This collection of essays, the latest in a long list of collected works put together by Variorum's Studies in East–Central Europe, 1500–1900, is supposed to give the reader a broad range of Nikolai Todorov's lifetime work. Todorov's contribution to the field is not in doubt, although this collection hardly does justice to that contribution. The fourteen separate articles often overlap in theme, and on one occasion they almost reproduce the same article, as they span a period that reaches back to Todorov's early career in Bulgaria (1964–92). The essays somewhat misplace Todorov's importance to the field, as most of the language appropriated has become outdated with the collapse of the Bulgarian institutions that funded Todorov's research until 1989. I would like to think Todorov can survive the fall of historical materialism.

The first written information about the Kyrgyz is found in ancient Chinese chronicles. However, no Kyrgyz historian who wrote a history of the nation can be identified before the end of the 19th century. Of course, there were many relaters of genealogical legends and stories based mainly on folk heritage. This paucity of indigenous historiography is the reason that Kyrgyz history has been written mainly from external sources in various languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Iranian, Greek, Turkic, Mongolian, and Russian. Kyrgyz historians made their first attempts at publishing histories at the beginning of the 20th century under the influence of the reformist movement known as Jadidism. Some Kyrgyz intellectuals brought out works in Kazan, Ufa, and Orenburg. For example, books by Osmonaaly Sydyk uulu were published in Ufa in 1913 and 1915.

One of the two key principles of the Muעtazila was the emphasis on the omnibenevolence and justice of God (עadl). Among the issues that this raised was that of the origin of evil. That is, where does pain and suffering come from? For the Muעtazila, the principle of עadl demands that humans have freedom of choice and so have the ability to create evil, pain, and suffering. However, there is suffering, such as that caused by nature or illness, that is not the responsibility of humans and must be created by God. For this reason, even this suffering, although it appears bad, must be good because it comes from God. Heemskerk explores how עAbd al-Jabbar (d. 1024), a very important Muעtazili theologian, developed this theodicy by arguing that pain is divine assistance and that either here or in the hereafter the afflicted person will be compensated.

Eric Cornell, the Swedish ambassador to Turkey between 1990 and 1995, has produced a flawed and rather fragmented picture of Turkish politics, culture, and society. This book has no single thesis or unifying concept in its sixteen chapters about the different aspects of the Turkish state and society. Successive chapters seek to capture the complex dynamics of Kemalism, Islamic movements, Alevis, Kurds, the Armenian question, and the foreign policy of Turkey. Some of these chapters are more balanced and informed than others.

Not much has hitherto been written about עAyn al-Quzat al-Hamadani (1098–1131)—about his life, writings, social and political environment, incarceration in Baghdad, and tragic execution. Hamid Dabashi's book is, therefore, at first sight a desired contribution in the field of medieval studies. The author presents a portrait of עAyn al-Quzat as a “Persian individual” who belongs neither specifically to Sufi tradition nor to any other categorical appellations; rather, he is a free thinker who challenges Islamic sacred tenets about prophethood, sainthood, the nature of God, and so on. This gives a new picture of עAyn al-Quzat. The book is divided into eleven chapters, excluding the Introduction and Conclusion. Chapters 1–4 describe עAyn al-Quzat's life (his social, political, literary, and educational background); in Chapters 5–9, Dabashi gives a close reading of עAyn al-Quzat's oeuvre; and Chapters 10–11 are devoted to עAyn al-Quzat's death and his portrayal in hagiographies. Although Dabashi's approach is interesting, I have mixed feelings about the book, which I shall address shortly.

Colin Turner started writing Islam Without Allah as a biography of Muhammad Baqir Majlisi, the highly influential Shiעi scholar of the Safavid era. However, on deciding that not enough primary material was available for a book-length study, he decided to extend the topic and place Majlisi's life and thought within the broader context of the “victory of the exoteric over the esoteric” (p. viii). The book is evidence of continuing interest in Shiעi Islam and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the environment within which Majlisi's thought developed.

I received this book before 11 September 2001 and am reviewing it in the aftermath of that day. One could not imagine a more intense crucible in which to view a work on political Islam. Under the glare of the fiery collapse at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and with bombs falling on Taliban and al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, the work of an author and a reviewer requires even greater scrutiny.

In December 1913, the English traveler and Orientalist Gertrude Bell set out from Damascus on a four-month journey that looped southeast through Arabia to the city of Hayyil, then north to Baghdad, and back across the Syrian desert to Damascus. The Syrian portion of the passage was already familiar to her, and she was not the first European to follow the caravan routes through Arabia. Charles Doughty and Wilfred and Anne Blunt, among others, had preceded her. Nor did her efforts significantly advance European knowledge of the region. But her willingness to undertake such an arduous and dangerous journey without European companions won her a gold medal from the Royal Geographical Society and a reputation as an authority on the Middle East, subsequently reinforced by her role in intelligence for the Arab Bureau during World War I and in the establishment of the British-dominated Iraqi state afterward.

Gerald T. Elmore's Islamic Sainthood in the Fullness of Time: Ibn al-עArabi's Book of the Fabulous Gryphon marks another significant milestone in the ever-expanding realm of Sufi studies focused on the Andalusian master. Aside from the previous works of William Chittick, Michel Chodkiewicz, Claude Addas, Henry Corbin, James W. Morris, and so on, the past few years have seen the publication of some important translations of primary materials from Ibn al-עArabi. The most successful example of this, perhaps, is The Meccan Illuminations, a partial thematic translation of the Futuhat al-Makkiya. Elmore's task is significant because it represents the translation of a single text, the Kitab עAnqaء Mughrib. While obviously not on the same level of significance as either the Futuhat or the Fusus al-hikam, the current text is a minor classic of Ibn al-עArabi's that does shed some additional light on the great Sufi master's views on the nature of sainthood, particularly as articulated through the concepts of the seal of saints (also called the Mahdi in this text). Other sections of the book deal with the emergence of the world from the macrocosmic haqiqa al-muhammadiya (The Muhammadan Reality). A subsequent section deals with ten microcosmic “jewels” or pearls.

Regular readers of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung will certainly have come across the name of Navid Kermani during the past six years. Until last year, one could have followed developments in Iran by reading his articles, which were sympathetic to many opposition leaders whom he was allowed to interview on the spot. Experts also know Kermani from his doctoral thesis on the aesthetics of the Qurءan (Gott ist schön. Das ästhetische Erleben des Korans, Munich, 2000). He is now a long-term fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin and has used the first part of his stay to revise thoroughly some of his contributions in order to publish them as a book.

Constructing Boundaries is the latest entry in a growing body of revisionist scholarship on the history and political economy of Palestine under the British, contesting the once cherished notion that the Jewish and Palestinian communities of Palestine/Israel were best investigated and understood as isolated and autonomously developing entities. By focusing on one urban setting—Haifa, which during the Mandate period become Palestine's most important port and industrial center—this work provides new insight into how the industrial economy of Palestine shaped, and in turn was shaped by, the conflictual interaction of the two communities.

This book represents a breakthrough in Fatimid research. Brett challenges the prevalent approach that the Fatimids were a minority heretic sect on the fringes of Islam. To date, scholars have interpreted Fatimid history in terms of success and failure of their political and religious doctrine. This view is the outcome of the huge gap between the meager traces left of the Fatimids in Egypt's history following almost two hundred years of rule and the high aspirations set up in the doctrinal “platform” of the Ismaעili mission, which aimed toward universal fulfillment of the true faith and just rule. Brett, in contrast, suggests that Fatimid secular and religious history must be examined in terms of its impact on Islamic civilization and on Christian Europe of the Middle Ages. From this point of view, the appearance of the Fatimids in the 10th century was a major event.

The reader plunges into the whirlwind of revolution in this study of the satirical press that circulated after the Young Turks reinstated the Ottoman constitution in 1908. The brave new world depicted in the more than one hundred cartoons reprinted in this work is headed in unknown and often paradoxical directions: we see starving peasants confront fur-coated revolutionaries; dragon-headed despots leading Lady Liberty by the arm; cadaverous cholera victims patrolling the streets; and a woman steering an airplane above the revolutionary city of the future. The 1908 revolution will never look quite the same to readers familiar with the (still scant) treatment of the subject in the English language. Palmira Brummett addresses her innovative study not only to revisionist historians of the late Ottoman period, but also to a wider community of scholars interested in the history of publishing and the construction of identity in the Middle East, Europe, and elsewhere.

Some casual readers might be put off by the title of Robert Olson's latest offering, which sounds like the title of a Ph.D. dissertation. They will be badly mistaken if they do judge this book by its title and fail to take a closer look, for it is a treasure trove of data and ideas on the regional relations of one of the Middle East's and Europe's key actors. This book, a sequel of sorts to Olson's The Kurdish Question, is fundamentally a foreign-policy book offering an analysis, and interpretation, of Turkey's relations with four of its neighbors since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The book is likely to join the rank of other recent, high-quality publications on modern Turkey: Heinz Kramer's A Changing Turkey: The Challenge to Europe and the United States (2000), Morton Abramowitz's Turkey's Transformation and American Policy (2000), and Dietrich Jung and Wolfango Piccoli's, Turkey at the Crossroads: Ottoman Legacies and a Greater Middle East (2001), to name but three. What distinguishes Olson's book from these is that, although the reader is treated to a general but nevertheless insightful survey of Turkey's foreign relations, the focus of the study makes a persuasive case for spending time on two or more aspects of a country's foreign relations as a means of shedding light on the broader picture. Olson, relying on his deep knowledge and experience of the Kurdish issue and that of political Islam, turns these into nodes for a better appreciation of Ankara's relations with Iran, Syria, Israel, and Russia.

Sometimes the writing of history seems to float free of its grounding in archaeological and documentary data, offering (albeit necessary) abstractions when we require detailed and concrete records. This is not, however, the case in the volume under review. In Negotiating Cultures, the reader enjoys a coherent perspective on textual data in all their complexity and meticulously rendered: the discovery of a lost document in the Archives of the Crown of Aragon (Barcelona); edition and translation of texts; dating; identification of names of places and personalities; and all kinds of complementary tasks that lead to a historical contextualization and analytical study.

The book under review is a monograph on one of the most outstanding figures in the tradition of Islamic mysticism. Ruzbihan Baqli (1128–1209) is celebrated for numerous works he wrote in both Persian and Arabic, treating a range of subjects, from Qurءanic exegesis to prophetic traditions, Islamic law, theology, jurisprudence, language and grammar, Sufism, and biography. Ruzbihan is most renowned, however, for his extensive mystical writings, especially his עAbhar al-עashiqin (The Jasmine of Lovers), in which he meticulously outlines theories of mystical love, and his Sharh-i Shathiyyat, (Commentary on Ecstatic Saying), in which he offers a commentary on the ecstatic locutions of mystics, particularly Husayn Mansur Hallaj (executed 922). Ruzbihan belongs to the group of malāmatī (self-blame) mystics who, as described in this book, maintained “perfect obedience to the law in private and outrageous behavior designed to incur censure in public” (p. 10).

The Safavid period (1501–1736) boasts a rich and diverse body of chronicles that range from universal histories to general and dynastic ones. The scarcity of secondary literature on Safavid historical writing and the transformation of historiographical traditions poses fundamental challenges to historians of this period. Despite these obstacles, Sholeh Quinn has managed to produce a work of great value that fills a void in the field of Persian historical writing.

Intellectual history of modernism in Iran has proved to be a subject of lively academic interest. The role of Iranian exiles in late 19th and early 20th century, in particular, has drawn considerable scholarly attention. In recent years, the Iranian press in exile has also become a focus of academic scrutiny. In Germany, Anja Pistor-Hatam has studied the Iranian intellectual community in Istanbul around the newspaper Akhtar (Nachrichtenblatt, Informationsbörse und Diskussionsforum: Ahtar-e Estānbūl (1876–1896)—Anstöße zur frühen persischen Moderne [Münster, 1999]) and Keivandokht Ghahari's doctoral dissertation is concerned with ideas of nationalism and modernism among Iranian intellectuals in Berlin as reflected in the journals Kâveh, Iranshahr, and Ayandeh (Nationalismus und Modernismus in Iran in der Periode zwischen dem Zerfall der Qāğāren-Dynastie und der Machtfestigung Reżā Schah [Berlin, 2001]). In this context, the bibliography of Kâveh is thus a welcomed contribution.

Since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the colonization of most of the Arab world by Western powers during the first part of the 20th century, Arab intellectuals have been searching for answers to the many political and social questions—indeed, dilemmas—the Arab world has been facing. The appearance of communism at the beginning of the last century, embodying both an agenda for social justice and a Marxist methodology for historical analysis, appealed to many of them as a possible answer to these questions. Since then, many attempts have been made to show that there is compatibility between Islam and Marxist socialism—or, at least, that there is no incompatibility. The book under consideration, Min tarikh al-harakat al-fikriyyah fi-l-islam (The History of Intellectual Movements in Islam), is one of these attempts. Its author is considered by Professor Tamara Sonn, the translator of this book from the original Arabic, to be the first Arab to adopt the Marxist methodology in analyzing Islamic history. “Bandali Jawzi's work is . . . historically significant as the first full-scale Marxist analysis of the nature and development of Islamic though” (p. 16).

Harald Schüler's Die türkischen Parteien und ihre Mitglieder (Turkish Political Parties and Their Members) is based on the doctoral dissertation he submitted to the Institute for Oriental Studies at the University of Bamberg in 1998. Contrary to the book's title, Schüler's main research concerns the Social Democrat Populist Party (Sosyaldemokrat Halkci Partisi, SHP) and its predecessors, although one does find in the first one hundred pages a good survey of the parties that currently participate in Turkish elections and that have played a significant public role since the coup of 1980. In addition to this survey, Schüler presents other research that does not focus exclusively on the SHP, including a historical overview of the number of political-party members in Turkey, the parties' politics, and legal measures that aimed at centralizing parties in the 1960s and at controlling parties in the 1980s. This information gives readers an idea about the special problems that exist between Turkish parties and their members. In his Introduction, Schüler shows, for example, that Turkey's political parties have trouble registering members not only because of special legal procedures and the general problem in Turkey of obligatory registration, but also because the parties themselves disregard their members. In describing the parties' sources of financial support—especially since the development of state funding of parties in Republican Turkey—Schüler also points out that membership fees play a negligible role in a party's finances because the regulations concerning such fees are usually ignored.