During commentary at a conference recently in Istanbul, a well-known scholar of the late Ottoman Empire blurted out something to the effect that Yemen had been under “continuous Ottoman occupation since the 16th century.” To my chagrin, when I looked around, the audience did not seem to react to such a statement. The failure of the expert audience to note a colleague's mistake reinforced my long-held suspicion that the history of Yemen, and the history of Ottoman affairs in Yemen in particular, is a misunderstood, unappreciated, and even forgotten area of study. It is in this context of academic neglect that one begins to appreciate Frédérique Soudan's massive work.

Iranians have often been criticized for overestimating the role played by external forces in the domestic history of their country; they also have been accused of attributing “occult powers” especially to the British and of cultivating a paranoid style in political discourse. Yet as studies of early-20th-century Iran have repeatedly shown, such myths, far from being purely irrational fantasies, had their origins in actual historical realities. In the first quarter of the 20th century, British and British Indian military officers and civilian officials were widely and intimately involved in Iran's political and economic life, both in Tehran and in the provinces, providing levels of political, financial, and military support to their clients, which profoundly affected the political landscape and rearranged local, national, and regional balances of power.

Breastfeeding, as Avner Giladi amply demonstrates, is far more than the simple matter of providing nutrition to an infant. Who breastfeeds, for how long, and with what kind of encouragement, respect, and reward can tell us much about social attitudes toward infancy and the mother–child bond, as well as the value placed on motherhood in general. The extent to which the father alternately provides general support for mother and child or controls and limits the breastfeeding relationship, for example, can shape the father–child and husband–wife relationship in the long term. And a breastfeeding mother, as the primary nurturer of a child, finds herself in a unique position in relation to her children, her husband, and society in general: it is a moment pregnant with possibilities for the enhancement of a woman's power. A close study of breastfeeding, then, draws our attention to a society's attitudes toward young children, the construction of the family in relation to the needs of these children, and the ways in which relations between a husband and wife are informed by the rights and responsibilities surrounding this act of pivotal importance to the survival of the species, particularly in the days before pasteurization and infant formula, when the absence of a mother or wet nurse spelled almost certain death for a baby.

The position of Jews in Arab societies is an arena of enduring controversy in Middle East scholarship. In the hands of some writers, the persecution of the Jews by a Muslim majority serves as a central theme and an implicit justification for the Zionist position. Other, more measured studies have emphasized a dynamic of relatively peaceful coexistence, if not always harmony, that presents a more complex and, at the same time, more convincing picture of Jewish life in the Middle East. In The Jews of Lebanon, Kirsten Schulze takes up a position in the second camp in her presentation of a case study in which two large Christian and Muslim communities in a multi-confessional society provide the backdrop.

The Places Where Men Pray Together is a monumental work of scholarship. This is the most complete study ever done of the urban-settlement pattern of North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Inner Asia in the period from the 7th to the 10th century. Basing his work on the 10th-century geographer al-Maqdisi, further informed by a vast array of sources, including the geographies of al-Istakhri and Ibn Hawqal, and with a full command of the scholarly literature, Paul Wheatley has given us the most comprehensive, profoundly detailed, and clearly articulated discussion of the physical location, historic settlement patterns, and institutions of Middle East Islamic cities. This work follows upon Wheatley's seminal work in Chinese history, The Pivot of the Four Quarters, which provided a new theory of the origin of Chinese cities as shrine centers. One can only stand in awe before Wheatley's extraordinary linguistic, historical, and cultural range. Sadly, Wheatley died before this work was published.

In this book, Judith Tucker attempts to understand how gender differences, family relations, and sexuality were legally constructed in Syria and Palestine during the 17th and 18th centuries. At the same time, she explores the avenues through which women were able to exert agency and control their fates in a predominantly patriarchal social and legal environment.

The Urdu novelist and short story writer Intizar Hussayn, in his story “Ihsan Manzil,” describes the anxiety produced in a northern Indian Muslim community when a magazine arrives addressed to the daughter of a respectable household. Set in the early part of the 20th century, the story depicts how the Muslim woman's name on the envelope, exposed as it was to the whole world, became a metaphor for modernity, the public, and the outside penetrating Muslim moral boundaries and domestic ethos. Similar to Hussayn's incisive depiction of changes within Indian Muslim households, Gail Minault gives us a sense of how religious reform, expanding opportunities for education for both genders, and colonial modernization in the first half of the 20th century undermined and challenged traditional aspects of middle-class Muslim life in northern India.

This handsomely bound, well-written volume (remarkably devoid even of typographical errors) on the period from 1914 to the end of the century continues a series of works by Martin Sicker that deal with the Middle East from early antiquity on. In fact, the volume deals almost exclusively with international politics—what the author calls the area's “geopolitical history” (p. 1)—and is far from providing comprehensive coverage of that. Aside from the Conclusion and Introduction, the book consists of twenty short chapters (some of which are extremely sketchy considering the nature of the subjects being dealt with) in chronological order, starting with “Britain and the Arabs, 1914–20” (some other aspects of this period were covered in the preceding volume) and ending with “Conflict in the Persian Gulf Region, 1973–99.” The bulk of the book deals with the Arab–Zionist/Israeli conflict and matters pertaining to Egypt and Arab Asia, although there are chapters on Iran, on oil in the period leading up to 1947, and even on Transcaucasia in 1917–21.

This concise book concerns 18th-century Basra and its connections both within the western Indian Ocean region and toward the Ottoman urban world, extending all the way to Istanbul. The author is a former student of Hanna Batatu, the well-known scholar of Iraqi history. Hala Fattah (The Politics of Regional Trade in Iraq, Arabia and the Gulf, 1745–1900) is another influence. The works of M. N. Pearson and C. A. Bayly also help shape this study. The bases of Abdullah's solid research include the India Office Records in London, New Delhi, and Mumbai, and Ottoman records in the Basbakanlik Arsivi in Istanbul, as well as Arabic and Persian sources.

This book is unique in several ways. It is the product of unprecedented research collaboration between a Muslim feminist female anthropologist (Ziba Mir-Hosseini), based and educated in the West, and a Muslim feminist male cleric (Hujjat al-Islam Sayyid Muhsin Sa[ayin]id Zadih), based and educated in Islamic seminaries in Iran. For the first time, the Qom seminary (Hawzih)—the center of religious and political power of Shi[ayin]i clerics—opened its doors to a feminist female scholar, letting her engage in a face-to-face encounter on gender issues with several prominent Islamic ulema (clerical scholars). Much of the book is a transcription of dialogues between Mir-Hosseini and eminent clerics in the Iranian religious seminaries in the city of Qom. The central concern of these dialogues is the way religious knowledge is produced in Shi[ayin]i Islam and the complex relationship among the believer, religious authority, and political action.

Mandatory Palestine experienced changes in land tenure and land administration that had tremendous social, economic, and political impact on the state and its transformation after 1948. Warwick Tyler's State Lands and Rural Development in Mandatory Palestine reflects a growing interest among historians in the Mandate period. It is the first book to focus on British policy on “state land,” an issue that was hotly debated by Palestinian leaders and proponents of Jewish colonization at the time.

Nina Berman's Orientalismus, Kolonialismus und Moderne consists of a theoretical Introduction and a chapter each on three modern German-language authors who visited, and wrote extensively about, the Middle East: Karl May, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Else Lasker-Schüler. The argument is based on the analysis of literary texts, but Berman also weaves in discussions of the authors' own travels in the Near East, a wide range of contemporary Orientalist texts, and post-colonial theory. Thus, although her book primarily addresses specialists in German literature, it will also be of interest to anyone concerned with Orientalism and the functioning of imperialist and colonialist ideology.

This volume provides a timely, useful contribution to an under-studied region of the world. Substantial work on Libya and Sudan exists, but Chad remains enigmatic. Fortunately, Millard Burr and Robert Collins are well placed to offer an analysis of the three countries and their complex interactions in the post-independence era. Burr worked for years in the Office of the Geographer of the U.S. Department of State, specializing on Libyan–Chadian relations. For his part, Collins is an academic historian who has written studies of the Upper Nile. Given its level of painstaking detail and specificity, Africa's Thirty Years War may not be useful to undergraduates and generalists seeking an initial understanding of the region's history and politics. It is, however, valuable to specialists and experts on the region in search of a useful historical reference, especially on the central role that Chad has played in the region's geo-strategic dynamics.

In Sanctioning Iran: Anatomy of a Failed Policy, Hossein Alikhani has successfully organized a useful source that includes various ways to understand the American sanction policy. Numerous aspects of the policy have been elaborated in a book that contains ten chapters, a bibliography, and an index. The book provides an excellent and up-to-date, systematic accounting of the sanction's process.

The scholarly attitudes toward the socio-historical diversity of Turkey vary from benign neglect or indifference to confusion and tension. Quite common among state-centric scholars (e.g., Bernard Lewis, Stanford Shaw, and Feroz Ahmad) is insensitivity toward religious, ethnic, and regional differences, as well as a general lack of interest in the connection between domestic and foreign policy. These attitudes have recently been tempered by the work of new scholars such as Nilufer Gole, Jenny White, and Michael Meeker.

From rather different perspectives Paul Rivlin and Ray Bush sound alarm bells about the economic plight of the Arab world, which may contribute to serious political instability and—after 11 September 2001—to more recruits for the Usama bin Ladens of this world. Both authors raise serious criticisms of the economic-reform programs propagated in the region by international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Rivlin is a mainstream economist from an Israeli university who is sympathetic to the latest strands of World Bank thinking, whereas Bush is a more radical skeptic from a British university who is grounded in the details of the political economy of Egyptian agriculture.

The Pure and the Powerful, the second book by the Oxford-based anthropologist Nadia Abu-Zahra, is a case study of the rituals performed at the Cairo shrine of al-Sayyida Zaynab, patron saint of women, during the anniversaries of her birth and death. Considered by many to be the granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad, al-Sayyida Zaynab is the epitome of purity and has the power to heal the sick. Abu-Zahra sees religious practices at the shrine as a demonstration of Islam and Egyptian society's “integrated wholeness.” In short, the beliefs and practices of common people, intellectual elites, men, and women are more analogous than previously thought.

The time is certainly ripe for a new history of Afghanistan. Nearly twenty-five years of war have laid bare previously hidden contestation of the meaning of past events. Intellectuals, either in exile or under new (if short-lived) authorities not bound to the orthodoxies of the old regime, have reissued old works and penned new ones, proposing new interpretations and presenting new facts. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to the release of new documents and narratives, as well.

This work is a critically informative study of religious modernism in Iran from 1953 to 2000 in the context of Islam versus democracy. It examines the thoughts and works of seven religious intellectuals who either shaped or influenced the religious-political developments of contemporary Iran. According to Jahanbakhsh, although Iranians have failed in understanding the meaning of democracy, the yearning for democracy was the most enticing goal in both the 1906 and 1979 Iranian revolutions.

Agrarian issues and rural development have been among the most controversial themes of scholarly studies in contemporary Iran, especially in the post-revolutionary era, when dramatic restructuring of the socio-economic and political order, often dominated by intense ideological debates and political fiction, has largely impeded critical examination and empirical investigation of the issues. This makes Ali Shakoori's sociological enquiry a timely contribution to the understanding of rural politics and development during the past two decades. The book's primary objective is to explore the socio-economic impact of state rural-development policies and programs at the societal level, as well as at the village-community level. The author contends that, despite various development efforts initiated by the state and considerable improvements in the rural economy and its infrastructure, the revolutionary goal of increasing peasant participation in decision-making, with progress toward a more equal distribution of income and wealth, is yet to be realized.