As R. H. Tawney once remarked, ‘the past reveals to the presenr what the present is capable of seeing’. Present political scientists who are interested in comparing past power structures have been the first observers to reveral methodically the fundaqmental differences between feudalism and oriental despotism. They have shown how the feudal monarchies of Europe, in their ideal form, were restricted by hereditary and independent aristocrats, by institutions representing the estates of the real, and with civil societies with corporate rights, immunities, and inalienable privileges. And they have shown how despots in the East, in their ideal form, ruled through patrimonial bureaucracies, did not contend with estate institutions, could withdraw concessions granted previously, and were unhampered by independent intermediaries between themselves and their subjects.

Until recently, most works dealing with nineteenth-century Iran have had special points of view which now are hopelessly out of date. Concerned only with aspects of nineteenth-century Iran, they have treated these subjects either in connection with literature or with the rivalry of the European imperialist powers. Whatever the merits of these works, they may be said to have outlived their main usefulness. The age of imperialism is gone; and though the classical Persian literature of a thousand years may well be immortal, its creative spirit is dust. In Iran, as elsewhere, modern men have drastically altered their political, historical, and literary views. We now need histories of other kinds. It is time to explore and to research. Too much which is published on Iranian history continues to be either shallow, narrow, cliché-littered imitations of the not-so-great historians of the past, or are official glorifications of Iran's present, not always consistent with the truth. The field requires a widely extended and earnest historical inquiry into the development of modern Iranian society through the exploration of its recent past. An investigation of the social structure of nineteenth-century Persia, for instance, is absolutely essential to an understanding of the behavior of the present-day Iranian bureaucracy, which is often inexplicable to the Western observer. When the Persia of the peasants, the mullâs and the mîrzâs, is brought into clear perspective behind the Iran of the National Iranian Oil Company and the Plan Organization, we shall be in a position to understand the complexities of the present Iranian administrative machinery and the broad spectrum of motivation of its maintenance men.

In his classic study of revolution, Crane Brinton succeeds in uncovering certain common features, or uniformities, which are present in all four of the great Western revolutions. In analysing the English Revolution of the 1640s, the American Revolution, the French Revolution and the more recent Russian Revolution, he employs ‘the fever of revolution’ as a conceptual measure of social disequilibrium. This pathological analogy provides a means of focusing attention upon the key uniformities of revolution.

The European industrial revolution adversely affected the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century and was instrumental in its final collapse. The eastward flow of European goods grew rapidly in the years following the end of the Napoleonic era in 1815, and Ottoman lands soon became important markets for many European manufacturers. Their wares increasingly displaced traditional Ottoman products, made Ottoman handicraftsmen jobless, reduced Ottoman internal sources of taxes, and so contributed to eventual European control of Ottoman finances. These phenomena are well known and have received appropriate recognition as symptoms of an economic invasion that was aided by the diplomacy of West European consuls and ambassadors, and sanctified by largely unquestioned European arguments in favor of laissez-faire.

During the last decade or so, educational institutions of developing countries have attracted the attention of social scientists as the prime movers of structural changes in such societies. Some of those who are concerned with economic development and growth have argued that a major barrier to economic development is not so much the scarcity of natural resources and capital, but rather the lack of trained manpower resulting from insufficient or mismanaged investment in training the ‘necessary manpower’.

I.O. The work under consideration1 was originally a doctoral dissertation at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Department of Linguistics, under the supervision of the former head of that department, Professor Robert B. Lees, now at the University of Tel Aviv. The book deals with an interesting subject, to be sure. The basic theses and conclusions presented are worth considering and worth testing, though in my opinion they are wrong. The work as a whole is marred by typographic, stylistic and scholastic infelicities, the latter in the form of erroneous bibliographical citations, for the most part. First, I shall address myself to the main theme in terms of general linguistic theory, and Arabic linguistics and dialectology. Then I shall proceed to list some of the typographic, stylistic and scholastic infelicities, more to help the author should he revise the work than to inform the reader who would, of course, see them for himself.