Middle East Book Reviewsby Robert Lebling

These book reviews through the year 2011 appeared in Saudi Aramco World magazine and its predecessor Aramco World.

The Adventures of Amir Hamza. Lakhnavi, Ghalib and Abdullah Bilgrami. Musharraf Ali Farooqi, tr. 2007, Modern Library, 978-0-679-64354-8, $45.00 hb. 2008, 978-0-812-97743-1, $25 pbThere is a treasure of wonderful, imaginative stories in the collective psyche of the Indian subcontinent. In Sanskrit, there is the mammoth Ocean of Story, a collection of fairy tales and folklore that goes back to the mingling of Aryan and Dravidian stock some four millennia ago. Many Indian story motifs found their way into the Arabian Nights—that Middle Eastern cornucopia of adventures and wonder-tales beloved by Arabs since the Middle Ages and ultimately taken to heart by the West. Then there are the countless stories of Hamza, uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, first spun by storytellers in Persia, and elaborated and multiplied in Mughal India. Those tales found their way into Urdu, and a 19th-century edition of them, complete and unabridged, has just been translated into English for the first time in this volume. The stories are fossils of an oral tradition that vanished with the death of the last of the professional storytellers, or dastangos, in 1928. But what vibrant fossils they are! Amir Hamza, as articulated here, is not your average uncle. A superhero of Mughal vintage, he travels the world—and beyond—with his sidekick, the wily Amar Ayyar, battling evil and setting things right. The translation, by Pakistani–Canadian scholar Farooqi, is masterful. The book contains nearly 1000 pages, but the tales are generally short and self-contained, accesible to sample rather than reading straight through. But prepare to be swept up by the wave of narrative, which could very well carry you from beginning to end before you realize it. (Robert Lebling) (SO08)

Animals in Islamic Tradition and Muslim Cultures. Richard C. Foltz. 2006, Oneworld, 978-1-85168-398-7, $19.95 pb.The author—a religion historian, Iran expert and animal rights advocate—explores the role and treatment of “nonhuman animals” in Islamic traditions and cultures. This is a useful resource for writings about animals from the Qur’an, traditions (hadiths) and works of science and philosophy. Great minds are cited, including Ibn Sina, al-Razi, al-Jahiz, al-Damiri, the Ikhwan al-Safa’ (Brethren of Purity), Jalal al-Din Rumi and Ibn Tufail. The book features modern Muslim discussions of animal rights, the role of dogs in Muslim societies and Islamic vegetarianism (as lifestyle option, not requirement). The author finds Islam more sympathetic scripturally to nature and the preservation of living species than some other world faiths. But he is uncomfortable with Islam’s “hierarchical perspective” (shared by the Judeo-Christian tradition), giving humans higher ranking than animals. He recommends fresh Muslim interpretations of old notions on animals, which he notes are already taking place on the Internet. —Robert W. Lebling (SO11)

Arabian Knight. Lippman, Thomas W.2008, Selwa Press, 978-0-9701157-2-0, $25.95 hbOne writer has called American Marine Col. William Eddy (1896–1962) “probably the closest thing the United States has had to Lawrence of Arabia.” This may be true in a sense, since Eddy, like Lawrence, spoke Arabic, was present as Middle Eastern history was made and even had a role in shaping his country’s policy toward the Arabs, particularly in the Arabian Peninsula. But unlike Lawrence, Eddy stayed well below the radar, to such an extent that few Americans today can tell you who he was. An iconic photograph of the historic shipboard meeting of Saudi Arabia’s King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz and US President Franklin Roosevelt in 1945 shows Eddy in uniform, interpreting for the two leaders—the only Arabic–English interpreter present during their more than four hours of in-depth discussions. This meeting was the centerpiece of a rich and eventful life chronicled in fascinating detail by journalist

Lippman. He tells the human story of the summit aboard the USS Quincy in Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake—how a great man of the desert came to encounter and connect with the urbane, cultured president of a new world power. Lippman goes far beyond this event, using rare archival material and interviews to reconstruct the largely unknown story of Eddy’s life. Born in Sidon, Lebanon, to an American missionary family, Eddy spoke fluent Arabic—not only Lebanese colloquial but also classical Arabic—and was a lifelong student of the Arabs, their culture and their faith. He could recite large portions of the Qur’an from memory. After Belleau Wood, Princeton and the OSS, he became a diplomat, serving as the top US envoy in Saudi Arabia. Like Harry St. John Philby, Eddy was a trusted friend of King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, often joining the monarch for deep desert treks. Later in his career, after the accession of King Saud, Eddy lent his expertise to Aramco, working for its offices in Beirut and Washington. Lippman sees Eddy’s career as a metaphor for the growing American involvement in the Middle East. Beyond this, it is also a highly personal tale of one man’s deep affection for a culture and society other than his own. (Robert Lebling) (SO08)

The Arabian Nights and Orientalism: Perspectives from East and West. Yamanaka, Yuriko and Tetsuo Nishio.2006, I.B. Tauris, 1-85043-768-8, £42.50 hbThe Arabian Nights tales have long fascinated the West, but what about their impact on the East—on, say, Japan? Japanese perspectives on the subject are well represented in this book, which brings together a wealth of scholarship on The Thousand and One Nights from an international conference at Osaka’s National Museum of Ethnology. The scene is set aptly in the preface by Middle East historian Robert Irwin, who shows how the Arabian Nights fits into the “Orientalist” mindset, as defined by Edward Said and others. But Irwin suggests that applying Orientalist theory to Orientals like the Japanese may not be quite so easy as applying it to the British or French. Fitting the Arabian Nights into that framework may be even more problematic. As Tetsuo Nishio points out in an article on Orientalism from a Japanese perspective, “Japan accepted the Arabian Nights as a constituent part of European civilization.” Europe’s “Orient” was the Middle East. Japan’s “Orient,” or object of control, was China. Japanese illustrations in Arabian Nights translations published in the late 19th century sometimes show the Arab characters dressed like Victorian Europeans. The Japanese found the Nights tales extremely compelling as stories, but the tales did not exercise the same hold on them that they did on Europeans—because Japan was not linked to the Middle East by economics, history and geopolitics. This collection also explores other topics of equal interest. Yuriko Yamanaka traces the origins of an Alexander the Great story in the Nights to a historical event that took place when the world conqueror reached India. The direct source for this story in the Nights appears to be a version related originally in Persian in Ghazali’s Nasihat al-Muluk (Book of Counsel for Kings). Since the Arabian Nights has long been regarded as a collection of “popular” or lower-class stories spun by storytellers in the cities of the medieval Middle East, Yamanaka suggests that the gap between popular and elite literature in those days may not have been as wide as commonly thought. (SO06)

The Arabs: A History. Rogan, Eugene. 2009, Basic Books, 978-0-46507-100-5, $35 hb.Histories of the Arabs are seldom described as “refreshing,” but this one is. The author, an Oxford historian, uses Arabic sources to give his material unexpected perspectives. His book focuses on the last 500 years of Arab history, from the Ottoman conquest to the present time, and his narrative techniques put us front and center on the stage of history. We share the horror of the aging Mamluk sultan Qansuh in 1516 as he watches his army of sword-wielding knights disintegrate before modern Ottoman troops—”gunpowder infantry,” armed with muskets—ushering in new technology and a new era. Four centuries later, as we witness Cairo street demonstrations and army plotting drive Egypt toward the 1952 revolution, our experience is enriched by the reminiscences of Nawal El Saadawi, celebrated physician and feminist intellectual. Rogan views the Arab experience over the last half millennium as “playing by other people’s rules”—Ottomans, Europeans, Cold War superpowers or Americans alone—and hopes that the Arabs may be able to break the “cycle of subordination.” But he concedes this would require the leading powers to pursue balanced conflict resolution and the Arab countries to move on in the direction of broad-based reform and government accountability. —Robert Lebling (SO10)

Aristotle’s Children: How Christians, Muslims and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages. Rubenstein, Richard E. 2003, Harcourt, 0-15-100720-9, $27 hb; 0-15-603009-8, $15 pbThe author of this history of medieval thought is a professor of conflict resolution, and he brings an unexpected modern flavor to his subject, showing us how conflict resolution lay at the heart of the heated debate between faith and reason in the young universities of Europe. The scientific and philosophical writings of the great Greek thinker Aristotle were lost to the West after the fall of Rome. But his works were saved in the East, translated into Syriac and then Arabic, and used to ignite a great era of scientific discovery in the Arab–Islamic world in the eighth and ninth centuries. The Arabic versions of Aristotle and the works of his Muslim commentators were later translated into Latin at Toledo and other centers, and found their way into the universities at Paris, Montpelier, Oxford, Padua and Bologna. Four centuries before Francis Bacon and René Descartes, a recognizably modern, rational perspective, based on Aristotle and his greatest Arab commentators—particularly Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroës)—swept through the universities, advanced largely by Dominican and Franciscan clerics. Religious conservatives sought to stem the tide. The resulting struggle between faith and reason became a culture war in Europe, leading eventually to the scientific revolution, the Protestant reformation and other sweeping changes. The author keeps his story relevant, lively and at times surprising: It’s rare to find a book that mentions both George W. Bush’s war in Iraq and Augustine of Hippo’s view of evil in the same sentence. (Robert W . Lebling) (SO04)

The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture. Jerrilynn D. Dodds, Maria Rosa Menocal and Abigail Krasner Balbale. 2008, Yale, 978-0-300-10609-1, $40 hb.In this original, thoughtful study, the authors show how cultures interact and cross-fertilize in spite of themselves. The tolerance of Umayyad Spain, and the cultural efflorescence it produced, lived on for centuries after such Muslim-ruled cities as Córdoba, Seville and Toledo were conquered and assimilated by Castile and its allies. We are familiar with the Christian religious paranoia and doctrinal rigidity that led to expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and removal of Muslims and Moriscos over the next century. Less well known is how the evolving culture and arts of Castile, particularly from the 11th to the 14th century, were influenced and molded by the achievements of Spanish Muslims and Jews. Alfonso vi, conqueror of Toledo, styled himself “king of the two religions” (Christianity and Islam). His most difficult task was governing not Muslims, the backbone of the city’s economy, but rather the Mozarabs, local Arabized Christians who chafed under the control of clergy sent by Rome. He admired Muslim culture–the surviving Christian architecture, with its Muslim features, reveals as much. Centuries later, Alfonso x, the Wise, promoted the translation of great Arabic works for European scholars. This book is impressively illustrated and features an in-depth bibliographic essay. (Robert W. Lebling) (MA09)

At Empire's Edge: Exploring Rome's Egyptian Frontier. Jackson, Robert B. Yale University, 0-300-08856-6, $40 hbOman-based historian Robert Jackson has spent a lot of time over some two decades tramping through the deserts of Egypt. His favorite historical period is the Graeco-Roman – specifically from about 29 BC to the start of the Byzantine period in the late fifth century. He has tracked down an amazing collection of ruins and sites from this period, and compiled them in this appealing book, which is part history, part gazetteer, part explorer's adventure. It is packed with Jackson's fine photos of Roman ruins from across Egypt, most of which cover sites you've probably never seen. Jackson divides his subject into three geographical areas: the Eastern Desert, the Upper Nile Valley and the Western Desert. He explores the Red Sea coast, Roman stone quarries, the Porphyry Road, the desert trade routes. He visits the temples and fortresses of Roman Nubia. He catalogues Roman ruins in the inhabited depressions or oases of the Western Desert: the Great Oasis (Rome's term for the united oases of Kharga and Dakhleh), the Small Oasis (the united oases of Bahariya and Farafra) and of course Siwa, home of the famed oracle. Two aspects of the book stand out. First, it covers a lot of

territory and gives you a good idea of just how extensive the Roman presence in Egypt actually was. Second, Jackson manages to keep us entertained along the way, supplementing his impressive array of hard facts with a good sprinkling of anecdotes, oddities and historical mysteries. (Robert W. Lebling, Jr.) (SO03)

A Concise History of the Middle East. 8th ed. Goldschmidt Jr., Arthur and Lawrence Davidson. 2005, Westview Press, 0-8133-4275-9, $45 pbThis introductory textbook for college students studying the Middle East does its job well, and it is also a useful gateway for non-students who want to understand the region behind the news. At 559 pages, it grows larger with each edition, but retains its clarity and its concise, highly readable style. Goldschmidt and Davidson survey the full sweep of Middle Eastern history from early Byzantine times to April 2005, and describe the birth and growth of Islamic civilization with balance and realism. They caution readers against drawing unjustified conclusions about the present day from past events, pointing out, for example, that the Prophet Muhammad’s disputes with Jewish tribes “did not poison later Muslim–Jewish relations nor did Muhammad’s policies cause what we now call the Arab–Israeli conflict.” The book features cogent profiles of diverse key figures in the region’s history, from the Prophet’s wife ‘Aisha to the science-oriented caliph Ma’mun to Egyptian nationalist Ahmed Urabi to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. The book’s most recent chapters read more like press accounts, with a minimum of historical analysis and perspective, and the authors try to remedy this by introducing occasional “mini-debates” in these later chapters, each scholar presenting a different viewpoint on an issue. The technique is distracting, perhaps confusing, for newcomers to the region’s history. One of the work’s greatest strengths is its detailed bibliographic essay, which recommends a treasure-house of excellent reading material on the major topics in every chapter. (Robert W. Lebling) (MA07)

Culture and Customs of Saudi Arabia. Long, David E. 2005, Greenwood Press, 0-313-32021-7, $49.95 hbThoughtfully developed by a former US Foreign Service officer with extensive experience in the Arab world, this handy little book is a fine introduction to Saudi Arabia for students, visiting businesspersons, expatriate workers or the pioneer tourists the Kingdom is gradually attracting. Even longtime foreign residents of Saudi Arabia may find it a useful way to fill in gaps in their knowledge and confirm their suspicions about aspects of Saudi custom and culture. The author truly knows his subject matter. He does not sugarcoat: He takes on topics like terrorism and disaffected Saudi youth. But he writes to explain differences, rather than criticize them. He offers fascinating insights on the extended family, gender roles, the disorientation of young people and the complex interplay of tradition and modernization in today’s Saudi Arabia. He explains the various roles of Islam in Saudi life, as a religion, as a social system and as a political driver. He explains traditional dress, cuisine, rites of passage, holidays and other aspects of culture. No human activity is totally immune to change, and Long shows how these Saudi traditions have been modified over time. He deals with purely modern aspects of Saudi life, such as communications and the media, while not forgetting their development from ancient ways and from a powerful oral communication tradition. The chapter on Saudi artistic expression is very helpful and quite refreshing. There are sections of course on literature and poetry, but also on the performing arts, the plastic arts, jewelry design and architecture. This book was written by someone who clearly cares about Saudi Arabia and its journey of national development. The author makes it clear to his readers that for those who look beyond the stereotypes of the western media, there is a rich and vibrant culture and an evolving society worthy of attention and respect. (Robert W. Lebling) (SO06) The Desert Caves of Saudi Arabia. Pint, John, Saudi Geological Survey. 2003, Stacey International, 1-900988-48-8, £25 hbThis book introduces us to a truly unexpected natural wonder: the cool, dark, mysterious caves that underlie the deserts of east-central Saudi Arabia. Our guide is John Pint of the Saudi Geological Survey's Cave Exploration Unit (www.saudicaves.com). This large-format book showcases the dramatic photography collected over two decades during the exploration of limestone caves, caverns,

sink holes and tunnels in the Umm-er-Radhuma formation, many located at the edge of the Dahna Desert, on the Summan Plateau. Pint tips his hat to a long line of explorers who preceded him, including Aramco's Max Steineke and Tom Barger, but he deserves credit for pioneering the systematic exploration of these caves, and for promoting their protection for future generations of Saudis and foreigners. He chronicles with lush photographs and spare English and Arabic text more than 20 years of cave exploration in Saudi Arabia and covers 11 major caves, including Ain Hit near al-Kharj, a sinkhole that leads to a vast aquifer, where divers have encountered what may be the clearest water anywhere in the world. Pint also highlights the joint cave exploration project of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and the Austrian Academy of Sciences. (Robert W. Lebling, Jr.) (SO03)

Early Islamic Art 650–1100: Constructing the Study of Islamic Art, Volume I. Grabar, Oleg. 2005, Ashgate Variorum, 0-86078-921-7, £70 hbThis is the first of four volumes bringing together the stellar achievements of one of the world’s leading Islamic art historians. Grabar is professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and spent a decade (1980–1990) at Harvard as Aga Khan professor of Islamic art and architecture. His long and eventful career has included a lot of fieldwork in the Arab world—“dirt archeology,” as he calls it—in Syria, Iraq and other lands, because he believes in the importance of experiencing the physical spaces in which events of history took place. The experience of these spaces, both man-made and natural, helps define the people who transformed the area and created within it a new culture. Grabar works diligently to fill in the gaps in Islamic archeology, a field in which circumstances have left a lot of research unpublished. He calls attention to little-known but reliable written sources, such as al-Azraqi’s ninth-century historical account of the construction of sacred buildings in Makkah. He explores the mysteries of the remote Umayyad palaces of Syria, and finds they were built in part to take advantage of an older agricultural base that no longer exists in those desert regions. He studies the interactions of Byzantine and early Islamic art, and finds that each benefited in significant ways from the presence of the other. He puzzles over the survival of the magnificent Islamic art of Spain. Discussing Spanish mudejar art (Muslim-inspired art in a non-Muslim setting), Grabar theorizes about why “this preservation of allegedly Muslim forms took place while Islam itself and those who professed it were persecuted.” This volume is packed with nuggets for the curious. The author is conscious of the fact that scholarship can sometimes be ponderous, and tries to share with us, when he can, the excitement of discovery in the field. (Robert W. Lebling) (SO06)

Edward William Lane, 1801–1876: The Life of the Pioneering Egyptologist and Orientalist. Jason Thompson. 2010, American University in Cairo Press, 978-977-416-287-9, $39.95 hb.In his famous Orientalism, Edward Said accused western scholars of the Middle East of viewing the region through a cultural-imperialist lens. One of the top three offenders Said named was Egypt expert and Arabic scholar Edward Lane. Though Thompson agrees with Said in general, he disagrees on Lane, in part because Said found little biographical material on Lane—a problem substantially remedied by this compelling and colorful 750-page work. Thompson discovered that Lane consciously sought to transcend many of the “imperial” attitudes and prejudices of his day, and was convinced he had achieved total objectivity in his writings on Egypt—particularly in his classic Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836), which has never been out of print. Thompson thinks Lane was naïve to suppose this, but he gives the man credit for trying, and notes that most western and Arab scholars have praised Lane highly for his achievements. Lane translated the massive Thousand and One Nights (1839–1841), in a version more accurate than Galland’s first European translation (1704) and more prudish than Burton’s later no-holds-barred version (1885–1888). Perhaps the greatest value of Lane’s rendition is the rich corpus of anthropological notes accompanying the text—still consulted by scholars to this day. Thompson’s biography gives us a close-up, sometimes quite intimate, look at a man whose attraction to Egypt and its people turned from fascination to a full-blown love affair. —Robert W. Lebling (MA11)

The Emirates: A Natural History. Peter Hellyer and Simon Aspinall, eds. 2005, Trident Press, 1-905486-02-2, £65 hb.This big, beautiful book is billed as the most comprehensive reference work ever on the wildlife of the United Arab Emirates, with more than 400 pages of articles by 34 experts. Over 3000 species are described, many illustrated with stunning color photos. The book’s three main categories are geology (including fossils), habitats (land, shore and sea) and wildlife (from plants to insects to marine life to land animals). Readers learn that four-tusked elephants lived in Abu Dhabi six to eight million years ago, and discover that the colocynth, or desert gourd plant, survives the blazing summers by sweating, as humans do. We get a fascinating look at the brief lifespan of the clam shrimp, a freshwater creature that survives for years in the desert as a hard-shelled cyst, coming to life for a few weeks when winter rains create an ephemeral pool of water. The book also explores human interaction with nature—the sustainability of harvesting, traditional uses of desert plants, commercial and pelagic game fisheries, agriculture and plantation and even humans’ encounter with mangroves. Publisher Peter Vine is a well-known marine biologist and mariculture expert with more than 20 books of his own, including some highly regarded works on Red Sea marine life. (Robert W. Lebling) (MA09)

Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. Beckwith, Christopher I. 2009, Princeton UP, 978-0-691-13589-2, $35 hb.Central Eurasia is widely known as the cultural backwater from which nomadic barbarian warriors spilled westward, bent on violence and pillage: the vicious Scythians, Attila and his Huns, the fearsome Turks, Genghis Khan and the Mongol horde. But this carefully researched history shows us that Central Eurasia has often been a wellspring of culture, science and civilization, nourishing and strengthening great powers familiar to us: the Persian, Greco-Roman, Indian and Chinese. The “Silk Road” of the title—the historic trade routes through Central Eurasia linking China with the Middle East and Mediterranean— passed through cultured cities and prosperous realms whose names are remembered but whose accomplishments and global importance are often slighted: Khurasan, Bukhara, Ferghana, Balkh, Tashkent, Khwarizm, Lhasa.... The author reverses our usual perspective: The familiar great powers are viewed as “peripheral” states, surrounding the Central Eurasian heartland. We learn that the “barbarian” powers of this heartland were no more vicious or violent than the empires of the periphery, and that the movements of men and ideas from Central Eurasia were motivated less by a taste for combat than by a love of trade. We see that many of the leading thinkers and scientists in the Golden Age of Arab Islam, the early Abbasid period, originated in Central Eurasia: Ibn Sina (from near Bukhara), al-Ghazali (Khurasan), al-Biruni (Khwarizm) and al-Farabi (Utrar). It’s a humbling lesson— that greatness sometimes springs from the most unlikely places. (MA10)

The Formation of al-Andalus. Part 1: History and Society. Marin, Manuela, ed. 1998, Ashgate/Variorum, 0-86078-708-7, £90 hbThis is volume 46 in the impressive Variorum collection The Formation of the Classical Islamic World, under the general editorship of Lawrence I. Conrad. Modern Spain is showing a growing interest in its rich Islamic heritage, and this work, comprising good English translations of the latest Spanish scholarship on history and society in Muslim Spain, certainly reflects that trend. Leopoldo Torres Balbás provides a useful historical catalogue of 22 cities founded by Muslims in al-Andalus, from Badajoz to Calatayud to Murcia to Madrid to Gibraltar. María Luisa Ávila describes the social structure of the Andalusian family and discusses the role of women in Muslim Spain. Miguel Cruz Hernández, in a chapter from an upcoming book on Islam in Spain, discusses the overall social structure of early al-Andalus and the evolving relationships among Arabs, Berbers, Muwallads (converts to Islam), Mozarabs (Arabized Christians) and Jews. For dessert, non-Spaniard Heinz Halm gives a new historical and linguistic explanation for the origin of the word “al-Andalus.” No, it’s not derived from “Vandals,” he says, but comes instead from a common real-estate term that the Arabs took over from the Goths, landahlauts (land lot). (SO02)

The Formation of al-Andalus. Part 2: Language, Religion, Culture and the Sciences. Fierro, Maribel and Julio Samso, eds. 1998, Ashgate/Variorum, 0-86078-709-5, £90 hb

Volume 47 of Variorum’s The Formation of the Classical Islamic World is packed with new perspectives from Spanish and other scholars on the achievements of civilization in Muslim Spain. For those interested in language, literature, theology, art, architecture, astronomy, mathematics, medicine or pharmacology, this is the place to delve. Roger Wright explores the disappearance of written popular Latin, or Ladino, among Andalusian Christians, who kept their spoken Romance language but found that Arabic script fully met their literary needs. Manuel Ocaña Jiménez offers a new look at the origins of the Great Mosque of Cordoba, and in the process shows that Muslims took over Gothic Cordoba not by violence but through a negotiated peace treaty and at the urging of the local Jewish community. Anchoring the “Exact and Natural Sciences” section are informative articles examining Arab, Indian and Greek influences on astronomy in al-Andalus. Particularly fascinating is Paul Kunitzsch’s translation of The Book on the Stars by Andalusian polymath Ibn Habib, relaying early Arab star knowledge originally compiled by Malik ibn Anas of Madinah. (SO02)

God’s Rule: Government and Islam—Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political Thought. Crone, Patricia. 2004, Columbia UP, 0-231-13290-5, $39.50 hbThink tanks, journalists and other analysts are devoting much time and attention these days to forecasting the shape of political institutions throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds. But to do that, we must understand how these institutions developed. The author, a distinguished Islamic scholar known for straight talk and surprising insights, cuts through a welter of misconceptions and describes the birth and evolution of government in the Islamic Middle East. Writing unpretentiously, making connections to modern-day life, Crone explores how rival versions of the Islamic community, the umma, developed over time, and how the nature and role of the caliphate changed through history. She explains the influence of Persian and Greek political thought on Islamic government and on the great Islamic thinkers like al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd. She shares her insights on the role of religion in government: While the Christian concept separates religion and state (i.e., God and Caesar), in the Muslim tradition “the umma was a congregation and a state rolled into one.” (Robert W. Lebling) (MA05)

The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the ‘Abbasid Empire. Bennison, Amira K. 2009, Yale UP, 978-0-300-15227-2, $30 hb.Culture, rather than politics, is the concern of this a fine introduction to a much-heralded period of Islamic history. During Abbasid times, from the eighth to the 13th century, Baghdad was the center of a great civilization that encompassed the Mediterranean region and the Middle East—one that, as the author seeks to demonstrate, is not alien to western (i.e., Greco-Roman) civilization, but is rather its logical extension. Under the Abbasids, the scientific and philosophical legacy of the Greeks and Romans was amplified and extended. Scientists and translators of every description—Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Sabian, Zoroastrian—absorbed the great works of Mediterranean thought and science and took them to the next level. In fact, Abbasid civilization experienced a “scientific renaissance” as important as the one Europe underwent centuries later. Bennison uses a wide-angle lens to encompass the full picture. She includes simultaneous cultural advances in Islamic Spain and Fatimid Egypt, for instance, since these lands were in constant interaction with Baghdad. The Abbasid world was a strikingly mobile in many ways, with pilgrims setting out from its far reaches for Makkah and Madinah, traders seeking commerce in distant lands, and other travelers crossing vast stretches of desert and sea simply to learn. The famous hadith attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, “Seek knowledge, even unto China,” reflects an attitude: The quest for knowledge was a key characteristic of the early Abbasid world, and politicians, scholars and scientists alike shouldered their responsibilities well. (MA10)

The Handless Maiden: Moriscos and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Spain. Perry, Mary Elizabeth. 2007, Princeton UP, 978-0-691-13054-5, $19.95 pbThis is a rare, sympathetic look into the lives of the Moriscos—those Muslims and their descendants who remained in Spain after the completion of the Spanish Christian reconquest in 1492 and who were then forcibly baptized. Their status as “New Christians” made them subject to the Spanish Inquisition, for Old Christians often suspected the Moriscos were secretly clinging to their Muslim faith.

As it turned out, the suspicions were accurate. Perry has delved deep into the little-consulted aljamiado literature (Romance language written with Arabic letters) and into a wealth of myths and legends. One of these is of the Handless Maiden, a princess who remains devoted to Allah despite having her hands amputated by her unbelieving father—an enduring metaphor for the Morisco experience. The author found that it was most often Morisco women who preserved what they could of Muslim belief and practice, and passed it on to their children. Perry is the first author to devote a book to Morisco women, and she succeeds by letting them speak for themselves. She traces their lives through the fall of Granada, the Muslim rebellion of 1499, the forced conversions of 1502, subsequent decades of repression, the Alpujarras revolt of 1568 and the expulsion of Moriscos from Spain in 1609. Most Moriscos fled to Muslim lands after the expulsion, though for many the suffering did not end there, as many North African Muslim communities had their own suspicions about the Moriscos. They were best received in Tunisia, where the Ottomans protected them and allowed them to retain their identity as Hispano-Muslims. (MA08)

The Hejaz Railway. Nicholson, James. 2005, Stacey International, 1-900988-81-X, £25 hbWithout T. E. Lawrence, few in the West would ever have heard of the Hejaz Railway. And without the railway, there might never have been a “Lawrence of Arabia.” The saga of the rail line from Damascus to Madinah—built by the Ottoman Turks to carry pilgrims to the Holy Places and targeted by Arab raiders during the First World War—is well told in this attractive and informative coffee-table opus. The photographs, old and new, are wonderful, and themselves justify the book, but Nicholson also tells a riveting story about how the railway was built, how it served the needs of pilgrims and other travelers from the Levant, and how it became a strategic target of Arab forces and their British allies, helping to hasten the fall of the Ottomans in the Great War. Each of the major attacks on the railroad is described in compelling detail, and the book answers just about any question that might come to mind about it. Why wasn’t the rail line extended to Makkah as originally planned? Did the railway continue to operate after the war? What about efforts to start it up again? An appendix describes the recent renovation of the Madinah station and the plans to restore other major stations on the line. We hope this book will add to the momentum to complete these projects, and preserve what remains for posterity. (Robert W. Lebling) (MA06)

The Holy Cities, the Pilgrimage and the World of Islam: A History: From the Earliest Traditions till 1925 (1344H). Sultan Ghalib al-Qu’aiti. 2007, Fons Vitae, 1-8877-5289-7. $49.95 hb, $29.95 pb.The British-educated author was the last Qu’aiti ruler of Yemen’s Hadhramaut. He left the sultanate in 1967, when it became part of the People’s Democratic Republic of [South] Yemen, and has resided in Saudi Arabia since then. He has produced a rich history of Makkah and Madinah and their role as holy cities and pilgrimage sites, using a wealth of Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Urdu source material unavailable to most scholars, as well as eastern and western diplomatic records. The sacred sites of Madinah hinge on the life of the Prophet Muhammad, who made it his base and second home. Makkah’s holy precincts, however, long predate Islam; its original sacred house, or Ka’bah, was built by Adam directly below the heavenly throne of God, Muslims believe, and the second was constructed by the Prophet Abraham. The author begins with these earliest accounts and moves at a comfortable pace through the era of Muhammad, the Umayyads, ‘Abbasids, Fatimids, Mamluks and Ottomans, and on to the rise of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud, the founder of Saudi Arabia. Sultan Ghalib walks the reader through the many episodes of building, rebuilding, expansion and renovation of Makkah and Madinah, putting the changes in understandable context. He keeps his story human, presenting warts and all, and thus maintains both his credibility and the reader’s interest. (Robert W. Lebling) (MA09)

Hoshruba. Book One: The Land and the Tilism. Husain Jah, Muhammad. Musharraf Ali Farooqi, tr. 2009, Urdu Project, 978-0-9780895-5-1, $24.99 pbImagine The Lord of the Rings told from the viewpoint of the Dark Lord Sauron, and in eight volumes—totaling more than 8000 pages—instead of three. That is Hoshruba, a vast, magical Urdu epic penned in India in the 19th century. The story centers on Afrasiyab, a sorcerer-emperor who rules over

Hoshruba, a fantasy world or tilism where anything can happen. Look for deceit, betrayal, romance, war, bizarre plot twists and, of course, magic. This cycle of tales, born in Lucknow, is the brainchild of storyteller Mir Ahmed Ali, who wanted to thrill audiences with a turbocharged, freewheeling variant of the much older Indo–Persian Amir Hamza epic. The first published version of the tales was written by Jah, another Lucknow storyteller, in the early 1880’s. These adventures are crafted for English readers in a comfortable style, and packed with color and amazement, zipping by at breakneck speed. (Robert W. Lebling) (SO09)

The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization. Lyons, Jonathan. 2009, Bloomsbury, 978-1-59691-459-9, $26 hbBooks about the transformative Arab influence on western civilization are not unusual, but this one focuses on the personalities responsible for setting the transformation in motion, showing how specific works of Arab knowledge were accepted and utilized by European scholars. The “House of Wisdom” is the research center and library built in Baghdad by the Abbasid caliph Al-Ma’mun, but for the author it is a symbol of a much larger intellectual endeavor in the Arabic language that was eventually bequeathed to Europe. The setting for this knowledge transfer is a topsy-turvy world (from our perspective) in which Europe is underdeveloped and riven with violence, superstition and intolerance, but Arab lands are centers of science, culture and sophistication. Enter the English scholar Adelard of Bath, who traveled the “crusader lands,” learned Arabic and began a major effort of translation and study that helped set Europe on the path to the Renaissance. (Robert W. Lebling) (SO09)

How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs. O'Leary, De Lacy. 2002, Kegan Paul, 0-7103-0747-0, £75 / $127.50 hb; 1979, Ares Publishers, 0-89005-282-4, $20 pbDe Lacy Evans O’Leary, born in 1872, was a British historian and lecturer in Aramaic and Syriac at the University of Bristol. This book is one of his well-known classics, first issued in 1949, and, as such, it’s more useful to scholars than to the average reader. O’Leary explores the role of early Christianity as a Hellenizing force in the Middle East, and traces the flow of Greek science and philosophy through the Nestorians and their Monophysite rivals to the intellectually curious—and somewhat Persianized—Arab Muslim Abbasids who ruled Mesopotamia from the eighth century. He pays close attention to the translators who brought the classics of Greek science into Syriac and Arabic, and to the cities that served as important science centers: Basra, Baghdad, Harran, Jundishapur and the rest. He also credits Bactria and India for their roles in transmitting Alexandrian Greek science by land and sea to the Abbasids. The Mesopotamian patchwork quilt of ethnicity and religion that O’Leary so carefully describes turned out to be a very fertile environment for scientific inquiry. Christians of many sects, Jews, Zoroastrians and Sunni and Shiite Muslims all contributed to the explosion of scientific knowledge. They worked together, with reasonable tolerance for each other’s differences, in a way that gives hope for the present-day process of nation-building in Iraq. (Robert W. Lebling) (SO04)

How Islam Created the Modern World. Graham, Mark. 2006, Amana, 1-59008-043-2, $21.95 hbWho would have thought an Edgar-winning mystery novelist could explain to us in clear, concise language that without Islam, western civilization as we know it might not exist? Underlying that dramatic proposition is an important point: The post-9/11 talk about a “clash of civilizations” misses the reality that Islam and the West developed from essentially the same roots and, despite their rivalry, helped each other in profound ways along the path to “civilization.” In fact, the West and Islam can be viewed as merely different faces of the same civilization. Graham draws readers in with his bright, colloquial style and such chapter headings as “Hippocrates Wears a Turban” and “Islam’s Secret Weapon.” (It’s Aristotle.) He explains how Arabic-speaking Muslims not only preserved the scientific and philosophical knowledge of the Greeks but also “made it their own,” greatly extending and improving on it. For example, the newly developed concepts of Arab philosopher Ibn Rushd of Córdoba (Averroes) found their way into western universities, where they were viewed as challenges to church orthodoxy and ushered in the beginnings of the scientific method. Muslim thinkers, poets and scientists set the stage for the European Renaissance: Graham points out specific borrowings in

Dante’s Divine Comedy from the works of the great Andalusian writer Ibn ‘Arabi, and shows how these intercultural transfers were likely mediated by Dante’s mentor Brunetto Latini, who had brought back learning from the legendary libraries of Toledo. And Graham shows more concrete ways in which the West is indebted to Islam: A Mongol invasion of Europe was thwarted when Egypt’s Mamluk army defeated the Mongols at ‘Ain Jalut, Palestine, in 1260. Imagine how different the West would be today if the Mongols had triumphed! As it turned out, the West never again faced the threat of Mongol invasion after ‘Ain Jalut, and the breather this provided gave Europe a chance to absorb what Graham terms “the other great gift of Islam—knowledge.” (Robert W. Lebling) (MA07)

A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire. Bose, Sugata. 2006, Harvard UP, 0-674-02157-6, $27.95 hbIn the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, the Indian Ocean “both was a British lake and it was not,” says Professor Bose, a Harvard historian of Indian descent. To outward appearances, the Indian Ocean rim was dominated by British power emanating from colonial India. But a closer look shows that the old “interregional” relationships persisted under British domination and continue to this day. The powerful culture of India exerted its influence from South Africa to Indonesia, diffused by trade and worker migrations. Simultaneously, the transnational fabric of Islam, spread by merchants traveling by sea, blanketed coasts from Zanzibar to Java. These and other indigenous forces, including the perennial Muslim pilgrimage to Makkah and Madinah, created a regional unity that outlasted the British Empire. Thus it was not surprising that Mahatma Gandhi’s own conceptions of Indian nationality should have crystallized during the years he spent amid the Indian expatriate community in South Africa, on the western edge of the Indian Ocean. Or that Indian poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore should visit Baghdad in 1932 and, speaking about the Hindu–Muslim conflict in his own country, would call on his hosts to “resend” to India the universalist message of their Prophet, to rescue India from narrow-mindedness and bigotry. In the end, the British era in the Indian Ocean region may have been, as another Indian historian put it, one of “dominance without hegemony”: Fundamentally, the people of the region wrote their own history. Bose conveys this well and with considerable insight. Among other topics, he relates in compelling fashion how Indian Muslim pilgrims managed to make their way to Arabia’s holy places each year under the watchful colonial “policing” of the British. This book is nicely illustrated with historical photos that capture the spirit of the times. (Robert W. Lebling) (MA07)

Islam and Science. Iqbal, Muzaffar. 2002, Ashgate Publishing, 0-7546-0799-2, £50 / $89.95 hb; 0-7546-0800-X, £17.99 / $29.95 pbThe role of Islam in the modern world is much debated, and some claim that Islamic cultures cannot nourish scientific progress today as they did in the Middle Ages. Iqbal, who heads the Center for Islam and Sciences in Canada, tackles questions like this head-on. He analyzes the rise and fall of science in the Islamic world and probes the reasons for the “withering” of the scientific tradition there even as Western science was on the rise. Iqbal assesses the impact of colonization on scientific inquiry in Islamic cultures and weighs the prospects for reviving the role of science in today’s Islamic societies. He focuses on the “Islam and science discourse,” i.e., the interplay of a strongly held religious faith and the natural human impulse to understand the world and its complexities: At times, he finds, the two forces conflict; on other occasions they reinforce one another. Iqbal argues that religion did not cause the decline of science in the Islamic world, and that more important factors were fragmentation of the Islamic empire following the Mongol conquests and the misguided priorities of the fragments that remained—the Ottoman, Safavid and Timurid Empires. (Robert W. Lebling) (SO04)

Islam: Past, Present and Future. Kung, Hans. John Bowden, tr. 2007, Oneworld, 1-85168377-1, $39.95 hbThis book is arguably the most important of the three volumes of Dr. Küng’s monumental study of the Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—because of its timing and its remarkable insights. The author, one of the world’s greatest Christian theologians, has taken on the formidable task of challenging Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations (1993), which argues that Islam and the

West are ineluctably locked in a battle for world supremacy. Küng is convinced that the three prophetic religions, by collaborating, can advance the cause of world peace. Indeed, he believes that there can be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions. Küng presents a readable history of Islam that emphasizes its interactions with the other faiths. For example, he shows evidence that the Jerusalem-based Jewish-Christian community of James found a home in western Arabia and eventually came to influence the thinking of the Prophet and his contemporaries. Küng examines the five “paradigms” through which Islam has passed—among them the original Islamic community, the Arab empire and Islam as a world religion—and speculates about the shape of the sixth, which today’s Muslims will determine. To Küng, Islam represents hope, not threat—in particular the hope that it will serve as a positive example to Judaism and Christianity by infusing spiritual values and ethics into the “globalized” economy, society and culture of tomorrow. (Robert W. Lebling) (SO08)

Islamic Geometric Patterns. Broug, Eric. 2008, Thames & Hudson, 978-0-500-28721-7, $21.95 pbThe amazing thing about the most complex Islamic patterns is their fundamental simplicity. These designs on floors, walls, windows and ceilings of world-famous mosques, madrasas, monuments and palaces dazzle the eye with their intricacy, creativity, power and sometimes even whimsy. As Dutch artist Broug demonstrates, the complexity of these patterns is often reducible to a single geometric shape—a square, pentagon or hexagon, for example—which is elaborated by adding straight lines and arcs until the shapes begin multiplying and mutating, almost like living organisms. Broug sees the creation of these remarkable patterns as both art and science. He shows the reader how to draw them, step by step, using only a pencil, ruler and geometric compass. In the process, we recreate the experiences of the Islamic artists and craftsmen who first developed these distinctive geometrical patterns many centuries ago. We also learn important chunks of art history, since the patterns we develop are taken from actual buildings and artworks from Spain to Kyrgyzstan. The author discusses structures like the Mustansiriya Madrasa of Baghdad, built by an Abbasid ruler in the 13th century; the Capella Palatina, royal chapel of Norman king Roger II of Sicily; and the ninth-century Qarawiyyin Mosque of Fez, Morocco. Supplementing the book is an excellent CD with a strong image gallery, desktop wallpapers, pattern-construction sequences and other useful features. (Robert Lebling) (SO08)

Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge. Euben, Roxanne L. 2006, Princeton UP, 0-691-12721-2, $29.95 hbThis book explores the similarities and contrasts of travel writing from the Muslim world and the West over the course of centuries. Euben, a political scientist at Wellesley, sets up some interesting pairings: Herodotus’s Histories with the Rihla of Ibn Battuta; Tahtawi’s visit to Paris of the 1820’s with de Toqueville’s Democracy in America; and Montesquieu’s fictional Persian Letters with the Memoirs of Sayyida Salme, daughter of the ruler of Oman and Zanzibar. Euben calls travel writing a window on the ways ordinary people make sense of the strange or inexplicable things one encounters in foreign lands. This is often accomplished by means of the “nested polarities” that the traveler takes along: for example, Greek/barbarian, Sunni/Shi‘ite, Muslim/Christian or European/Arab. While the traveler often undertakes a journey to see for himself and thus achieve some understanding of “the other,” the reader of the traveler’s account often learns more about the traveler than about the place he visited. An interesting aspect of this book is its exploration of cosmopolitanism. To the ancients, a cosmopolitan was a “citizen of the world,” one who could interact easily with different cultures. Today, the term is sometimes linked with the modern economic phenomenon of globalization. Nowadays, some in the West view Islam as anti-cosmopolitan and intolerant of other cultures. Euben shows that the contrary is true: Islam, reaching from Europe through Africa and the Middle East all the way to Southeast Asia, has encompassed, coexisted with and been enriched by a multitude of diverse cultures, and turns out to be an excellent example of true cosmopolitanism. (Robert W. Lebling) (MA07)

The Kingdom: Saudi Arabia and the Challenge of the 21st Century. Craze, Joshua and

Mark Huband, eds. 2009, Columbia UP, 978-0-231-15434-5, $50 hb.What stands out in this collection of commentaries and articles, published initially in a Web forum and written mostly by Saudis, is the diversity and complexity of Saudi society. It is appropriate that the Internet was the arena for these discussions, since it was the explosion of communication technologies that made Saudis profoundly aware of the significance of their own diversity, and of the fact that the future of the country depends on its ability to accommodate diversity, both internally and in the global context. One article quotes King Abdullah as articulating this necessity: “We cannot remain rigid while the surrounding world is changing.” Most of us are familiar with the conservative faction in the kingdom that flatly rejects the message of change, but that faction is only one end of a spectrum of opinion, and most of the various viewpoints are represented here. Some articles voice frustration with the government’s “incremental, moderate” approach to reform. Some seek to disentangle the purest principles of Islam from ancient custom and habit. Others demonstrate that life is indeed changing in Saudi Arabia. For the western reader, this collection offers a rare and welcome glimpse of the ongoing debate inside the kingdom—Saudis talking to Saudis about the direction and destiny of their country. —Robert Lebling (SO10)

Kuwait and the Sea: A Brief Social and Economic History. Yacoub Yusuf Al-Hijji. Fahad Ahmad ‘Isa Bishara, tr. 2010, Arabian Publishing, 978-0-9558894-4-8, $60 hb.Few of us know the Kuwait before oil: essentially a tiny, walled town called al-Qurain, surrounded by desert, bereft of natural resources, which turned to the sea and built a prospering economy based on the fruits of the Gulf and long-distance maritime trade that extended to East Africa and the Indian subcontinent. The author, trained as a water-resource geologist, is a recognized expert on Kuwait’s maritime history and spent many years researching this book and interviewing nakhodas (ship captains), merchants, mariners and shipbuilders. Al-Hijji paints a vivid picture of a parched environment where fresh water had to be brought from the Shatt al-Arab waterway in great wooden tanks aboard even greater dhows. Before oil, almost all able-bodied men were pearl divers in the summer months, a job Al-Hijji calls “a season in hell,” with divers working in blazing heat from daybreak to sunset, making ten dives in a row without a break. The long-distance dhow trade, another pillar of the economy, enjoyed a final burst of prosperity when World War ii temporarily halted European freighter traffic to Asia, but then the era of wooden dhows came to an end. Al-Hijji captures the unique flavor of this bygone age and provides facts, figures and illustrations to sate the appetites of the most curious. —Robert W. Lebling (MA11)

Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds. Joel L. Kraemer. 2008, Doubleday, 978-0-385- 51199-5, $35 hb.When Muslims and Jews are at violent loggerheads, both sides might learn lessons from the life of Musa ibn Maimun, or Moses Maimonides. The 12th-century lawgiver, physician, philosopher and scientist was one of the great thinkers of his era. He was fluent in Arabic, Hispano–Romance and Hebrew. He wrote in classical Arabic for his Muslim readers, as in the case of his medical works, and in Judeo-Arabic (Arabic dialect with Hebrew letters) for his coreligionists, as in his famous philosophical work, The Guide for the Perplexed. Born in Córdoba, in Islamic Spain, and educated in Fez, Morocco, Maimonides eventually moved to Egypt, where he became head of the Jewish community under the Fatimids, known for their tolerant rule. He spent the rest of his life in Cairo, and his reputation flourished to the point that he was named court physician to the Ayyubid sultan Saladin, celebrated nemesis of the Crusaders. (He had been offered a similar position in the royal court of Christian-ruled Jerusalem, but declined.) This book is a definitive account of the life, works and times of Maimonides, based on a trove of original source documents, including his own manuscripts and letters, found in the Cairo Genizah. The author brings fascinating insights to the story of this great man. (Robert W. Lebling) (MA09)

Makers of the Muslim World. Crone, Patricia, ed. Various authors. 2005–2006, Oneworld Publications. $40 each hbProfessor Crone is the perfect scholar to edit this timely series of biographies of “the men and women

who made the Muslim world what it is today.” The Danish-born, British-educated Islamic historian is known for both brilliance and boldness, and demonstrates those traits in this series, expected to comprise 50 volumes; 17 have been published so far. The books are well-structured, clearly written monographs, each running about 160 pages. Useful for scholars and students, they also have another important audience—those with “no prior knowledge of Islam or its history”—who will likely benefit most from the series. The portraits describe their subjects, often in fascinating detail, capture the flavor of their times and highlight the most important issues of the day. Some of the subjects are predictable choices: Besides ‘Abd al-Malik, builder of the Dome of the Rock, there are ‘Abd al-Rahman iii, first Umayyad caliph of al-Andalus; Ibn ‘Arabi, one of the most influential thinkers of Islamic Spain; the Abbasid scholar-caliph al-Ma’mun; and the celebrated poets Abu Nuwas and al-Mutanabbi. But many of the personalities are less familiar: Amir Khusraw, the 13th-century Indian poet who synthesized Muslim and Indian culture; Shaykh Mufid, a prominent Imami Shi’ite scholar of medieval Baghdad who introduced rationalism to Imamist belief; and Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi, a leading Indian Sunni Muslim reformer of the early 20th century. On balance, the series pays extra attention to Shi’ites and others of heterodox belief. This makes sense in today’s world—one need only look at the political demographics of modern-day Lebanon and Iraq to understand why. The impression we get from these volumes is that Islam is a “big tent” and that diversity is a key aspect of the faith. As the pilgrimage to Makkah demonstrates each year, there is plenty of room in this particular tent for believers of all descriptions and inclinations. (Robert W. Lebling) (MA07)

Medicine in the Days of the Pharaohs. Halioua, Bruno and Bernard Ziskind. M. B. DeBevoise, tr. 2005, Harvard UP, 0-674-01702-1, $24.95 hbWhen Greek medicine flowered in the fourth century bc, Egyptian medicine was already 2500 years old. Ancient Egyptian physicians guarded their secrets well, and records have survived of Mitannian, Hittite and other kings requesting that Pharaoh send them an Egyptian doctor. The best of them were virtually a priestly class, trained in the royal precincts and practicing medicine largely for the royal family and nobles. Their ancient remedies were based on healing herbs, minerals and animal tissue, as some 1740 surviving “prescriptions” attest, and, for the most part, Egyptian medicine was practiced in a rational, “scientific” manner; at times, when conventional remedies failed, the physicians would turn to spells and incantations that dated even further back into antiquity. Authors Halioua and Ziskind, both French physicians, have done fine work capturing for the general reader the current state of knowledge about ancient Egyptian medicine. The book is clear, concise and well illustrated, and covers such topics as childhood and adolescence, the medical risks of certain careers (e.g., the threat of schistosomiasis for Nile fishermen), and a look at how the modern study of mummies helps us understand the health issues of ancient Egypt. (Robert W. Lebling) (SO07)

The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity: AD 395–600. Cameron, Averil. 1993, repr. 2000, Routledge, 0-415-01421-2, £16.99/$28.95 pbThe Arabs’ seventh-century conquest of large chunks of the old Roman Empire happened more quickly and easily than historians have well explained. Cities and garrisons surrendered; the process was relatively bloodless. The eastern Romans, or Byzantines, shouldn’t have been such pushovers: A century earlier, they had become masters of North Africa, and only 10 years before Muhammad’s death they had scored an impressive, crippling victory over the Sasanids of Persia. In Cameron’s view, the reasons for the speed and ease of the Arab conquest lie neither in the traditional “Gibbon” argument of an empire in decline nor in religious differences between rulers and subject peoples. She focuses instead on profound and complex cultural changes that the Roman East was already experiencing before Muhammad, including its “Arabization.” Having expended much blood and treasure on distant wars, the Romans hired Arab forces (often Ghassanid nomads) to patrol the empire’s eastern frontiers. Financial crisis in Constantinople meant military payrolls weren’t met, so it’s not surprising that Byzantine garrisons laid down their arms and Ghassanid troops changed sides. As Cameron notes, Arab victory came at “a time of rapid change,” posing problems with which “we might identify in our own post-modern world.” (Robert W. Lebling) (MA04)

The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. Khaldun, Ibn and Franz Rosenthal, tr. and intro; N.J. Dawood, abridged and edited; Bruce B. Lawrence. 2005, Bollingen Series, Princeton UP, 0-691-12054-4, $24.95 pb (Orig. pub. 1969.) Ibn Khaldun was a 14th-century Arab jurist and scholar from Tunisia who revolutionized the writing of history. The Muqaddimah laid the foundation for new disciplines, among them sociology, ethnography, economics and the philosophy of history. This work—part of a larger history—expounds a theory for the rise and fall of civilizations. Ibn Khaldun paints the story of humankind on a vast canvas, encompassing nations, cities, dynasties, tribes and families, along with their works, their arts and their sciences. When Rosenthal’s original three-volume translation appeared in 1958, British historian Arnold Toynbee called The Muqaddimah “undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever been created by any mind in any time or place.” Dawood shrewdly condensed it into one volume in 1969 and improved Rosenthal’s translation, and Princeton has now made the book available in a new paperback edition, with a fresh introduction. If you’re new to Ibn Khaldun, you’ll likely be impressed by his modernity, his frankness and his scientific approach to history. He is also, refreshingly, a literary man, who loves finely turned phrases and well-expressed ideas. You’ll find plenty of both in this book. (Robert W. Lebling) (MA05)

Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Hebrew Poems. Bernard Lewis, trans. and intr. 2011, Princeton UP, 978-0-691-15010-9, $17.95 pb.“Love sits as sultan in my soul,” writes Ibn al-’Arabi. “His army has made camp in my heart.” This is not the kind of book one expects from a prominent historian. The Princeton professor emeritus has translated 129 short poems from four Middle Eastern cultures—Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Hebrew—that for the most part have never before appeared in English. Lewis explains that poems are historical documents, reflecting not just the state of mind of their writers but also the world and era of their creation. These works were written by men and women, caliphs and commoners, mystics and slaves, from Arab Spain to Central Asia, between the seventh and 18th centuries. They reflect four separate literary traditions, all deeply influenced by Islamic culture. The poems speak of passion, courage, melancholy, loss and sheer wonder at God’s universe. Sometimes it is hard to tell which culture is speaking; at such times, common humanity prevails. —Robert W. Lebling (SO11)

My Jerusalem: Essays, Reminiscences, and Poems. Jayyusi, Salma Khadra and Zafar Ishaq Ansari, eds. 2005, Olive Branch Press, 1-56656-549-9, $20 pbJerusalem, the city claimed by two peoples and three major faiths, is the thorniest knot of the Arab–Israeli dispute. While we await the next effort at resolution, it’s worth reading this anthology of prose and poetry to become more intimately familiar with the issues and emotions at stake. If you feel like confronting the history, politics and diplomacy of the Jerusalem question head-on, then the first two sections—“The Contemporary Scene” and “The Classical Scene”—are for you. If you prefer indirection or appeals to the heart, then I suggest you try “Voices of Jerusalem,” a bouquet of splendid poems and personal reminiscences by such writers as Muhammad Asad and Nikos Kazantzakis, as well as others—among them novelists Leila al-Atrash and Mahmoud Shahin, painter Kamal Boullata, publisher Michel Moushabeck and physician Subhi Ghosheh—who were once part of Jerusalem and now must contemplate the city from a painful distance. The collection contains moving poetry on Jerusalem by such writers as Etal Adnan, Nizar Qabbani, Isma‘il I. Nawwab, Nathalie Handal, Nazik al-Mala’ika and Naomi Shihab Nye. The latter tells us: “There’s a place in this brain / Where hate won’t grow.” She sets the tone for the anthology, which despite the anguish of loss remains anchored in reconciliation and hope. (Robert W. Lebling) (SO05)

New Turkes: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England. Dimmock, Matthew. 2005, Ashgate, 0-7546-5022-7, $94.95/£49.50 hbThis unusual work examines the changing images of Islam and the Ottoman Turks in English drama during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. This topic becomes of wider interest when we realize the author is studying the geopolitics and global economics of that era—largely the interactions of England, Spain, the Roman Catholic church and the Ottoman Empire—through the lens of English

popular culture. England had defied Rome and embraced a Protestant faith. Spain, loyal to the Roman Church, saw the English as heretics and lumped them with the Ottoman Turks and other Muslims. England was looking for new markets in the Near East and building economic and political ties with the Ottomans. The resulting spiderweb of relationships was reflected in the English stage plays of the era. The author shows that English popular stereotypes about Islam and the Ottoman Turks evolved and grew more complex with changing geopolitical and economic realities; indeed, one of the insights of this book is that ethnic and religious stereotypes are not static and unchanging: They can ebb and flow, become more intricate, and change their focus and tone in response to the forces of economics and politics. (Robert W. Lebling) (SO05)

Night and Horses and the Desert: An Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature. Irwin, Robert, ed. 2000, Overlook Press, 1-58567-064-2, $40 hbIrwin, a historian of the Arab Middle East and a thoroughly entertaining writer, takes us on a thoughtful yet dizzying excursion down the literary alleyways of the Middle Ages, with a focus on the neglected 10th and 11th centuries. This is an anthology of extracts, both prose and poetry, and Irwin reminds us that some of the most esteemed works of medieval Arabic literature were “collections of other men’s flowers.” His goal is to give English readers “a taste of the authentic strangeness” of this particular corner of the medieval past. He does that well, but he can’t help reminding us that human nature has changed very little in the past thousand years. He acquaints us with the swaggering poetry of Mutanabbi, who died trying to live up to his most famous line of verse: “I am known to night and horses and the desert, to sword and lance, to parchment and pen.” He introduces the poet-commentator Ma‘arri, who “carried the equivalent of a large library in his head” and who, as a strict vegetarian, refused to eat honey because it was cruel to the bees. Then there was Jahiz, the witty essayist and book-lover who penned a rambling seven-volume opus called The Book of Animals—a masterpiece of digression on the order of Tristram Shandy. The rambunctious parade of Arab literati is kept in line by Irwin’s thread of lucid commentary. This is a very user-friendly introduction to an unjustly neglected body of literature. (Robert W. Lebling) (MA04)

The Novel: An Alternative History. Beginnings to 1600. Steven Moore. 2010, Continuum, 978-1-4411-7704-9, $39.95 hb.A reviewer recently said a new translation of the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh “reads as effortlessly as a novel.” Maybe that’s because it is a novel. Steven Moore would like to claim that it is the world’s first novel, but he concedes its language is closer to poetry than prose; it should probably be called a “novel in verse.” Moore’s book, the first volume of two, takes a fresh, bold and irreverent look at the great works of world literature before 1600. The novel, he says, actually began with fictional tales written anonymously in ancient Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, for by the 19th century BCE, all the elements of the novel were in place there: sustained narrative, dialogue, characterization, metafiction—even magical realism. Moore gives us a new perspective on the early writings of many peoples, including the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Celts, Britons, Scandinavians, Arabs, Persians, Indians, Chinese and Mesoamericans. Of particular interest is his analysis of the classic frame-tale collection, The Thousand and One Nights, Persian in origin but thoroughly Arab in its present form. Moore extracts three extended narratives from this influential opus that qualify as separate novels: The Story of the Hunchback (a “cruel comedy”), The Story of Qamar al-Zaman (a “dark romance” forming the core of the Nights) and The Tale of King Umar ibn al-Nu’man (the longest, taking Shahrazad a hundred nights to narrate). More artistically refined Arabic works of the Middle Ages are highlighted as well, such as Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan, which may have influenced Robinson Crusoe, and the “hugely entertaining” Adventures of Sayf ben Dhi Yazan, which Moore calls “the most outlandishly imaginative tale in Arabic literature.” —Robert W. Lebling (MA11)

Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the 17th-Century Mediterranean. Adrian Tinniswood. 2010, Riverhead Books, 978-1-59448-774-3, $26.95 hb.In the early 17th century, the Ottoman fleet competed for dominance in the Mediterranean with navies of European powers. Petty rulers of Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli and other North African (“Barbary”) city-

states paid lip service to the Ottoman sultan but pursued their own power agendas. In this setting, Barbary pirates forged shifting alliances and captured vessels of many nations, seizing treasure and slaves. The British and others tried to put a stop to the piracy, and their efforts make for fascinating reading. This book is refreshingly written with a strong narrative. Among its surprises: many Barbary pirate captains were Europeans—British, Dutchmen and others termed “renegades” by their own countries. Some became Muslims; others did not. Diversity was the hallmark of these entrepreneurs of discord. Pirate crews were mixed: North Africans, Turks and Europeans. Faith was not a controlling factor; yes, they were in it for the money. —Robert W. Lebling (SO11)

Prophets and Princes: Saudi Arabia from Muhammad to the Present. Mark Weston. Wyche Fowler, forw. 2008, Wiley, 0-4701-8257-1, $35 hb.Many books about Saudi Arabia are researched and written far from the kingdom, but writer/lawyer Weston lived and worked in Riyadh as a visiting scholar. Aimed primarily at American readers, his book is a strong argument in favor of the special relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia. Weston does not whitewash Saudi Arabia, saying the kingdom has “serious shortcomings,” but he is also convinced that Saudi Arabia is America’s most important ally in the Middle East. The book combines history, current events, sociology and commentary in a crystal-clear narrative. One of its strengths is its early history of Islam in Arabia, from the Prophet Muhammad to the Umayyad caliphs—helpful for context and a good introduction for newcomers. Regrettably, the millennium between the late seventh century and the first Saudi state is given short shrift— barely two pages—with the explanation that the Arabs’ role during those years was “marginal.” Surely it is a mistake to dismiss the Arab Abbasid dynasty (among others) in a few paragraphs, given its long-term influence on world culture, science and thought. The author compensates with a colorful, compelling account of Saudi history—the transformative movement of Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, the fate of the first two Saudi states, the rise of King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud and Saudi Arabia’s entry into the modern era. He writes sensitively about the post-9/11 era and the powerful forces of change sweeping the kingdom. (Robert W. Lebling) (MA09)

Rethinking the Other in Antiquity. Erich S. Gruen. 2011, Princeton UP, 978-0-691-14852-6, $39.50 hb.This work challenges conventional notions about how peoples of classical antiquity—Greeks, Romans, Jews—viewed their enemies, adversaries, conquerors and conquests. The traditional view is that the ancients kept their distance from the “Other” through stereotypes, disdain and mockery. Gruen looks at these relationships and discovers surprising results. He examines classical Greek views of the Persians, Egyptians and Phoenicians, the Romans’ perspectives on the Carthaginians, Celts, Germans and Jews, and even Greek and Roman opinions of “people of color.” While hostile views of the Other of course existed, he finds a surprising amount of tolerance, constructive interaction, even empathy. Some ancients even sought their origins among their enemies. Greeks believed they were parents of the Persians through their legendary ancestor Perseus, and Achaemenid Persians accepted and reshaped the same legend. Gruen delves deeply into a wealth of ancient tales and histories, and draws a vivid portrait of a truly multicultural world. —Robert W. Lebling (SO11)

Robes and Honor: The Medieval World of Investiture. Gordon, Stewart, ed. 2001, Palgrave (The New Middle Ages Series), 0-312-21230-5, $59.95 hbInvestiture is the ancient practice of bestowing robes of honor on a deserving person, often by a king or other leader to someone who has shown loyalty or fealty or has achieved great distinction. The practice apparently originated among nomads of Central Asia. It spread east to Tibet, China, Japan and Korea, and west across Persia to the Arab world, Byzantium, North Africa, Eastern Europe and beyond. This colorful collection of academic articles examines numerous historical examples of investiture and the interesting parallels between honorific robing in medieval Christianity and in medieval Islam. Robing became widespread among the Abbasids of Baghdad, and was popular among the Fatimids and Mamluks of Egypt and the Mughals of India. Some Muslim holy men used a robe called the khirqa as a symbol of spiritual authority. While the robing tradition failed to take hold

among most royalty of Western Europe, it did assume great importance for the papacy and the cardinals of the medieval Church. The book features an informative article on the famous mantle or robe of King Roger II of Sicily, a 12th-century Norman ruler with strong links to the Arab and Islamic world. This stunning red robe, now in Vienna, bears embroidered lions, camels, a date palm tree and a long Arabic inscription about its origins, and was used for centuries in coronation ceremonies of the Holy Roman Empire. (Robert W. Lebling, Jr.) (SO03)

Sailors in the Holy Land: The 1848 American Expedition to the Dead Sea and the Search for Sodom and Gomorrah. Jampoler, Andrew C.A. 2005, Naval Institute Press, 1-59114-413-2, $32.95 hbIn 1848, an Arab tribal leader asked a US military officer about possible American support for a revolt against the Ottoman Turks. The support never materialized, but this nugget of documented fact, buried in Sailors in the Holy Land, shows that Arab nationalism was simmering long before Lawrence of Arabia. It also demonstrates what a valuable resource this book is. Jampoler chronicles the first and only US naval expedition to the Dead Sea. Led by Lt. William F. Lynch, its scientific objectives were to circumnavigate the sea, collect mineral samples and determine its absolute elevation. A secondary goal was to show the flag and boost the image of the young US Navy. Lynch took two boats filled with sailors from the Sea of Galilee, down the twisting 150-mile Jordan River with its 27 sets of “threatening” rapids, to the lifeless Dead Sea itself, whose waters Lynch, a firm teetotaler, described as the smoldering color of “diluted absinthe.” Lynch was the first to accurately determine the Dead Sea’s water level—some 1300 feet below sea level at that time. As for Sodom and Gomorrah, let’s just say that their locations have yet to be determined. (Robert W. Lebling) (SO05)

Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination. Tolan, John V. 2002, Columbia University, 0-231-12333-7, $24.50 pbThis scholarly survey of anti-Muslim polemics in the Middle Ages shows how Christian views of Muslims evolved from the seventh to the 13th century and set the stage for the Orientalist misconceptions that survive in the West to this day. The expansion of Islamic civilization into realms formerly ruled by Christians – including Byzantium and Spain – led Christian theologians and commentators to seek explanations for the changes that swept their world. At first, the rise of Islam was viewed as God's punishment of a wayward Christian flock. Then Christian writers began portraying Islam as a heresy designed to lure Christians away from their religious heritage. Christians outside the Islamic world, such as those in northern Europe, imagined that Islam must be a return to idolatry and paganism, and this misconception was used to help justify the Crusades and the reconquest of Spain. Medievalist Tolan shows how the relatively fluid European beliefs about Islam turned rigid in the 13th century, leading to strict laws that separated Christians from Muslims and produced even greater distortions in perception, and he suggests that this European "denigration of the other" is the dark side of Christian universalism. (Robert W. Lebling, Jr.) (SO03)

Sheba: Through the Desert in Search of the Legendary Queen. Clapp, Nicholas. 2001, Houghton Mifflin, 0-395-95283-2, $26 hb; 2002, Mariner Books, 0-618-21926-9, $14 pbThe author of The Road to Ubar takes readers on another quest, this time to Yemen, with side trips to Jerusalem, Palmyra and Aksum. Clapp sets out to unravel the mystery of Bilqis, the storied Queen of Sheba, but before taking to the field, he equips his reader with fascinating lore on the queen and her encounter with King Solomon, preserved in the scriptures and traditions of three major faiths, in particular the Arab legends in al-Kisa’i’s Tales of the Prophets. Some say Bilqis is buried at Palmyra, Syria. Ethiopians insist she was the mother of their first emperor, Menelik. The most popular Arab tradition makes her the queen of the kingdom of Saba, a trading power that straddled the Frankincense Route in Yemen. Clapp travels to the ruins of the Sabaean capital Ma‘rib, on the edge of the Empty Quarter. He marvels at Sheba’s Moon Temple and wonders what might lie buried in its still-unexcavated circular precinct. Clapp may not find all the answers, but this is a journey worth taking, if only to watch this tenacious investigator and deft storyteller in action. (Robert W. Lebling) (MA04)

Stars and Numbers: Astronomy and Mathematics in the Medieval Arab and Western Worlds. Kunitzsch, Paul. Ashgate/Variorum Collected Studies Series, 0-86078-968-3, £59.50 hbMany of the brightest stars in the heavens today have Arabic names—testimony to the great influence of medieval Arab and Islamic astronomy on European science. German historian of science Paul Kunitzsch has done more to document and study this important influence than almost any other living scholar. He has written at least 20 books and more than 160 articles and papers on various aspects of medieval astronomy and related sciences. Some of Kunitzsch’s most interesting work is in German and published in hard-to-find journals, but the Variorum series helps give his studies wider exposure. In this collection on Arabic–Islamic astronomy and its reception in medieval Europe—Kunitzsch’s second—the 29 articles (20 in English) are divided into four sections: Ptolemy in the Arabic-Latin Tradition, Arabic Astronomy, Arabic Astronomy in the West, and Mathematics and Numbers. The author devotes special attention to ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi, a 10th-century Muslim astronomer whose catalogue of the fixed stars was the earliest and most important channel for transmission of Arabic star names to the West. He also concentrates on the astrolabe, a star-locating device invented by Greeks and perfected by Arabs. European scientists learned about the astrolabe from their colleagues in Islamic Spain. It was by way of al-Andalus, Kunitzsch explains in more than one article, that much of the Arabs’ legacy of scientific knowledge found its way into Europe. (Robert W. Lebling) (MA05)

Suleiman the Magnificent. Clot, Andre. Matthew J. Reisz, tr. 2005, Saqi, 0-86356-510-7, £12.99 pbWhen the average westerner thinks about the Ottoman Empire, two words often come to mind: “weakness” and “decadence.” “The sick man of Europe” was the description applied to the Ottoman state during its final century. But it was not always so. Clot’s highly readable book reminds us that, during the 16th century, when Suleiman the Magnificent was sultan, the empire was in its golden age and truly a world power. It spanned three continents and had world-class artillery and fierce, white-bonneted shock troops, the Janissaries. Suleiman’s capital, Istanbul, was a grand and wealthy city, a center of civilization. Suleiman himself, though an absolute ruler, dined frugally, showed empathy for his adversaries and focused on what he thought was best for his people. He promulgated laws to protect average citizens from exploitation, and showed a lifelong tolerance for non-Muslims, who thrived under his rule. He was a complex man, ruthless one day and compassionate the next, very much a man of his times and his civilization. In that sense, this book is more a history than a biography, but that does not diminish it in the slightest. (Robert W. Lebling) (SO07)

Traces of Paradise: The Archaeology of Bahrain 2500 BC– 300 AD. Crawford, Harriet and Michael Rice, eds. 2002, I.B. Tauris, 1-86064-742-1, £24.95, pbTo the Sumerians, the islands of Bahrain and the nearby Arabian coast were Dilmun, a paradise of milk and honey linked to the origins of the world. Beyond myth, however, Dilmun was also a center of international trade, blessed with fine harbors and abundant supplies of fresh water, whose capital was at Qal‘at Bahrain, on the main island’s north coast. Dilmun supplied Mesopotamia with valuable goods including pearls from the Gulf, copper from Oman and lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. In Alexander’s day, Dilmun was known as Tylos, and it remained a vital commercial nexus for further centuries as it had for centuries past. The archeology of these eras—a story seldom told and still strewn with major puzzles—is the subject of this attractive, well-produced book. It includes Bahrain’s well-known “vast sea of sepulchral mounds” but goes far beyond it. The reader’s eye tends to linger long over the lush photography—a silversmith’s hoard, rare snake bowls, ornate golden jewelry, delicate alabaster bowls and even a free-blown glass baby-bottle from the first century of our era. The images complement a strong, lucid text written by a well-chosen team of experts. (Robert W. Lebling) (MA04)

The Unfurling. Nawwab, Ni‘mah Ismail. 2004, Selwa Press, 0-9701157-9-2, $14.95 pbWestern readers with preconceived notions about what it means to be a woman in today’s Saudi Arabia will find this book an eye-opener. Those without preconceptions will find it a most pleasurable learning experience. Ni‘mah Nawwab, Saudi poet, essayist, editor and photographer, writes fluently in English, sharing in poetry her thoughts, her emotions, her important life experiences. She speaks of

her identity as a Saudi woman, of her family, of her personal joys and frustrations, and of the fractious and fascinating world beyond her own circle. She is surprisingly at ease in juxtaposing the traditional and the modern. With poetry, she explores the horrors of war and terrorism, and somehow finds precious remaining scraps of humanity in the wreckage. Nawwab deals realistically with life’s problems, yet she emerges as an optimist, a champion of the human spirit. Her poems are refreshingly honest and unafraid. (Robert W. Lebling) (SO04)

A Vanished World: Medieval Spain’s Golden Age of Enlightenment. Lowney, Chris. 2005, Free Press, 0-7432-4359-5, $26 hbLowney surveys the history of al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), from its beginnings in the eighth century, through its Golden Age and decline, to Ferdinand and Isabella’s conquest of the last Muslim stronghold in 1492, providing ample colorful anecdotes and little-known facts. His goal is to take a close look at the convivencia—the “living together”—of Muslims, Christians and Jews in medieval Spain, for Lowney, a former Jesuit and banker with degrees in medieval history and philosophy, believes the story of religio-ethnic cooperation in al-Andalus offers hope in today’s strife-torn world. Yet he does not try to sugarcoat the “Golden Age.” He points out that convivencia was not without its problems, at times breaking down in spasms of bloody violence. He demonstrates that cooperation among the religious groups in al-Andalus was motivated not by idealism or charity, but by each community’s recognition that survival often depended on getting along. Lowney shows how the three communities grew in wisdom, prospered economically and flowered culturally in this atmosphere. (Robert W. Lebling) (SO05)

A Voyage to Arabia Felix (1708–1710). De la Roque, Jean. 2003, Oleander Press, 0-906672-50-3, £45 hb This unusual reprint sheds light on a little-known corner of history: 18th-century France’s maritime trade with Arabia, specifically the beginning years of the Yemen coffee trade. In those days, Yemen was the world’s only commercial cultivator of the coffee plant, and most exports of the precious bean were shipped to the Levant and Europe through Turkish and Egyptian merchants. Coffee had first been introduced to France only four decades earlier by a visiting emissary from the Ottoman sultan. Levantine businessmen then opened a few coffee shops in Paris, and before long, the beverage became a national vogue, though coffee beans were sometimes hard to find and very expensive. The two merchant ships that set sail from the Breton port of St. Malo in 1708 were France’s first bid to bypass the coffee middlemen of the Mediterranean to ensure regular supplies and significantly lower costs. De la Roque’s account of this first commercial voyage around Africa to the Yemeni ports of Aden, Mocha and Bait al-Faqih, translated into English in 1732, is attractively reproduced in facsimile—the first new edition of this work in 260 years. The volume also includes four other related works, including de la Roque’s fascinating treatises on coffee cultivation, customs and history. Also featured is M. Cloupet’s New Travels in Arabia Felix (1788), offering some perspective on the coffee trade from near the end of the century. Archeologist and Arabia specialist Carl Phillips provides helpful introductions to the texts as well as two solid bibliographies. (Robert W. Lebling) (SO04)

Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage. Cuno, James. 2008, Princeton UP, 978-0-691-13712-4, $24.95 hbShould an imperial Roman artifact made and recovered in Libya belong to Italy? Should a Uighur object manufactured in Urumqi before Chinese rule belong to China? The director of Chicago’s Art Institute argues that antiquities should belong not to states, as current laws have it, but to the people of the world. The growth of nationalism since World War ii has been accompanied by a proliferation of “nationalist, retentionist cultural property laws,” ostensibly to curb theft of archeological artworks but actually to support state ideologies, he argues. These policies do not in fact reduce looting or the sale of undocumented artifacts, Cuno maintains, but do make it very difficult for museums around the world to acquire the kinds of artworks they have traditionally sought. He makes an impassioned defense of “encyclopedic museums” such as the British Museum, the Louvre and the Met, whose collections allow viewers to compare and contrast many different cultures, giving visitors a sense of how peoples

have developed, interacted and benefited each other. (Robert W. Lebling) (SO09)

Whose Culture? The Promise of Museums and the Debate over Antiquities. Cuno, James, ed. 2009, Princeton UP, 978-0- 691-13333-1, $24.95 hb.This book features essays by scholars who, like editor Cuno, support encyclopedic museums and advocate an internationalist approach to ownership of ancient cultural heritage. They include Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton, Sir John Boardman of Oxford, British Museum Director Neil MacGregor and David Owen of Cornell. A key issue is objects—called “unprovenanced”— whose original archeological context is unknown. Many archeologists say museums should not acquire such artworks, because trade in them encourages looting, theft and illegal exports. Cuno and colleagues disagree, noting that objects like the Hellenistic Laocoön sculpture or the Rosetta Stone could never have been acquired, displayed or studied had such policies governed. Owen notes that sentiment against unprovenanced artifacts is so intense that the us, uk and Germany are campaigning to stop publication of cuneiform inscriptions that have emerged from the Iraqi war zone, sadly unprovenanced but still of potentially great value; he calls this “censorship” and “suppression of knowledge.” Other topics include the Taliban’s destruction of the giant Bamiyan Buddhas and the long-running dispute over Britain’s removal of the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon. (MA10)

The World of Pharmacy and Pharmacists in Mamluk Cairo. Chipman, Leigh. Sir Henry Wellcome Asian Series, Vol. 8. 2010, Brill, 978-9-0047-606-5, $154 hb.This book offers a glimpse of a segment of medieval Arab society rarely seen—the dispensers of medicines and other health treatments. In 1260, a Jewish druggist in Mamluk Egypt named Abu ‘l-Muna al-Kuhin al-‘Attar wrote Minhaj al-Dukkan (Managing the Store), a first-of-its-kind manual of knowledge on how to run a pharmacy. Previously, books on drugs had been written on the Greek model by Arab physicians—Muslim, Christian and Jewish—for use primarily in hospitals. By the 13th century, drug-stores were becoming commonplace in Cairo; they also sold spices (which frequently had medical properties) and perfumes (which often had health benefits). In fact, the Mamluk-era word for pharmacist was ‘attar, or perfumer. Chipman analyzes al-Kuhin’s writings and the literature of the period, finding that pharmacists saw themselves as hardworking, God-fearing tradesmen, dedicated to the betterment of human health, while contemporary literature often portrayed them as scoundrels out to cheat the public by selling them overpriced medications of dubious efficacy. The reality, as now, was probably midway between the two perceptions. —Robert Lebling (SO10)

Saudi Aramco World: http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/