviews 185
scribes as linguicide, are the focus of the essays in Anne-Emmanuelle Bergers intelligently
compiled collection.
Only in the books concluding section does a brief passage from the work of the Moroccan
writer Abdelkebir Khatibi suggest that linguistic pluralism could prove less destructivethat
it might in fact provide the conditions for the literary and artistic creativity that many of the
books contributors find so lacking in present-day Algeria. Although Khatibis lyrical presentation of the bilangue, the state of linguistic in-betweenness, is taken up by the Algerian francophone writer (and Brown University Professor) Reda Bensmaa, it is significant that the impetus
for celebrating linguistic diversity should originate outside Algeria, in a country such as Morocco, where such differences can be acknowledged without immediately taking homicidal
form.
The equally lyrical passage by Hele`ne Cixous that ends the volume also celebrates the magic
of Algerias many languages, here including her grandmothers native German. But it cannot
do so without also evoking the marginalization that characterized Cixouss Algerian Jewish
childhood and her ultimate exile from her native land. Of course, it is Cixouss attachment to
the land in which her artistic sensibility was formed that provided the original impetus for this
collection edited by her daughter, who is a professor of French literature at Cornell University.
Cixouss love for Algeria and her concern for the victims of its current violence were evident
at the 1996 Cornell conference, Algeria In and Out of French: Politics and Culture in Postcolonial Algeria, whose influence can be discerned in the background of the current volume. As
Berger admits in her Preface, this conference, which she organized under the aegis of Cornells
newly founded interdisciplinary program in French studies, might have had a different shape
if it had been sponsored by Near Eastern studies or Arabic. Both Cixous and her Algerian
French compatriot Jacques Derrida were a major presence at the 1996 conference, their words
providing a compelling illustration of the way in which the situation of Algerian linguistic
diversity provided the grounding for two voices who have powerfully interrogated the language
of France. Derridas contribution to the conference, not included in this volume although often
referenced, was related to the material he published the same year in his now classic essay,
The Monolingualism of the Other.
Despite the potential francophone bias of both conference and editor, contributors to this
volume view Algerias linguistic crisis from very different political and disciplinary perspectives, agreeing only that the linguistic policies imposed by the FLN government have tragically
failed. In his fine lead essay, whose title echoes Derrida, Hafid Gafaiti argues the case for
Arabization while attempting to deconstruct the binaries of the warring linguistic factions.
While exposing the policial motives of the FLN and Islamists alike for imposing Arabic, Gafaiti
would continue to emphasize literacy in Modern Standard Arabic, which he presents as a language of modernization and international communication, in opposition to those who would
attribute these qualities only to French.
While Gafaiti points out the obvious irony of the re-emergence of French, the language of
colonial oppression, as a standard bearer of democratic values, Ranjanna Khanna argues that
French has historically offered Algerian women not only a language but a discourse through
which their protest could be expressed, from the revelation of French rape and torture published
by Gise`le Halimi and Simone de Beauvoir during the war of independence to a 1995 mock
trial of violence by Islamic fundamentalists, in which victimized Algerian women chose to
express themselves in French. Lucette Valensi laments the loss of an important expressionand
critiqueof Algerian reality in the suppression of Algerias internationally known francophone
literature and of the writers themselves, who have become exiles, such as Assia Djebar, or
victims of violence, such as Tahar Djaout.
The essays by the socio-linguist Djamila Saadi-Mokrane and by Berger herself present more
pessimistic readings of the linguistic strife described by Gafaiti, pointing out the dangers of

186 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

attempts to suppress Algerias mother tongues, the spoken languages of dialectal Arabic and
Tamazight, which they see as embedded in the life and history of the region. In SaadiMokranes view, the effort to impose an imported language is a strategy elaborated to subjugate and reshape the identity of the country and its inhabitants by separating them from their
points of reference (p. 44). And Berger concludes her essay by defending dialectal Arabic,
which she compares to creole, as the language in which all the idioms that have made up the
history of Algeria meet and mix (p. 78).
Although the issue of Berber languages is often mentioned, the collection includes little real
discussion of the place of Tamazight, whose suppression has been accompanied by significant
violence, which in turn has provoked violent protest. Gafaiti is critical of those he identifies
as Kabyle culturalists, who, he claims, set themselves up as spokespeople for a much larger
and more linguistically diverse Algerian Berber community, engaging in a discourse of ethnic
marginalization while benefiting from their position as a French-educated administrative elite.
Although these distinctions may be correct, Gafaiti does not seem to take seriously the argument for the linguistic survival of Tamazight, whose roots, as Saadi-Mokrane reminds us, go
deep into the Maghribian past. None of the contributors to the volume has, of course, been
able to take into account the recent proclamation by President Bouteflika of Tamazight as a
national language or to speculate on how this somewhat enigmatic new designation may help
to calm one area of Algerias linguistic strife.
Whatever their linguistic preferences, however, the contributors agree in condemning the
history of violence so vividly outlined by Omar Carlier, and they see any possible solution to
lie in the direction of moderation and recognition of linguistic diversity.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803440075

M AHMOUD LAMEI, La poetique de la peinture en Iran (XIVeXVIe sie`cle), Publications universitaires europeennes, Serie 28, Histoire de lart; vol. 363 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2001). Pp.
380. $58.95 paper.
REVIEWED BY M ARIANNA SHREVE SIMPSON, Baltimore, Md.
This is an ambitious, complex, and erudite book based on the authors 1998 dissertation at the
University of Lausanne and following some of the same lines of inquiry as Johann Christoph
Burgels provocative essays in The Feather of Simurgh (1988). La poetique de la peinture en
Iran combines literary and pictorial analysis, takes on the important and little studied issue of
the conceptual links between Persian literature and Persian painting, and aims at nothing less
than an interpretation of the philosophical and theoretical underpinings of both verbal and
visual production in Iran during the medieval through early modern periods.
Lame divides his study into three parts. The first and longest section begins with a structural
analysis of the passage in Nizamis Sharafnama (the first part of the Iskandarnama in the poets
Khamsa) that recounts the dialogue about the nature of painting between Iskandar and the
Khaqan of Chin, and their debate as to whether the Greeks or the Chinese were superior in
the art of pictorial representation. A contest then ensued between a Greek painter, who painted
an image on a vaulted wall, and a Chinese painter, who polished his vault to create a mirror
reflection of the Greek painting. This concours des peintres et des miroitiers concludes with
Iskandars judgement that the Greek artist excelled in painting (suratgar) while the Chinese
excelled in polishing (saygal). Lame leads us through this well-known text , both in the Persian
original and in French translation, virtually line by line and word by word, with a discussion
of Nizamis narrative progression and themes. His detailed and subtle explication de texte
concludes with a diagrammatic scheme to prove that Nizami constructed his poem according

Reviews 187
to a numerical system. Lame then applies the same rigorous analysis to two other versions of
the dialogue between the Greeks and the Chinese, one by Maulavi (Mawlana Jala al-Din
Rumi) and the other by Amir Khusrau Dehlavi. The purpose of this comparison is to underscore
the greater appeal of Nizamis poem, in which painting is accorded the same metaphorical
status and value as poetrythus explaining why Persian artists preferred illustrating the Nizami
version to those of the other two poets.
Having established Nizamis primacy as the inspiration for Persian painters, Lame then turns
to a discussion of five known illustrations of the GreekChinese competition in different volumes of the Khamsa dating from the mid-15th through the early 16th century. All five compositions depict the contests final stage, when the two artists have completed their work and
Iskandar sits in judgement on the results. Here again, Lames concern is as much with the
literary and thematic as the iconographic and compositional, and his analysis involves the treatment and meaning of specific motifs, such as the curtain that separates the two competitors,
featured in four of the illustrations, and the human- and animal-headed rinceau, similar to the
waq-waq motif that dominates the fifth painting. Regrettably, Lame does not offer any synthesis or conclusion to his discourse on these illustrations, except to note that each example provides an ingenious and original interpertation of Nizamis story. If the truth be told, none of
the illustrations in the authors corpus belongs among the masterpieces of Persian painting,
and their painters, more competent than gifted, would seem to have relied more on artistic
convention rather than innovation in the representation of these scenes.
In Part 2, Lame broadens his joint interrogation of the literary and pictorial with further
discussion of Nizami. Under the rubric LAmour et lart, he pursues a wide range of fascinating topics, from the relationship between poetry and metallurgy and Nizamis role as an alchemist and as a poet-painter to the metaphorical significance of various images in the Khamsa,
including Khusraus seal (mohr), Farhads steel pick (pulad), and the mirror and the sword, as
well as seated poses. Portraiture also receives considerable attention, including three portraits
of Khusrau in landscape settings, Sultan Mahmud looking at the portrait of Ayaz, and Shirin
contemplating the portrait of Khusrau. An important point that emerges from all this is Nizamis
preoccupation with the practices and language of painting and sculpture and even his selfidentity as a painter. Besides Nizami, Lames reading of poetic-cum-pictorial imagery is informed by the works of other Iranian/Persian literary and cultural figures, from the 14th-century
poet Rami to the 20th-century filmmaker
Abbas Kiya-Rostami.
In the conclusions to parts 1 and 2, the author states that his exploration of the multiple
and complex relations between texts and images in illustrated manuscripts of the 14th to 16th
century is intended to demonstrate the long and rich tradition of Iranian art theories and the
reciprocal relations between painted pictures and written texts. Although Lame seems to be
unaware of the growing recognition among historians of Islamic and Persian art of the close
integration between the arts of poetry, painting, and calligraphy (as broached, for instance, by
Oleg Grabar in La peinture persane: Une introduction [1999]), it is good to have his further
evidence of the prestige of painting in medieval and later Iranian culture. Likewise, it is valuable to be reminded, especially through such meticulous textual analysis, of the cosmic conception of Persian painting, so beloved of French and francophone scholarship, and of its
grounding in Iranian philosophical, mystical, and poetic rhetoric.
The third and final part of this publication is titled Appendix, suggesting its function as
a supplement to the two preceding sections. In fact, it is at once central to the authors interpretation of Nizamis account of the competition between the Greek and Chinese painters as a
manifestation of Iranian art theory and a totally independent, and quite compelling, topic within
the present study. Here Lame discusses eight terms or bases (although he introduces them as
sept fondements) relating to the classification of and techniques for figurative styles in 16thcentury Iran. His principal source is the Safavid poet
Abdi, whose mathnavs feature these

188 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

terms in descriptions of the buildings and gardens at the court of Shah Tahmasp. Most of

Abdis languageor the words underlying conceptsis familiar, with words such as eslm
(translated as islamique), xatay (of Cathy, or Chinese), farang (European), abr (cloud),
band-e rum (interlace), and vaq (plants with anthropomorphic and zoomorphic heads), while
others expand the theoretical range for our understanding of how Persian writers conceived
visual forms: fassal (narrative painting) and nlufar (waterlily). Of greatest consequence here
is Lames discussion of the metaphorical nature of these terms and their visual equivalence in
contemporary Persian painting.
With
Abdi, Lame also returns to a notion he introduces at the outset of his study: the
metaphorical relations or ties (liens) between architecture and the illustrated book. Thus, for
instance, the principal palace entrances are comparable to a manuscript frontispiece. Also at
issue here are the relations between the poet who composes a text and the king who commissions a palace. As he says at the conclusion of the Appendix, this area of investigation could
be pursued further to strengthen our understanding of the conceptual bonds between literature
and painting in Iran.
It is to be hoped that Lame himself might take up this challenge and build on the important
groundwork he has laid in La poetique de la peinture en Iran. But in so doing, he might wish
to bring his familiarity with Persian painting (especially its historical development) in line with
his evident expertise in Persian literature, so that the poetic conception of Persian painting can
really be appreciated. He also would do well to take note of recent work on Persian aesthetics
by Grabar and David Roxburgh, among others. Then he might actually achieve a study that
would be of enormous benefit to a broad range of scholars in Iranian culture studies, one that
truly balances the value of Persian poetry for Persian paintingand vice versa.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803450071

PAUL E. LOSENSKY, Welcoming Fighani: Imitation and Poetic Individuality in the Safavid
Mughal Ghazal, Bibliotheca Iranica: Literature Series, no. 5 (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda
Publishers, 1998). Pp. 405. $45.00 cloth.
REVIEWED BY JULIA RUBANOVICH, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Hebrew University
of Jerusalem
The postHafizian ghazal, for all the magnitude of its textual corpus, has been a somewhat
marginal area in Persian literature studies, while those few full-fledged works devoted to the
subject were set in a preponderantly descriptive vein. Losenskys in-depth analytical study undoubtedly offers a valuable corrective to this state of research. The book explores the literaryhistorical development of the SafavidMughal ghazal through a distinctive focus on one of the
key concepts of the Persian literary traditionthat of poetic imitation, as embodied in the
poetic practice of Baba Fighani (d. 1519) and a number of his imitators and followers. Justly
observing that our critical understanding of the period remains hampered by an inadequate
conceptual framework (p. 3), Losensky grounds his inquiry both in a solid theoretical basis
and in meticulously prepared methodology. In contrast with traditional discussions of Safavid
Mughal poetry in terms of Indian style, conceived largely in a synchronic perspective as a
sum total of stylistic features, the theoretical tendency of the book under review clearly leans
toward viewing it as an integral part of the Persian literary systemthat is, of a structured
whole in which literary objects (properties, phenomena, processes) must be studied in the multiplicity of their intersections, both synchronically and diachronically.
The advantages of a systemic approach are seen clearly in Losenskys treatment of biographical material on Fighani scattered in tazkiriah collections (chap. 1). Rather than conventionally
bewailing the uncritical and derivative nature of tazkiriahs, which prove to be of limited use

Reviews 189
for reconstructing a real biography, the author uses them to unravel the reception history of
Fighanis poetry over a period of three-and-a-half centuries. Losensky shows how each of the
biographers appropriates Fighanis figure in accord with his specific bias, thus creating a range
of diverse representations of the poetfrom an irrevocable drunkard and outcast to a religious
penitent and a saint. The authors functional view of biographical accounts in terms of interpretive discourse (p. 19, passim) on Fighanis poetic legacy helps him to elucidate the true
significance of later accretions to the poets life story. Thus, the apparently spurious episode
of Fighanis voyage to Herat and his rejection there by the Timurid literary circle is shown to
spell out the discernment of the poets crucial role in the processes of literary change on the
part of later SafavidMughal literati. (One is also curious about the possibility of considering
this story as a kind of topos; compare the famous anecdote of Firdausis journey to Ghazna via
Herat and the court poets conspiracy against him, which was fully elaborated in Baysunqurs
introduction to the Shahnama).
Losensky extends his critical re-evaluation of Fighanis biography to yet another possible
source of biographical informationhis own poetryarguing against reading it as a form of
autobiography (chap. 2). To the by now rather antiquated biographical method, which fails to
differentiate between the historical agent and his poetic personae, shaped by genre conventions,
Losensky counterposes a manifold exploration of Fighanis poetic voice as it emerges from his
four response poems to Amir Khusrau (chap. 3). For the author, it is through the inter-textual
environment of imitation (istiqbal being a most common technical term) that the self-defining
stance of a poet vis-a`-vis the tradition, as well as his divergent attitudes toward the literary
past, are most pronouncedly expressed. In this way, the essentially diachronic study of istiqbal
necessarily evolves into a broader inquiry into the dynamic processes of literary change, encompassing the important issues of canon(icity), innovation, poetic individuality, etc.
As a prelude to defining Fighanis position in Persian literary history, Losensky charts a
broad and richly substantiated picture of the literary system of the latter half of the 15th century
(chap. 4). He breaks ranks with the majority of Persian literary historians in arguing against
the outright characterization of the Timurid-Turcoman period as decadent and demonstrating
instead that the intricacy and artificiality of some of its poetry should be seen as manifestations
of an all-pervasive drive for systematic consolidation of literary tradition, which was engendered by the rapid spread of poetry among all classes of urban society. An important corollary
of this systematizing effort was the formation of canon both of specific authors and works and
of stylistic and thematic norms of poetic repertory, as exemplified, for instance, by Daulatshahs
Tazkirat al-shu
ara, Jamis imitations or, this reviewer would add, treatises on poetics (the latter
are not considered in any detail in the book; however, their discussion could additionally reinforce the authors argument). Losensky shows that rather than an impediment to artistic creativity, Timurid-Turcoman canonizing activities were an indispensable prerequisite for experimental
search and innovation on the part of Fighani and his SafavidMughal followers. The complex
interaction between the authority of the literary tradition and the aesthetics of the new, which
actualized in the fresh style (tazah-guy), is revealed from Losenskys close scrutiny of metapoetic reflections of SafavidMughal poets, Saib-i Tabrizi being the most prominent (chap. 5).
Analyzing five imitations of Fighanis ghazal by different poets, the author concludes that,
notwithstanding Fighanis influential status, his influence was neither petrifying nor uniform,
having taken variegated forms and differing from one poet to another. Chapter 6 examines three
sequences of response poems to Fighanis ghazals by Shapur, Naziri, and Saib, pinpointing their
widely diverse ways of welcoming their model through its evaluation and re-creation. These
case studies, based, as elsewhere in the book, on philologically rigorous though eminently
readable translations compellingly testify to the fact that SafavidMughal poetry was more
highly differentiated and far less monolithic than usually portrayed. At the same time, it fully
articulated the dynamic and multi-linear character of the imitative practices that permeated it.

190 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

The book is enhanced by an impressive scholarly apparatus, including appendixes of Persian
texts on Fighani from unpublished tazkiriahs, a detailed table of the models for and imitation
of his ghazals, and Persian texts of poetic citations, as well as a general index and an index
of the first lines of all the poems cited. The bibliography is comprehensive. However, for some
puzzling reason it omits a considerable number of items that are quoted in the footnotes.
Welcoming Fighani stands out as a fundamental and innovative study that definitely will not
be without conceptual impact on the research of Persian literature. It not only brings together
in a tightly organized form a great deal of useful information, demonstrating the authors impressive command of the sources, but alsoand even more significantlydevelops a dense
theoretical discussion around the crucial concepts of Persian literary history, those of creative
imitation and poetic originality. Losenskys judicious and subtle use of theoretical findings on
poetic influence and imitation in Western literature shows that such trespassing on culturally
different domains can be undeniably salutary and insightful. By virtue of its manifold approach
and contents, the book has much to offer not only to scholars of Persian and Middle Eastern
literature, but also to comparatists. The authors comprehensive knowledge of the subject, coupled with his sensitivity to theoretical and methodological issues, has allowed him to penetrate
to the core of traditional assumptions and present a polyphonic scene of an important period
in Persian literary history.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803460078

YOSEFA LOSHITZKY, Identity Politics on the Israeli Screen (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2001) Pp. 246. $50 cloth, $21.95 paper.
REVIEWED BY DORIT NAAMAN, Department of Film Studies, Queens University, Kingston, Ont.
In Where Are You Going? a film about the Israeli journalist Amira Hass, Hass responds to a
question about why she has chosen to live in Gaza and Ramallah in the past few years by
telling a story about her mother, a Holocaust survivor. The mother described to Amira how
she saw the European villagers watching the train taking her to a concentration camp with
boredom and lack of interest. It was this knowing observation of the Others tragedy that
shocked Hasss mother and prompted Hass not to be an uninterested bystander, a knowing
observer of the Palestinian tragedy. Hass here uses her identity as a second-generation to Holocaust survivor to demarcate herself with relation to Zionism, the Holocaust, and the Palestinian
fight for independence. In effect, Hass here exemplifies an enactment of identity politics, a
drawing from negotiation of personal and communal experience with hegemonic structures.
This form of identity politics is used very effectively in Yosefa Loshitzkys excellent book
Identity Politics on the Israeli Screen.
Identity-politics movements, alongside multi-cultural practices and theories and a postmodern deconstruction and fragmentation of hegemonic power structures have dominated the
Euro-American discourse of the past few decades in both academe and political action. In
the context of Israel, the major wave of immigration from the former USSR, the emergence
of a solid political block of orthodox Oriental Jews (represented by the Shas Party), and the
increasing political visibility of the Palestinian citizens of Israel (represented, for instance, by
Azmi Bsharas Balad Party), have all helped in an already sobering process of examining
Zionism and its ideological formations of internal inclusion and exclusion, as well as its alignment with similar European national movements of the late 19th century. Israel, like many
other countries, had been moving away from a melting-pot ideology to a multi-cultural reality,
and the enactment of diversity in a Jewish state of immigrants with a large Arab minority is
crucial for the formation of the social fabric.
Loshitzkys focus is Israeli cinema, although she does discuss other cultural phenomena,

Reviews 191
such as theater and music, when it is appropriate. To that extent, the book serves as a tool for
evaluating cultural practices, not just cinema. The book covers fiction films as well as documentaries, and in a non-traditional move it does not address them as separate epistemic genres.
Instead, Loshitzky discusses fictive characters and documentary ones as social agents, metaphors for identity politics, and representatives of groups and social and ideological positions.
The book covers the representation of three main groups who have complex relationships to
the Zionist project: second-generation to the Holocaust, Oriental Jews, and Palestinians. Although many more groups exist (recent Ethiopian and Russian immigrants, women, foreign
workers, etc.), the choice to focus on those three groups as examples gives the book a necessary
depth. Loshitzky analyzes plot lines, camera angles, and relationships between filmmaker and
subject. Her analysis is primarily textual and is thorough and productive in outlining the problematic engagement of these groups with the national movement and its institutions. Painstakingly, Loshitzky shows time and again that the dialectics used by Zionism (such as Orient
versus Western culture, democracy versus theocracy, and Jewish versus civil society) cannot
account for the complex lived experience of individuals in this system. Identity politics in that
respect does not come to stand as a reductive construct; rather, it stands as complex intersecting
sets, such as Oriental Jewish women in the case of Hanna Azulai Hasfari of Shchur or MoroccanJewish relationships to the Holocaust in the case of Asher Tlalim and Dudy Maayan
of Dont Touch My Holocaust and Arbeit Macht Frei vom Toitland Europa, respectively. In that
fashion, Loshitzky uses cinema to chart hyphenated identities, ones that employ or withhold
language, knowledge, and emotion to enact varying political positions at different times without
ever becoming too thinly symbolic.
In the best of identity-politics tradition, Loshitzky herself does not mask her own position
vis-a`-vis the material. Although the book is rigorous and written in traditional academic language, it does not pretend to emanate from some objective and universal perspective. Loshitzky
reveals that she is a second generation to the Holocaust, and her personal perspective gives the
two chapters on that topic a certain richness. Similarly, the book does not provide an analysis
of women in Israeli cinema (or of female Israeli filmmakers) but employs the tools of feminist
analysis in several chaptersmost notably, while discussing inter-ethnic romance between Israelis and Palestinians. In light of the New Historians debate and the emergence of post
Zionism, the book reviews Israeli cinema as a testament to the contested nature of culture in
contemporary Israel. Therefore, a grand and coherent (academic) narrative on the topic would
be completely inappropriate.
To set the ideal new Jew of the Zionist project, Loshitzky interestingly chose to analyze
Otto Premingers (Hollywood) production of Exodus. The analysis focuses on the creation of
the myth of the establishment of Israelwhich was based on the supposed eradication of the
old Jew (i.e., European and diasporic)symbolically represented by the death of Karen, the
Aryan-looking Holocaust survivor. At the same time, the Uncle Tom Arab, Taha, also dies
as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of the establishment of the new state. If Exodus sets the tone,
the films discussed afterward represent myriad counter-examples to this official and mythic
narrative. The following two chapters discuss the Holocaust, its memory, and experience, particularly with respect to the second generation. Films such as Dont Touch My Holocaust, Because of That War, and Choice and Destiny deal with the memory, the silencing of the early
years in Israel, and finally the telling of the stories, mostly at the prodding of the children of
the survivors, now turned filmmakers. The book then turns to Shchur a controversial mid-1990s
film written by, and featuring, a Moroccan Jewish woman, Hanna Azulay Hasfari. Although it
is ethnographic in appearance, the film uses realism and fantastic styles to challenge hegemonic
(Western) aesthetics in cinema, while claiming a place as an Israeli film, not just as an Oriental
(or marginalized) phenomenon. In an analysis of My Michael, Loshitzky compares the representation of the Palestinian characters and the Israeli woman protagonist. Using feminist criticism,

192 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

as well as Edward Saids (anti) Orientalist formulation and post-colonial terminology, Loshitzky
compares the woman and the Palestinians in both the writing of the novel by Amos Oz and
the making of the movie by Dan Wolman. Finally, analyzing a large group of films in which
inter-ethnic romance between Israeli Jews and Arabs is foregrounded, Loshitzky shows the
economy of identity and sexual politics as it pertains not only to the conflict, but also to sexual
orientation, to ChristianMuslim dynamics, and to the OrientalWestern dynamics within Israeli culture. To name just a few of the titles discussed, the list includes Hide and Seek, On a
Narrow Bridge, Hamsin, and Day after Day.
The book is dedicated to the memory of the thirteen Palestinian citizens of Israel who were
killed at the beginning of the second Intifada in October 2000. My initial unease with this
dedication melted away as I read the book. I believe that the book not only exposes Israel as
a Jewish state, not as a state of all its citizens, but that it also shows that the seemingly cohering
umbrella of Zionism did not apply to many of its Jewish immigrants, and that these are now
problematizing their relations to the state and its institutions in both the cultural and the political
spheres. The book provides an excellent overview of Israeli culture from postZionist and
identity-politics perspectives and will be useful to anyone interested in understanding the cultural workings of the Zionist narrative, as well as challenges made to it, in recent years. Finally,
I find the book well researched, well written, and a pleasure to read; it enriches the literature
on Israeli cinema, as well as cultural studies, history, and the broad variety of politics of identity
in Israeli society.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803470074

REZA AFSHARI, Human Rights in Iran: The Abuse of Cultural Relativism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). Pp. 382. $49.95 cloth.
REVIEWED BY ALI AKBAR M AHDI, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ohio Wesleyan
University, Delaware
Using a vast array of government documents, newspapers, journals, memoirs of political prisoners, and reports issued by the Special Representative appointed by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), Reza Afshari provides a rich, sensitive, and very sympathetic
presentation of the experiences and voices of victims of human-rights violations in Iran. This
timely book is organized into eighteen chapters and is, to a large extent, the story of two
decades of interaction between the UNCHR and Iranian officials. It discusses reports issued
by the Special Representative of the UNCHR on the conditions of human rights in Iran and
documents their violations in 19792000. In addition to gender discriminations and threats to
the liberty and life of secular intellectuals, each of the following rights is discussed in a separate
chapter: the right to life; freedom from torture and cruel punishment; liberty and security of
person and freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention; a fair trial; freedom of conscience,
thought, and religion; freedom of opinion, expression, and the press; participation in the states
political affairs; and the rights of women to equal opportunities in public life.
Afshari shows the inhumane and contradictory nature of Islamist ideology, brutal consequences of the emergence of a theocratic state in the late 20th century, and naivete of cultural
relativists who excuse the regimes human-rights violations in the name of religious differences. For Afshari, those relativists would have been right in their claim to Islamic exceptionalism if those particular cultural traditions had not violated the basic universal rights instituted
in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). There is nothing unique about the
system created by Ayatollah Khomeini. The Islamic Republic of Irans view of the others
(i.e., its political and ideological opposition), as well as the way in which it treats them, is no
different from other rights-abusing states. The culture that prevailed in the Intelligence Minis-

Reviews 193
try [of the Islamic Republic] had less to do with Islam as a religion than with the authoritarian
states modus operandi, which is universal, thus requiring universal human rights to curb its
abuses (p. 292). The Islamic Republic treats its religious, political, and ideological opposition
as second-class citizensit suppresses their views, jails their activists, denies them their rights,
and crushes them if they fight back for recognition and restoration of their rights.
Afsharis concerns are first and foremost human. He has no interest in simply demonstrating
contradictions in Islamic laws regarding human rights, in arguing for reform in civil and religious norms within the Islamic Republic, or in using human-rights violations as a rhetorical
tool for opposing Iran. He is concerned with the severity and ubiquity of violations of human
rights, as defined by the UDHR, and the theological and political tactics used by the Islamic
Republic of Iran to conceal these violations from the international community and the UNHRC.
Afshari is critical of cultural relativists for accepting justifications offered by the regime for
countless violations of these rights within and outside of the prison system in Iran. In a nondemocratic context, where people are ruled against their wishes, claims to cultural authenticity
and protection of native culture are mere excuses for legitimizing violations of human rights.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, since its establishment, has been consistently on the United
Nations list of states violating human rights of its citizens. The UNCHR and human-rights
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) confront several inter-related challenges in monitoring
human-rights conditions in Iran. These include the denial and concealment of human-rights
violations, lack of cooperation and diversionary tactics used by the regime, difficulty in collecting reliable information, the victim attitude taken by the regime against Western monitoring
agencies, and the Islamic exceptionalism used by the regime in cases of verifiable and wellknown violations. The Islamic Republic of Iran sees itself as a victim of an imperialist plot
aimed at discrediting its revolutionary ideology, undermining its political legitimacy, and replacing its system with a proWestern regime. Religious authorities and government officials resort
to cultural relativism and complain that Westerners are ignorant about Islamic laws and are
imposing their values on them. Even Islamic intellectuals opposed to the ruling clerics complain
of Western double standards for singling out Iran for these violations while ignoring similar
violations in proWestern countries such as Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Western political
and academic apologists of the Islamic Republic also brush human-rights concerns aside on
the ground that the violations in Iran are not as bad as those in other countries. European
countries, for instance, continued to criticize these violations while maintaining a critical dialogue with Iran to change its behavior.
Afshari provides a human face for various reports by the UNHRCs Special Representative.
He chronicles the evolution of the prison system from the early stages of the revolution to its
fully developed Islamic form, where torture, forced confession, conversion, repentance, and
denunciation of prisoners ideology and past activities were institutionalized and rationalized
by religious and legal codes. Seeing prisons as the microcosm of a perfect Islamic society,
where Islamic authorities have full control over their subjects and complete resources to put
into effect their idealized community, Afshari offers personal narrative accounts of many prisoners lives to give the legal framework of human rights flesh and feeling. He delivers fully
on dehumanizing and devastating conditions and procedures that political prisoners experience
in a shari
a-based political system. These personal stories are touching and painful, staying with
one for days and weeks.
In approaching culture and rights, Afshari favors rights over culture, universal over particular,
and international over national. He believes that the language of culture used by the Islamicists
masks their political motives and legitimizes their abuse of universal human rights of Iranians.
Many of the justifications provided by clerics and government officials for these violations
have been based on political rather than religious or legal imperatives. Even where the religious

194 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

doctrine has been invoked, it has been done so in a selective and expedient manner to defuse
a political crisis or provide justification for practices contrary to international laws and conventions. Many of the changes in judicial procedures in the past decade also have been brought
about through political expediency rather than through discursive and theological developments
among religious experts.
Afshari shows that the cooperation of the Islamic Republic with the UNCHR has been tactical and utilitarian. By engaging the Special Representative and hesitantly allowing several visits
to the country, the regime has tried to reduce international criticism of its violations, show a
more cooperative and gentle image of itself, vilify the terrorist groups opposing Iran, and
lecture the Special Representative on the Islamic conceptualization of human rights. Although
Iran never meant to admit the violations outlined in the Special Representatives reports, its
interaction with the United Nations compelled it to change its practices enough to temper international criticisms and introduce human-rights language into its Islamic discourse. These
changes, even though they are often symbolic and specious, may have saved the day for the
regime, but in time, I believe, they will force it either to stop these violations or to confront
more criticism and opposition at home and abroad.
Afshari is also critical of the Special Representative and the under-estimation of the severity
of the situation. He sees no gain in catering to Islamic sensitivities, acknowledging an Islamic
difference in understanding human-rights issues, or hoping for recognition of the United Nations human-rights laws by the Islamic Republic through cross-cultural and politico-philosophical dialogue. He is not interested in protecting a native culture that violates the UDHR.
Culture is relevant, but cultural relativism is not. Society and communities are free to practice
their culture, but they should not be allowed to violate the basic human rights of their citizens
in the name of religion, communal traditions, and social norms. Allowing for Islamic difference
by international bodies, especially the U.N. Special Representative, encouraged the regime to
pursue its diversionary tactics and send the international monitors on a chase after fruitless
theoretical arguments. These theoretical issues and justifications are irrelevant to the agonies
of victims of human-rights violations.
For a secular humanist such as Afshari, the state of human rights in Iran will improve only
when a secular state in full compliance with the UDHR emerges and the people become incensed at some unacceptably cruel elements of their traditional culture. Such a state will privatize religion and divorce the issue of rights from moral principles associated with one or the
other religious, ethnic, or tribal groups. Women and men will be treated equally, and particularistic communities will be allowed to exercise their cultures so long as they are not imposed
on others and do not violate international human-rights laws, especially through state policies.
By emphasizing the secular and universal aspects of human rights, Afshari offers a vigorous
criticism of cultural relativists who have remained silent on the violation of rights of the secularists in Iran.
Despite its many contributions, the book could have benefited from a clear discussion of
violations of human rights in the context of Iranian culture, guided by the entangled elements
of local traditions, societal norms, and religious principles. Such a discussion is crucial for the
deconstruction of embedded practices, identification of their historical and ideological sources,
and explication of Western individualistic versus Middle Eastern communitarian assumptions
underlying this issue. Neither religion nor culture is a monolith. Both are complicated and
layered forces that contain conflicting elements, diverse traditions, and nuanced histories. Demonstrating and debating this diversity is a necessary step in preventing the violations that are
so capably exposed by the author. The lively debate about reform and the nature of change in
the Islamic Republic since the election of President Khatami in 1976 is a testimony to the
effectiveness of such a discussion in advancing the notion, as well as the cause, of human

Reviews 195
rights. The smallest achievement of the reformist movement has been the problematization of
a singular, and hegemonic, interpretation of religious laws and generation of a discourse of
rights through the tension in power.
It is reasonable to expect a modern state to construct the rights of its citizens in a universal
manner and to protect them without discrimination. However, it is equally important not to
under-estimate the varied, particularized, and ideologically based notions of these rights as
perceived and negotiated democratically by citizens within their own communities. Maintaining
the diversity of culture and equality within society is in fact the challenge of a democratic
societya feature still not sufficiently achieved in Iran. Afshari is very convincing in his
demand for change of culture and state policies in favor of the incorporation of universal
human-rights laws. However, he offers no clue as to how a secular state in a developing society
will demand change from communal groups, or their cultures, without infringing on their freedom of conscience, thought, and religion. Even if we do not use the best contemporary examples of Turkey and Algeria, we cannot forget what happened when the Pahlavis tried to deal
with the ulemas demand for shari
a-based laws or with the settlement of nomadic tribes. Defending modernity and demanding equal rights of expression and participation in a multi-ethnic,
multi-lingual, and multi-cultural society are reasonable and commendable. But one cannot under-estimate the challenge of establishing equality and respect among diverse groups in a traditional non-democratic society without trampling on the cultural, linguistic, and ethnic rights of
one or more groups.
Afshari is successful in demonstrating the constancy of human-rights violations in the Islamic
Republic from its inception to the present, regardless of the political and ideological vicissitudes
of the regime. However, a clearer and more concise picture of the developmental correlation
between the regimes violations and its political developments would help the reader see the
political and ideological offensives of the Islamic Republic in confronting international criticisms of its harmful practices against its own citizens. The organization of the book into eight
categories of human rights monitored by the UNHRC is helpful to fill the void in U.N. reports
of details of personal stories, but it comes at the expense of chronological confusion that is
difficult to overcome by readers who are not familiar with Iranian history. Readers find themselves moving back and forth from one period of life in the Islamic Republic to another
periods in which human-rights abuses changed character because of the countrys changing
social and political conditions. The narratives movement among description, documentation,
interpretation, argumentation, and analysis makes it at times difficult for the reader unfamiliar
with Iranian politics and history to follow the sequence of events, or even the fate of victims
whose prison experiences are incorporated into the book. The generous and detailed use of the
experiences of a few prisoners is helpful in familiarizing the reader with the brutalities imposed
on them, but it comes at the expense of repeated reference to the same people in a long and
packed book. Numerous religious explanations and ideological defenses offered by the clergy
remain theoretically unconnected and logically scattered among countless details of personal
stories offered to rebut them. A more cohesive discussion of these explanations in a separate
part of the book would have displayed their incoherence, arbitrariness, a-historicity, and constructed genealogy more effectively.
These emphases may reflect my own intellectual concerns and should not diminish the overall positive contributions of this excellent book. Following Abrahamians Tortured Confessions:
Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran, this book represents the first probing and
critical examination of the full record of human-rights violations in Iran in the English language
and goes a long way toward exposing the twisted and deceptive games played by a theocratic
regime in international forums to hide its human-rights violations. This passionate research
work will set the standard for future studies in the nascent area of human-rights studies in Iran.

196 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

Although extremely useful for professionals working in the human-rights field, the book deserves a wide reading because it shows how a regime can skirt international laser beams and
muck around with basic human-rights issues.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803480070

EFRAIM I NBAR, The IsraeliTurkish Entente, Kings College Mediterranean Series, University
of London (London: Tewkesbury Printing, 2001), Pp. 96. $10.50 paper.
REVIEWED BY AHMED S. HASHIM, Strategic Research Department, U.S. Naval War College,
Newport, R.I.
The IsraeliTurkish entente, which has been in place for about half a century, has generated a
vast literature over the course of its life. The literature has been of varying quality. Some of the
literature has extolled the virtues of the entente, while some has condemned it as contributing to
the tensions in the Middle East. Yet other writings believe that it will not last.
This study by Efraim Inbar, one of Israels leading strategic analysts, extols the virtues of
the entente and posits that it is a positive and resilient feature of the strategic environment in
the Middle East. Inbar begins his study with the simple overarching thesis that, because both
Israel and Turkey are democratic societies and proWestern powers, they should have discovered each other decades ago, implying that certain factors prevented the cementing of their
bilateral relationship. The study is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1, Israel and Turkey
Discover Each Other, is a historical overview of the factors that initially constrained the relationship, then those that ultimately drew Israel and Turkey together. Inbar does a good job of
summarizing the history of IsraeliTurkish relations before the rise of the entente. Israel sought
Turkeys friendship from the very early days of the Jewish States emergence. This was part
of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurions periphery strategy, which sought to leap over the wall
of Arab hostility to the states beyond and establish strong relations with them. Turkey was
particularly attractive, because it was a large and emerging nation. It was also a Muslim country,
and Israel wanted to extend the hand of friendship to as many Muslim countries as possible
to prevent the ArabIsraeli conflict from acquiring an overt religious dimension. Inbar is quite
correct in pointing out that, although Turkey did establish diplomatic relations with Israel, it
was not interested in promoting deep bilateral relations. After the establishment of the Turkish
Republic under Mustafa Kemal, also known as Ataturk, the country had turned its back on the
Middle East and ceased to play a critical role there. For the modern postOttoman elite, the
Middle East was a source of problems, and the Arabs had betrayed the Ottoman Empire by
siding with the Western allies during World War I. After World War II, Turkey became part
of the antiSoviet Western alliance and was more concerned with defending itself against the
Soviet threat than with playing a role in the Middle East. Moreover, it did not wish to get
involved in the debilitating IsraeliArab conflict. Inbar correctly identifies the end of the Cold
War in the late 1980s as one of the key factors in promoting a Turkish discovery of the threats
and opportunities emerging along its southern flank.
Chapter 2 analyzes the nature of the IsraeliTurkish entente and reviews the extensive strategic interests that bind the two countries. The chapter contains a rich and concise encapsulation
of these interests. One of Inbars key points is that the new bilateral relationship between Israel
and Turkey is not an alliance. This is a point that quite a few of the studies in the burgeoning
literature fail to see. Not surprisingly, the word alliance is carelessly bandied about in some
of these studies. Chapters 1 and 2 are the strongest and most detailed sections of the monograph. There is a wealth of detail on the historical evolution of bilateral relations between the
two countries, the process of threat perception in both countries in the aftermath of the Cold
War, and the nature of the entente itself.

Reviews 197
Chapter 3 assesses the significance of the relationship for the Greater Middle East and the
eastern Mediterranean, particularly in terms of its impact on inter-state alignments and regional
stability. Inbar argues that the relationship seems to strengthen the peace process between
the Israelis and the Arabs, because the peace process is predicated on a strong Israel. A solid
IsraelTurkish entente helps promote a strong Israel. This is a neat and seemingly logical argument, but it is based more on faith and belief in the virtues of the entente. There is no evidence
that it promotes the peace process between the Arabs and the Israelis.
Despite their worries over the strategic implications of the IsraeliTurkish alliance, the Arabs
have tried their utmost not to establish any link between the ArabIsraeli conflict and the
IsraeliTurkish entente. Notwithstanding the history of animosity between the Turks and the
Arabs stemming from the time of the Ottoman Empire, many of the Arab countries have solid
relations with Turkey, based on economic and historical ties. One of these is Egypt. In this
context, it is not clear how the entente functions politically to promote the peace process.
Moreover, it is not clear that Turkey wants to insert itself into this morass. It is true that on
numerous occasions Turkey has extended offers of mediation between the Palestinians and
Israelis. Neither side has actively sought its help.
The virtual war between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in spring 2002, which, to be
fair, Inbar could not include because his study appeared before then, was a source of concern
to Turkey. There were demonstrations against Israel in Turkey and nasty comments in Turkish
papers. Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit stated that what Israel was doing in the West
Bank was genocide, which caused a very negative reaction in Israel. Last but not least, the
entente, which has admittedly put a great deal of pressure on Israels remaining conventional
Arab-state opponent, Syria, has not promoted peace between Jerusalem and Damascus. Faced
with the hypothetical possibility of a two-front war for its stretched and increasingly obsolescent military forces, Syria should have moved to sort out the problems that perpetuate the
conflict between it and Israel. Instead, Syria engaged in its own strategic calculations. These
went along the following lines: the problems between Damascus and Ankara (i.e., Syrian support of the Kurdish separatist movement of Abdullah Ocalan, sparring over water, the problems
over some territory that the Asad regime did not lose to Turkey) paled in comparison with
Damascuss long-standing problems with Jerusalem. Not surprisingly, Syria beat a path toward
Turkey and moved with alacrity to try to solve its problems with that country. Indeed, there
have been a number of official exchanges and plans to engage in confidence-building measures
between the militaries of both sides. Turkey scored a strategic success in this regard, which is
precisely what the Turkish General Staff (TGS) wanted all along. But is the TGS interested in
Israeli retention of the occupied Golan Heights? Will the entente force Syria into a peace
process with Israel that rebounds to the benefit of the latter? It does not look likelyunless,
of course, by peace process, Inbar suggests a perpetuation of the status quo, with Israel
controlling the Golan Heights. This still raises a question: how does that benefit Turkey? Why
should that country benefit from the continuation of the unstable status quo?
One of the strengths of this monograph is that Inbar explores briefly the domestic sources
of the entente and opposition to it. In chapter 4, he concisely mentions the domestic constituencies in both that called for, perpetuate, and benefit from the entente. But while the debate in
both countries was more extensive and intensive than suggested by Inbars brief analysis, it is
not clear that he could have done more, given space constraints. What is unfortunate, though,
is that he glosses over the strong role of the TGS in this saga. Inbar succinctly summarizes
the extent of the strategic and military relations between the two countries in chapter 1. The
TGS officers played an important role in this saga. But unfortunately, the role of the TGS as
a domestic pressure group merited more than only the following sentence: above all, the
Turkish military, which has a key role in the formulation of defence and foreign policy, has
continuously hailed the advantages to be accrued by the bilateral relations (p. 71). A deeper

198 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

discussion would have given a better flavor of the powerful role that this institution plays in
Turkey.
The monograph suffers from some poor editing. What are we to make of the following
sentence: then the Israeli embassy helped Turkey counter the influence of the Greek lobby
and its ally on Capitol Hill, the Jewish lobby? Is the Jewish lobby an ally of the Greek lobby?
All in all, this monograph is a welcome addition to the literature on the IsraeliTurkish
entente and is worth recommending for courses on strategic issues and alliance-building in the
Middle East.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803490077

TAREQ Y. ISMAEL, Middle East Politics Today: Government and Civil Society (Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, 2001). Pp. 528. $59.95 cloth.
REVIEWED BY DON PERETZ, Political Science Department, State University of New York at
Binghamton
A problem with books about the Middle East that include today in the title is today becomes yesterday so rapidly that attempts to produce a volume with more than ephemeral
value is indeed difficult. Any textbook dealing with the Middle East should strive to be other
than an account of current events. Figures dealing with current population, per capita income,
and gross national product, are likely to become quickly outdated. It is better to deal with longterm trends and fundamental influences, such as the continuing role of religion, the influence
of population shifts on politics, the impact of resources on economies, and past history as the
fountainhead of contemporary political change.
Tareq Ismael, a political-science professor at Calgary University who has written several
books dealing with Middle East politics and international relations, strives successfully in this
new edition to bring up to date his previously published Middle East textbook.
Although the principal chapters deal with the Arab East (Egypt and Arab League members
eastward), Turkey, Iran, and Israel, data are provided in appendixes on Arab North Africa as
well as Sudan, Comoros, Somalia, and Djibouti. An initial three chapters discuss forces in
Middle East politics that have an impact throughout the region. The following nine deal with
each country in the conventional Middle East.
A brief Introduction summarizes Middle East history from Sumeria to the outbreak of Operation Desert Storm, an operation the author implies might have been avoided. From the very
beginning of the war, he observes, it became clear that Washingtons primary political goal
was to eliminate Iraq as a challenge to the Camp David order in the Middle East (p. 30). At
several points, Ismael raises questions about Pax Americana and the incorporation of the
Middle East into Western capitalist markets (p. 424). He especially underscores the close
relations between the United States and the leaders of the 1952 Egyptian revolution, and later
with Anwar Sadat, who became obsequious to U.S. policy (p. 437).
Approximately half the chapter on the political heritage of Islam focuses on its role in contemporary politics. A major problem, Ismael maintains, is reconciling the social values of Islam
and the Western modernization process. Hamas and Hizbollah are cited as two principal models
of contemporary Islamic activism that threaten repressive and secular governments in the region
today.
A third introductory chapter focuses on the nature of the state in todays Middle East and
on the interface between state and society (p. 59). Here the author examines the evolution
of the state from the Ottoman era through the colonial period to contemporary independence.
Wide coverage is given to human-rights violations and state oppression in the Arab East and
North Africa, Israel, Iran, and Turkey based largely on extensive use of reports from Human

Reviews 199
Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Ismael observes that [a]ll of the postSecond World
War states in the Middle East relied too much on the instruments of oppressiona preponderant presence of the army and enhanced internal security apparatus (p. 67). This critique of
the oppressive state is carried forward in the following chapters dealing with individual countries of the region.
Among the sections that follow, Syria and Lebanon are incorporated into a single chapter,
as are Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council members. Each of these chapters includes short sections beginning with the pre-independence era and the modern period, as well
as brief coverage of foreign relations and economies.
Although the author makes passing reference to the impact of globalization in an introductory
chapter, it would be useful to describe its influence at greater length in the discussions of
economic developments of the individual countries. Globalization, for example, has transformed
Israels economic structure so that the income gap between those living in poverty and the
well-to-do is one of the widest among so-called Western nations. One consequence is a transformation of the political-party system, with a sharp decline in the importance of the countrys
two major parties (Labor and Likud) and growing influence of formerly fringe factions.
One of the most influential institutions in Israels political, economic, and social developmentthe Histadrut, or General Federation of Workers is not mentioned. Although its significance, like that of Labor generally, has declined drastically in recent years, its role is crucial
in understanding the countrys political development. A useful addition in this chapter would
be a translation of party acronyms such as Mapai, Mapam, Rafee, and Kach. Elsewhere in the
bookin the chapter on TurkeyEnglish translations of party acronyms such as DSP (Democratic Left Party) and CHP (Republican Peoples Party) are given.
Overall, this is a useful text for introductory courses on the Middle East. Its value as an
introduction to the region is enhanced by three brief appendixes covering social groups, languages, and religions; population and health in the region; size, income, and regional diversity;
and an extensive bibliography.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803500071

SAMIR KHALAF, Cultural Resistance: Global and Local Encounters in the Middle East (London: Saqi Books, 2001). Pp. 326. 35.00 cloth.
REVIEWED BY LUCIA VOLK, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass
If you have grown wary of global/local titles in recent years, because they usually promise
more than they deliver, you have found another book to be wary about. Samir Khalafs collection of previously published or presented articles and essays has much to commend it but little
that addresses questions of the local or globalor questions of cultural resistance for that
matter. The books title finds justification only in Chapter 11, Contesting Space and the Forging of New Cultural Identities. The remainder of the book deals with decidedly pre-global
concerns, such as issues of Lebanons civil war and sectarian identities, the dialectics of tradition and modernity, and, most prominently, Khalafs central paradox of a society simultaneously
held together and torn apart by communal or familial loyalties. In a slightly different category
are four articles about early18th-century American Protestant missionaries, whose letters, sermons, and missionary activities show them to be pioneers of cultural imperialism in the Middle
East. Khalafs motive for writing most of his articles is a sincere concern about the postcivilwar reconstruction of his country and a steadfast belief that, as an intellectual, he has to play
a role in the discourses about reconstruction. His noble intentions make his writing rather
compelling, and his essays should be read as fragments of Lebanese history via the travels and
travails of a scholar whose ideas were greatly shaped by that history.

200 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

Much of Khalafs writing is characterized by setting up two opposing arguments or categories, and then, as his alternative, wanting to have it both ways. For instance, his first three
essays juxtapose forces of modernity or social change and forces of tradition, such as sectarian
loyalties. In Khalafs ideal worldand many other scholars and development agencies would
agreeforces of tradition should be co-opted into, support, and finally drive social change.
What this means it that neighborhood associations or kin groups become a locus for mobilization and political involvement, bringing about change. Although this alternative modernization is a seductive concept, Khalaf fails to show, in concrete examples, how it works or could
be initiated in Lebanon or beyond. What he does show is how Arab intellectuals are struggling
with, and ultimately failing at, reconciling dictates of modernity and reason with traditional
culture. In Chapter 3, Khalaf finally comes out with a stance against tradition because it obstruct[s] rational planning and zoning (p. 90). Thus, this collection of three essays shows the
ambivalence of a liberal Arab intellectual who says he wants both modernity and tradition in
theory but cannot sustain the line of argument when it comes to the details of particular cases.
What is behind the ambivalence, in my view, is not an insufficient grasp of theory or a misreading of social change but the very life trajectory of the author, who has gone back and forth
between the United States and Lebanon and who wants to combine what is good in both,
without having to deal with the bad.
The essays on New England Puritanism that follow the modernizationtradition discussion
seem somewhat out of place. Based on archival research of early missionaries letters and sermons, Khalaf concludes that these young militant idealists or zealots on a moral crusade
paved the way, culturally, for later large-scale political incursions into the Orient. Clearly written
in the spirit of Edward Saids Orientalism, these four articles aim to show not only cultural
insensitivity on the part of the missionaries, but also a cunning, unobtrusive, and non-confrontational strategy on the part of the missionaries to subvert locals with their Puritan ideas. Whereas
Saids writings aim to show how Orientalist scholarship and literature shaped the European imagination and subsequent political conceptualization of the Middle East, Khalaf wants to show how
Puritan imagination took hold in the Middle East. What makes Khalafs venture implausible is
that his research is based on missionary material he found in U.S. archives, with comparatively
little attention paid to the actual reception of the missionaries among the locals at the time. This
is mostly a problem of sources: we do not have letters or sermons of the pupils of early missionaries, and we can only guess what impact they had on local minds. We know that the local clergy
was very alarmed by these determined foreigners in their midst and certainly organized resistance
because they saw their authority threatened. However, this says little about the locals who may
have been disillusioned with their religious leaders and therefore may have gone to missionaries
as an act of resistance and subversion. We have little evidence of how early 19th-century Lebanese
minds were actually formed by these New England Puritan endeavors. Indeed, if we take Khalafs
observation that the average life span of an early missionary in Lebanon was five years, and if
we count how many Protestant converts there actually were, it would seem that on the whole the
early Protestant missionaries did not have a lasting impact. It was the Jesuits and other European
missionaries whose much longer-lasting work in the region should have received Khalafs scrutiny. To equate the undeniable zeal of the early American missionaries with profound cultural
transformations in Lebanon is a hasty conclusion.
After this collection of historical essays, the reader moves back into more familiar territory.
Those of us who have read Khalafs previous work value it for its acute sociological analysis
of Lebanons civil war and post-war reconstruction. His concern with the social and economic
divisions created by the civil war, the ghettoization of Beirut because of fear among members
of one community of members of others, the enormous labor that lies ahead in bringing down
sectarian barriers, and shaping a civil consciousness as well as public spaces make him a prominent spokesperson for and about Lebanon. His attention to space in the aftermath of war especially has been a refreshing change from the more standard scholarly literature on Lebanon.

Reviews 201
His concept of a geography of fear, and his ideas about the important role urban planning
has to play in the healing of civil-war wounds and about public spaces as incubators of civic
consciousness are both creative and compelling. Repeatedly, Khalaf points out the psychological importance of people remembering their roots and finding a sense of security in their heritage and community. At the same time, he coaxes his fellow Lebanese to come out of their
sectarian cocoons, because it is exactly this sense of secure separation from others that sustained the many years of killings and massacres of members of other communities. To back
up his claims, Khalaf brings, for instance, evidence of a 1983 survey conducted among nine
hundred middle- and upper-middle-class Lebanese, or 1998 neighborhood case studies, as well
as his own previous research in and around Beirut. His concluding personal essays again underscore his personal motivation for writing most of his scholarly work, his profound sense of responsibility and his worry about Lebanons future and what the country will mean for his sons.
Finally, I will briefly explain why Cultural Resistance is not a book that you would want
to assign as reading material for your globalization seminars or for classes on resistance. In
Chapter 11, Khalaf promises to show how local Lebanese groups are increasingly globalized
while global forces are being localized. Moreover, he promises to show how mobilized local
groups reclaim their contested spaces and eroded cultural identities. However, his three examples mainly contradict his assertions. First, Beiruts neighborhood of Ayn al-Mryseh has been
radically rebuilt because of horrendously high real-estate prices. Global capital has had free
rein, and the little resistance that was mustered by a neighborhood association and the fishermens lobbywe do not learn what concrete actions were takenwas ineffective. Even worse,
young fishermen are said to prefer lucrative jobs in the global-resort sector, which means that
not only the neighborhood geography but also its socio-economic structure was fundamentally
homogenized according to mandates of the global economy. Khalafs second example, the
neighborhood of Gemmayzeh, escapes the real-estatedevelopment rush and forces of global
investors; instead, this site is beautified in response to a neighborhood associations efforts and
some money from the European Commission. As far as I read it, there is no global homogenizer
weighing down on local residents, nor is there any reason for resistance. In the third case, the
Elisar Project, designed to rebuild and beautify the much poorer neighborhood of the dw aya,
is successful because the government-led initiative was co-opted by dw ayas two political representatives, Amal and Hizbollah. Again, I am uncertain whom to consider global in this example, and whom to credit with acts of resistance.
Khalafs essays are best when they rely on his traditional strengths: theorizing the profound
paradoxes that beset Lebanese society, Beiruts geography of fear in the aftermath of the war,
the importance of urban planning in the configuration of social ties and loyalties, and his
survey-based discussion of attitudes of middle-class Lebanese. The other essays are mainly
indicators of how Lebanons history affected one of its prominent academics.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803510078

M ARTIN KRAMER, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America
(Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001). Pp. 147. $19.95
paper.
REVIEWED BY JOEL S. M IGDAL, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University
of Washington, Seattle
You do not have to wait long to find out what this book is all about. The Preface trumpets it
as a veritable consumers report on Middle East studies, ominously warning let the buyer
beware. Martin Kramer comes out swinging and cuts his opponents very little slack over the
next 130 pages.
He sees a generation of scholars who have done no more than engage in self-indulgent

202 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

research (p. 96), with little practical purpose. They have interpreted and predicted Middle
Eastern politics with a supreme confidence in their own powers, but, in fact, time and again
. . . have been taken by surprise by their subjects; time and again, their paradigms have been
swept away by events (p. 2). The root cause of the pitiful state of Middle East studies, he
concludes, lies in a cabal, which was hatched in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Middle
Eastern studies came underand succumbed toa take-no-prisoners assault, which rejected
the idea of objective standards, disguised the vice of politicization as the virtue of commitment,
and replaced proficiency with ideology (p. 22).
The books ultimate target is not so much individual scholars, although Kramer has some
choice words for big names in the field, as the major research universities Middle East centers
and Title VI federal funding for them. If something were worth doing in American academe,
Kramer notes wryly, almost with a wink to his knowing audience, surely it had to have its
own independent administration, funding, offices, secretaries, committees, and letterheads. Thus
emerged the flagships of American Middle Eastern studies, the Middle East centers (p. 8).
His purpose is not to convince the skeptical; this is a work aimed dead-on for the choirthe
policy wonks on the right who shudder at the thought of left-wing ideologues running these
publicly funded centers.
And Kramers call has not gone unheeded. Stanley Kurtz of the Hoover Institution, for instance, asked his readers in the 16 May 2002, edition of National Review, Do you know that
your tax dollars have been subsidizing courses that train American elementary and high-school
teachers about the Middle East by assigning them Arundhati Roy, Robert Fisk, Tariq Ali, and
Edward Said . . . , that the American government has been pouring millions of dollars into the
pockets of the most antiAmerican scholars in the academy? How does Kurtz know all this?
The story of the Title VI scam was broken by Martin Kramer, editor of The Middle East
Quarterly, whose recent book, Ivory Towers on Sand, is a must-read for anyone concerned
about the intellectual failure and moral bankruptcy of the contemporary academy.
The bete noir of Kramers account is Said and his book Orientalism. The story of the career
of Orientalism . . . is the story of how the founders of Middle Eastern studies in America lost
their composure. It is also, above all, an American tale (p. 31). The flaw he finds in Saids
account of the 1970s is one that he falls prey to himself in his story of the present day. Said
represented Middle East studies in America as a tightly integrated establishment, which maintained dominance through invisible networks. . . . It was all made to sound conspiratorial (a pool
of interests), authoritarian (there are hierarchies), and corrupt (those other rewards). To top
it off, the old boys were of one hue (p. 34). These words could just as easily be Kramers
representation of Middle East studies a generation later. The specter of McCarthyism that Kramer
feels Orientalism raised (p. 38) comes around, I am afraid, to be his weapon of choice, as well.
Some of Kramers arguments are not without merit. He repeats the charge made by Malcolm
Kerr more than two decades ago that Said in Orientalism seemed particularly blind to the
political power of Islam (and of Islamists appropriation of Saids arguments for their own
purposes). And he is rightly critical of the entire fields slowness in turning its attention to the
new political militancy of Islam in the 1980s. Saids scathing critique of the Orientalistsand
the popularity of that critiquedid have a chilling effect, I agree, on scholars tackling certain
sorts of issues for fear of being branded Orientalist themselves.
Kramers insights, though, are swamped by ad hominem tactics and a series of puzzling
contradictions in his analysis. The ad hominem attacks often come as he attributes the basest
motives to Middle East scholars. How many resources within the university could they command if their phones stopped ringing and their deans did not see and hear them quoted in the
national newspapers and on public radio? (p. 55).
As to the contradictions, I will briefly note three. (1) He lambastes the academic establishment on two frontsfor self-imposed isolation (p. 108), shunning policy-makers, the press,
and the general public, and for engaging policymakers, press, and public but getting the story

Reviews 203
utterly wrong (p. 78). (2) For most of the book, we are presented with the fief-holders of
Middle Eastern studies (p. 78), who disseminate powerful (wrong) paradigmsOrientalism,
Islamic reformation, civil society, Palestinian societyas a paragon of democracy. This powerful elite prevents the emergence of alternative views by producing a migrating tribe of
acolytes, a closed epistemological circle (p. 70). But scholarship seems much more diverse
than he lets on; he repeatedly quotes dissenters at the center of the field, such as Malcolm
Kerr, Lisa Anderson, Jerrold Green, and James Bill. (3) In a review in Foreign Affairs (March
April 2002), Gregory Gause III makes the point that Kramer harps on the chokehold of Saids
Orientalism on the field, but his wrath is reserved mostly for political scientiststhe one group
of Middle East specialists that almost entirely ignored Saids book.
Logical consistency aside, Kramer repeatedly makes the point that failures to predict one
crisis or another are prima facie evidence that the field is bankrupt. It has been patently unable
to address the problems of the day, especially ones of interest to the U.S. government, which
supplied so much of the fields key funding. One conduit of such funds was the Social Science
Research Councils (SSRC) Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East, which came in for
special opprobrium from Kramer. It marched Middle Eastern studies down every dead end in
the 1980s and 1990s (p. 124) and resembled a politburo [those haunting McCarthyite terms
again] of the like-mindedmost of them adherents of the (neo-Marxist) [!] political economy
schooland almost none of the grant topics had any relevance to the national security of the
United States (pp. 9293).
Now, in support of full disclosure, I acknowledge that I fit the description of a fief-holder,
a person with a stake in many of the studies that have been published in the past decade. From
1991 to 1996, I chaired the SSRCs Joint Committee. As to Kramers charges about the committees composition, all I can say is that he is completely misinformed. He is equally ignorant
of the content of the projects funded, which included multiple studies of Islam, authoritarianism, gender, and more. All that aside, the more important question is whether, indeed, the
committees responsibility was to use government money to fund studies relevant to national
security. My own firm answer is no. Although some of the research willy-nilly fit into that
category, neither I nor other members of the committee made that the linchpin in awarding
grants. A project on medieval cartography was as likely to receive funding as one on the
participation of Islamist groups in recent elections.
Kramer seems not to have a clear sense of the differences between contract and other
forms of government-funded research and between applied and basic research. Much of what
preoccupies him is Middle East scholars inability to pierce the fog shrouding the future. How
fair a criticism is this? To my mind, Kramers critique is akin to dismissing seismological
studies for missing the next earthquake. Seismology still has plenty to tell us about how the
world is constructed, even if it repeatedly falters in calling the next big one. Practicality and
relevance should be measured in Middle East studies, not by scholars capacity to predict the
next political earthquake, but by their ability to provide keys to understanding culture, politics,
and society in the region as unpredictable events unfold. Kramers disservice to the field lies
in his diverting attention from a serious assessment of how well Middle East scholars have
done that.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803520074

AHMED A. SAIF, A Legislature in Transition (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2001). Pp. 285.
$79.95/45.00 cloth.
REVIEWED BY CHARLES SCHMITZ, Department of Geography, Towson University, Baltimore, Md.
Saifs A Legislature in Transition, his Ph.D. thesis for the University of Exeter, is an insightful
contribution to Yemeni political studies. Based on interviews and surveys of members of the

204 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

Yemeni Parliament in 1998 and 1999 and an extensive analysis of Parliaments workings, the
research results depict the complex relationships among the institutions of Parliament, Yemeni
society, and current political outcomes.
The argument in a nutshell is that the government does not possess sufficient financial and
administrative capabilities to exercise both hegemony and autonomy from domestic and foreign
interests in order to implement national capitalist development (p. 237). At the same time,
Yemeni society is not capable of forming sufficient organized power to exert pressure towards
national interests. Parliament, by virtue of its nature, is formed from, and affected by, these
components (p. xi). Saif is clearly disappointed that Parliament has not been able to fulfill
the transformative promise of Yemeni unity and that the old regime has survived. The political, legal and socioeconomic frameworks have been set up for the transition to democracy, but
parliaments role is constrained by the ruling establishment, whose continuing control and
socio-bureaucratic patronage networks continue to reproduce characteristics of the old regime
(p. xi). The problems, in Saifs view, lie in the nature of the Yemeni economy and in certain
characteristics of Yemeni society. The economy is hampered by the lack of an industrial bourgeoisie and working class and the dominance of a tribalmilitary and commercial complex
[ruling establishment] that monopolizes wealth and power (p. 114). Further, in Yemeni society,
the rate of illiteracy and the tribally based society have limited the development of civil society
and often make political allegiances conceal close family or tribal ties. Thus, there is an
imbalance in statesociety relations, and as a result MPs have frequently needed the government for providing services and projects to their constituents, this has decreased MPs autonomy, which in turn reflected on their behavior within the parliament (p. 221). Still, Yemeni
unity was not stillborn, and Saif believes that Parliament shares some responsibility for Yemeni
democracys current tribulations:
[S]ome practices of both the parliamentary presidium and the MPs have impeded the creation of common
parliamentary traditions. The weak party organization and the pattern of recruitment to the parliament
provided little help in forming distinct parliamentary blocs. Consequently, it was difficult to predict the
voting. Though this allowed room for individual discretion, it deprived the MPs of the power to collective
bargaining against the government. . . . MPs cited government intervention, the fragile opposition and their
low professional levels as the top factors that have impeded the role of the chamber [p. 218].

Herein lies the strength of Saifs book: his rejection of simple reductionisms and a nuanced
positioning of human agency in the unfolding of Yemeni politics.
The first chapter begins with Saifs argument that academic interest in parliaments has rebounded in the 1990s after a hiatus in which parliaments were ignored for what were thought
to be politically more significant institutions of the military, the bureaucracy, and political parties. Based on a short literature review in the first chapter, Saif asserts that, in fact, parliaments
in the developing world have played important political roles in certain times and places and
that generalizing across the entire developing world is a mistake. There is growing recognition
that parliaments have multiple roles apart from the initiation of legislation, such as providing
a means of national integration, as goal-setting agencies, in conflict management, in the recruitment of political elites, and in legitimization. After rejecting the assumptions of perfect information inherent in the rational-choice perspectives, Saif provides a list of different approaches
in the literature from which he selectively garners conceptual tools that appear in later chapters.
The power in Saifs book is not its theoretical contribution but, rather, its treatment of the
Yemeni case study.
Chapter 2 provides a brief sketch of the history of modern Yemen. Saifs history is acutely
political and focuses on institutional developments in the formal state. Seasoned Yemeni observers will find nothing new here, and those new to Yemen will require a broader introduction.
Chapter 3 is largely a descriptive survey of Yemeni political institutions, with astute political
commentaries peppered among the details of legal bodies, press laws, and the like. The heart

Reviews 205
of the book is in Chapters 4, 6, and 7, and these are the better chapters. Chapter 4 examines
the informal structures of power that govern statesociety relations. Here Saif builds his case
for the contextual causes of Parliaments difficulties. These are principally the lack of a genuine
civil society because of Yemens heterogeneous social structure, the inability of the state to
penetrate society, and the political elites wariness of any extension of democracy. As a result,
political parties are weak and tend to be patronage networks rather than ideological groupings.
Similarly, members of Parliament tend to be social notables rather than disciplined partisans.
Chapter 5 is a simple description of the institutions of Parliament that lends little to the book.
Chapter 6 examines the impact on Parliament of various contexts, including the changing
political environment between 1990 and 1999, the constitutional structure, the administrative
structure, the electoral system and political parties, the influence of interest groups, and, finally,
the relations between Parliament and the executive branch. In general, the result of Saifs detailed assessments is that characteristics of the old regime have been retained to a large extent
in the new Parliament since unification but that there is some evidence of Parliaments autonomous institutionalization. Chapter 7 investigates characteristics of members of Parliament and
their relationships to their constituencies and the internal institutions of Parliament. His conclusions are that MPs are poorly educated and ill equipped to address a comprehensive political
program for national development and instead MPs represent parochial interests served through
personal connections with bureaucracy. Political parties have little influence within Parliament because of the prevalence of personal relations among MPs and weak party cohesion
(p. 207). Most work in Parliament is done not in the main chamber but in standing committees,
where personal influence is sometimes applied to redirect a committees output by using rewards
and sanctions. Saif concludes that MPs in Yemen have reproduced the traditional social and
political intermediary role between the state and society. Once again, Saif leaves a sliver of hope
by restating his belief that there is a degree of institutionalization in the parliament through a
slow but steady accumulation of experience, procedures and norms (p. 222).
Though in need of a strong editorial hand, as is often the case with doctoral dissertations,
A Legislature in Transition is an interesting contribution to our knowledge of Yemeni politics
and will reward those familiar with Yemen as well as political scientists of the developing
world who are interested in a rich case study.
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803530070

MOUNA SAWAF AND KOUTAIBA ALGUILBI, The Mental Health of the Arab Woman (Cairo: Arab
Psychiatrists Association, n.d.).
REVIEWED
D.C.

BY

LILIA LABIDI, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington,

In the past two years, the Arab Psychiatrists Association has accomplished at least two major
objectives: organizing an international conference on the mental health of Arab women, held in
Tunisia in 2001, and publishing a work in Cairo on the same subject, written by Mouna Sawaf
and Koutaiba Alguilbi. This illustrates the importance this scientific institution gives to such a
discussion. The conference and the publication are both the work of the second generation of Arab
psychiatriststhe first generation devoted itself primarily to the training of personnel, setting up
institutions for mental care, regulating the profession, and so on. This new generation of psychiatrists, in which women are present in ever greater numbers, is directing its attention increasingly
to societal problems, looking to answer social needs, as everyone admits that the regions development cannot take place without the active participation of women.
Examining the mental health of the Arab woman entails accounting for the weight of sociopolitical structures, the impact of obstacles on this level, and an assessment of the work, which

206 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

still needs to be accomplished if a transition is to take place. It provides the occasion for
Alguilbi, who has worked in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, and who is the
author of numerous studies and publications, and for Sawaf, who has worked in Saudi Arabia
and carried out many studies and whose contributions to the print and audiovisual media are
very well known, to ask what it is that needs to be reinterpreted so that women can begin to
live in harmony and undertake the realization of their dreams. In his Preface, Adel Sadik, a
professor at Ain Shams University in Cairo, draws the readers attention to the original approach taken by the authors, who explore therapeutic spaces, as well as those of teaching, onthe-job training, the public diffusion of research; who have solid knowledge of the populations
expectations from both private and public medicine; and who have a view of patients problems
and treatment with regard to the contribution of modern medicine, as well as to the patients
social and cultural dimensions. The authors approachinterrogating the impact of traditions
and of social conditions on the mental health of womenis a contribution, for Sadik, to the
building of an Arab school of psychiatry.
This works originality, bearing witness to clinicians practice and to their capacity to interpret the actions of their patients, also resides in its being addressed not only to professionals
but to the public at large. The authors use a comparative approach in two directionsone in
comparisons between the sexes, and a second in comparisons between the Arab world and the
West. They might also have introduced comparisons among countries within the region with
different legislationhere, comparisons with Tunisia and Turkey, for example, which have
enacted important legislative provisions concerning women even while remaining within an
Islamic framework, might have been useful.
The authors have also explored the differences between men and women with regard to their
recourse to treatment, their relation to stereotypes, somatization, the mechanisms in place to
deal with unequal power relations within the couple, and so on. The work is composed of ten
chapters exploring questions relating to how women live, couples, and families in Kuwait and
Saudi Arabia. To do this, the authors have placed this theme in relation to numerous other
subjects, such as the impact of environment, conflict, sexuality, menopause, the mental health
of women during pregnancy and after childbirth, infertility and sterility, the unmarried state,
polygamy, divorce, and the khul
a (the womans right, under Islamic law, to obtain a divorce,
provided she is willing to return her dowry).
The authors emphasize the cultural obstacles that have played a role in the relationship between Arab women and health care. If in earlier periods women went to psychiatrists only if
they were brought there in emergency situations or after their capacities had deteriorated significantly, today we find them routinely seeking out sophisticated treatment, a phenomenon to
which the media have contributed in an important way. Womens search for health care has
varied considerably over time, and it is clear that the willingness to seek treatment has increased
as women have gained economic autonomy and circulated in public space ce que les auteurs
auraient gagne a` historiciser (which is what the authors will have succeeded in historicizing).
Another factor that contributed, albeit indirectly, to the maintenance of cultural obstacles that
served as refuges, was the absence of cultural support for such treatmenta subject that the
authors unfortunately do not address. To this must be added a scarcity of human resources
(medical students continued to turn away from a specialty that was given little value and that
did not correspond to the image of the successful doctor), conflicts between traditional practitioners and psychiatrists, disputes between those who proposed chemotherapy and those of a
psychoanalytic persuasion, and so on. Cultural resistence also played an important role in the
rejection and exclusion experienced by the first female psychologists and psychiatrists in the
region who had tried to open new areas of discourse, and some of whom went into exile or
into an interior exile. Faut-il aussie rappeler que les soignants eux memes, issus du meme
groupe social que leurs patient(e)s, connaissent souvent les memes problemes que leurs pa-

Reviews 207
tients. The female psychiatrists of the new generation enjoy a somewhat better situation than
their predecessors, even if this is simply on the demographic level and even though the number
of psychiatrists per inhabitant remains minuscule on the African continentin Tunisia, for
example, there are only some 120 psychiatrists for a population of ten million, elles font face
a une demande sociale tres importante.
While remaining very close to observed behavior and without wanting to commit themselves
to one specific position, the authors reach conclusions rejoining those reached in earlier studies
in the region. The authors conclude, for example, that polygamy has a negative effect on the
first wife among approximately one-fourth of patients.1 And Arab psychiatrists who work in
the region are called on to contribute to a new reinterpretation of the symbolic order if they
wish to help women regain their mental health. Here, the authors use to advantage the notion
of social fearas in situations of celibacy, divorce, and so on. They also condemn the absence of sex education, which often engenders problems. Because the authors wish to reach a
broad public, the juxtaposition of interpretations of the different Islamic judicial schools with
practical efforts and results assists the reader in fixing what interests him or her and in making
choices. This is perhaps the most significant aspect of the psychiatrists activitythat of helping the patient choose what is best for him or her.
This work is in a direct line of descent both from the reformist authors of the beginning of
the 20th century such as Kacem Amin in Egypt and Tahar Haddad in Tunisia, who had denounced socio-cultural conditions and their impact on womens mental health, and from the
debates pursued by the regions feminists since the 1970s, among whom Nawal Saadawi is
perhaps the most prominent. The Tunisian conference mentioned earlier and this particular
publication constitute important historical moments in this field in the Arab world, and they
open hopeful paths in this new millennium in which, as Elizabeth Fernea underlines, it will
not be acceptable to use the old paradigms when speaking about women.2 In every Arab country
women are no longer restricted to private space; they openly move about in public space and
participate in formal politics and in constructing culture.
In addition to providing this useful work, perhaps the Arab Psychiatrists Association, in its
effort to help Arab readers appreciate their own regional production, ought to pay more attention
to satisfying normal publication practice in terms of bibliographical references, quality of print,
indicating year of publication, and so on. A books quality is not independent of its presentation.
NOTES
1

The work of Mariama Ba, the Senegalese writer, introduces the reader to the interior lives and feelings
of women in polygamous situations and testifies to the psychological stress that a husbands taking a second
wife imposes on the first.
2
Elizabeth Fernea. The Challenges for Middle Eastern Women in the 21st Century, Middle East Journal
54 (2000).
DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803540077

MELANI MCALISTER, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East,
19452000, American Crossroads, no. 6 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
Pp. 373. $50.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.
REVIEWED BY SANDRA CARTER, Communications Department, Manchester College, North
Manchester, Ind.
Melani McAlister, currently assistant professor of American studies at George Washington University, attempts a multi-faceted and multi-layered coherence between U.S. political activities

208 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003)

and agendas figuring the Middle East, and U.S. popular-culture appropriations of specific histories, religions, and symbologies of the region over a fifty-fiveyear span. McAlister sets herself
a daunting task to interweave popular culture, politics, history, and criticism:
If we want to argue that cultural products are politically significantand they often arewe simply cannot
make the assumption, implicitly or explicitly, that movie producers or struggling novelists are producing
(or reproducing) the ideologies needed by the ruling political elite, which is itself often quite divided.
Instead, we have to explain the coincidence that brings specific cultural products into conversation with
specific political discourses [p. 7].

Her endeavors to perform such objective multivalent analyses are impractical, given her interest in spanning decades of trends and productions that range from cinema to museum exhibits
and newspaper images. As a result, she makes some foundational claims that are not sufficiently
supported by documentation or by analysis of culture and politics, or tied to the trajectories of
cultural production or political agendas. However, in some instances she is more complete than
others, as the author posits three specific objectives for her work that she does achieve.
First, McAlister critiques Orientalism as first developed by Edward Said for being too binary
in its construct of East and West dialectics; instead, she provides a fifty-fiveyear history in
which the U.S. imagining of the Middle East fluctuated in response to sub-national appropriations of parts or historical moments of the East. Second, she seeks to highlight the protean,
complicated, and influential relationships between gender, race, and nationalism (p. 271), particularly the traditionally binary masculinized West versus the unproblematically feminized
East. While the U.S. self-identification as the dominant masculine authority is upset by challenges to military power wrought by Vietnam and the Iran hostage crisis, the East usurps the
masculine mantle temporarily through moments of Israeli military success or the same crisis
in Iran. McAlister also interprets the dialectic of masculine and feminine through various moments in which domestic or family space is appropriated to tie public and private spheres in
representing the nation. And third, McAlister problematizes the homogeneity posited for the
East and the West, emphasizing in particular the potentially influential sub-national identities
in the United States (though not the Middle East). These include strong religious and racial
affiliations that at times encouraged trans-national connections, particularly concerning narratives of the Holy Lands, Islam, and Africa.
To accomplish her three objectives, McAlister organizes her book into six historical periods
(six chapters). In each she presents U.S. foreign policy or military relations pertinent to the
Middle East, against which she provides critical analyses of discrete U.S. popular-cultural productions or media representations incorporating the Middle East that either support or undermine a homogenous construct of the region.
Of two complaints I would register about McAlisters otherwise insightful and thought-provoking analyses, the first would be her decision to proceed through artificially constructed
historical periods rather than topically. One outcome of this organization includes, for example,
separating U.S.Israel relations into several different chapters, which requires that she revisit
certain arguments, and in some cases she seems to contradict herself. Similar problems occur
in her accounts of black American identity issues. As a result, the book seems occasionally
repetitive or contradictory, depending on the objective of the moment required for each
chapter.
The second would be her reporting on U.S. foreign relations and military activities in discrete
but also seemingly unrelated chunks versus constructing a more cohesive policy that links
military, government, and business interests in the Middle East. At times slightly critical in her
reporting of the U.S. government and military, she predominantly takes a much more objective
and distanced position than that taken in critiques of cultural productions. In Chapter 1, McAlister offers excellent research into the production and consumption of the film The Ten Commandments. She links the movie to U.S. policy in an arrangement she coins benevolent supremacy through analysis of the Cold War politics of National Security Council (NSC)

Reviews 209
document no. 68. However, other than NSC 68, no history is offered, such as influences that
might stem from the two world wars, including U.S. participation, Holocaust discourse, or
preCold War issues that would shape U.S. aims to power in Europe and elsewhere, along
with increased backlash against racial and gender discrimination at home.
Further, beginning in her Introduction, McAlister reveals some problems with her versions
of historical analysis when she links emerging consumer culture with a presumed but not substantiated or documented strategy by producers to lead consumers to impulse buying by
linking shopping and sensuousness or sexuality, both of which were associated with the Orient (p. 21). Functionalist arguments that draw such convenient links between popular-culture
iconography in general and commercial and economic trends in a unidimensional trajectory
need more supporting documentation than she provides.
In her critique of cultural productions, McAlister also does not consistently take into consideration the multiple dimensions of the industries and interests behind the products she analyzes.
She links the richness of the King Tut treasure exhibit in Chapter 3s era (197379) to the
construct of Saudi and other oil kingdoms unwarranted wealth at the expense of the U.S.
consumer, yet she does not go back into her own historical fascination of the world with the
Egyptian treasures proffered in her Introduction. Nor does she draw on audience fascination
with ostentatious wealth from anywhere, notable in long lines to see the British crown jewels,
preoccupation with the Ewings in Dallas, or other displays that seem relevant.
A final example of reluctance to critique U.S. policy is quite evident in the recounting of
Military Multiculturalism stemming from the Gulf War, when McAlister concludes that opposition [to the Gulf War in the United States] failed to have the slightest effect on the outcome
of the conflict, nor did it have a significant impact on public discussion of the war (p. 238).
At this juncture she fails to discuss the numerous arguments about media ownership, media
manipulation, media censorship, or other streams of analysis that could be (and have been)
applied to Gulf War reporting. Citing few of the multitudinous sources about media ownership,
gate-keeping, and reporting during the Gulf War, McAlister goes out of her way to de-emphasize popular protest against the war and reporters protests against their ability to report the
war. Instead, she chooses to articulate in depth the videogame war issues at the margins of
most discussions (see pp. 24045).
Having begun with two negatives, there are two weighty positives that render McAlisters
work of true benefit: her interrogation of U.S. religious groups fluctuating appropriations of
the histories, images, and sites of the Middle East as source of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam;
and the inclusion of African Americans as a noteworthy sub-national group with distinct though
multi-dimensional and multi-local histories of appropriating tropes of origin, identity, and religious mantles of the Middle East. These two trajectories seem to have been developed through
specific research grants allowing access to materials and time to reflect on their significance,
as indicated in her acknowledgements to the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton
University and the W. E. B. Du Bois Center at Harvard University. Unfortunately, in Chapter
2, African American Cultural Politics, McAlister focuses on only the larger, more urban
movements of civil rights, Nation of Islam, Black Panthers, and noteworthy cultural producers
such as Barakaleaving rural populations and other seminal black thinkers excluded. McAlister could be more attentive to how she explicitly categorizes blacks and perhaps also consider
other popular-culture players, such as black filmmakers who were quite active in her chosen
eras.
I recommend this book primarily for the work McAlister has done to bring to light the
powerful influence that religion has had on the U.S. government (the powerful religious right
in government) and on U.S. culture via disseminations of iconography and meanings of the
Middle East. Further, her inclusion of African Americans is another unique contribution to the
field. Her initial work should provide an excellent launching platform for additionaland, one
hopes, more referential and developedinvestigations by others.