This annotated translation of selected works by the early Muslim mystic al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi of northeastern Iran, who died some time between 905 and 910 at about ninety years of age, was produced by the felicitous collaboration of two scholars. One of them, Bernd Radtke, has previously published studies in German on al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi and meticulously edited some of his works, while the other, John O'Kane, is known for his fine English translations of various Persian sources of Islamic mysticism. Though titled “Two Works,” the book actually includes three translations: (1) the translation of al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi's autobiography on pages 15–36 (which Radtke previously translated into German in Oriens 34 [1994]: 242–98); (2) the translation of al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi's Sirat al-awliya (The Way of Life of the Friends of God) on pages 38–211 (which, in a slightly different German translation, appeared as the first part of B. Radtke, Drei Schriften des Theosophen von Tirmid. Zweiter Teil: Übersetzung und Kommentar [Beirut, 1996], 9–154); and (3) the translation of an appendix of text passages selected from other works of al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi on pages 213–39, also previously published in German (Drei Schriften: Zweiter Teil, 154–74). The Introduction to the annotated translations is rather short, and its references are somewhat sparse and cryptic. The reader is frequently referred to Radtke's German dissertation on the author (cf. Bernd Radtke, Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi: Ein islamischer Theosoph des 3./9. Jahrhunderts [Freiburg: Klaus Schwarz, 1980]) and to his edition of the Arabic texts written by al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi (Drei Schriften des Theosophen von Tirmid. Erster Teil: Die arabischen Texte [Beirut, 1992]).

P. M. Holt's The Sudan of the Three Niles is an annotated translation of the Funj Chronicle, a history of the Funj sultanate (1504–1821) based at Sennar, along the Blue Nile, and of the Turco-Egyptian regime that succeeded it at Khartoum. Along with the Tabaqat of Wad Dayf Allah (a biographical dictionary of Sudanese Muslim holy men compiled in the late 18th century), the Funj Chronicle is the most important Arabic source on the northern riverain Sudan in the Funj era, a period in which Islam was spreading widely and the region was developing its pronounced Arab–Islamic identity.

“Define your terms” was the dictum stressed in school, and that is precisely what Ronnie Ellenblum does to fine effect. He challenges both the image of a Crusader population living in isolation behind city walls and the alternative picture of a Franco-Syrian society in which Crusaders were totally assimilated. Both interpretations rest on a series of assumptions, which are methodically examined and act as guideposts to a new and convincing conclusion.

In this book, Marion Boulby traces the rise and evolution of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Jordan. In chapter 1, she gives a brief historical survey of Jordan's state-building and the economic and social developments in the country between 1921 and 1989. In chapter 2, she describes the formative phase of the Brotherhood and the conditions surrounding its establishment between 1945 and 1957. Here, Boulby contends that the concern over the future of Palestine rather than competition with leftist groups was the primary motive behind the formation of the Brotherhood. She also highlights the conservative nature of the founders of the movement and their adoption of a reformist ideology and pragmatic political stands. In her opinion, the norms of political conservatism, reform, and pragmatism, which have characterized the movement throughout its history, were behind the forging of a close alliance between the Brothers and the monarchy.

The history of Sudan still reflects the country's struggle to find its identity between Middle Eastern and African studies. Even within Sudan, there are spheres of interest ranging from the expanding ancient studies of Nubia to the protracted conflict between so-called Afro-Arab northerners and Nilotic southerners. Lost in these expanding domains are the histories of eastern Sudan and Kordofan to the west. Even the historiography of Sennar and Darfur is far better established than that of Kordofan. Thus, the very title of the book being reviewed suggests that Kordofan is an “invaded” and “peripheral” area on the edge of the Islamic and African worlds. Thus, this work is a welcome starting point in filling in this considerable gap in Sudan studies. Stiansen and Kevane have done noble service in this respect.

This book, based on a Ph.D. thesis submitted at Princeton University about ten years ago, is a welcome contribution to historians' relatively narrow preoccupation with Islam as practiced rather than the Islam of textual production. Its author, currently associate professor of religious studies at Drew University, sets out to describe and analyze a vital practice of Islamic piety that is the cult of Muslim dead “saints” (ziy―ara) in Egypt between 1200 and 1500 C.E. The choice of the topic is certainly pertinent, for, as Taylor notes, the saint phenomenon has not received the study it deserves. Goldziher's pioneering article, although written more than 100 years ago, remains to a large extent unsurpassed, and most of the research since has been done on the geographic peripheries of the Islamic world and largely in a modern context.

Balanced, well-written surveys of the pre-modern history of the Middle East are still, unfortunately, quite rare, and works that illuminate specific areas of that past with aplomb are rarer still. Such, however, is no longer the state of our field with regard to Islamic Spain, which can now be studied and taught from the excellent survey provided by Hugh Kennedy. The book is a fine political history deftly attuned to the elucidation of critical historiographical issues. The importance of contemporary Arabic sources, or lack thereof, is central to the organization of this text, a point that the author utilizes throughout to prompt a sense of critical inquiry from the reader.

With this book, Michael Herb makes a significant contribution to the debate on monarchism and its resiliency in the Middle East and North Africa. Relying on archival materials, a small number of interviews, and secondary literature, Herb compares the fortunes of twelve monarchies in the Middle East and North Africa and one monarchy in Afghanistan. By comparing the fate of eight successful monarchies with that of five failed monarchies, Herb seeks to understand which variable best accounts for the success of monarchical rule. A secondary task of the work is to evaluate the future of monarchical institutions in the Middle East and North Africa. Herb asks, “Is revolution—the destruction of these institutions—a necessary step toward political development in the region? Is it possible that political development can occur in the Middle East as it did in some places in Europe, through the adaptation and evolution of traditional institutions, rather than through their destruction?” (p. 256).

As van Doorn-Harder rightly states, recent research on women in the Arab world has focused nearly exclusively on Muslim women. In this study of contemporary Coptic nuns, van Doorn-Harder offers us richly detailed observations of the lives of a rarely studied group of Egyptian women. Situating this discussion in the context of Coptic revival in Egypt, van Doorn-Harder gives a sense of the dynamic and evolving functions of the Coptic church, and how these have been reflected in Egyptian convents since the mid-1950s.

The globe is estimated to have 6 billion people today. The rapid increase of the human population has for decades been a common Western bogeyman. Now, at the turn of the millennium, the threat is brought out again. Today “the human time bomb” connotes uncontrolled fecundity in the Other, the non-Western or non-European. Demographic research shows that many countries in the Middle East and North Africa have among the highest rates of population growth in the contemporary world. Unlike Europe, where the nightmare of demographers and politicians is the aging and decreasing population, the Middle East still has a rapidly increasing and young population. Quite clearly, many politicians in the European Union are worried about the “uncontrollable overflow” of populations over its borders from the southern and eastern Mediterranean shores.

Although the vicissitudes of the Ottoman Empire during World War I are well known, the fate of Iran during the same period remains relatively unappreciated. Officially neutral in the conflict, Iran in fact found itself overrun and occupied by various foreign powers. Following a 1907 accord with Britain that divided the country into two spheres of influence, Iran by 1911 found much of its northern half practically occupied by Russia. Intent on safeguarding its Indian possessions, Britain, meanwhile, controlled most of the south. With the outbreak of the Great War, these traditional rivals were joined by the Ottomans, who, supported by local tribes and Iranian nationalists loath to see half of the country controlled by Russians, invaded Azerbaijan in early 1915. Finally, there were the Germans, who, supported by an alliance with the Ottomans, infiltrated Iran later in 1915 as part of a grand strategy designed to destabilize the country by inciting its population against the British and eventually to forge a German–Iranian alliance.

Chinese Muslims, known today as the Hui and during the 19th century as Dungans, present a particular problem for a historian. Why should Chinese-speaking believers in Islam constitute a separate ethnic group when believers in other religions of foreign origin (Buddhism and Christianity, for example) do not? Did Chinese Muslims have a common history across China, or has one been created for them because they are now labeled an ethnic minority group (minzou) in the People's Republic of China? Jonathan Lipman begins his history by challenging the whole notion of the “Hui” as an ethnic group, which he argues in his Introduction has been taken as an unproblematic category by both Chinese and Western scholars. Lipman prefers the term “Sino-Muslim” to “Hui” to emphasize the reality that these Muslims are and have been Chinese in culture for centuries and to distinguish them from non–Chinese-speaking Muslim groups in China.

Seeing a country through the eyes of diplomats is to see it both intimately and from a distance. Diplomatic messages are full of gossip: who is close to who, what various characters are like, how they look, what they wear—in this book, even how they eat. At the same time, diplomats are odd people, plucked from their home cultures, yet representing them in alien and perhaps alienating climes. A conviction that home is best might not be realized consciously, but it is there, permeating judgments about characters and incidents and shaping advice given to foreign offices at home and decisions about how to handle things on the spot. Coupled with the generally narrow view represented in routine reports—how much can one person see, after all, and how well can most of those who come for only a few years interpret the range of meanings of what they see?—an account that rests heavily on a limited range of diplomatic sources may itself be two-dimensional, more anecdotal than reflective about what these various accounts might have to say to us today.

An argument that the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians can be resolved no longer seems utopian, and some might even assert that it no longer needs to be made. It is in this sense that this book of essays by the Israeli journalist and essayist Amos Elon is important, for it describes how deeply the conflict has structured regional political developments and how much is involved in breaking the cycles of violence and hostility. Elon's perspective on the prolonged confrontation between Israel and the Arab world conveys a strong sense of contingency: the confrontation that is taken for granted as a fixture of Middle Eastern politics is interpreted by Elon as the result of bad choices made by politicians whose attachment to the past turned into an unbearable burden for the future. With his powerful prose, Elon raises fundamental questions about the authoritarian polities characteristic of the Arab states, as well as about the nature of Israeli democracy and its concentration of political power. These essays, mostly drawn from previously published articles in The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books from 1967 through 1995, provoke a serious critique of Israel's dominant culture even as they are very much a product of it.

Endowments (sing. waqf) are one of the more pervasive and diverse institutions found in Muslim societies through time and space. Praised for their contributions to religious practice, culture, and welfare, endowments have also been criticized and condemned in historical and contemporary writings for their detrimental effects on individuals, society, property, and the greater economy, as agents of sloth, corruption, and underdevelopment. This negative image stems from repeated, though not well-substantiated, accusations, as well as a paucity of research on the actual functioning of individual endowments. Generally, endowments have been written about from the perspective of their founding documents, or of snapshot images taken at later and seemingly diminished or deteriorated stages of their existence. Until now, only Robert McChesney (Waqf in Central Asia, Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim Shrine, 1480–1889 [Princeton, 1991]) has undertaken a monograph study of one endowment in order to demonstrate how a particular foundation survived and evolved over several hundred years.

Originally published in 1994, The Innocence of the Devil, by the Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi, has been reissued in a paperback edition with a striking cover. Included in this edition is a well-written and well-documented Introduction by Fedwa Malti-Douglas, which provides a review of El Saadawi's life, a summary of the story, and insights into many aspects of the book. Malti-Douglas is a professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University, Bloomington, and a commentator on El Saadawi's works and life. El Saadawi, a medical doctor and a writer, has used both her fiction and nonfiction as social commentaries on Egyptian—and more specifically, Muslim—society. She was educated in Cairo and the United States, practiced as a physician in Egypt, was director of health education in the Egyptian Ministry of Health from 1958 to 1972, has served on United Nations commissions, and is a practicing psychiatrist. Over the years, she has written several nonfiction books along with numerous short stories and novels. In this book, she comments on many facets of Egyptian culture, but the main thrust is that religion is the underlying cause of women's oppression. She emphasizes theological patriarchy in terms of monotheism (a single male god), the weakness of Eve as fallen woman, a male Satan (the serpent), and males designated as religious leaders who hold authority over women.

This well-researched book is a welcome contribution to the study of the Druzes, one of the most under-studied religious groups in the Middle East. The main objective of this book is to trace the historical development of the Druzes in Israel since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 to the present, and to show that Druze ethnicity was and still is an instrument in the hands of the Israeli government officials and the Druze elite. This book also attempts to show how the Zionists used Druze ethnicity and ethnic issues to pursue their policy aims of alienating the Druzes from other Arabs. In this work, the author, a professor at the University of Haifa, revisits an area he knows well and has already presented in a previous book, A History of the Druzes.

The mystery of the Ottoman Empire is not that it ended but that it lasted as long as it did. The End of the Ottoman Empire is the first book in a new Longman series under the editorial direction of Keith Robbins to examine key “turning points” in the history of the emergence of the modern world. Positioning the Ottomans' final moments within the context of a world-history approach is a worthy goal. Moreover, scholars in the discipline have recently been discussing the need to develop texts to expose the Ottoman experience to a broader audience. Macfie attempts to make this connection by relating the end of the Ottomans to the contemporary world. He argues that the destruction of the Ottoman state marked “a tectonic shift in the political and social structure of the area” (p. 234), leading to the emergence of the successor states and the modern organization of the Middle East and southeastern Europe. It is also, according to him, “the end of the Eastern Question” (p. 234) and the beginning of new relations among the modern European states.

At its heart, Aykut Kansu's The Revolution of 1908 in Turkey is a thoughtful attempt to revise the way Turkish and Western historians have portrayed the events that ushered in the Ottoman Second Constitutional Period. Consisting of both a provocative historiographical essay and a detailed political narrative of the years 1906–8, the book reads the dominant accounts of the last years of the empire against the grain and makes a fresh contribution to the often staid discussions of this fundamentally important moment in the history of the Eastern Mediterranean. Although his arguments are compelling, evidentiary and rhetorical problems inherent in the work undermine its overall value; less persuasive, though still worthwhile, is his attempt to mitigate the historical significance of the statist reforms of the Kemalist period. In Kansu's revision, the events of 1908 constituted the last great bourgeois revolution of the “long nineteenth century.” It succeeded in wresting power from the grip of Turkey's ancien régime—bureaucrats of the Sublime Porte and the sultan—and placed it, temporarily, in the hands of the “citizens.”

The work under discussion is the slightly revised version of the author's Ph.D. dissertation, which she completed in 1995 at the University of Hamburg. Its aim is to show the treatment of the subject of slavery by Ottoman men of letters. In doing so, it investigates the question of when and how the specifically Ottoman attitude toward slavery was influenced by European ideas.