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Pre-Modern Cultural & Social History |
| Reprinted from the Middle East Studies
Association Bulletin, Winter 2000 (with changes in orthography to HTML standards). Copyright 2000 by the Middle East Studies Association of North America |
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Ibn Khaldun and the Medieval
Maghrib, by Michael Brett. (Variorum Collected Series: CS627) 300 pages, index. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 1999. $106.95 (Cloth) ISBN 0-86078-772-9 |
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Ibn Khaldun and the Medieval Maghrib assembles fifteen articles by a prominent British scholar of medieval North Africa who sees his work as revising French colonial scholarship. Brett approaches Islamization, Arabization, and urbanization through the prism of Ibn Khaldun. He sees Islamization as a process of colonization, not conquest, accomplished through conversion and trade. He demonstrates this through an examination of two fatwas by al-Qabisi; al-Qabisi believed it illegal to trade beyond the realm of Islam, so it was necessary to extend the Law by establishing some kind of Muslim supervision. |
| The Ottoman City between East and West: Aleppo, Izmir, and
Istanbul, by Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters. 214 pages, illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999. $59.95 (Cloth) ISBN 0-521-64304-X |
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The debate over the nature of Islamic cities has been going on for decades among historians of the Arab cities in response to
Weber’s model of a western urban archetype and his rejection of an Islamic city. The authors of this book question the validity of applying any model based on Eurocentric and/or relativist essentialist categories (Islamic, Arab, and Ottoman). Instead, they emphasize geographical and functional characteristics across cultural divides. They do not, however, extend their comparison further east to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean commercial networks and settlements that also developed as a result of early modern contact with the West. The central theme of this collective volume is the role of trade with Europe in the development of Ottoman Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul during the early modern period. The authors demonstrate that even though all three cities reached the height of their development during the Ottoman period, each had a different trajectory. While Aleppo and Istanbul claimed a rich pre-Ottoman (Byzantine and Arab-Islamic) heritage, Izmir rose from humble origins to a colonial port city in the seventeenth century. Both Aleppo and Izmir developed as a result of commercial interaction and trade with the Mediterranean world and Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But Aleppo’s rise to prominence was also due to its function as a caravan-city and an entrepôt of the silk trade between Iran, the Ottoman Empire, and Europe. Istanbul, on the other hand, was primarily the capital of a vast Islamic empire where the state regulated economic and social life. International trade played a secondary role in the development of Istanbul, in contrast to Aleppo and Izmir. All three cities boasted a diverse population; Muslim merchants, Ottoman minorities, and European traders all played important roles in their economies. But the European trading communities, along with a service merchant class made up of Ottoman minorities, dominated the economic life of Izmir. This ethnic diversity endowed all three with a cosmopolitan and tolerant outlook prior to the onset of nationalism. Eldem’s contribution throws a fascinating light on inter-ethnic relations and the impact of the Capitulations on the growing social and economic tensions in Istanbul. He also responds to Wallerstein’s theory of the incorporation and peripheralization of the Ottoman economy by focusing on Istanbul. While Masters and Goffman draw on their earlier monographs on Aleppo and Izmir, Eldem offers fresh insights on the history of an understudied yet very important imperial capital. In general, this collaborative effort succeeds in addressing key issues in the wider debate on the nature of ‘Islamic’ cities and the possibilities of cross-cultural and comparative urban studies. Hopefully, it will prepare the ground for comparative studies between the port cities of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean world. This book is highly recommended for use both in the classroom and in scholarly studies on urban history. Fariba Zarinebaf-Shahr University of Illinois at Chicago |
| European and Islamic Trade in the Early Ottoman State: The Merchants of Genoa and Turkey, by Kate Fleet. (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization) 204 pages, bibliography, index, appendices, glossary. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1999. $59.95 (Cloth) ISBN 0-521-64221-3 |
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European and Islamic Trade in the Early Ottoman State is an important compilation of data on the Genoese trade with Turkey, primarily in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is a scholarly work aimed at scholars; that is, it takes much background knowledge for granted and, although it does include a glossary, often does not provide glosses in the text for either Latin or Ottoman terms. As a source for trading arrangements, goods, and prices,
Fleet’s work is one that those interested in the late medieval Mediterranean will refer to again and again. It synthesizes a wide range of printed primary and secondary sources and adds important documentation from the Genoese state archives (particularly useful for the intricacies of trading relations and contracts). One element that makes this work valuable is its organization into chapters based on various items of trade. Thus, a researcher interested in wine, or alum, need not sift through the whole work looking for citations. The chapter divisions are as follows: Introduction, Historical Outline, Money, Commodities (soap, horses, cattle, hides, spices, wax, and so forth), Slaves, Grain, Alum, Cloth, Metals, The Fall of Constantinople and Ottoman-Genoese Relations after 1453, and Conclusion—The Latin Contribution to the Early Ottoman Economy. The real conclusion (pp. 140-41), concerning the dynamic nature of Ottoman economic policy and the importance of the Genoese contribution to economic development in the region, could have been expanded. These chapters are followed by a good concordance of place names and five appendices on exchange rates (akçe to hyperpyron); prices of slaves, alum, and cloth; and notarial documents from the Genoese archives. The heart of this work lies in the fascinating details: the tax levied on Venetians importing horses from Menteşe, the expenses incurred by a merchant exporting Anatolian sheepskins, the competition for primacy among alum mines, the preferred colors and lengths for silks, and appropriation of the goods of fellow merchants by the Genoese occupants of Constantinople at the time of the Ottoman conquest. I, for one, would have liked to see the author elaborate more on the implications of the trading relations and systems she details. There are some good interpretative sections, such as Fleet's analysis of Ottoman alum policy, her discussion of Scorpiata as a loading site, and her speculations on the nature of grain exports in the beylik period and early Ottoman customs rates. But tantalizing questions and some important issues are not thoroughly addressed. Why, for example, would the bey of Aydın agree to stop minting his own coins (p. 14-15)? Did Mehmed II drink alcohol (p. 74), or not (p. 76)? Why would the beylerbeyi of Rumelia, if indeed it was he, take part in an embassy in 1392? The author does persuasively take on some of the arguments about fifteenth century ‘decline’ and concludes that economic policy under Mehmed II “does not appear to have differed greatly from that of his predecessors and cannot be viewed as a determining factor in any decline in trade relations between the Genoese and the Ottoman state” (p. 133). The book, unfortunately, does not contain a single map, a significant problem even for scholars of the region. There is an error in the ducat value of hyperpyra on page 50, and “lose” instead of “loss” on page 133. Cambridge University’s continued use of the footnote remains a cause for celebration. This is a valuable work; I have already put it to good use in my own work. Palmira Brummett University of Tennessee |
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The Crusades and Their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard
Hamilton, edited by John France and William G. Zajac. 297 pages, bibliography, tables, appendices, index. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998. $75.00 (Cloth) ISBN 0-86078-624-2 |
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As a historian of Euro-Islamic interaction, it was with some interest that I agreed to review The Crusades and Their Sources. Its fifteen studies address new historiographical approaches to existing sources, as well as some hitherto unexplored ones, which might advance not only our understanding of the Crusades themselves but also the social, economic, and legal innerworkings of the Latin Kingdoms and their relations with the Papacy and the medieval European monarchies. The contributions here are individually quite strong. Malcolm Barber’s study of the 1178-79 battle over Jacob’s Ford (near the Sea of Galilee) sufficiently convinces us of its importance to understanding the evolving ‘frontier’ strategy practiced by both Crusaders and Muslims. Susan Edington thought-provokingly argues that one of the most reputed Crusader histories, Albert of Aachen’s Historia Ierosolimitation, shared a close literary relationship with the genre of chansons de geste, the lyrical recountings of the Crusaders’ trials and tribulations in the Levant. Detailed studies of Crusader texts and their changes over time are offered in articles by France, Benjamin Kedar, Peter Edbury, and Anthony Luttrell. Kedar’s “The Tracatus de locis et statu sancte tere ierosolimitane” and Edbury’s “The Livre des Assises by John of Jaffa” are the historiographical gems of this collection, arguing for detailed comparisons of extant manuscripts and early printed works to avoid recurring misinterpretations and scholarly errors. A fresh, non-Latin perspective is given in Gérard Dédéyanh’s study of Armenian colophons, while Jarolave Folda and Colin Morris look to European art and architecture for clues to understanding propaganda, identity, and self-perception in the Crusader states. The noted Hans Eberhad Mayer delves into social/gender history, examining how one Maria von St. Lazarus rose to relative power in twelfth-century Jerusalem. Alan Murray provides a truly interesting account of how the ‘rediscovered’ relic of the True Cross in 1099 served as a “military artifact” for the Crusaders who sincerely believed it to be “a powerful vehicle of divine favour and assistance” (p. 231). From the perspective of an Islamicist, however, the editors’ selection of articles raised some troubling questions. Of the fifteen contributions, only one presents the Muslim perspective, which ironically tells us something about the modern ‘historiography’ of the Crusades. This one exception, Robert Irwin’s study of Usāma ibn Munqidh, a twelfth-century official in Mosul and Cairo, was rather disappointing. In describing Ibn Munqidh’s Kitāb al-I’tibār (a “medieval version of Gone with the Wind”), Irwin makes repeated use of the dangerous adjective ‘seductive’ (pp. 72, 73), and compares the text’s tone and subject matter to The Thousand and One Nights. Moreover, the author’s emphasis on the role of Arabic poetry erroneously suggests that qasīdahs enjoyed a renaissance during the Crusader era and that Muslim rulers suddenly looked to verse to express their political ambitions. On an editorial point, this collection could also have been improved by an introductory article that described its contents and gave a brief overview of the historiographical trends which have shaped Crusades studies in recent years. Colin Paul Mitchell University of Toronto |
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The Sephardim: Their Glorious Tradition from the Babylonian Exile to the Present
Day, by Lucien Gubbay and Abraham Levy. 224 pages, maps, illustrations, bibliography, index. London, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992. $39.95 (Paper) ISBN 0-827-604-335 |
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It was only during the past five hundred years that the demographic balance between Ashkenazim—Jews who lived primarily in the Germanic portions of northern Europe and emigrated to Poland and Russia—and Sephardim—defined as those Jews whose tradition derived from their sojourn in Babylonia (later Baghdad) and Spain who lived primarily in southern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa—began to change. Until then, the majority of Jews were Sephardim and Middle Eastern Jews. Today, with the Ashkenazim numerically and culturally dominant, the authors have written this book to remind Sephardim of their glorious history and tradition and to bring the story up to date. The result is a lavishly illustrated volume designed for the general reader. The Sephardim focuses on Spanish Jewry and their descendants. Achieving the height of spiritual and cultural creativity under Muslim rule, the Jews of Spain became dominant in the Jewish world, eclipsing the community of Baghdad that had been established by exiles from Jerusalem after the destruction of the first Jewish Temple in Jerusalem (586 BCE). With their expulsion from Spain in 1492, Sephardim settled in the Ottoman Empire and parts of western Europe. They can be found today in communities in North and South America, Europe, and the Far East where they have contributed to economic, social and cultural life. The thrust of this story is political with tidbits of economic, social, and religious history. Balancing fact and legend, the authors trace the Sephardim through Jewish history from biblical Abraham to the Aleppan Jewish diaspora in Brooklyn, New York. Though the literary and cultural triumphs of the Jews of Spain and Portugal are praised and their later travails as New Christians and secret Jews recounted, most of the volume highlights the Sephardi diaspora communities in the Ottoman Empire, Western Europe, and the New World. How Sephardim integrated and meshed their culture with Jews of the Middle East and North Africa is analyzed in separate accounts of the communities of Baghdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Calcutta, areas of Central Asia, Egypt, Turkey, Rhodes and the Balkans, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Morocco. These are followed by short descriptions of Sephardi life in France, Italy, Amsterdam, New York, Gibraltar, London and Manchester. The volume is based on material culled from published studies (primarily British), reminiscences, and relies heavily on the Encyclopedia Judaica. Scholars will be hampered by the mere twenty-nine books cited as sources which do not include standard works in English by well-known scholars in the field.[1] They also will be annoyed by the lack of or incomplete citations for quotations and the use of ‘Mohammadan’ instead of Muslim. And, while readers will find the surveys of contemporary Sephardi communities enlightening, they will wonder why the authors avoided discussions of the role of Zionism in these communities and the emigration of Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jews to Israel. Reeva S. Simon Columbia University [1] Such as Jane Gerber, The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience (Free Press, 1994) and Norman Stillman, Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book (Jewish Publication Society, 1989). |
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The Crusades: Islamic
Perspectives, by Carole Hillenbrand. 648 pages, bibliography, index, illustrations. Chicago, IL: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1999. $125.00 (Cloth) ISBN 1-57958-210-9 |
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Do not let the ‘textbook’ appearance of the cover of this volume deceive you; it is a valuable work of serious scholarly synthesis. Its aim is to chip away at the imbalance seen in Crusader historiography, characterized as “unabashedly Eurocentric” to date (p. 2), by concentrating solely on the two centuries of the Crusades in the Levant as reflected in Muslim sources. This Hillenbrand certainly achieves, demonstrating a thorough familiarity with not only the chronicles and biographical dictionaries, but also the poetic, juristic, epigraphic, numismatic, artistic, and architectural sources produced by contemporary Muslims. Heavily annotated and lavishly illustrated, The Crusades is a most welcome book. There are nine chapters: the first four both establish the basic narrative and, more importantly, address the theme of Jihad and its evolution over the Crusading period. Hillenbrand tracks this evolution primarily via an examination of the careers of Zengi, Nur al-Din, Saladin, and Baybars. She surveys the existing scholarship on these individuals, deftly pointing out contrasting views and frequently adding new insights. Her analysis of Crusader-Muslim ‘détente’ during the Ayyubid era is especially important in this regard. Indeed, her open and ongoing analysis of the works of Sivan and Köhler in particular should provide impetus for further inquiry. Chapter 5 discusses Muslim stereotypes of the Franks, both using and moving beyond the usual suspects of Usamah b. Munqidh and Ibn Jubayr. The long chapter 6 covers aspects of Muslim life in the Levant. The nuanced coverage of the volatile question of the impact of the Crusades on the eastern Christian populations (pp. 407-19) is a high point. Chapters 7 and 8 are essentially one extended discussion of military matters. Throughout these four chapters, the liberal sprinkling of translated passages opens up much more material to historians who lack access to the (primarily) Arabic texts. Finally, the last chapter briefly sketches the multi-layered and primarily unfortunate heritage of the Crusades. The Crusades is a major contribution to the goal of a more “holistic” (p. 613) overview of the crusades. More than a textbook, it certainly can be used as one. Historians and teachers of the medieval eastern Mediterranean now have an extremely useful resource at their fingertips: it unfolds the complexity of the Muslim opposition to the Crusaders, and presents a careful introduction to many aspects of Muslim history. Moreover, while Maalouf’s The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (1984)—described by Hillenbrand as “a breath of fresh air” (p. 12)—provides non-Muslim students an alternative view of the Crusades, I would argue that the eyes of that title are primarily twentieth-century eyes. Hillenbrand’s book takes major strides toward unpacking and revealing what contemporary eyes may have seen. Warren C. Schultz DePaul University |
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The Persian Presence in the Islamic
World, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian and Georges Sabagh. 267 pages, footnotes, index. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. $64.95 (Cloth) ISBN 0-521-59185-6 |
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In 1991, the thirteenth Giorgio Levi Della Vida Medal for Islamic Studies of the Gustave E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies at UCLA was bestowed upon Ehsan Yarshater, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University. Yarshater chose as the conference theme “The Persian Presence in the Islamic World,” and his chapter of that title forms approximately half of the edited volume. Amin
Banani’s introduction provides a fitting tribute to Yarshater and outlines his achievements, the latest of which is the production of the Encyclopedia Iranica, “by far the single most significant scholarly enterprise in the realm of Iranian studies undertaken anywhere at any time” (pp. 1-2). Yarshater’s chapter reflects the remarkable depth and breadth of his polymathic scholarship. Drawing on a vast array of sources, Yarshater adds new perspectives to the traditional outline of Persian contributions to Islamic civilization from the pre-Islamic period to the present. While repeatedly acknowledging the role of Arabs in maintaining the unity of the Islamic religion, he concludes that “it would not be an exaggeration to say that Persians took the lead in developing Islamic civilization” (p. 90). Several articles by prominent scholars pay tribute to Yarshater. George Saliba’s “Persian Scientists in the Islamic World: Astronomy from Maragha to Samarqand” examines astronomical texts from observatories in these locations, concluding that the Persian contribution to astronomy differed from its Arab counterpart in that it was more concerned with “astrological computations” than with “theoretical astronomical issues” (p. 144). Annemarie Schimmel’s “The West-Eastern Divan: The Influence of Persian Poetry in East and West” focuses on the legacy of Persian poetry in the Indian subcontinent and Europe, paying particular attention to the Indo-Persian poet Muhammad Iqbal and the German Goethe, and to the reciprocal influences between German and Persian poetry. “Ideas of Time in Persian Mysticism” by Gerhard Bowering examines concepts of time and the terms used to express such ideas in Persian classical and medieval texts. Oleg Grabar, in “Persian Miniatures: Illustrations or Paintings,” reinvestigates the purpose of fifteenth-century Persian miniatures “not to illustrate texts but to decorate books” (p. 215). C. Edmund Bosworth’s “The Persian Contribution to Islamic Historiography in the Pre-Mongol Period” finds that the greatest contribution of the Persian historiographers was to add a unique world view that was specifically Persian to Arab-Islamic historiography. He notes that Iran’s experience with the Turkish and Mongol invasions contributed to widening the inclusivity of Islamicate historiography. “The Influence of Persian Language and Literature among the Turks” by Gerhard Doerfer examines the influence of the Persian language on Turkish, providing examples of specific loan-words and their etymologies to show Turkish-Persian cooperation in matters of language. What makes this volume unique is the consistently high level of outstanding scholarship throughout. It is a fitting tribute to Professor Yarshater. Sholeh A. Quinn Ohio University |
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Studies in Medieval Islamic Technology: From Philo to al-Jazari—From Alexandria to Diyar
Bakr, by Donald R. Hill. Edited by David A. King. (Variorum Collected Studies Series) 368 pages, illustrations, figures, tables, index. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998. $110.95 (Cloth) ISBN 0-86078-606-4 |
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Studies in Medieval Islamic Technology is a collection of previously published articles by the late Donald R. Hill (1922-94), the well-known specialist on Islamic medieval technology whose recent death was a great loss for our field. The articles were collected by David A. King, who
introduces them with three notices (an ‘editorial preface,’ a biography of Hill, and a list of his publications) and added about twenty pages of indices. The subtitle of the book evokes the chronological and geographical route along which the ancient techniques were transmitted to the medieval Muslim world. Philo of Byzantium (ca. 250 BCE) is a well-known mechanician whose Pneumatics, a treatise on machines worked by air pressure, survived only in Arabic versions. Its vivid influence is perceptible in the monumental work of
Badi’ al-Zaman al-Jazari, Kitab ma’rifat al-hiyal al-handasiya (Book of knowledge of ingenious mechanical devices) completed in 1206 in Diyar Bakr, the capital of the Artuqids, who sponsored
al-Jazari’s mechanical achievements. Twenty articles are included in this volume. Some are short encyclopedic entries, while others are long scholarly papers first published in specialized journals and books in the Arab world, Europe, and the United States between 1973 and 1995. The articles are classified into five sections. Two sections on “Islamic Technology” comprise articles devoted to historical descriptions of Islamic technology and engineering, its influence on the development of European horology and mechanical engineering, its historical sources in manuscripts and in Arabic geographical works, a survey of Banu Musa’s Kitab al-hiyal (Book of ingenious devices), and an edition and translation of a chapter of al-Biruni’s Kitab fi isti’ab al-wujuh al-mumkina fi san’at al-asturlab (Book on the full comprehensiveness of possible methods for constructing the astrolabe) describing a mechanical calendar working with geared wheels. The other three sections are dedicated to “Greek Technology,” “Technology in Andalusia,” and “Technology and War.” They comprise an introduction to the 1998 reprint of Carra de Vaux’s edition and French translation of Heron’s Mechanics, the edition and translation (with Richard Lorch and Kamal Shehadah) of the Arabic version of Apollonius of Perga’s treatise on the construction of a fluting machine, a description and tentative ascription of Kitab al-asrar fi nata’ij al-afkar (The book of secrets about the results of thoughts), the only known Andalusian technological treatise containing descriptions of water-clocks and automata machines, and the English original of a paper on “Andalusian technology” published in 1992 in Spanish. The last two articles, on trebuchets and the role of the camel and the horse in early Arab conquests, have a special value; the former reflects Hill’s first encounter with Islamic technology, and the latter is derived from his published thesis (1971) on the termination of hostilities in the early Arab conquests. Besides being a precious testimony to the multifaceted work of a major historian of Islamic technology, these articles can be recommended to anybody interested in the history of medieval science and technology. Studies in Medieval Technology will be a necessary supplement to the detailed general histories of technology published by our lamented colleague. Mohammed Abattouy Fez University |
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Astronomy and Astrology in the Medieval Islamic
World, by Edward S. Kennedy. (Variorum Collected Studies Series: CS600) 352 pages, photoreprints, tables, figures, bibliography, index. Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1998. $99.95 (Cloth) ISBN 0-86078-682-X |
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In 1983, a hefty volume of papers appeared entitled Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences including many of the published papers by the eminent historian of Islamic science, E. S. Kennedy. At that time, Kennedy also had seven books to his credit, a lifetime achievement by any standard, especially given the languages, mathematical skills, and historical sensitivity needed to produce such an output. Fifteen years later, this Variorum volume appears with nineteen new articles; so much for retirement. Kennedy’s work has been characterized by its marked attention to mathematical detail and computational technique, but he has also written comprehensive surveys that advance our understanding of whole genres of Islamic scientific literature, for example, an astronomical handbook (zīj) survey; or his work on trigonometry. His work on planetary modeling was a landmark in the history of theoretical astronomy, exhibiting the Islamic role in Renaissance and Copernican astronomy. Another often unnoticed aspect of Kennedy’s work is its chronological range, from pre-Islamic Iran to the Timurids. The latter is particularly significant: secondary literature has until recently proclaimed the decadence or nonexistence of late medieval Islamic science, but Kennedy finds wonderful exceptions, and thereby reveals a thriving scientific tradition especially in Iran and Central Asia. This volume continues many of these themes. Paper VII, dealing with part of the Zīj of al-Kāshī (d.1429), also provides a summary of spherical astronomy in Islam. XIX shows how the astrological houses were mathematically determined (XVI studies the methods of Ibn Mucādh [d.1093] on the same subject). Two articles deal with planetary modeling, VI with the so-called spherical Tūsī couple; XII with a more general approach. The theme of intercultural transmission crops up in several pieces. Paper II describes Indian techniques for calculating planetary latitudes in an Arabic manuscript. The apparently Sasanian astrological technique of correlating major events with Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions, discussed in II, also finds its way into a Persian astrological history (XVII) of Genghis Khan. XIII and XIV deal with a fascinating fourteenth-century zīj dedicated to the Mongol Viceroy of Tibet containing Arabic transcriptions of Chinese star names as well as Mongol and Tibetan glosses. On the later period, two articles on the Timurid Prince Ulugh Beg (X and XI) establish his impressive scientific credentials and survey his accomplishments and those of the Samarqand Observatory he established, while VII and XVIII discuss specific accomplishments of al-Kāshī, one of the directors of that observatory. Kennedy’s lifetime fascination with the polymath al-Bīrūnī (d.1048) finds expression in two papers, V and XV, the latter a translation (with facsimile) of an astrological treatise. Rounding out the volume are papers on an unusual astrolabe projection technique (I), a celestial globe treatise by al-Sūfī (III), methods for calculating distances on the Earth’s spherical surface (IV), the equation of time (VIII), and the determination of the meridian by Ibn al-Haytham (IX). Three of these (I, X, XI) are first publications. Astronomy and Astrology in the Medieval Islamic World is not for everyone, but specialists will appreciate the careful, unembroidered style and the foundational work it represents. At least one piece (XI), which claims for fifteenth-century Samarqand the status of scientific “capital of the world,” will, one hopes, find a larger audience. F. Jamil Ragep University of Oklahoma |
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The Jewish Discovery of Islam: Studies in Honor of Bernard
Lewis, edited by Martin Kramer. 311 pages, index. Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1999. $24.95 (Cloth) ISBN 965-224-040-0 |
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This collection is a result of a conference convened at Tel Aviv University in 1996 celebrating the eightieth birthday of the eminent Jewish scholar of Islam, Bernard Lewis. The conference itself carried the same title as this volume, and its participants were asked to take
Lewis’ famous article, “Pro-Islamic Jews,”[1] as a point of departure in their essays on the most prominent Jews engaged in the early period of modern Western fascination with Islam. The ‘discovery’ of Islam refers to the slowly emerging European realization of a great religious civilization, not merely as a world exciting fear and
loathing, but as a world of immense intellectual interest. The Jews’ role in Europe’s
‘discovery’ was a direct result of the unique Jewish position simultaneously between, and ‘as,’ both Occident and Orient. Jewish scholars of the nineteenth century did not (indeed, they could not) subscribe to the dichotomous European intellectual constructs of Christendom and Islam, Europe and Asia, West and East, and Aryan and Semite with their heavy bias toward the first member of each dyad. Such dichotomies represented obstacles to the Jews’ own acceptance in Europe and were thus avoided in their own constructions of Islam. The bottom line, as Martin Kramer points out in his splendid introduction, was that “a Europe respectful of Islam and Muslims was more likely to show respect for Judaism and Jews” (p. 3). The irony of this Jewish ‘partiality’ was that it allowed for far more impartiality toward Islam and, therefore, a more reasoned comprehension than was possible for contemporary Christian scholars. Goldziher’s critique of Renan’s theories about the limits of the Semitic mind (applied to Muslims as well as Jews), for example, laid the groundwork for the subsequent development of Islamic studies. The Jewish ‘discovery’ of Islam, therefore, although very much a part of Europe’s emerging appreciation of the Orient, was overwhelmingly biased against ‘Orientalism’ as an ideology of difference and supremacy. And although some Jews perhaps resent Edward Said’s failure to include any reference to a ‘Jewish’ contribution in his essay on “Western Views of the Muslim World,” that omission is in itself telling. Nine of the ten studies in the collection treat individuals, and ‘Jewish’ is defined broadly by including such figures as Benjamin Disraeli, Arminius Vambery (born Hermann Wamberger) and Muhammad Asad (born Leopold Weiss) as well as Abraham Geiger, Ignaz Goldziher, and others. The essay by the late Hava Lazarus-Yafeh treats the transplantation of Jewish scholarship in Islamic Studies from Europe, largely as a result of the rise of Nazism, to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The narrative as well as scholarly quality of some of the essays is so good that I found myself reading certain chapters as if I were reading a novella. Joel Kraemer’s chapter on Paul Kraus, for example, follows Kraus’s work and tragic career through the political as well as scholarly labyrinths of Germany, France, and Egypt during the war years. The volume does not include American scholarship or any one born after 1920. Despite these minor limitations, The Jewish Discovery of Islam opens a fascinating chapter in the intellectual history of Europe’s Jews as well as Europe’s scholarship on Islam. It also provides a compelling angle on the current debate on ‘Orientalism.’ Reuven Firestone Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles [1] In Lewis, Islam and History: Ideas, People, and Events in the Middle East, new rev. ed. (Chicago: Open Court, 1993). |
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The History of Jerusalem: The Early Muslim Period,
638-1099, edited by Joshua Prawer and Haggai Ben-Shammai. 420 pages, maps, photos, index. New York, NY: New York University Press, 1996. $75.00 (Cloth) ISBN 0-8147-6639-0 |
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This book is an impressive addition to Yad Itzhak Ben-Zvi’s series on Medieval Jerusalem, which has published two volumes in Hebrew in 1987 and 1991.
The History of Jerusalem is the first of the English translations to be published. Apart from a glaring typo on the very first page of the preface, the volume is beautifully presented. There are extensive illustrations and photographs, two maps by Dan Bahat, the premier archeologist of Jerusalem, and a useful index of names. In his preface to the Hebrew edition, Joshua Prawer explains that this volume incorporates subjects and scholarly disciplines that are much broader than normally found in urban histories. The collection includes well-documented articles with extensive footnotes and bibliographies for those wishing to pursue further study. The volume is organized in a sensible way, beginning with a political history of Jerusalem during the early Muslim period by Moshe Gil. Dan Bahat interprets the physical infrastructure of the city. Gil then analyzes the relationship of the authorities to the local population. The volume then looks at each of the religious communities dwelling in Jerusalem during the early Muslim period. Amnon Linder contributes a piece on the Karaites. In the next three chapters the literary production of the Jewish community is considered: Avraham Grossman’s “Yeshiva of Eretz Israel, Its Literary Output and Relationship with the Diaspora,” Joseph Yahalom’s “The Temple and the City in Liturgical Hebrew Poetry,” and Grossman again with “Jerusalem in Apocalyptic Literature.” Prawer contributes an essay on “Christian Attitudes toward Jerusalem in the Early Middle Ages” and Izhak Hasson one on “The Muslim View of Jerusalem: The Qur’an and the H’adith.” The volume is rounded out by Myriam Rosen-Ayalon’s “Art and Architecture in Jerusalem in the Early Islamic Period” and Yaakov Meshorer’s “Coins of Jerusalem under the Umayyads and the `Abbāsids.” For this early period it may be difficult to track the interactions of individuals from the different communities, but it would be helpful if this aspect of the early Muslim period could be elucidated. Judith Mendelsohn Rood William Tyndale College |
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