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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
Among revisionist works on the so-called ‘Abbāsid Revolution, which argue for an Arab ethnic character of the constituency of the revolution, M. A. Shaban's stands out as the most influential. Shaban's methodology and conclusions have been generally and specifically criticized. Patricia Crone aptly remarks: ‘Shaba's imaginative efforts are visible on every page [of] his books’; and, Elton Daniel, in his critique of Shaban's interpretation of the word taqādum, perceptively comments: ‘Instead of basing his theory on the meaning of the word, he seems to have simply invented a meaning on the basis of his theory.’ To these ‘imaginative efforts’ and ‘inventions’ also belongs Shaban's treatment of the source material on the ‘Battle of the Pass’ and its aftermath.
2 The authenticity of the alleged early relationship between the ՙAbbāsid dynasty and the revolutionary organization has been brought to question by: Crone, Patricia, ‘On the meaning of ՙAbbāsid call to al-Ridā’, in The Islamic world from classical to modern times, essays in honour Bernard Lewis, ed. Bosworth, C. E. et al. (Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1989), 95–111Google Scholar; and Agha, Saleh Said, ‘The agents and forces that toppled the Umayyad Caliphate’ (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, 1993), (henceforth, Agha, ‘Agents’), especially, 192–256Google Scholar.
3 Modern scholarship is divided, with respect to the ethnic identity of the constituents of the Revolution, into two broad schools. The first, or ‘classical’, school vouches for a predominantly Iranian identity of the Revolution, and is best represented by: Wellhausen, Julius, The Arab kingdom and its fall, tr. Weir, M. G. (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1927)Google Scholar; also Van Vloten, G., al-Siyādah al-ՙArabiyyah wa al-Shīՙ ah wa al-Isrā'; iliyyāt fī ՙAhd Banī Umayyah, tr. Hasan, H. I. and Ibrāhīm, M. Z., (Cairo, 1934Google Scholar; original: Recherches sur la domination arabe, le chi'isme et les croyances messianiques sous les Omayyades, Amsterdam, 1894). The second, or ‘revisionist’, school which dominated the field in the last several decades, vouches for a predominantly Arab identity of the Revolution, and is represented, along with M. A. Shaban, by: Dennett, Daniel, ‘Marwān ibn Muhammad—The passing of the Umayyad Caliphate’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1939)Google Scholar; Omar, Farouk, The ‘Abbāsid Caliphate, 132/750–170/786 (Baghdad: The National Printing and Publishing Co., 1969)Google Scholar; Sharon, Moshe, Black banners from the east (The Max Schloessinger Memorial Series, Monographs II, Jerusalem and Leiden: the Hebrew University—E. J. Brill, 1983)Google Scholar; and Sharon, , Revolt, the social and military aspects of the ‘Abbāsid revolution (The Max Schloessinger Memorial Series, Monographs V, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1990)Google Scholar. The evolution of the controversy has been progressively and cumulatively depicted in the many reviews and critiques offered by more recent authors of their predecessors’ works. Cf. Dennett, ‘Marwān’, 1–5 of the preface; Omar, 57–8; M. A. Shaban, xiii–xv; Daniel, Elton, The political and social history of Khurasan under ‘Abbasid rule, 747–820 (A publication of the Iran-American Foundation, Minneapolis and Chicago: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1979), 60–61Google Scholar, n3 Lassner, Jacob, The shaping of ‘Abbāsid rule (Princeton Studies on the Near East, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 3–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lassner, , Islamic revolution and historical memory (American Oriental Series, 66, New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society, 1986), xi–xii, n2Google Scholar; Agha, ‘Agents’, 7–13, 16, and passim; Daniel, Elton L., 'The ‘Ahl al-taqādum’ and the problem the constituency of the ՙAbbāsid Revolution in the Merv Oasis’, in Journal of Islamic Studies, 7/2 (1996), 150–179CrossRefGoogle Scholar, (henceforth, Daniel, ‘Taqādum’), especially, 151–8 and the notes, which depict an excellent review of the literature on the issue.
4 Shaban, M. A., The ՙAbbāsid Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970)Google Scholar.
5 Hawting, G. R., The first dynasty of Islam—The Umayyad Caliphate a.d. 661–750 (London Sydney: Croom Helm, 1986), xix–xx, 124Google Scholar; Agha, ‘Agents’; Crone, Patricia, ‘Were the Qays Yemen of the Umayyad period political parties?’, in der Islam, 71/1 (1994), 1–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar (henceforth, Crone, ‘Qays and Yemen’. Thanks are due to Dr Crone for bringing this valuable article to my attention. I had not seen it when the prototype version of this paper was prepared and read at MESA 1998); Daniel, ‘Taqādum’.
6 Respectively, Crone, ‘Qays and Yemen’, 25; Daniel, ‘Taqādum’, 160.
7 That component is the letter caliph Hishām wrote to his governor in Khurasan, in the wake of the battle (see infra); Shaban's treatment of the text of the letter was criticized by: Crone, Patricia, Slaves on horses—the evolution of the Islamic polity (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980), 229, n266CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Agha, ‘Agents’, 319–21; Crone, ‘Qays and Yemen’, 33–4.
8 Shaban himself acknowledges the fact; he states that the figure 30,000, which he computed as the size of the Arab army after the Battle of the Pass (infra), ‘would represent the great majority of the Arab tribesmen in Khurāsān’, 115. Other scholars have also recognized the limited Arab presence in the province: Wellhausen, 427f n3; Sharon, Banners, 65–6; al-ՙAlī, Sālih Ahmad, ‘Istītān al-ՙArab fī Khurāsān’, in Majallat Kulliyat al-Ādāb wa al-‘Ulūm, Baghdād, III (June 1958), 36–83Google Scholar, see, 40; Agha, Saleh Said, ‘The Arab population in Hurasān during the Umayyad period—some demographic computations’, Arabica, XLVI (1999), 211–229, (henceforth, Agha, ‘Population’)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Shaban xv, see also 116–17.
10 Shaban manipulates two of Madā'inī's accounts: in the first account (al-Tabarī, Muhammad b. Jarīr, Ta'rikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk, ed. De Geoje, M. J. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1879–1901, rep. 1964), 2: 1022–1032)Google Scholar, Shaban (46–7) finds what he calls ‘seeds of assimilation’; he (116–17) singles out an alleged complaint by a disgruntled faction of the Banū Tamīm (who had been fighting the governor) accusing the governor of subjecting them to the ‘authority of the dahāqīn in matters of taxation’; and he accepts the complaint as a fact reflecting a universally prevailing situation among the Arabs in the year 78/697, which he then considers as a ‘precedent [which] was stretched to cover the new situation’ [in the aftermath of the Battle of the Pass]. In a flagrant example of his disregard to the letter and spirit of the source material, on which he so decisively relies, Shaban rotates Madā'inī's account (Tabari, 2: 1688–89) of Nasr b. Sayyār's 121/739 fiscal reform 180 degrees along its axis. In the history remade according to Shaban, Nasr's speech and Madā'inī's epilogue, which unmistakably speak to and of non-Arab converts, mysteriously become a ‘reform which was intended to remove the grievances of the Arab Settlers in Merv over the abuses of the taxation system imposed on them by the dahāqīn of Merv’ (Shaban, 129). A fullyfledged refutation of this phase of Shaban's argument is in preparation.
11 Tabari, 2: 1532–59; Ibn al-Athir, 'Izz al–Din, al-Kāmil fī al-Tdrīkh, ed. Tornberg, C. J. (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1871 (rep. Beirut, Dār Sadir, 1965)), 5: 162–171Google Scholar. Another tradition is in Ibn A'tham, Ahmad al-Kūfī, Kitāb al-Futūh (Haydarabad: Dāirat al-Ma'ārif al-'Uthmāniyyah, 1968–1975, rep., Beirut, Dār al-Nadwah al-Jadīdah, N.D.), 8: 100–106Google Scholar. The battle is also briefly reported in: Khalifah b. Khayyāt, , Ta'rīkh Khalifah b. Khayyāt, ed. Zakkār, Suhayl (Damascus, 1968), 2: 505Google Scholar; al-Dhahabī, Muhammad b. Ahmad Shams al-Dīn, Tārīkh al-Islām, ed. Tadmurī, 'U.'A.S. (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-'Arabī, 1990), vol. 101–120H, 307Google Scholar; Kathīr, Ibn, ‘Imād al-Din Abū al-Fidā’, al-Biddyah wa al-Nihāyah (Cairo: Matba'at al-Sa'ādah, N.D.), 9: 303–304Google Scholar; Ibn Taghrībirdī, Jamāl al-Dīn Abū al-Mahāsin, al-Nujūm al-Zāhirah fī Mulūk Misr wa al-Qāhirah (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub, 1929), 1: 272Google Scholar. Al-Balādhurī, Ahmad b. Yahyā, Futūh al-Buldān, ed. al-Munajjid, S. D. (Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahdah al-Misriyyah, 1957), 3: 527Google Scholar, succinctly paraphrased the measures which caliph Hishām took in the aftermath of the battle.
12 The history of al-Tabarī, xxv—The end of expansion, tr. Blankinship, Khalid Yahya (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989Google Scholar; henceforth, Blankinship, Tr.), 70–94; Blankinship, Khalid Yahya, ‘The reign of Hishām (105–25/724–43) and the collapse of the Umayyads’, (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Washington, 1988)Google Scholar; henceforth, Blankinship, ‘Hishām')’, 273–85, also recounts and analyses the battle and its aftermath. The combination from both aims at brevity and at emphasizing the universality of the significations of Tabarī's Arabic diction (where the quotations are from Blankinship's account in ‘Hishām’) and to bring the original to light, where Blankinship, in his account, contradicted or deviated from his own translation of the original (where the quotations are from Blankinship, Tr.). Other modern scholars also referred to this battle and its impact. Barthold, Wilhelm, Turkestan down to the Mongol invasion, 3rd edn., tr Minorsky, T., ed. Bosworth, C. E. (London: Luzac and Company, 1968), 189–191, 137–8, mentions the battle and emphasizes Arab losses; Wellhausen, 460–1Google Scholar; and Gibb, H. A. R., The Arab conquests in Central Asia, rep. from the edition of 1923, (New York: AMS Press, 1970), 73–75, 78–9Google Scholar; both basically recount Tabari's report—the first briefly, with illuminating remarks on dates; the latter offers an animated discussion, with insights illuminating the stage, and with significant remarks regarding the fate of the reinforcements sent from Iraq, after the battle, to man the Samarqand garrison. Kennedy, Hugh, The Prophet and the age of the Caliphates (London and New York: Longman, 1986), 109–110Google Scholar, assimilates the event and its major consequence within the overall geopolitical situation. Zakeri, Mohsen, Sāsānid soldiers in early Muslim society (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz Verlag, 1995), 248–249Google Scholar, refers to aspects of the ethnic composition of al-Junayd' army.
13 Blankinship, ‘Hishām’, 273–7 (Tabarī, 2: 1532–45, 1559).
15 Blankinship, Tr., 89 (Tabarī, 2: 1552–53). The shift here, from quoting Blankinship's account to quoting his translation, is instigated by a subtle, but serious and extremely consequential discrepancy between his account of the story and his translation of the report that carried it. Tabari's which Blankinship faithfully translates, as ‘he sent with them’, means just that—that al-Junayd sent all, not some, of the 20,000 fresh troops to Samarqand. In his account, however, Blankinship, ‘Hishām’, 283, says that al-Junayd ‘detailed some of these fresh troops … [to] Samarquand’. By this twist, Blankinship puts his reading somewhere between Tabari's pristine text and Shaban's manipulated text; he says (ibid., n746): ‘Shaban overstates the case in saying that no Iraqis went to Samarqand even temporarily.’
16 The pretentious title of Shaban's crucial chapter viii, 114–37.
17 ibid., 114.
18 Consider, in Tabarī, the years 75, 76, 79, 92, 99, where Khurāsān is scarcely mentioned. The years which passed with nothing reported on Khurāsān besides internal Arab conflicts are many more.
19 Tabarī, 2: 1563.
20 Shaban, 114.
21 Al-Junayd and his exhausted army could not have settled down in Marw before the winter of the year 731–732 had sat in. Cf., Wellhausen, n460, n461; Blankinship, ‘Hishā’, 274, n721, 282.
22 Tabarī, 2: 1553.
23 ibid., 2: 1544.
24 ibid., 2: 1552.
25 ibid., 2: 1545.
26 ibid., 2: 1549.
27 Wellhausen, 461.
28 Gibb, 75.
29 Shaban, 114. He cites as his reference Tabarī (2: 1554). This page is consumed by poetry irrelevant to the issue; and Madā 'inī's account had ceased at the very beginning of p. 1553. Yet, allowing for printing errors, search as you will in Mada 'inī's subject account, no mention of Marw will be spotted except on p. 1544, where it relates al-Junayd's immediate evacuation of the families of the fighters, who had fallen with Sawrah, from Samarqand to Marw. If this is the ‘other part of the tradition’ to which Shaban refers, I fail to see the connection, since this evacuation had happened before Hishām received the news and before sending the reinforcements.
30 ibid., 114–15.
31 Tabarī, 2: 81; Balādhurī, Futuh 3: 507.
32 There were 7,000 of them in the year 96/714–15, Tabari, 2: 1291.
33 His tribal affiliation, 'al-‘Amirī’, in Tabarī, 2: 1552, line 14, is most probably a scribal corruption of ‘al-Ghāmidī‘, ibid., 2: 1582, line 7.
34 ibid., 2: 1582, 1552.
35 No source accounts, for example, for the whereabouts of 18,000 Kūfans, the difference between the 25,000 whom Ziyād is reported to have deployed to Khurāsan in 51/671, and the 7,000 present in t he province in 96/714–15; nor for the move which brought in the excess 15,000 Basrans. And we do not know about the move or moves which removed from the province more than 57,000, the difference between the 100,000 Arabs with Yazīd b. al-Muhallab in 98/716–717, and Ibn A'tham's figure of 43,000, which Shaban accepts as comprising ‘all the Muslims in Khurasan at the beginning of Junayd's campaign’. Shaban, 115; Ibn A'tham, 8: 104–5. For the preceeding figures: Tabarī, 2: 81, 156, 1291, 1318; Baladhuī, Futūh, 507.
36 Shaban, 115.
37 Gibb, 79.
38 Barthold, 191.
39 Gibb, 78; Wellhausen, n468.
40 Tabarī, 2: 1532, line 10.
41 ibid., lines 10‐11.
42 ibid., lines 17–2: 1533, lines 1–2.
43 ibid., 2: 1533, lines 2–3. Actually, since 51/671–72, when Ziyād b. Ab¯i Sufyān sent 50,000 muqātilah to settle the province with their families as a permanent garrison (Tabarī, 2: 81, 156; Baladhurī, Futūh, 507), through Qutaybah's days, when the diwān enrollment stood at 54,000 men, of whom 7,000 were mawātī (Tabarī, 2: 1291; Balādhurī, Futūh, 520), up to the time of the Revolution, it will be found that, whenever an estimation is possible, the size of dīwān enrolment would hover around the figure 50,000. Cf. Agha, ‘Population’.
44 Ibn A'tham, 8: 103, line 4.
45 Tabarī, 2: 1540, lines 3, 10.
46 ibid., line 11.
47 Ibn A'tham, 8: 103, lines 8–14.
48 ibid., 8: 104, lines 10ff.
49 Shaban, 115, lines 12–13; Blankinship, ‘Hishām’, 276, line 5.
50 Cf. Blankinship, ‘Hisham’, n724, 275.
51 Tabarī, 2: 1540, line 11; 1541, lines 14–15.
52 Throughout the report, Madā 'inī specifies numbers (7, 80, 190, 700) and names of some of the fallen. If these numbers do not overlap, they add up to approximately 1,000 men; ibid., 2: 1536–8,1542–3.
53 ibid., 2: 1559, line 1.
54 Blankinship, ‘Hishām’, n730, 276, contends that Shaban ‘did not realize the full extent of the disaster.’ This is an understatement.
55 Shaban, 112–13.
56 Ibn A'tham, 8: 104–5.
57 Shaban, 115.
58 ibid. Through these arbitrary choices, Shaban avoids reaching a figure which would be too small for his purpose. Had he subtracted from Ibn A'tham's 43,000 Ibn A'tham's 20,000, then his own 2,500 non-Arabs, Shaban would have been left with 20,500. The absurdity of the suggestion that Hishām meant to discharge 15,000 men from such an already small force would be magnified.
59 The context of Madā 'inī's report, ‘wakāna mimman salima min ashāb Sawrah alf rajul’(Tabarī, 2: 1546, lines 4–5; cf. 1541, lines 14–15), does not allow for the assumption that salima (escaped unharmed) is a scribal corruption of aslama (converted to Islam), yet, Shaban (113, line 28) reads it as aslama, without even mentioning the absurd assumption. Saqah, in usage, in the lexica, and everywhere it appeared in Madā 'inī's account (Tabarī, 2: 1546, line 17; 1549, line 16; and passim), means the rear of the army. It has nothing to do with feet, foot-soldiers or infantry—at least not necessarily. Yet, Shaban (113, line 25) construes it as ‘infantry’, and takes it for granted that the infantry was formed from mawālī only.
60 Shaban, 115.
61 An integral reading of Ibn A'tham's report and figures would indicate that substantial numbers of the natives of Samarqand comprised the majority of Sawrah's force (see below, notes 76–9). Scattered references in Tabarī to the mawalī in al-Junayd's army, and to specific prominent individuals amongst them, permeate Madā 'inī's report (Tabarī, 2: 1538, lines 11–12; 1541, line 15; 1544, lines 9–12; 1550, lines 5–6, 11; 1551, lines 10, 13; 1552, line 3). Of special significance are two leaders of the mawāl¯i. Ibrāhīm b. Bassām, the mawlā of the Banū Layth, under whose leadership al-Junayd, before crossing the Oxus, had despatched 10,000 men to an unspecified destination (ibid., 2: 1532, lines 10–11); and al-Bakhtarī b. Mujāhid, the mawlā of the Banū Shaybān, whose absence (obviously at the head of a significant garrison) in Harāt had been cited, by al-Majashshir b. Muzāhim al-Sulamī, as one of the crucial factors (equivalent to the absence of Ibrāhīm with his 10,000 men) which ought to have detained al-Junayd from crossing the Oxus with much less than 50,000 men (ibid., 2: 1532, line 17; 1533, line 3). Of all the prominent mawātī, at least these two were not merely prominent individuals. Al-Bakhtarī would still figure prominently in the subsequent history of the province and of the Revolution (cf. Blankinship, Tr, n326, 81), as would Ibrāhīm. Ibrāhīm was a central figure in an extremely influential clan of mawālī. His brother, al-Fadl, was one of al-Junayd's staff (Tabarī, 2: 1544, line 11); his son, Ahlam, was one of those to whom the slaying of the celebrated revolutionary leader, Qahtabah b. Shabīb, was attributed (ibid., 3: 18; al-Balādhurī, Ahmad b. Yahyā, Ansāb al-Ashrāf, İİI, ed. al-Dūrī, ՙA. ՙA. (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1978), 137)Google Scholar; his other son, in whose protection Ahlam was alleged to have killed Qahtabah, was Bassām, one of the revolutionary leaders who later led an anti-ՙAbbāsid insurgency (Ảnonymous, Akhbār al-Dawlah al-ՙAbbāsiyyah wa-fīh Akhbār al-ՙ'Abbās wa waladih, ed. al-Dūrī, ՙA. ՙA. and al-Muttalibī, ՙA. J. (Beirut: Dār al-Talī ՙah, 1971), 321–322, 351, 374, 377Google Scholar; Tabarī, 2: 1959, 1996, 3: 18, 21, 37, 48,75–6, 83; cf., Blankinship, Tr., 81, n301, n325).
At least these two men, from amongst other mawātī notables, were leaders of sizeable contingents. Did they lead contingents comprising Arabs, mawālī, or both? In this context, we do not need to give a definitive answer. All we need to decide that al-Junayd's army was truly mixed is to recall that, in the year 96/714–15, the mawātī had formed a separate contingent of the dīwan comprising 7,000 men led by one of their own, Hayyān al-Nabatī (Tabarī, 2: 1291); and that Hayyān's son, Muqātil, was chosen, from amongst the leaders of the loyal Umayyad forces, to lead the effort to defend Balkh during the Revolution (ibid., 2: 1998). Cf. Zakeri, 248–9.
62 Shaban, 115.
63 See n8.
64 See n43.
65 Cf. Al-ՙAlī, Ṣālih Aḥmad, al-Tanẓīmāt al-Ijlimā ՙiyyah wa al-lqtiṣādiyyah fī al-Baṣrah fī al-Qarn al-Awwal al-Hijrī, 2nd ed. (Beirut: Dar al-Ṭalī ՙah, 1969), 162–165.Google Scholar
66 This would not have been a unique case. Umayyad pragmatic policies of inclusion-exclusion have almost always responded to the needs of the moment. Consider, for example, Ziyād b. Abī Sufyān's increase of the enrolment in the dīwān of Baṩrah, from 40,000 to 80,000 muqātilah (al-Balādhurī, Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā, Ansāb al-Ashrāf, iv A, ed. Schloessinger, Max, rev. M. J. Kister (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1971), 190)Google Scholar; and his son ՙUbayd Allāh's increase from 70,000 to 80,000 (Ṭabarī, 1: 2496; 2: 433).
67 Shaban, 115.
68 ibid., 30–1.
69 abari, 2: 866–72.
70 Cf. Blankinship, ‘Hishām’, 276, n730.
71 Shaban, 115.
72 ibid.
73 ibid.
74 ibid.
75 See n59.
76 Ibn A ՙtham, 8: 100, lines 7–8.
77 ibid., 8: 103, lines 7–9.
78 Shaban, xviii–xix.
79 See n61.
80 abarī, 2: 1354, lines 2–3; cf. Agha, Saleh Said, ‘A viewpoint of the Murji'a in the Umayyad period: evolution through application’, Journal of Islamic Studies, 8/1 (1997) 1–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see 19.
81 Ṭabari, 2: 1354, lines 8–9.
82 Bulliet, Richard, Conversion to Islam in the medieval period: an essay in quantitative history (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 43–44, and nl.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
83 For a discussion of Bulliet's method and findings, see Agha, ‘Agents’, 269–73.
84 Cf. Agha, ‘Agents’, 267–316.
85 Unlike Shaban, the shrewdest ‘revisionist’, Daniel C. Dennett, the forerunner, and Moshe Sharon recognize the phenomenon but fail to take stock of its potential implications (Dennett, Daniel C., Conversion and the poll tax in early Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950), 119, 128CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sharon, Revolt, 28). That mass conversion was the order of the times is a fact which other scholars recognized and took stock of (Wellhausen, 457; Frye, Richard N., ‘The role of Abu Muslim in the 'Abbasid revolt’, in: Muslim World, XXXVII (1947), 28 38, especially 31)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
86 Shaban, 115–16.
87 Tabarī, 2: 1545, lines 11–14.
88 Ṡection ‘A’ above.
89 Balādhurī, Futūh, 527.
90 Gibb, 75; Blankinship, Tr., 82, n333; Blankinship, ‘Hishām’, 276 and n730; Crone, ‘Qays and Yemen’, 33–4; Crone, Slaves on horses, n266; Agha, ‘Agents’, 319–21.
91 See the root ‘gh.y.a.’ in: Ibn al–Athīr, al-Nihāyah, 3: 180, line 12; Ibn Manzūr, Lisān al-ՙArab, 15: 143; Lane, 6: 2312.
92 Baladhurī, Fulūh, 527.
93 Shaban, 116.
94 ibid., 117.
95 ibid., xiv.