One of the most remarkable surveys of Islamic history and civilization remains Marshall G. S. Hodgson's The Venture of Islam, published posthumously in 1974.1 For an introductory text, it has some bad faults—notably, a very dense style. Moreover, it has inevitably fallen out of date at many points. For example, one may admire Hodgson for coming up with his own critique of modernization theory in volume 3, but modernization theory has fallen so completely before other critiques that we hardly need Hodgson any longer. However, Hodgson has had some permanent effects on the way scholars approach Islamic history. For example, we may not have adopted many of his neologisms, but he certainly has made us self-conscious when we use the traditional terminology. The mere mention of “Jamaעi-Sunni,” “Islamicate,” “Arabist bias,” and other special terms immediately alerts us to the dangers of some customary approaches to Islamic history.

Today, the religion of Islam is most distinctly characterized by the emphasis it places on the transcendence of God.1 God's otherness (mukhālafa), it is said, is presupposed in Islamic thinking from the Qurءan.2 A review of the history of dogmatic development in Islam reveals, however, that during the formative period—that is, the period to about 9503—divine transcendence was only one alternative among several models attempting to explain God's unity. Indeed, it coexisted alongside its antithesis, “assimilation” (tashbīh), or as we term it, anthropomorphism.4 Muslim and Western scholars agree that, although the anthropomorphist model certainly existed—the various heresiographies attest to it—it existed only on the margins of Islam, in the extravagant fancies of a few deviant doctors.5 Thus, anthropomorphist ideas were relevant only marginally, if at all, to Islam's attempt at theological self-definition. Such, at least, is the current scholarly consensus. But how accurate is this reading of Islam's theological history?

Abu al-Thanaء Shihab al-Din al-Alusi (1802–54) was one of the most prominent ulama of mid-19th century Baghdad. In an era in which the Ottoman drive for modernization and centralization was changing the fabric of society and undermining the power and influence of the ulama class in large parts of the sultanate, al-Alusi was emerging as a powerful local alim, in terms of both his status as a scholar and his influence as a public figure. By the time of his death, the Alusis were becoming firmly established as a recognized ulama family, members of which would continue to play important roles in the intellectual and political life of Iraq and the Arab Mashriq. The grand Alusi, as Abu al-Thanaء al-Alusi was known, however, was, and still is, a controversial Muslim scholar whose intellectual genealogy and leanings seem to be difficult to categorize and too contradictory to pin down. Nothing illustrates the problematic of defining al-Alusi's intellectual and theological attitudes better, perhaps, than the way in which his two sons diverged. Whereas Nuעman Khayr al-Din al-Alusi (1836–99) became one of the most influential Salafi ulama in the late 19th century, his brother, Abdullah, was known as an alim with strong Sufi tendencies. Mahmud Shukri al-Alusi (1857–1924), the son of Abdullah, however, emerged as a highly regarded member of the growing Salafi circles of the major Arab urban centers in the beginning of the 20th century.

This article explores household formation among the Greek Orthodox population of a mixed village of Cappadocia inhabited by Muslims, as well. The village, Çukur, was located on the right bank of the river Kızılırmak, 49 kilometers north–northwest of Kayseri.1 I aim to show that complex forms of household formation were the main type of social organization and were especially durable over time, with a high average household membership. I attempt to clarify whether the predominance of extended households—which, as other studies have shown, is not that common in the Asian portion of the Ottoman Empire—was related to the Christian character of this section of the Çukur population, or whether the agricultural basis of the village economy played a more important role.

This article seeks to explain the generation, spread, and reproduction of post-secondary education in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank since the inception of this process in the 1950s and into the 1990s, with a focus on the period of Israeli military occupation. It is based on the findings, qualitative and quantitative, of extended socio-anthropological field research that was carried out in Dheisheh camp in the years 1992–95. The conceptual framework that instructed the research methodology and the interpretation of the findings sought to combine a political-economy approach, which accords centrality to the determinants of the “system” of power relationships—in this case, primarily those of the military-occupation regime—with an analysis of “human agency” or praxis, particularly the reorganization of the division of labor in the refugee family household over the years and generations. Accordingly, the article explores and traces the inter-relationships among (1) “system-imposed” barriers and obstacles to the acquisition of education by Dheisheh refugees and to their education-related job mobility; (2) family-based patterns of organization that developed around the education and employment opportunities of second- and third-generation refugees in the face of impeding structural conditions; (3) the long-range consequences of the resultant “education and labor process” for the transformation of socio-economic relationships within the family and the community.

The study of women in the Middle East was almost dormant for the quarter-century after 1945. Since then, it has flowered, especially in the United States but also elsewhere, and it seems useful to take stock via a review of some of the main English-language scholarly books of the past decade that are of special interest to historians, including brief mention of some relevant works in the social sciences. To keep this to a reasonable length, this review concentrates on books relevant to women's history since 1800 on Iran, Egypt, greater Syria, Turkey, and North Africa, and omits journalistic and biographical books, and the important work done in literature and the arts, and also in the books primarily about other subjects. It also omits articles that were not published in books not primarily about Middle Eastern women, gender, or the family. It does not claim to include or analyze every significant book, as significance is partly a question of individual judgment and scholarly interests. The article is limited to books published since 1990.

A good history of 20th century Yemen is something for which those of us researching that fascinating country have long been asking, and Paul Dresch's work in many ways fills the void. Within a clear chronological framework and in limited space he authoritatively outlines the political history of Yemen. He starts his account around 1900, just before Imam Yahya (1905–48) acceded to the imamate in the north. Meanwhile, the British extended their rule over the south from their base in Aden (occupied in 1830). The book ends with a discussion of the recent unification (1990) and the troubled decade that followed it. In an impressive tour de force, Dresch has written a history that is clearly informed by the large body of new scholarship in a variety of disciplines, as well as by his background in anthropology. Thus, he uses myriad illuminating details and quotations from original sources to paint a picture that is far more interesting and deeper than is commonly expected of historical textbooks. This is particularly evident in the first three chapters, which deal with background and with the 1950s. This part of the book seems particularly rich. It is therefore regrettable that Dresch accords the first half of the century only slightly more than a quarter of the book (the discussion of the 1950s starts on p. 58 of 214).

This is the best biography to date of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Kemal co-founded the Turkish Republic in 1923 and was its first president until his death in 1938 at age 58. Mango writes that Kemal “believed that the struggle for genuine independence should be waged by each nation for itself in the name of an overarching secular ideal of progress common to all. . . . His aim was not imitation but participation in a universal civilization” (p. xi). Kemal's views derived from those of late Ottoman ideologues—notably Namık Kemal and Ziya Gökalp (authors of significant studies that are not in Mango's bibliography, which, in this reviewer's opinion, would have enhanced his fine work). Kemal was “[a]bove all . . . a builder, the greatest nation-builder of modern times,” writes Mango on the first page of his engagingly written, well-documented book. He concludes that “Atatürk was a competent commander, a shrewd politician, a statesman of supreme realism. But above all he was a man of the Enlightenment. And the Enlightenment was not made by saints” (p. 528).

Itzchak Weismann's recent book on reform movements in late Ottoman Damascus illustrates how contemporary Islamic reform movements such as the Salafiyya have their origins in the efforts of Damascene religious men of learning and mysticism. These men attempted to construct reform movements that adhered to Islamic ideals while accommodating changed circumstances brought about by Western penetration into the region. Sufi ulama movements that made claims to both orthodoxy and reform in this early period provided much of the intellectual and social fodder for what Weismann calls modern Islamic movements. The combination of עilm and taṣawwuf, according to Weismann, allowed these early scholars to carve a reformist, yet orthodox, path that avoided the rigidity of the traditional ulama, who ignored mystic thought, and the popular Sufis, who neglected religious learning. Further, the story of these early reform movements illustrates how the path to modernity in the Muslim world is not simply the tale of an all-out adoption of Western rationalism by a centralized Ottoman bureaucracy; rather, it reflects a deep commitment by local Muslim intellectuals to contend with their changing world in terms that reflect the depth of their Islamic tradition. Through an investigation of the teachings and participants of three distinct reform movements in late Ottoman Damascus, Weismann illustrates the tensions within the movements and with the central Ottoman government—all of which pushed many of these reformers gradually to rely on more local avenues of expression, thereby paving the way for the rise of Arab nationalism.

The principle thesis of Jahangir Amuzegar's book is to examine the success of the nations in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in managing their oil wealth. OPEC countries came into a great deal of money as a result of the oil-price shocks of 1973–74 and 1979–80. Their newly gained wealth became one of the most celebrated stories of the 1970s and 1980s. What happened to all the wealth? Where did it go? Whom did it benefit? And finally, how does one measure the success or failure of different countries?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This edited volume presents recent directions in the growing scholarship on the visual arts, film, dance, and music from the Middle East. It is a much needed collection of eighteen essays and interviews that addresses several imbalances in academic scholarship and lay understanding of Middle Eastern expressive cultures. In part, the book is intended to counter negative images of the region by providing rich analysis of local art forms. The editor uses tarab, translated for the title as “enchantment,” to conceptualize the aesthetic particular to these forms. She argues that this aesthetic depends on a reflexive interaction among audience, performer, and art that is different from the distanced “appreciation” common to Western high art audiences. Images of Enchantment also aims to contribute to the growing academic literature on modernity in the Middle East. It does so by tracking the changes in expressive culture from the early 1900s to the present, and by looking at the relationship among Middle Eastern artistic production, Western art forms and technology, and political and economic changes. This analysis of the relationship between art and modernity is also intended as a counterpoint to the materials on “traditional art forms of the region” (p. 3). The editor also rightly states that the book's focus on arts such as music, dance, film, and painting offers a corrective to the massive scholarship on text-based art forms (e.g., poetry) and textuality more generally. Finally, the collection attempts to go beyond the confines of the academy by including authors who write for the popular press and short pieces by art producers reflecting on the political and social motivations of their craft.

Within the field of Middle East women's studies, many scholars have analyzed the veil in terms of opportunity and constraint, confinement and liberation, imposition and choice. Veiling has, for instance, freed young women from the constraints of patriarchal families and community social controls to enable them to move about in the public space, enter occupations that previously were off-limits to such young women, and even to join the military (albeit with sex segregation still intact). Scholars note that the veil has been a symbol of cultural identity, religious assertion, gender oppression, and sexual mystery. The book under review describes the extent of this versatility in the popular cultures and print materials of both East and West.