Readers of Saudi Aramco World who want to range more widely or delve more deeply than a bimonthly magazine will find interesting material, most of it recently published, in this list. Without endorsing the views of any of the authors, the editors nonetheless encourage varied and omnivorous reading as a sure, if winding, path to greater understanding. The books listed below are available in libraries, from bookstores—we urge our readers to patronize independent bookstores—or from their respective publishers; 10-digit International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) are given to facilitate ordering.

Please do not order books from Saudi Aramco World.

The print edition issue of Saudi Aramco World in which each review was originally published appears in parentheses at the end of the review, e.g. (SO03).

100 Myths About the Middle East. Fred Halliday. 2005, Saqi Books, 0-863565298, £8.99 pb.
If a bit of discomfort is a sign that education may be taking place, then this book has a bit of education in it for just about everyone. Professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, Halliday fearlessly and dispassionately takes on pervasive “facts,” stereotypes, perceptions and overly reductive ideas—often held by residents of the Middle East as well as by westerners, and by people in the street as well as by “experts” whom we’d expect to know better—and in clear prose puts them smartly, occasionally iconoclastically, into contexts larger than those most of us take into daily consideration. He covers conflicts in the region, views of Islam past and present, western relationships with Middle Eastern governments, economics, nationalism, conspiracy theories, politically manipulated language and even humor. (Myth 2: “The Middle East is a region... [with] no sense of humour”—quite the opposite, Halliday shows.) Few books cut so quickly and clearly through so many misconceptions. (SO05)

An A–Z of the Middle East: A Reference Cd-Rom. Dominique Vidal and Alain Gresh. 1998, Sindibad Multimedia Ltd., www.sindibad.co.uk, [n.p.]. Cd-Rom.
The 115 topics in this useful addition to a school, library or home reference shelf cover people, events, movements and ideas that have shaped the politics and culture of the region in the last century, supplemented by photographs, maps and a brief appendix of treaties and un resolutions. The scope is roughly equivalent to what might be found in a good popular book, but given the potential of the cd-rom format, we were hoping for more, particularly regarding its capacity to present photographs, maps and diplomatic documents. We expect this will prove most useful and appealing to younger readers and budding researchers, and what they find will serve them well. (MA99)

Abha, Bilad Asir: Southwestern region of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Noura bint Muhammad al-Saud and Al-Jawharah Muhammad al-'Anqari (text), Madeha Muhammad al-'Ajroush (photographs). Riyadh [no publisher listed], 1989, 0-905906-82-9. This large and lavishly illustrated volume provides detailed information on the geography, history and cultures of the little-known, mountainous Asir region of western Saudi Arabia (SO94)

Admiring Silence. Abdulrazak Gurnah. Hamish Hamilton, 1996, 0-241-00184-6, £16, hb; New Press, 1996, 1-56584-349-5, $19.95, hb. England itself is the main character in this painfully honest novel about the difficulties of being an immigrant and the impossibility of being anything but a foreigner in a country one has adopted as one's own. "Sometimes I think that what I feel for England is disappointed love." (MA97)

The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the 14th Century. Ross E. Dunn. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1989, 0-520-05771-6 (hb), 0-520-06743-6 (pb). The broad sweep of the Islamic world of six centuries ago is captured in an entertaining account of one of the great travelers of the Middle Ages. Ibn Battuta spent three decades traveling through Asia and Africa. (See Saudi Aramco World, JF01.) (MA93)

Adventures in the Bone Trade: The Race to Discover Human Ancestors in Ethiopia’s Afar Depression. Jon Kalb. 2000, Copernicus Books, 0-387-98742-8, $29 hb.
In the trenches of anthropology, you keep your head down: You don’t want to overlook anything, and you don’t want to offer a colleague a tempting target. So Jon Kalb discovered early in his 30 years studying the Afar Depression of Ethiopia, first as a geologist, then as an organizer and participant in the expeditions that found traces of some of the earliest ancestors of modern humans: Lucy, the First Family, Bodo Man, the Aramis Skeleton and the Buri Skull. The “bone wars” among rival teams of scientists were hardly less savage than the armed conflicts that took place around them, and Kalb’s fascinating, first-person account makes a very good read, and provides insight into the human politics of science and the science of human development. (MA01)

After the Great Mughals: Painting in Delhi and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Barbara Schmitz, ed. 2002, Marg Publications (margpub@tata.com), 81-85026-56-4, $66 hb
Although the brilliant painting of the Mughal Empire is one of the most widely appreciated arts of India, the continuation of the Mughal artistic tradition after about 1678, when the court moved from Delhi to the Deccan, has received little attention. Perhaps because of Aurangzeb’s lack of interest in the visual arts, painters sought other patrons in Delhi or elsewhere, and the style of the golden age of Mughal painting diffused to such other centers as Bikaner and Murshidabad, influencing and being in turn influenced by the styles of the subsequent 150 years—including European ones. This valuable, heavily illustrated, oversize volume, including nine expert essays, redirects the spotlight onto a neglected and fascinating period of art history. (SO02)

Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth.Naguib Mahfouz. Anchor, 0-385-49909-4, $12 pb.
The Nobel Prize–winner Mahfouz constructs a multiple biography of the “heretic” monotheist pharaoh and his brief reign with Queen Nefertiti, presenting the widely varying accounts of relatives and courtiers, 14 versions in all, as supposedly presented to a truth-seeking young nobleman 20 years after the ruler’s death. Mahfouz demonstrates elegantly that history is as much a human construct as fiction. (MA00)

Akhenaten & Tutankhamun: Revolution & Restoration. David P. Silverman, Josef W. Wegner and Jennifer Houser Wegner. 2006, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 1-931707-90-1, $24.95 hb. In the mid-14th century bc, the Pharaoh Akhenaten overturned his predecessors’ belief system and introduced the concept of a single god. He moved his capital from Thebes to Akhenaten (now known as Amarna) and instituted other revolutionary changes in the arts, architecture, city planning and language. Within a few years of his death in 1336 bc, after 17 years on the throne, his presumed son the Pharaoh Tutankhamun abandoned both the city and the religion and restored the pantheon of gods of his forebears. This finely illustrated book, by three University of Pennsylvania Egyptologists who draw on their own institution’s considerable resources, explores how and why Akhenaten undertook his revolution and Tutankhamun undid it. The authors’ conclusions aren’t certain, since key pieces of evidence are forever lost, but their book is a fascinating investigation of two pharaohs and what lay behind “a precursor to, if not the first manifestation of, monotheism.” (SO07)

Al-Jazeera: How the Free Arab News Network Scooped the World and Changed the Middle East. Mohammed el-Nawawy and Adel Iskandar. 2002, Westview, 0-8133-4017-9, $24 hb
The claims of the subtitle are premature, but the significance of the Qatar-based network is considerable, the journalistic temptations created by its own sudden fame are great, and its implications for news-gathering and -dissemination in the Middle East are very interesting. The Egyptian-American lead author is a professor of journalism at the University of West Florida; the co-author, Egyptian-Canadian, is a doctoral candidate in international communications at the University of Kentucky. (SO02)

The Alhambra. Robert Irwin. 2004, Wonders of the World Series, Harvard UP, 0-674-01568-1, $19.95 hb. British scholar and polymath Robert Irwin is the only contemporary writer who has published surveys of Arabo-Islamic art and literature for a general audience; he has shown himself a wise and sensitive reader of Islamic civilization. The Alhambra, as Irwin presents it, is a historical riddle: a series of castles and buildings shrouded in mystery, a veritable series of interlocking “texts” in need of decoding. Originally built in Nasrid Spain during the Christian reconquista, the Alhambra is the product of a civilization in retreat, but it was also enriched by the dazzling civilizations that had informed Andalusia through many centuries of triumph. The compound was built and rebuilt, and became an amalgam of the spiritual and artistic strains and trends that had been developing and evolving over many centuries of Arab life. The Alhambra is that rare book that entertains while it enlightens: not merely a boon for those needing a guidebook, but also a valuable gateway into the world of Islam during its European sojourn. —David Shasha (MA05)

Ali Child of the Desert. Jonathan London. Illus. Ted Lewin. 1997, Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, 0-688-12561-1, $15.95 hb.
Ali and his camel become separated from his father in this attractive book. Remembering what his father has told him Ali is able to survive a sandstorm. Cairo. R. Conrad Stein. 1996, Children’s Press, 0-516-20024-0, $26.50 hb. Though the text is brief, but still covering a good deal of Cairo’s history, this book would be enjoyed by any age. The book is illustrated with superb photographs, and the format is creative and exciting. Daily Life in Ancient and Modern Baghdad. Dawn Kotapish. Illus. Ray Webb. 2000, Runestone Press, 0-8225-3219-0, $25.26/£9.99 hb. This is another in the “Cities Through Time” series, which provides an excellent resource in middle school. The text is informative and interesting, and covers briefly, but adequately, the history, culture and people of Iraq. The layout is very appealing. Daily Life in Ancient and Modern Istanbul. Robert Bator. Illus. Chris Rothero. 2000, Runestone Press, 0-8225-3217-4, $25.26/£9.99 hb. One in the “Cities Through Time” series, this book is an attractive and informative history of Turkey’s ancient and most famous city. A very good resource. (MA01)

Ali & Nino. Kurban Said, tr. Jenia Graman. Overlook, 1996, 0-87951-668-2, $21.95, hb; Robin Clark, 1991, 0-86072-130-2, £5.95, pb. War, political upheaval and young love are the surface elements of this 1937 novel, but it is also a sensitive and accurate depiction of the difficult marriage of East and West during that shining moment before and during World War I when Azerbaijan and other countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia were promised future independence by Germany or Russia, and believed the promises. Nino Kipiani, a Georgian Christian, and Ali Khan Shirvanshir, a Tatar Muslim, are the childhood friends who marry. The pseudonymous author was born in Baku in 1905, and writes from his own experience. Another movie is said to be in the making. (MA97)

Alice’s Kitchen: My Grandmother Dalal & Mother Alice’s Traditional Lebanese Cooking. Linda Dalal Sawaya. Linda Sawaya Design, 1997, 0-9660492-1-7, $17.00, pb; phone or fax (503) 297-4777 for ordering information.
Idiosyncratic, charming and above all full of pride and affection, this family cookbook represents a distinctive and delicious Lebanese–American culinary heritage. The author has, over years, translated her mother’s and grandmother’s lumps, pinches and enoughs into cups and teaspoons, and has kept the nourishing combinations and soul-satisfying flavors, while using ingredients available in the United States. The result is a cookbook that is fun both to read and to cook with. (MJ98)

Alice’s Kitchen: My Grandmother Dalal & Mother Alice’s Traditional Lebanese Cooking. Linda Dalal Sawaya. 2005 (4th ed.), Linda Sawaya Design (www.lindasawaya.com), 0-9660492-2-0, $20 pb. (Orig. 1992.)
This generous serving of pride, affection and kitchen wisdom is a family cookbook that has evoked heartfelt responses from readers for 13 years. (Aramco World published an excerpt in March/April 1996.) The author painstakingly translated her mother’s and grandmother’s lumps, pinches and enoughs into cups and teaspoons, and the result is a classic of Arab–American tradition, fun both to read and to cook with. (SO05)

American Muslims: The New Generation. Asma Gull Hasan. 2000, Continuum International Publishing Group, 0-8264-1279-3, $19.95 hb.
Growing up in Colorado and at college in Massachusetts, the 25-year-old author always felt like “a normal American” but was often not so regarded—because she is Muslim. Now she is “a self-proclaimed Muslim feminist cowgirl, a category I invented.” With just such touches of candid humor, Hasan’s essays address the major issues young Muslims face in the US today: Women and the hijab, or veil; the Muslim view of Jesus; the role of the Nation of Islam; negative Hollywood and political stereotypes; dating and other moral issues. Hasan is very likable, a smart voice for a Muslim generation raised in middle-class life in the United States. (ND01)

Amina and Muhammad's Special Visitor. Diane Turnage Burgoyne. Penny Williams-Yaqub, illustrator. Rockport: A & M Book Sales, 1982. A beautifully illustrated book about two children and their family in modern Saudi Arabia Text is for primary-school children, notes are for parents or teachers. The book seeks to dispel the impression that most children in Arabia live the life of the traditional Bedouins. (MA91)

Among Muslims: Everyday Life on the Frontiers of Pakistan. Kathleen Jamie. 2002, Seal Press, 1-58005-086-7, $14.95, C$24.95 pb; Among Muslims: Meetings at the Frontiers of Pakistan. Kathleen Jamie. 2002, Sort Of Books, 0-9535227-7-6, £6.99 pb.
A well-known Scottish poet, Jamie traveled through northern Pakistan in 1991, and found that being a woman alone was more an advantage than a hindrance. Sympathetic, non-judgmental and willing to accept even when she could not understand, Jamie wrote of her experiences in spare, water-clear prose in The Golden Peak (1992). Ten years later, married with two children, living an entirely different life in a rural Scottish town, she came upon 10 Pakistani men sitting on the pavement outside the Co-op, reading the Qur’an. “We are on a peace-march,” they explained, and Jamie found the tables turned: The obligations of hospitality, of protection of the travelers from their own innocence, of humane and personal contact, were now upon her and her family, as they had previously been on her hosts in the Northern Areas. The meeting inspired her to return to Pakistan, to Gilgit, to see again the people who had befriended her. This book is a re-publication of The Golden Peak with the addition of 50 pages of prologue and epilogue, and it is warm, eloquent and more topical than ever. (MA03)

Ancient Laws and Modern Problems: The Balance Between Justice and a Legal System. John Sassoon. 2001, Third Millennium, 0-9536969-9-5, $27 hb. Five thousand years ago, one’s family and clan provided identity and security. Intertribal justice was often based on the law of talion; “an eye for an eye and a life for a life” maintained a rough equity among nomadic groups. In the subsequent thousand years, city life and social classes evolved, customs and precedents were codified, punishments became both harsher and more standardized, and laws began to be codified. We have found four law collections, none of them complete, in Sumer and Akkad. A fifth, that of Hammurabi, was found in Elam. To explain these laws and juxtapose them with our modern system, Sassoon invents a citizen of Sumer named Atu. The search for truth was paramount, he explains, using evidence, witnesses, oaths and, as a last resort, the river test. Family, children, slavery, the status of women, and matters as disparate as rape and adoption were treated in the context of property. Many punishments were harsher when applied to free men or nobles, who were often closer to their nomadic roots than their city-dwelling social inferiors, and so perceived talion as more fair than monetary punishments. The reader is left with the impression that the development of our own legal system has not been a linear progression from barbarism to civilized treatment, and that we must continue to review our laws, trials and appeals processes to achieve truth and justice for all. (Charles Sweeney) (SO04)

Ancient South Arabia: From the Queen of Sheba to the Advent of Islam. Klaus Schippmann. Allison Brown, tr. 2001, Markus Wiener, 1-55876-235-3, $39.95 hb, $18.95 pb.Scholars interested in the region of Yemen, Dhofar in Oman and far southwestern Saudi Arabia, as well as lay readers willing to navigate the often academic prose, will be rewarded with detailed insights into the area. Schippmann, a German archeologist who has worked in Yemen, calls his book "an attempt to offer a consolidated overview" of a period covering the roughly 1400 years from the purported reign of the Queen of Sheba to the revelation of Islam in the seventh century. It sketches the relatively brief history of archeological exploration in the area, and addresses topics such as South Arabia's kingdoms, its land and sea trade routes, and its architectural and engineering heritage. The author calls South Arabian architecture, as understood from the remains of temples, city walls and irrigation systems, especially at Marib, "unique in the entire ancient Middle East" and predicts that "pleasant surprises" about ancient South Arabia await future archeological expeditions. (SO03)

The Animal World of the Pharaohs. Patrick F. Houlihan. Thames and Hudson, 1996, 0-500-01731-X, $39.95/£24.95, hb. Animals were enormously important in ancient Egypt as food, quarry, labor or pets; some were associated with the gods and goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon. Almost 200 illustrations—too few of them in color—here supplement a very informative text that illuminates many aspects of the daily lives of the people of ancient Egypt (MA97)

'Antar and 'Abla, A Bedouin Romance. Rewritten and arranged by Diana Richmond. London : Quartet Books, 1978, 0-7043-2162-9. This collection of tales about a sixth-century Arab hero and his bride provides a survey of the manners, culture and history of pre-Islamic Arabia . (MA93)

Approaches to the History of the Middle East: Interviews with Leading Middle East Historians. Nancy Elizabeth Gallagher, ed. Reading , UK : Ithaca Press, 1994, 0-86372-185-0, hb. Eight historians whose scholarship has shaped Western understanding of the Middle East—Hourani, Issawi, Raymond, Marsot, Rodison, Keddie, Inalcik and Rafeq—share memories and insights that put their writing in the context of their lives. (MA96)

Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations. Michael Sells. 1999, White Cloud, 1-88399-130-7, $29.95 hb; 1-88399-126-9, $18.95 pb
This unusually sensitive volume offers three significant services to readers unable to apprehend the Qur’an in its original Arabic. First, it recognizes that, for many Muslims, the transmission of the Qur’an by recitation is a tradition of great popularity and power. The author, a professor of religion at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, thus not only discusses the role of recitation and provides phonetic schemas to aid in understanding its structure, but has also included a cd recording to introduce the recitation styles. Second, he focuses on the relatively concise, early suras, which tend to be hymnic, prophetic and largely concerned with the human relationship to God, and which give non-Muslims a simplified point of entry to the spiritual foundations of the Qur’an. Finally, Sells offers new translations of these early suras, which together with his commentary will further assist non-Muslims to comprehend the spiritual depth of the Qur’an. (MA00)

The Arab Americans: A History. Gregory Orfalea. 2006, Olive Branch Press, 1-56656-597-9, $25 pb.
Combining the research of a historian with the storytelling of a poet and novelist, this insider’s history updates and fills out Orfalea’s 1988 book Before the Flames: A Quest for the History of Arab Americans. Orfalea’s search for Arab–American history began with his own family’s past and a personal quest for identity; the journey took him from Los Angeles to his family’s ancestral village in Syria, and then on to nearly 30 Arab–American communities across the US. His archival research and interviews with more than 150 Arab–Americans—from taxi drivers and shopkeepers to White House correspondent Helen Thomas—personalize his subjects. He also offers one of the most detailed accounts to date of the history of Arab–American political organizations. (MA06)

Arab-American Faces and Voices: The Origins of an Immigrant Community. Elizabeth Boosahda. 2003, University of Texas, 0-292-70920-X, $24.95 pb; 2-292-70919-6, $65 hb.This labor of love documents the experience of Arabs who emigrated to Worcester, Massachusetts between 1880 and 1915. The author, a third-generation Worcester Arab-American, has interviewed immigrants from Lebanon, Syria and Palestine; she discusses their lives and their connections with fellow Arab immigrants in the United States and South America, particularly Brazil. She also highlights the political and economic factors that brought Arabs to America and led many of them to stay, even after they had met their goal of earning enough to prosper in their homelands. Interviewees, most in their 80's and 90's, are succinctly quoted about subjects including their neighborhoods, work, traditions and education. The author offers evidence aplenty of how hard work and creativity enabled Arabs to put down roots in America, to the benefit of the community and the country. (SO03)

The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement.George Antonius. Troy : International Book Center, 1969, 0-86685-000-7. The classic account of the birth and development of Arab nationalism, from its origins in Syria in 1847 to its collision with Zionism in the 1930's. Also contains text of crucial documents of the period, including the Sikes-Picot Agreement and the King-Crane Report. (MA91)

Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream. Nabeel Abraham and Andrew Shryock, eds. 2000, Wayne State University Press, 0-8143-2811-3, $49.95 hb; 0-8143-2812-1, $24.95, pb.
Some 30 essays create a richly detailed portrait of Arab-American Detroit, one of the largest, most diverse and most overlooked Arabic-speaking communities outside the Middle East. Food, music, religion, identity politics are among the topics; analysis, memory, poetry and biography among the approaches taken to limn a very complex reality, and the result is admirably personal, panoramic, fresh, deep and nuanced. The book is dense with information and emotion and thus difficult to read, but rewarding and illuminating. (SO00)

Arab Dress, A Short History: From the Dawn of Islam to Modern Times.Yedida Kalfon Stillman, ed. by Norman A. Stillman. 2000, Brill Academic Publishers, 90-04-11373-8, $101/ƒ191.72 hb.
This is a richly illustrated historical and ethnographic survey by an acknowledged expert in the field, covering the evolution and transformation of modes of dress over the past 1400 years throughout the Middle East, North Africa and—for the Middle Ages—Muslim Spain. Stillman deals with clothing in the social, religious, esthetic and political context of each period, including the present day. (MA01)

Arab Folktales. Inea Bushnaq, translator and editor. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986, 0-394-50104-7 (hb), 0-394-75179-5 (pb). A good way to penetrate a culture is through its folktales. This is a wonderful collection of popular stories from all parts of the Arab world. (MA91)

Arab Influence in Medieval Europe . Dionisius A. Agnius and Richard Hitchcock, eds. Ithaca Press, 1996, 0-86372-213-X, £12.95, pb. Seven essays from the 1990 Oxford confer­ence of the same name chart the gradual infusion of Muslim knowledge of the arts, commerce and science into Christian Europe. A particularly interesting chapter evalu­ates possible Muslim literary influences on Dante's Divine Comedy, which demonstrates the often-underestimated degree to which ideas crossed cultural boundaries during that era. Other essays discuss trade, mechanics, geography, divination and song. (MA97)

Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land. David K. Shipler. New York: Times Books, 1986, 0-8129-1273-X. A Pulitzer Prize-winning exploration of the attitudes, images and stereotypes that Arabs and Jews have of each other, by a New York Times correspondent in Jerusalem (MA93)

Arab Social Life in the Middle Ages: An Illustrated Study. Shirley Guthrie. London: Saqi Books, 1995, 0-86356-043-1 (hb). The author, a specialist in Islamic painting, uses the celebrated illustrations of Al-Hariri's 11th- and 12th-century Maqamat—the best of the few visual documents of the era—as windows on the daily life they depict through their Falstaffian protagonist, Abu Zayd. (MA96)

The Arab Table: Recipes and Culinary Traditions. May Bsisu. 2005, William Morrow, 0-06-058614-1, $34.95 hb.
“With this cookbook, you do me the honor of sampling the bounty of the Arab table [and] learning about the culinary and related social customs of Arab people,” writes the author, trained as a chef in both French and Arab cuisine. Her biography explains the range of her skills: Palestinian, born in Jordan and raised in Kuwait and Beirut, she lived as an adult in Kuwait and London, traveled widely and emigrated to the United States in 1990. Her book has four valuable elements: a very useful historical and cultural introduction; a section on “the pantry,” defining ingredients and explaining how they’re used; a plentitude of excellent recipes, divided into 11 categories (“Basics,” “Mezza,” “Soups and Stews,” Side Dishes” and so on), many with extensive introductory information; and interspersed boxed essays ranging from two lines to a page in length recounting personal experiences or passing on cultural information. Thus we learn about “Making Manakeesh in the Mountains,” “The Music in the Mortar” or the different nationalities of kafta. The book is approachable, inspiring and packed with information: the kind you’ll cook from often. (SO05)

Arab Travellers and Western Civilization. Nazik Saba Yared; trans. by Sumayya Damluji Shahbandar. 1996, Saqi Books, 0-86356-336-8, £45 hb.
Though little known in English—such works were rarely translated—Arabic accounts of Arabs’ travels to the West have long been part of the Arab literary tradition, especially popular during the 19th century. Rather than survey the genre, the author, a lecturer at Beirut University College and author of four books on classical Arabic literature, has chosen several diverse accounts that span three periods between 1826 and 1938. She has combed them for insights into Arab views on Western politics, philosophy, science, social values, economy and labor, arts, religion and more. Central in her readings is attention to the emergence of an important conflict in the Arab relationship with the West: maintaining the Arab identity while assimilating technologies and associated Western ways that threaten that identity. (MA99)

Arab Women in the Middle Ages: Private Lives and Public Roles. Shirley Guthrie. 2001, Saqi Books, 0-86356-773-8, £35 hb; 2001, I. B. Tauris, 0-86356-773-8, $55 hb.
Regardless of their individual social rank or position, regardless whether Muslim, Christian or Jew, Arab women played important roles in the functioning of society in the Middle Ages. This book draws on Islamic traditions, legal documents, historical sources and popular chronicles to describe their daily lives and their private and public roles. In the private sphere, Guthrie explores marriage, childbirth, child care, culinary traditions, body care and beauty rituals; in the public arena, women’s roles as benefactors, scholars, poets, calligraphers, teachers and entertainers receive attention. (ND01)

The Arab World: Personal Encounters. Elizabeth Warnock Fernea and Robert A. Fernea. New York: Doubleday, 1987, 0-385-23973-4. A sensitive and colorful portrait of the Arab world - from oil and politics to the realities of daily life - by a celebrated academic couple whose experience in the region dates back to 1956. (MA91)

The Arab World: Society, Culture, and State. Halim Barakat. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, 0-520-08427-6 (pb). The author, professor of sociology at Georgetown University views the Arab world not as a mosaic of subgroups but as a single, overarching society coping with polar stresses, such as tradition versus modernity, sacred versus secular and local versus national. (SO94)

Arabia of the Bedouins. Marcel Kurpershoek; Paul Vincent, tr. 2001, Saqi Books, 0-86356-809-2, £19.95 hb. 2002, Palgrave, 0-86356-809-2, $29.95 hb. (Abridgement of Diep in Arabië and De laatste bedoeïen, 1992 and 1996, J.M. Meulenhoff)
The author, a Dutch diplomat, turned his posting in Saudi Arabia into an opportunity to explore the oral literature of some of the most remote Bedouin tribes, and the story of his five-month journey in pursuit of the literature—after three years of familiarization—makes it a doubly valuable read. Among the poets he encounters, al-Dindan emerges as “an old, poor, illiterate and unruly” link between pre-Islamic oral traditions and the present; his poetry “offers contemporary proof of the authenticity of the great pre-Islamic tradition.” With him and others, the author runs errands, helps fix trucks, waits about in offices and tents and records tales of intertribal rivalry—literary and otherwise—with the result that what could have been a narrowly focused academic book is instead of interest to anyone curious about rural life in Saudi Arabia. (MA03)

Arabia Felix: An Exploration of the Archaeological History of Yemen. Allesandro de Maigret; Rebecca Thompson, tr. 2002, Stacey International, 1-900988-07-0, £22 hb (Orig. Arabia Felix: un Viaggio nell’Archeolgia dello Yemen, 1996, Rusconi Libri)
The pre-Islamic history of the southern Arabian Peninsula is not yet well-established, but this landmark study, by the director of a leading Italian archeological mission, tells the history of the region. It recounts as well the story of archeology in Yemen by historical period, with details of sites grouped by type (e.g. temples, tombs, figurative arts, etc.). Aimed at specialists, this book adds significantly to the body of knowledge available in English in this field. (SO02)

Arabia of the Wahhabis. H. St. John B. Philby. Salem Ayer, 0-405-05355-X; London: Cass, 1977, 0-7146-3073-X. One of the British explorer's classic works on Arabia . A new impression of the 1928 edition, with additions. (MA91)

Arabia Unified: A Portrait of Ibn Saud. Mohammed A. Altnana. New Brunswick : North American, 1985, 0-930244-05-2 (hb), 0-930244-06-0 (pb); London : Hutchinson Benham, 1980, 0-09-141610-8. A fascinating insider's view of the unification of Arabia under King 'Abd al-' Aziz Al Saud. Almana was court translator from 1926 to 1935, and a constant companion of the king on all his travels and expeditions. (MA91)

Arabian Cuisine. Anne Marie Weiss-Armush. Beirut: Dar An-Nafaes, 1991, no ISBN. Delicious recipes from the Arab world, presented with clear, step-by-step directions and attractive illustrations. Making the exotic seem familiar, this book takes the fear out of dealing with a new cuisine. (MA93)

The Arabian Delights Cookbook: Mediterranean Cuisine From Mecca to Marrakesh. Anne Marie Weiss-Armush. Los Angeles : Lowell House, 1994, 1-56565-126-X. Among the wide range of primarily low-fat and high-fiber recipes presented here are many traditional favorite dishes, with explanations of the cultural and geographical contexts from which they come. Charming as well as informative. (SO94)

The Arabian Nights and Orientalism: Perspectives from East and West. Yuriko Yamanaka and Tetsuo Nishio. 2006, I.B. Tauris, 1-85043-768-8, £42.50 hb.
The Arabian Nights tales have long fascinated the West, but what about their impact on the East—on, say, Japan? Japanese perspectives on the subject are well represented in this book, which brings together a wealth of scholarship on The Thousand and One Nights from an international conference at Osaka’s National Museum of Ethnology. The scene is set aptly in the preface by Middle East historian Robert Irwin, who shows how the Arabian Nights fits into the “Orientalist” mindset, as defined by Edward Said and others. But Irwin suggests that applying Orientalist theory to Orientals like the Japanese may not be quite so easy as applying it to the British or French. Fitting the Arabian Nights into that framework may be even more problematic. As Tetsuo Nishio points out in an article on Orientalism from a Japanese perspective, “Japan accepted the Arabian Nights as a constituent part of European civilization.” Europe’s “Orient” was the Middle East. Japan’s “Orient,” or object of control, was China. Japanese illustrations in Arabian Nights translations published in the late 19th century sometimes show the Arab characters dressed like Victorian Europeans. The Japanese found the Nights tales extremely compelling as stories, but the tales did not exercise the same hold on them that they did on Europeans—because Japan was not linked to the Middle East by economics, history and geopolitics. This collection also explores other topics of equal interest. Yuriko Yamanaka traces the origins of an Alexander the Great story in the Nights to a historical event that took place when the world conqueror reached India. The direct source for this story in the Nights appears to be a version related originally in Persian in Ghazali’s Nasihat al-Muluk (Book of Counsel for Kings). Since the Arabian Nights has long been regarded as a collection of “popular” or lower-class stories spun by storytellers in the cities of the medieval Middle East, Yamanaka suggests that the gap between popular and elite literature in those days may not have been as wide as commonly thought. —ROBERT W. LEBLING (SO06)

Arabian Oasis City: The Transformation of 'Unayzah. Soraya Altorki and Donald P. Cole. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1989, 0-292-78517-8, hb; 0-292-78518-6, pb. The authors chart some of the extensive social changes that have taken place in a conservative central-Arabian town since the mid-1970's. (MA96)

Arabic First Names. 1999, Hippocrene Books, 0-7818-0688-7, $11.95/£7.85 hb.
This compact dictionary of approximately 700 names is a pleasure for those who do not read Arabic, for it aids in understanding—too concisely at times—the elegance, poetry and deeply felt religious thought behind Arabic names, from Abida, “servant of God” (feminine) to Zaki, “pure” (masculine). (MA99)

Arabic Short Stories. Denys Johnson-Davies, tr. London: Quartet Books, 1983, 0-7043-2367-2. U.S. distributor: Salem House, Ltd. An eclectic sampler of 24 stories from throughout the Arab world, including works from many well-known writers. Johnson-Davies has introduced more than 15 volumes of Arabic literature to the English-speaking world. (SO94)

The Arabs. Peter Mansfield. London and New York: Penguin, 1991 [3rd edition], 0-14-013574-X. A respected historian and journalist explores the history, politics and society of the Arab world in this well-structured and concise classic. (MA93)

The Arabs: Activities for the Elementary School Level. Audrey Shabbas, Carol El-Shaieb and Ahlam An-Nabulsi, editors. Berkeley: AWAIR (Arab World and Islamic Resources and School Services), 1991, [no ISBN]. An imaginative collection of hands-on projects for elementary and junior high students to acquaint them with the arts, crafts, foods and culture of the Arab world. (MA93)

The Arabs and Mediaeval Europe . Norman Daniel. London: Longman, 1975, 0-582-78045-4. A classic exploration of the links between Arabs and the Europeans in the Middle Ages. Daniel looks at the impression made by the Arabs, the reactions of the Europeans and some of the ideas shared by both peoples. (MA93)

Arabs in the New World : Studies on Arab-American Communities. Sameer Y. Abraham and Nabeel Abraham, editors. Detroit : Wayne State University, 1983, 0-94356-000-4. This book offers much-needed insight into an important aspect of US-Arab interaction, the three-million-strong Arab-American community. (MA91)

The Arabs: Journeys Beyond the Mirage. David Lamb. New York: Random House, 1987, 0-394-54433-1 (hb); Vintage, 1988, 0-394-75758-0 (pb). The Los Angeles Times correspondent in Cairo has created an insightful montage of images, sights, sounds and moods from today's Arab world, designed to strip away some of the stereotypes about the region. (MA93)

Arabs of Chicagoland. Ray Hanania. 2005, Arcadia, 0-7385-3417-X, $19.99 pb. This book celebrates the struggles and achievements of the Arabs who settled in Chicago from the mid-19th century on. Compiled by a Chicago writer whose grandfather emigrated from Palestine in 1926, the slim volume is part photo album, part interviews and part first-person reminiscences. Syrian–Lebanese Christian immigrants arrived first, many earning a living as peddlers; they called their work “knocking on the door of God.” Today, some 150,000 Arab–Americans live in Chicago. Profiles and pictures of several dozen—bakers and bankers, realtors and politicians, teachers and journalists—portray the challenges immigrants faced in building new homes while keeping in touch with those they left behind. (MA07)

Aramco and Its World: Arabia and the Middle East . Arabian American Oil Company.  Ismail I. Nawwab, Peter C. Speers and Paul F. Hoye, eds.; main research and writing by Paul Lunde and John A. Sabini. Dhahran: Aramco, 1981, 0-9601164-2-7. A comprehensive illustrated reference on Saudi Arabia and its place in the modern world, with chapters on the pre-Islamic period, Islam and Islamic history, Saudi Arabia today, and oil and Aramco. The book explores the history and contributions of Arabia and the Middle East , and includes a useful bibliography. (MA91)

The Archaeology of Islam. Timothy Insoll. 1999, Blackwell, 0-631-20114-9, £55/$62.95 hb, 0-631-20115-7, £16/$28.95 pb.
Can archeologists draw conclusions about whole societies? The discipline of social archeology says they can, and Insoll proves it in the case of Islam. His goal is not only to demonstrate the richness and variety of the material culture of Muslim societies—he refers to a satisfactorily wide range of times and places in doing so—but also to interpret material culture and connect it convincingly to social characteristics. Islam itself structures his book, each chapter beginning with an epigraph from the Qur’an that sets the theme. Thus the obligation of prayer is made archeologically concrete in the structure of the mosque, the importance of privacy shapes the excavatable spaces of domestic structures, and dietary requirements affect the food remains and the building types the archeologist may find. (MA00)

Archaeology of the United Arab Emirates: Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Archaeology of the U.A.E. Daniel Potts, Hasan Al Naboodah, Peter Hellyer, eds. 2003, Trident Press, 1-900724-88-X, £39.95 hb. This handsome volume comprises the proceedings of a 2001 archeology conference held in Abu Dhabi. Although aimed at the specialist, it is well worth the time of anyone with an interest in how civilization evolved in this part of the world. Spanning some seven millennia, the book covers each archeological period by concentrating on key developments. Bronze Age trade, for example, is brought into focus by a paper detailing the considerable technology required to build a reed boat. Other papers analyze intriguing facets of the Iron Age, Late Stone Age, and the Pre-Islamic and Islamic periods. There is also a section on environmental archeology. Generously illustrated, it is sure to be as welcome to the armchair archeologist as to the specialist and student. (Jane Waldron Grutz) (MA04)

Architecture for Islamic Societies Today. James Steele, ed. London: Academy Editions, 1994, 1-85490-207-5. U.S. distributor: St. Martin 's Press. A beautifully illustrated presentation of award-winning designs from the fourth cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, with essays by such luminaries as Oleg Grabar and Charles Correa. (SO94)

Architecture of the Islamic World: Its History and Social Meaning. George Michell, ed. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995 (first printed 1978), 0-500-27847-4 (pb). Now in paperback for the first time, this is an easy-to-follow, well-illustrated introduction to the diversity of Muslim architecture and the social contexts that give it form and function. (MA96)

Aristotle’s Children: How Christians, Muslims and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages. Richard E. Rubenstein. 2003, Harcourt, 0-15-100720-9, $27 hb; 0-15-603009-8, $15 pb. The author of this history of medieval thought is a professor of conflict resolution, and he brings an unexpected modern flavor to his subject, showing us how conflict resolution lay at the heart of the heated debate between faith and reason in the young universities of Europe. The scientific and philosophical writings of the great Greek thinker Aristotle were lost to the West after the fall of Rome. But his works were saved in the East, translated into Syriac and then Arabic, and used to ignite a great era of scientific discovery in the Arab–Islamic world in the eighth and ninth centuries. The Arabic versions of Aristotle and the works of his Muslim commentators were later translated into Latin at Toledo and other centers, and found their way into the universities at Paris, Montpelier, Oxford, Padua and Bologna. Four centuries before Francis Bacon and René Descartes, a recognizably modern, rational perspective, based on Aristotle and his greatest Arab commentators—particularly Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroës)—swept through the universities, advanced largely by Dominican and Franciscan clerics. Religious conservatives sought to stem the tide. The resulting struggle between faith and reason became a culture war in Europe, leading eventually to the scientific revolution, the Protestant reformation and other sweeping changes. The author keeps his story relevant, lively and at times surprising: It’s rare to find a book that mentions both George W. Bush’s war in Iraq and Augustine of Hippo’s view of evil in the same sentence. (Robert W . Lebling) (SO04)

The Art and Architecture of Islam, 1250-1800. Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan Bloom. New Haven : Yale University Press, 1994, 0-300-05888-8, hb. A magnificent sequel to Ettinghausen and Grabar's volume covering the years 650-1250. More than 200 works of art and architecture are discussed, along with their social and economic contexts. A beautiful introduction to Islamic art and a useful—heavily illustrated—reference. (MA96)

The Art and Architecture of Islamic Cairo. Richard Yeomans. 2006, Garnet Publishing, 1-85964-154-7, £29.99 hb; 2006, Ithaca Press, 1-85964-154-7, $59 hb. In this volume, as good on history as it is on art, the author covers personalities, ideas, theologies and social conditions as well as dynastic politics, giving unusually broad context to the art. Stylistically, Yeomans is unfashionable: There are no sidebars, no breakouts nor snappy infographics; this is old-fashioned scholarship at its best. An independent scholar and artist, Yeomans notes the “long shadow” cast over Egyptian history by the allure of pyramids and Pharaonic monuments, leading both the West and Egypt itself to “marginalize” the country’s 1400-year Islamic period. His chapters follow a logical sequence: Umayyads, Tulunids, Fatimids, Ayyubids, Bahri Mamluks, Burji Mamluks—and if those don’t mean much to you now, after a short time with this book, you will understand that they were real people who, in their own messy times, managed to produce art for the ages. And after a long time with this book, you’ll be calling Yeomans your mentor and pricing air tickets to Cairo. (MA07)

The Art of Dhow-Building in Kuwait. Ya’qub Yusuf Al-Hijji. 2001, London Centre of Arab Studies, 1-900404-28-1, £39.50 hb w/case
The traditional sailing vessels of the Arabian Gulf have distinct regional traditions, and this is the first comprehensive study of the maritime crafts that supported Kuwait’s coastal economy for centuries. Dhows were distinguished in shape and size by their function, generally pearling, fishing or short- or long-haul cargo. The author was born near Kuwait’s waterfront and is a consultant at the Centre for Research and Studies on Kuwait. The book is amply illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs that show uses, construction methods, tools and decorative schemes; it also offers technical drawings, notes on economics and a glossary of Arabic terms relevant to the craft, all of which will be of great value to the serious reader of maritime history. (SO02)

The Art of the Islamic Garden. Emma Clark. 2005, Crowood Press, 1-861-26609-X, $50 hb. In many Islamic lands from Asia to Africa, the art of the garden has based itself on the principle that this world is a reflection of the divine realm. While there have been different garden styles—palace gardens, private home gardens, orchards, public open gardens and flower gardens are a few—there are frequently recurring common elements among them, including most notably a central pool or fountain from which four streams flow symbolizing the four directions or four corners of the Earth. The author is an English Muslim who teaches at the Prince of Wales School of Visual Islamic and Traditional Arts. She makes extensive use of both her historical research on Islamic gardens and the Prince of Wales’s Carpet Garden, which serves as a thorough case study of the issues that arise in attempting to adapt traditional Islamic garden principles and species to colder, western climates and cultural contexts. (MA05)

The Art of Madi. Hussein Madi; essays by Helen Khal, Joseph Tarrab, Michel Tapié, Martina Corgnati, Mounir Eido and Samir Sayegh. 2004, Saqi, 0-86356-871-8, £35 hb.
With more than 500 color plates, this heavy, handsomely produced volume presents the first published retrospective of 40 years of the paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints of the brilliant Lebanese artist. Madi’s joyful experiments in color and form relate to such moderns as Picasso and Matisse, but also, clearly, to Islamic and even to pre-Islamic Middle Eastern art. His careful calculation of effects is somehow subsumed in great spontaneity and freedom of line; the reaction that results combines thoughtful admiration for the artist’s skill and emotional delight. (SO05)

The Art of the Saracens in Egypt. Stanley Lane-Poole. Darf Publishers, 1993 (facsimile of 1886 edn.), 1-85077-142-1, £30, hb. Though more than a century old, Lane-Poole's descriptions of a wide range of arts— rchitecture, frescoes, pottery, mosaics, mashrabiyyah and other woodwork—from the earliest Islamic times to his own century remain some of the most detailed in English. This is a benchmark work for anyone reading seriously on Islamic art in Egypt The numerous engravings are reminders of the suc­cinct clarity possible with this bygone medium. (MA97)

The Art of the Turkish Tale. Barbara K. Walker, illustrated by Helen Siegl. Lubbock : Texas Tech University Press, 1993, 0-8-9672-317-8 (pb). The 80 well-translated tales, which won the 1994 Anne Izard Storytelling Award, have made the diversity, inven­tiveness and delight of Turkey 's oral tradition available in English for the first time. (MA96)

Arts of the Islamic World: A Teacher's Guide. 2002, Smithsonian Institution, [no ISBN], $20 pb. Orders: www.asia.si.edu/education. This thoughtfully compiled resource comes with a beautiful set of 10 color art reproductions that can be passed around a class, hung on a wall or used in other ways. Fourteen brief, well-written "focus" chapters, activities and vocabulary all help educators employ the arts of the book, architecture and everyday objects as points of entry into understandings of Islam that are both cultural and religious-an approach that often proves more successful than a purely religious one. Lesson plans are pitched to levels from elementary to high school. (SO03)

Artichoke to Za’atar. Greg Malouf and Lucy Malouf. 2008, University of California, 978-0-520-25413-8, $29.95 hb.
Just as “Middle Eastern” ties together the cuisines of North Africa, the Levant and the Gulf, so does Chef Greg Malouf tie together his own heritages: Lebanese–Australian by birth, he trained in restaurants across Europe and Asia. This is neither a scholarly reference book nor an exhaustive cookbook, though there are recipes for each ingredient entry. Rather, Greg and Lucy undertake a personal exploration of Middle Eastern cuisines, ingredient by ingredient. From dates to eggplant, saffron to sumac, each cuisine shares similarities and approaches through ingredients. Each entry describes an ingredient and includes its history, source and use in various cuisines, as well as a guide on how to purchase and store it. The recipes include updated versions of such traditional items as baba ghanoush and fusions like sticky lamb-shank soup with fresh fenugreek and molten mozzarella. The photographs are stunning. —Juliette Rossant (MA08)

Asmahan’s Secrets: Women, War and Song. Sherifa Zuhur. 2001, University of Texas Press, 0-292-79807-5, $15.95 pb; 2001, Saqi Books, 0-86356-327-9, £14.95 pb.
The great Arab singer Asmahan was the toast of Cairo song and cinema in the 1930’s, as World War ii approached. Actually named Amal al-Atrash, she came from an important clan in the mountains of Syria, but broke with her traditional family background, left her husband and became a public performer, a role then frowned upon for women. She was also rumored to have been an agent of the Allied forces during the war. Through the story of Asmahan and her musical career, Zugur shows us aspects of the cultural and political history of Egypt and Syria between the World Wars, and also changes in the attitudes toward female public performers. (ND01)

Astronomy in the Service of Islam. David A. King. Aldershot and Brookfield: Variorum, 1993, 0-86078-357-X. A collection of King's historical and scientific writings on the complexities and contributions of Islamic astronomy, showing how Muslim scientists and Muslim legal scholars dealt with the practical questions of visibility of the new moon, lunar time-keeping and the qibla, the sacred direction of Islam. (SO94)

At Empire's Edge: Exploring Rome's Egyptian Frontier. Robert B. Jackson. Yale University, 0-300-08856-6, $40 hb. Oman-based historian Robert Jackson has spent a lot of time over some two decades tramping through the deserts of Egypt. His favorite historical period is the Graeco-Roman-specifically from about 29 bc to the start of the Byzantine period in the late fifth century. He has tracked down an amazing collection of ruins and sites from this period, and compiled them in this appealing book, which is part history, part gazetteer, part explorer's adventure. It is packed with Jackson's fine photos of Roman ruins from across Egypt, most of which cover sites you've probably never seen. Jackson divides his subject into three geographical areas: the Eastern Desert, the Upper Nile Valley and the Western Desert. He explores the Red Sea coast, Roman stone quarries, the Porphyry Road, the desert trade routes. He visits the temples and fortresses of Roman Nubia. He catalogues Roman ruins in the inhabited depressions or oases of the Western Desert: the Great Oasis (Rome's term for the united oases of Kharga and Dakhleh), the Small Oasis (the united oases of Bahariya and Farafra) and of course Siwa, home of the famed oracle. Two aspects of the book stand out. First, it covers a lot of territory and gives you a good idea of just how extensive the Roman presence in Egypt actually was. Second, Jackson manages to keep us entertained along the way, supplementing his impressive array of hard facts with a good sprinkling of anecdotes, oddities and historical mysteries. (Robert W. Lebling, Jr.) (SO03)

Atlas of the Islamic World Since 1500. Francis Robinson. New York: Facts on File, 1982, 0-87196-629-8; Oxford Phaedon Press Ltd., 1982, 0-7148-2200-0. A beautifully illustrated work on the transmission of Islamic culture from generation to generation and from state to state over the past five centuries. (MA91)

Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery. Bahaa' Taher, tr. Barbara Romaine. University of California Press, 1996, 0-520-20074-8, $35, hb; 0-520-20075-6, $12.95/£9.95, pb. Obliquely questioning tradition and exploring events that reconcile religious differences, one of Egypt 's leading writers tells a compact tale of a young man who receives sanctuary in a monastery when the wife of a man he killed in self-defense demands vengeance. Although some of the transliterated vocabulary may be difficult at first for readers unfamiliar with Arabic, perseverance is quickly rewarded with a realistic, well-translated window on village life. (MA97)

Avicenna and the Visionary Recital. Henry Corbin. Willard R. Trask, tr. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988, 0-691-01893-6 (pb). Using a text discovered in an Istanbul library, the author examines the psychological thought of Ibn Sina (called Avicenna in the West), the 11th-century Persian philosopher and physician, author of more than 100 works on theology, logic, medicine, and mathematics. (SO94)

Ayat Jamilah: Beautiful Signs, A Treasury of Islamic Wisdom for Children and Parents. Collected and adapted: Sarah Conover and Freda Crane; illustrated: Valerie Wahl. 2004, Eastern Washington U. P., 0-910055-94-7, $19.95 pb. This is an anthology of nearly 40 brief parables and folk tales—all just the right length for bedtime reading to young children—that draws from the broadest possible range of Islamic cultures, from China to Morocco. Some are from the Qur’an, others are from the hadith—the reported sayings of the Prophet Muhammad—and others are from folk traditions, including half a dozen classic Joha/Nasreddin Hoja stories. Interspersed are proverbs from equally wide-ranging sources. It’s an eclectic, delightful presentation that will appeal to readers of any religious background who seek intercultural wisdom tales. All the stories are explained and sourced at the back of the book, which increases its value to students of Islam and world cultures, who will find in it a pleasurable, memorable path to understanding some of the life wisdom of Islam. (Dick Doughty) (SO04)

Back to Earth: Adobe Building in Saudi Arabia. William Facey. Al-Turath/ London Centre of Arab Studies, 1997, 1-900404-13-3, £50.00/$79.50, hb.
This elegant volume details the restoration of a historic farming estate, al-‘Udhaibat, in central Saudi Arabia. The book’s significance lies not so much in its beauty—the photos of Najdi craftwork are superb—but in its role as “the opening motion in a debate.” Prince Sultan bin Salman Al Sa‘ud, patron of al-‘Udhaibat, and author William Facey argue for a revival of the earth-based architecture espoused by contemporary Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy. In Saudi Arabia, Sultan observes, adobe has come to connote poverty. Al-‘Udhaibat demonstrates what a cultural loss that is, and offers an inspiring vision of an alternative future for housing in the kingdom. (MJ98)

A Balcony Over the Fakihani. Liyana Badr, tr. Peter Clark with Christopher Tingley. Interlink Books, 1993, 1-56656-107-8, $9.95/17.99, pb. Three interwoven novellas tell the stories of three Palestinians, each uprooted by political cataclysms: the war of 1948, Jordan 's Black September in 1970 and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Badr's attention to detail is memorable, as when she describes a mother's shock at finding a white hair on her baby's head the morning after a mortar attack in Beirut With the intensity that is so often a byproduct of war, Badr personalizes a full range of joys and sorrows, and shines a light into the emotional world of those who live in the shadow of events beyond their control. (MA97)

Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty. Muhammad Yunus. 1999, PublicAffairs, 1-891620-11-8, $24 hb.
The simplicity and success of under-$100 lending turned Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Dhaka-based Grameen Bank, into a contemporary icon of humanitarian economics. He uses this autobiography, however, to step off the pedestal—not of his own construction—and tell his story in frank, conversational terms. “I never intended to become a moneylender. All I wanted to do was solve an immediate problem. Out of sheer frustration, I had questioned the most basic banking premise of collateral....” The question gave rise to Grameen Bank’s conception of credit as a human right. Today, Grameen Bank is a multi-billion-dollar, multi-branched, international non-profit enterprise that has redefined the notion of development. (MA00)

The Bazaar: Markets and Merchants of the Islamic World. Walter M. Weiss and Kurt-Michael Westermann. 1998, Thames & Hudson, 0-500-01839-1, $50/£32 hb.
From the Middle Ages to the present day, from Marrakech to Isfahan, few institutions in the Islamic world have so captured the fancy of Western travelers as the colorful, fragrant, joyfully cacaphonous bazaar—a word that has come into English from Persian. This is a lush and imaginatively photographed exploration of what is left (and there is much) of the top dozen or so trading emporia of the classical Islamic world. The text illuminates the nuts and bolts of the bazaar-based mercantile system well, but it is weakened by lapses into orientalist romanticism that at times over-generalizes about “the East” and at others judges harshly the inevitable interplay of old and new in the bazaars of modern cities. (MA99)

Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600. Rosamond E. Mack. 2002, University of California, 0-520-22131-1, $65 hb. Rosamond Mack, an Italian Renaissance art historian, shows how “oriental” (primarily Islamic) influences, transmitted through travel, trade and diplomacy, shaped the Italian imagination in fine and decorative arts. In chapters on patterned silks, Arabic script in Italian paintings, carpets, ceramics, glass, bookbinding and lacquer, inlaid brass and pictorial arts, she points out extensive connections between objects from the Muslim world and Italian ones, and proposes that, in order to fully appreciate the familiar Italian works, it helps to understand the sources of the visual imagination that produced them. In the beginning of the period Mack covers, China and the Middle East produced virtually all the value-added silks, carpets, ceramics, glass, leatherwork and brass that reached Italy. Gradually, Italy developed its own centers of high-quality production, and trade in manufactured luxury goods became multidirectional—the Ottomans imported glassblowers from Murano to establish their Çes¸mibülbül glassworks—but mutual cultural and religious ignorance remained. The reproductions in the book are of high quality and the sources range from well-known galleries to smaller specialized collections. The extensive bibliography includes English, Italian, French and German source material, but occasionally proves frustrating when a footnote draws a parallel to a work that is not illustrated in the book. (Charles Sweeney) (MA04)

Beads of Faith: The Sacred Name and the Heart’s Celestial Garden—The Universal Use of the Rosary. Gray Henry. 1999, Fons Vitae, 35 minutes vhs, 1-887752-32-3, $24.95.
This is an inspired work of popular scholarship packed with insights. In what is essentially an illustrated lecture, Henry weaves connections at the deepest levels among what are commonly regarded as entirely distinct traditions: Prayer beads—tasbih in Arabic—are used not only in Islam, Christianity and Judaism but also in Buddhism and Hinduism. In each faith, although the ways the beads are used have varied, the metaphysical and spiritual goals that those forms have served are stunningly similar. The result is not only deeper appreciation of others’ traditions, but also of one’s own. (MA00)

Beauty in Arabic Culture. Doris Behrens-Abouseif. 1998, Markus Wiener, 1-55876-198-5, $49.95 hb; 1-55876-199-3, $22.95 pb.
Drawing from Arabic texts authored between the eighth and the 15th centuries, the author explores the qualities of esthetic experience in times, places, media and contexts (e.g., religion, academia, daily life) in the classical and post-classical Arab world. Of particular help to the non-specialist reader is that she is no less conversant with Western esthetics, and accordingly offers occasional useful comparisons. This is a lucid, relatively compact scholarly book, an excellent aid to understanding how the Islamic arts came to take the forms they did, and how their patrons, creators and audiences perceived them. (SO00)

Bedouin Life in the Egyptian Wilderness. Joseph J. Hobbs. Austin : University of Texas, 1989, 0-292-71556-0 (pb). This first modern ethnographic portrait of the Ma'aza Bedouins, with whom Hobbs lived for almost two years, includes descriptions of their conservationist patterns of resource management in Egypt 's Eastern Desert (MA96)

The Bedouins and the Desert: Aspects of Nomadic Life in the Arab East. Jibrail S. Jabbur. Albany : State University of New York Press, 1995, 0-7914-2851-6 (hb). The author, who grew up in Syria at the edge of the desert, draws on a lifetime of experience with Bedouin as well as his expertise in Arabic literature in this painstakingly researched survey of the "four pillars" of Bedouin life in Syria: desert, camel, tent and character. (MA96)

Before the Mountains Disappear: An Ethnographic Chronicle of the Modern Palestinians. Ali H. Qleibo. Cairo: A Kloreus Book, Al-Ahram Press, 1992, no ISBN. Jerusalemite Qleibo - an artist, cultural anthropologist and author - paints a vivid and multi-faceted picture of Palestinian life and culture in a time of political upheaval and transition. (MA93)

Before the Oil: A Personal Memoir of Abu Dhabi. Susan Hillyard. 2002, Ashridge Press, 1-901214-02-8, £20 hb. The author was one of the first Europeans to live in Abu Dhabi, beginning in 1954. Because she spoke Arabic, she enjoyed close relationships with local women, including some in the emirate’s ruling family. Her affectionate account of life there half a century ago, at the very beginning of Abu Dhabi’s modern development, focuses on family matters, describing food and customs, disease and treatment, the relationships of daily life and such events as the arrival of the first automobile, but also records the beginnings of Abu Dhabi’s oil industry. This is a fond and valuable source for the period. (Peter Hellyer) (MA04)

The Bleeding of the Stone. Ibrahim al-Koni; May Jayyusi and Christopher Tingley, trs. 2002, Interlink, 1-56656-417-4, $12.95 pb
Traditional desert life is threatened by the forces of greed in this tale of magical realism, the first English translation of a work by one of Libya’s foremost novelists. It is the story of a lone Bedouin herdsman forced to guide a pair of hunters to the remote mountain desert of southern Libya in pursuit of the mouflon, an endangered wild sheep. In the dream world of al-Koni’s novel, the desert—its plants, its animals and its very stones—come alive in the struggle between those who would protect the land and those who seek to destroy it. (SO02)

The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh. David Damrosch. 2007, 978-0-80508029-2, Holt, $26 hb. The author, professor of comparative literature at Columbia, begins with the rediscovery of the epic, the first great masterpiece of world literature, and its deciphering in 1872 by George Smith, who created a sensation when he discovered “the Chaldean account of the Deluge” in the British Museum. Damrosch presents the story as a literary bridge between East and West: A document lost in the sack of Ashurbanipal’s Nineveh in 612 bc is excavated by a Chaldean archeologist, Hormuzd Rassam, in the 1840’s and decoded by an Englishman in one of the more important moments of cultural history. Damrosch’s discussion of the epic itself is particularly valuable. Though often read as a tale of the fear of death and the quest for immortality, he writes, “the epic is equally a tale of tyranny and its consequences.” As Harold Bloom pointed out, “It is salutary to be reminded by Damrosch that ultimately we and Islam share a common literary culture that commenced with Gilgamesh.” (SO07)

Byzantium: The Decline and Fall. John Julius Norwich. Alfred A. Knopf, 1996, 0-679-41650-1, $45.00, hb.
This is the third volume of the vastly well-read and very readable Viscount Norwich’s trilogy on Byzantium. The second volume ended with the battle of Malazgirt and the Seljuks’ entry into Anatolia, and this one, recounting a 200-year struggle with the Ottomans, ends with the conquest of Constantinople by Mehmet ii. Norwich’s goal throughout has been to rehabilitate the Byzantine’s reputation from “base and despicable” (Gibbon’s view) to steadfast, heroic and tragic, and he makes a good, though often uphill, case for them while being very fair to their attackers and conquerors. Most strikingly, though, this is simply well-written history, full of telling anecdotes, scintillating details, and well-constructed judgement. (MJ98)

On Being a Muslim: Finding a Religious Path in the World Today. Farid Esack. 1999, Oneworld Publications, 1-85168-146-9, $17.95/£10.99 pb.
South Africa is a crucible not only for contemporary racial relations but also, as this set of essays demonstrates, for matters of faith as well. Esack refers to himself as a Muslim liberation theologian, and he is a smartly candid one at that. His book is a bold, deeply reflective, often humorously confessional, unpolemical ramble through his delights and agonies over the world and the crosscurrent demands of faith. Early on, he writes: “This work is, in many ways, about a South African engaged in the struggle for justice and trying to relate that struggle to his Islam.... The struggle to live as a child of the times in a liberated society and to be committed to Islam is incredibly difficult if you take your theological heritage seriously. Every answer seems to be accompanied by a multitude of questions.” His gaze inward is no less honest or intense: The book is arranged as a psychological journey outward from a relationship with God to relations with self, other individuals and society. While Muslims will likely enjoy this articulate book most, non-Muslims will appreciate Esack’s personal illumination of the qualities and challenges of modern Muslim life. (MA01)

"Believing Women" in Islam. Asma Barlas. 2002, University of Texas, 0-292-70904-8, $21.95 pb.
The author, professor of politics and interim director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity at Ithaca College, New York, discusses the relationship of the Qur'an to the cultures that received, believed and socially interpreted its message. To the question whether Islam's scripture teaches or condones gender inequality or oppression of women, her reply is an emphatic negative. Moreover, she contends, the Word of God in the Qur'an clearly tells Muslims that men and women are equals, and practices to the contrary are thus matters of culture, not religion. (SO03)

Birds of the Eastern Province of Saudia Arabia. G. Bundy, R. J. Connor and C J. O. Harrison. London: Witherby, 1989, 0-85493-180-5. Besides a systematic list heavily illustrated with excellent photographs, the book includes an ecological overview of land, climate and vegetation and articles on the origins and types of birds; migration, adaptation and habitat; and human influence. (MA91)

The Birth of the Islamic Reform Movement in Saudi Arabia: Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhab (1703/4–1792) and the Beginnings of Unitarian Empire in Arabia. George S. Rentz. William Facey, ed. and intro. 2004, Arabian Publishing, 0-9544792-2-X, £25 hb.
Rentz’s 1947 Ph.D. dissertation, long used by scholars, is here published for the first time. Its subject is the 18th-century beginnings of the first Saudi state, forged in an alliance between the House of Sa‘ud and Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab. At its greatest extent, in the early 1800’s, that state controlled most of the Arabian Peninsula, and it was infused with a sense of purpose that came from ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s teachings. Rentz was an Arabist who worked for Aramco—predecessor of today’s Saudi Aramco—for 17 years beginning in 1947; in examining a subject then well out of the academic mainstream, he relied principally on the writings of local authorities contemporary with ‘Abd al-Wahhab. His work sheds light on the movement commonly—and incorrectly—called Wahhabi, which embodies a return to the unitary principles of Islam; its members referred to themselves as muwahiddun, or Unitarians—“those who affirm the unity of God.” Rentz’s thesis, now of great interest outside the academy, is published virtually unchanged, but includes several maps not in the original that help navigate the text.(MA06)

Black Pilgrimage to Islam. Robert Dannin; photographs Jolie Stahl. 2002, Oxford University, 0-19-514734-0, $35 hb. Fifteen years of research have gone into the most comprehensive, candid and well-written social history of African-American Islam to date. The author's experience as a journalist and, more recently, teacher of urban anthropology at New York University shows as he brings facts and personalities to life. From the working-class and depressed urban neighborhoods to college campuses, community organizations and prisons, Dannin investigates the surprising range of expressions that Islam has taken, all the while inquiring how Islam has aided people seeking to overcome a legacy of slavery and racial oppression. His travels, conversations and readings show that the Nation of Islam, which commands a disproportionate share of national media attention, is but a thread in a much larger design, which is itself a rich element in the social tapestry of the United States. (SO03)

Black Sea . Neal Ascherson. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995, 0-8090-3043-8 (hb). In an easy, convivial style that synthesizes deep scholarship with personal experience, the author investigates the Black Sea as the site upon which "patterns of relationships"—some intended, many unintended—were forged as cultures from all points of the compass interacted with each other and with changing natural forces over 4000 years. (MA96)

Black Tents of Arabia: My Life Among the Bedouins. Carl R. Raswan. 2003, Xlibris, 1-4010-5797-7, $34.99 hb; 1-4010-5796-9, $24.99 pb. This is an expanded edition of the book first published in 1935, in which the author recounts his desert experiences in pursuit of knowledge of the Arabian horse. He later used what he learned to become a principal agent in building up the breed in the United States and Europe in the 20th century. Traveling in the Arabian Peninsula shortly before the founding of Saudi Arabia in 1932, Raswan was renowned among the tribes for his deep respect of Bedouin ways, especially horsemanship and horse breeding. Born in Dresden in 1893, he emigrated to the United States in 1921, where he assisted in the historic Davenport importation and with the establishment of the country's earliest Arabian stud farms. This edition contains 100 pages of photographs. (SO03)

The Book of Strangers: Medieval Arabic Graffiti on the Theme of Nostalgia.Attributed to Abu ‘l-Faraj Al-Isfahani. Trans. by Patricia Crone and Shmuel Moreh. 2000, Markus Wiener Publishers, 1-55876-214-0, $49.95 hb; 1-55876-215-9, $18.95 pb.
In 10th-century Iraq, when the flourishing of the Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad made long-distance travel relatively easy, the author—possibly pseudonymous, certainly peripatetic—gleaned verses from gates, doors, walls and the occasional piece of paper, and left us a delightful, spontaneous volume that illuminates the flesh-and-blood humanity of a bygone age. Or does it? The high literary quality of so many of the verses engenders as much skepticism as pleasure: Was this all really graffiti, “found writing,” or did the author compose some—or all—of it? The translators, who have taken pains to make the book accessible to general readers, give the author the benefit of the doubt. Either way, the form is surprisingly appealing, and the road-weary poetic sentiments are laced with irony and dark wit that presage today’s “been there, done that” cliché: “Have mercy on the stranger in a distant land / What a disaster he has brought upon himself. / He left his loved ones. They did not benefit from life after his departure, / and neither did he.” (MA01)

A Border Passage: From Cairo to America—A Woman’s Journey. Leila Ahmed. 1999, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 0-37411518-4, $24 hb; 2000, Penguin usa, 0-14-029183-0, $13.95 pb.
Two transformations make up this book: The political and social 20th-century transformation of Egypt, and the transformation of a Cairene child into a self-aware Egyptian woman scholar in the West. The mutually reflecting viewpoints of the child, the foreign student in England, the developing scholar and the established intellectual authority—author of an important book on Women and Gender in Islam—make this articulate memoir three-dimensional. The facts may or may not be objectively accurate, but “their trace and residue in my consciousness” are equally important. (MA01)

The Breadwinner. Deborah Ellis. 2000, Groundwood Books, 0-88899-416-8, $5.95 / C$7.95 pb. Parvana’s Journey: Sequel to The Breadwinner. Deborah Ellis. 2002, Groundwood Books, 0-88899-519-9, $5.95 / C$7.95 pb. Understanding the humanitarian gravity of contemporary Afghanistan is hard enough for an adult who has never been there, and it’s even harder if you are younger. Ellis is a youth counselor in Toronto who also has recorded oral histories of women in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. They inspired her character Parvana, age 11, middle of three daughters to an English-educated historian father and a magazine-writer mother, both of whom, at the beginning of Ellis’s tale, have been barred from their jobs in Kabul by the Taliban. Life unravels quickly: Parvana’s father is imprisoned, and she dresses as a boy to go out to earn a meager family living in the market. Later, she is separated from her mother and sisters, and when her father is released, they set out to find them. Her father soon dies, and she picks up an abandoned baby as well as an irascible, wounded boy as she walks through the bleak hills, guided by the thread of hope of reunion with the remains of her family in Pakistan. She finds solace by writing imaginary notes to a friend in France. Though she is scarred by horrific abuse and travail, her resourcefulness and courage make her heroism a universal metaphor of hope. (Dick Doughty) (SO04)

A Brief History of Islam. Tamara Sonn. 2004, Blackwell, 1-4051-0900-9, $17.95 pb. This concise work, an outstanding primer, is divided into five major sections. The first presents the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and explains the early ideological disputes that led to the split between Sunni and Shi‘a. In part two, Sonn examines the development of institutions, law, political structure, cultural achievements and spirituality during the “Golden Age” of Islam. This is followed by a look at division and reorganization, and how external challenges—the Crusades, the decline of the Abbasids and the rise of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals—affected Islamic history. Section four is particularly relevant to understanding current events in the Middle East, as the author addresses colonialism and its effects, along with themes of Islamic reform that have developed during this period. Last, she examines the possible directions for the future. (Helen El Mallakh) (MA05)

Brick Lane. Monica Ali. 2003, Scribner, 0-7432-4330-7, $25 hb; 2004, Scribner, 0-7432-4331-5,$14 pb; 2003, Doubleday, 0-385-60484-X, £12.99 hb; 2004, Black Swan, 0-5527-7115-5, £7.99 pb. Before this first novel was even published, Granta named Monica Ali to its list of 20 Best Young British Novelists—a bad sign. Other reviewers called her “the new Zadie Smith”: strike two. But in fact this tale of a woman who moves from complete will-lessness—even her survival at birth is a matter of merest accident—to the hard-earned capacity to take control of her own life is sharply and sympathetically observed, insightful, complex and hopeful. Humor and tragedy adjoin and intermingle inextricably, like the two cultures in which the sharply observed characters live and struggle, fail and succeed. (MA04)

The British Museum Book of Ancient Egypt. Stephen Quirke and ]effrey Spencer, eds. Thames and Hudson, 1996 (reprint of 1992 edition), 0-500-27902-0, $24.95, pb; British Library, 1992, 0-7141-0965-7, £14.99, pb. In 240 densely informative, generously illustrated pages we get thorough overviews of ancient Egypt 's religion, funerary customs, language and writing, art and architecture and technology, along with chapters on the country's geography, history and relations with other powers. The information is authoritative—the editors and writers are members of the Museum's curatorial staff—and written in a plain, understandable style. Appendices include "Suggestions for Further Reading" (unfortu­nately not updated from 1992), dynasty and king lists, and kings' names in hieroglyphics. (MA97)

Bulgarian Rhapsody: The Best of Balkan Cuisine. Linda Joyce Forristal. 1998, Sunrise Pine Press, 0-9639182-1-4, $14.95 pb.
Like any ethnic cookbook, this is an introduction to a whole culture, clearly one the author loves. Its wide range of recipes—some reminiscent of Turkish cuisine, thanks to Bulgaria’s 500 years in the Ottoman Empire, others of Austro-Hungarian or Greek—includes some for such Bulgarian basics as lyutenitsa (tomato-pepper spread) and kyopolo (eggplant salad). They are mixed with proverbs and snippets of Bulgarian history, and followed by a few interesting menus and short cultural essays. Forristal’s personal preferences have led her to exclude recipes using organ meats or lamb; the latter especially is a regrettable omission. But she is clearly in sympathy with Bulgarians’ emphasis on fresh vegetables and slow cooking, and her book is a real service to the country and the people who befriended her there—as well as to interested eaters and readers. (MA99)

The Bullet Collection. Patricia Sarrafian Ward. 2003, Graywolf Press, 1-55597-376-0, $25.00 hb. "The magic of Lebanon infects any person born there and any visitor who steps onto the land for even just one day," writes Patricia Ward in her story about troubled teenage sisters in war-torn Beirut. The narrator, Marianna, and her sister are the offspring of an American/Armenian marriage. In this deeply personal coming-of-age novel, each sister struggles to survive a near-fatal depression that is her own internal civil war. Marianna tells how her world grows smaller and smaller, until there is only her room-and then only her memories of a Lebanon both real and imagined. The adults in the sisters' lives inhabit an unreal world of denial, where civil war and depression are interspersed with hopeful truces, and family gatherings in the fresh piney mountains above the city promise that all will soon be well. The sisters know better-or do they? "What is this magic, this country that insists on being remembered even after forcing us to leave?" Good memories and bad can be equally haunting, and even when Ward writes of despair, her prose is lyrically poetic. (William Tracy) (SO03)

The Burning Ashes of Time: From Steamer Point to Tiger Bay. Patricia Aithie. 2005, Seren, 1-85411-400-X, £9.99 pb.
Aden, at the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, served as the main coaling station for colonial Britain’s steamship service between Suez and Bombay beginning in the 1840’s, thus creating an unlikely link between Wales and Yemen. The high-quality Welsh coal that fired the ships’ boilers made Cardiff’s docks the busiest in the United Kingdom and a magnet for generations of Yemeni workers who found work feeding the vessels’ furnaces and dumping the ashes that remained. Many emigrated from Steamer Point, a coal-bunkering point in Yemen, to Tiger Bay, adjacent to the port of Cardiff, where a sizeable Yemeni community remains today. A number served in the Royal Navy in the two World Wars. The author traveled to Yemen to find living links between her hometown and Aden and its hinterlands. She recounts her discoveries in a book that is part detailed travelogue, part detective story. (MA08)

Cairo: 1001 Years of Islamic Art and Architecture. Caroline Williams and Gray Henry. 1999, Fons Vitae, 100 minutes vhs, 1-887752-23-4, $39.95.
This four-part video works well on both a specific and a general level: On the one hand, it is an excellent survey of the Islamic dimension of Cairo’s artistic heritage; on the other, it is—in the 20-minute second part—a superbly lucid introduction to the general principles that underlie all of the arts in Islam. The photography of the monuments is captivating, and the soundtrack gives the video the feel of a walking tour led by expert guides: Williams is the author of a previous book on Islamic architecture in Cairo, and Henry was a student of Islam for a decade at Cairo’s renowned Al-Azhar University. (MA00)

Cairo: City of Sand. Maria Golia. 2004, Reaktion Books, 1-86189-187-3, $27.00 hb. The author is a longtime resident of Cairo, one of the “intimate strangers” she lists in her survey of the city’s “others,” and she finds herself simultaneously in love with and heartbroken by the city on the Nile. Luckily for us, Golia has channeled her joys and frustrations into this freewheeling romp and rave. City of Sand is composed of five ruminations on how Cairenes respond to the city, its layers of history, its unique patois, and—perhaps its saving grace—its rituals of family. Reading the book is akin to sitting in one of the city’s smoky cafés and listening to an impassioned riff on the legionsof frustrations that bedevil residents. Perhaps the most interesting chapter is “Listening,” a catalog of the idioms, insults, jokes, flattery and cajolery wielded by Cairenes to make the intolerable tolerable. Unruly and frequently as maddening as the city she describes, City of Sand is also filled with delight, surprise and tender beauty—just like Cairo. —KYLE PAKKA (SO07)

Cairo Cats: Egypt’s Enduring Legacy. Lorraine Chittock. 1999, Camel Caravan (www.cats.camels. com), 977-5762-01-4, $15.95 hb.
In rambles through Cairo’s nooks and crannies, mosques and markets, a cat-lover-cum-photographer captured city-savvy felines whose ubiquity in that city is, as all Cairenes know, both charming and maddening. This is a delightful gift book of photographs remarkable for their spontaneity and for Chittock’s often whimsical sensitivities to body language and the cat’s relationship to its surroundings. Each photograph is complemented by an apposite literary passage, and, with an opening historical essay by Annemarie Schimmel, they frame a light-hearted impression of the cat’s lasting place in Egyptian culture. (MA00)

Cairo: The City Victorious. Max Rodenbeck. 1999, Knopf, 0-679-44651-6, $27.50 hb.
Rodenbeck not only knows Cairo—he spent part of his childhood there, later studied Arabic and returned as a correspondent for The Economist —but, more importantly, he loves Cairo, not romantically but wholly, “in all her shambolic grandeur and operatic despair.” His historical insight is substantial, and serious-minded readers who complain of his leaving off source citations will, in the next breath, praise his ex- pansive bibliography. Anecdote, analysis and character are all sharp, rendered up to the reader in a kaleidoscopic fashion that is both erudite and populist. The approach suits Cairo well, for “other places may have been neater, quieter, and less prone to wrenching change, but they all lacked something. The easy warmth of Cairenes, perhaps, and their indomitable insouciance; the complexities and complicities of their relations; their casual mixing of sensuality with moral rigor, of razor wit with credulity.” (MA00)

The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca. Tahir Shah. 2006, Bantam, 0-533-80399-9, $22, £15 hb.
This is much more than a mere extension of the Year in Provence franchise: It is the tale of a rich cultural journey viewed through the window of a decrepit mansion where Shah, a British travel writer of Afghan extraction, moves his young family. Shah is drawn to Morocco by his father’s and grandfather’s history there and by a romantic wish to escape the secure “island mentality” of England—but he and his wife and young children get much more than they’d bargained for. Therein lies the beauty of the book. An outsider with a gift for words but little money, and a dreamer forced to interact with the community around Dar al-Khalifa (the Caliph’s House), Shah wholeheartedly captures the spirit of the place and time, incorporating a varied cast of characters—including baffling craftsmen, a gangster neighbor and even jinn (invisible spirits)—that threatens to unravel the entire project, and with whom Shah deals with a combination of innocence, guile and resignation.

Call Me Ishmael Tonight: A Book of Ghazals. Agha Shahid Ali. 2003, Norton, 0-393-32612-8, $21.95 pb. This collection of poetry by the late Agha Shahid Ali brings the classical Arabic ghazal, or ode, to an English-speaking audience. Ali, who died in 2001, was a renowned Kashmiri-American poet able to bridge literary and cultural divides. This compilation of his best ghazals takes its reader on a journey through the intricacies of this extremely disciplined, centuries-old poetic form. Ali works with both East and West, tradition and modernity, as he weaves themes of romantic love and spirituality amid global locations and issues. (A profile of Ali appeared in the July/August 2001 issue of Saudi Aramco World.) (Helen El Mallakh) (MA05)

The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia . Denis Sinor, ed. Cambridge and New York : Cambridge University Press, 1990, 0-521-2-4304-1. From the paleolithic era to the rise of the Mongol empire, this volume presents the current state of knowledge of the geographic, political and cultural factors that have shaped Central Asia (SO94)

The Camel’s Load in Life and Death. Elfriede Regina Knauer. 1998, Akanthus (Kilchberg/Zurich), 3-905083-12-4, sf49 pb.
In the second century bc, trade on the Silk Roads began in earnest, partly thanks to the proliferation of the camel in Han Dynasty China. From that time until the tenth century of our era, carefully wrought camel figurines were often part of Chinese mortuary furnishings. These figurines generally depict saddled, often loaded, camels, and the saddle styles and the nature of the loads reveal much about trade practices and patterns. Although written in an academic style, this is a significant book for students of the Silk Roads and Central Asia. (MA99)

The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization. Richard W. Bulliet. 2004, Columbia UP, 0-231-12796-0, $24.50 hb. Middle Eastern scholar Richard Bulliet presents a new concept: “Islamo-Christian civilization,” which challenges common stereotypes about the irreconcilability of Muslim-led and Christian-led societies. The author argues that Islamic and Christian cultures were both born of the same civilization and are thus “sibling societies.” Evaluating the shared historical experiences of both religions and their interactions over the centuries, Bulliet lays out his case in the first of four essays. For more than 1400 years, Islam and Christianity were linked by trade, the transfer of ideas and their Abrahamic heritage. But then what explains the current state of conflict, particularly between the US and Muslim countries in the Middle East? The author turns to this question in his second essay, which argues that readers should be asking, “What went on?” rather than “What went wrong?” Beginning in the 16th century, the sibling cultures took different paths, particularly regarding the separation of religion and state. By the second half of the 20th century, the role of Islam grew as secular states in the Middle East failed to deliver democracy and became more authoritarian. Islam, Bulliet argues, served as a counterbalance to authoritarianism and is thus not a barrier to either democracy or economic growth. The third and fourth essays continue to question beliefs that have shaped western policies and interventions in the Middle East since the Cold War. Bulliet challenges the rationale behind attempts to impose particular values on the Middle East. According to him, it is these policies—not an inherent incompatibility of values—that are the basis of current conflicts. The book concludes by suggesting an alternative path in which the West respects, rather than attempts to change, the values of Islamic societies, and thus builds on the deep roots of the shared Islamo-Christian civilization. (Helen El Mallakh) (MA05)

The Castles of the Assassins: The 1960 British Expedition to the Valley of the Assassins in Northern Iran. Peter Willey. 2001, Linden Publishing, 0-941936-64-3, $21.95/Can$32.95; (Orig. pub. 1963, George G. Harrap & Co., London).
The legendary Assassins (from the Arabic hashshashin, or eater of hashish) were members of the Nizari Ismaili sect that controlled much of the Middle East in the late 12th century from Alamut, their stronghold in northwest Iran. Tales of their ruthlessness and ferocity reached the West via returning crusaders and Marco Polo, but the 1960 British expedition to the Valley of the Assassins showed them to be remarkable castle-builders, craftsmen and farmers as well as warriors. Armchair archeologists and travelers alike will enjoy this straightforward account of the mishaps, hardships and ultimate satisfactions attendant on difficult fieldwork in pre-revolutionary Iran. In the preface written for the new edition, the author recounts his return to the Valley in 1996 and his dismay at the vandalism of Alamut and the castle of Maymun Diz, the site where the Mongols brought about the end of the Assassin state in 1256. This book serves as the best archeological record of one of the Middle East’s most famous dynasties. (ND01)

Chasing the Mountain of Light: Across India on the Trail of the Koh-i-Noor Diamond. Kevin Rushby. 2000, St. Martin’s, 0-312-22813-9, $24.95 hb.
In the Tower of London sits the world’s largest diamond, the Koh-i-Noor, whose name means “Mountain of Light.” It is not known how old it really is: Mughal rulers, for whom it and other gems were prizes worth battling for, said that Krishna had rescued it from the God of the Sun 2500 years earlier, and that it possessed sublime spiritual power. Likely it came from the mines of Golconda, in south India, which is where this well-spun travel yarn begins. Rarely setting foot in a polished-tile hotel lobby, dodging rickshaws and keeping one step ahead of slick crooks who take him for an underground diamond buyer, the author traces what is known of the great gem’s surprisingly bloody path, and illuminates the shadowy world of lowbrow gem-dealing along the way. At every turn he finds a fresh facet of a story in which the histories of India and Britain are refracted by two of human nature’s great oppositions: avarice and aspiration. (SO00)

Children in the Muslim Middle East . Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, ed. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1995, 0-292-72490-X (pb). Forty-one articles by 30 different authors offer a unique and balanced survey of the region's next generation of leaders. (MA96)

The Children’s Encyclopaedia of Arabia. Mary Beardwood. 2001, Stacey International, 1-900988-33-X, $29.95, hb
This vividly illustrated volume by a teacher with nearly a quarter-century of experience on the Arabian Peninsula is a delight for children and young adults to peruse alone or with parents. The history, culture, plants and animals of the region are brought to life in a pleasing format certain to engross young readers, and perhaps deliver a surprise or two to adults who thought they knew it all. (MA03)

Christians and Muslims: From Double Standards to Mutual Understanding. Hugh Goddard. Curzon Press, 1996, 0-7007-0364-0, $29.95/£14.99, pb; 0-7007-0363-2, 68/£37.50, hb. Believing that "mutual ignorance is far more widespread than mutual understanding," Goddard, lec­turer in Islamic theology at Nottingham University, looks in detail not only at what Christians and Muslims might agree on or "agree to disagree" about, but also at how believers of both faiths have tended to perceive—and misperceive—each other. This volume, which covers scriptures, laws, histo­ries and the problems of both Christian and Muslim fundamentalism," is a healthy resource for interfaith discussions from either perspective. (MA97)

Cities and Caliphs: On the Genesis of Arab Muslim Urbanism. Nezar AlSayyad. Westport : Greenwood Press, 1991, 0-313-27791-5. The author draws almost exclu­sively on original Arab chronicles to propose an alternative, holistic framework for understanding the Muslim city in its social, economic and religious contexts. (SO94)

Cities From the Arabian Desert: The Building of Jubail and Yanbu in Saudi Arabia. Andrea H. Pampanini. Praeger, 1997, 0-275-95594-X, $55.00, hb.
The Saudi industrial cities of Jubail, on the Arabian Gulf, and Yanbu‘, on the Red Sea are the two largest public-works projects in the history of the world. Both built virtually ex nihilo since the 1970’s, they account for some 10 percent of the world’s petrochemical production today. Drawing on interviews with more than 100 sources, the author has set down the hugely complex story of these cities in the clear, instructive style of the business reporter. (MJ98)

City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem. Meron Benvenisti, tr. Maxime Kaufman Nunn. University of California Press, 1996, 0-520-20521-9, $24.95, hb. Perhaps no city has been so closely studied by historians as Jerusalem A former deputy mayor of the city, the prolific Benvenisti (this is his eighth book about Jerusalem ) writes with an insider's intimacy and an uncommonly disinterested eye. He focuses on the ways contemporary political interests manipulate versions of the city's, and the region's, history in their struggles to "appropriate physical and... chronological space." His grasp of multiple points of view is exemplary, and the result is a book with few heroes but much passionate humanity. (MA97)

Classic Turkish Cookery. Ghillie Basan, photography by Jonathan Basan. Tauris Parke, 1996, 1-86064-011-7, £19.95, hb; St. Martin 's Press, 1997, 0-312-15617-0, $29.95, hb. This is an unusual cookbook in that it goes far beyond Istanbul to provide recipes from seven dif­ferent regions of Turkey, selecting dishes that one is unlikely to encounter except in private homes, and providing evidence that it wasn't only the palace cooking of Topkapi that made Turkish cuisine one of the world's great ones. Author and photographer, by blood and art, are descended from an Ottoman grand vizier's family that dined on both palace and Anatolian fare. The photographs are mouthwatering; the recipes, which also include familiar dishes, are detailed, and reveal a deep understanding of how the cuisine developed. The book may indeed, as the jacket says, be destined to become the standard work on the subject. (MA97)

Classic Vegetarian Cooking from the Middle East and North Africa. Habeeb Salloum. 2000, Interlink Books, 1-56656-335-6, $25 hb.
Even more valuable than his more than 300 recipes are Salloum’s little introductions to many of them, neat pocket disquisitions on, say, coriander, or how his Arab-American daughter’s simplified recipe for aysh al-saray differs from the classical one, or the medicinal merits of beets and the marital merits of eggplant. He provides a group of basic recipes for foods used to make other dishes, and his cooking instructions demonstrate that he has spent much time in the kitchen himself. He points out connections to medieval Arabic food texts (and provides a short bibliography of them), but his historical discrimination is otherwise limited to the phrase “many thousands of years.” Still, this is an excellent book both for reading and cooking, and he succeeds in substantiating his assertion of the central role of vegetarian dishes in the delicious everyday cuisine of the Middle East. (SO00)

Cleopatra’s Heir. Gillian Bradshaw. 2002, Forge, 0-765-30228-4, $25.95 hb
This is a historical fiction about Caesarion—the son of Cleopatra vii by Julius Caesar, she claimed—written by a scholar of classics. Caesarion was only 18 when his natural enemy, Caesar’s adopted son, Octavian, conquered Egypt, and in this tale the Greek princeling is protected and helped to grow up by an Egyptian commoner. (SO02)

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Islam. Yahiya Emerick. 2003, Alpha Books, 0-02-864233-3, $18.95 pb. Don't be put off by the self-deprecating series title: This is one smart book, written in a conversational tone like talking to an interesting guest at a backyard barbecue. The author is a us-born convert who has done some serious homework without going pedantic along the way. A solidly interior understanding of the faith of a billion people is a complicated thing, and Emerick and Alpha know that, so to help you along, they've created one of the most efficiently packaged books in the "Islam 101" genre. Not only is it all here-faith, history, cultures and life styles; squirmy issues like sectarianism, colonialism, the "inner-struggle" meaning of jihad, heaven-hell-and-judgment-but also to help you navigate it, there are two tables of contents, a short version and a long one. Topical infographics with titles like "Just the Facts" and "Ask the Imam" pop up as intellectual snack food, and at the end of each chapter there is a box "The Least You Need to Know" that offers bulleted Cliff Notes-style one-liners. Who'd pass up a book like this? Only a complete idiot. (SO03)

The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt. Richard H. Wilkinson. 2000, Thames and Hudson, 0-500-05100-3, $39.95 hb. Wilkinson, director of the University of Arizona Egyptian expedition and author of several books on ancient Egypt, breezes through scores of temples, both major and obscure, in an unadorned and lucid style. Separate chapters are devoted to the origin of Egyptian temples, their growth and decline and their modern rediscovery; the process of building and decorating a temple; the components of a temple; the temple’s relationship to the pantheon of Egypt’s gods, along with the roles and rituals of pharaohs and priests, and the sacred rites and festivals; and a catalog and guide to the ancient sites. Profusely illustrated with photographs, maps and reconstructions, this attractive volume, like the others in the series, is an entertaining guide and general reference book, useful for planning a trip, nurturing a budding interest in the subject or as a memento of your own expedition. More experienced readers may be disappointed in the brevity of the individual entries, however. (Kyle Pakka) (MA04)

The Complete Valley of the Kings: Tombs and Treasures of Egypt 's Greatest Pharaohs. Nicholas Reeves and Richard H. Wilkinson. Thames and Hudson, 1996, 0-500-05080-5, $29.95/£19.95, hb. This is an encyclopedic treatment of the history of the arche­ology of the world's most famous—and romanticized—necropolis. With anecdotal information presented in frequent sidebars; generous, well-captioned photographs and diagrams; and tiny "factfiles" pointing to original sources, the book remains lively and readable in spite of the enormous amount of information it contains. At the end there is a five-page list of further reading and a page of tips for planning a visit. (MA97)

Concise Encyclopedia of Islam. Cyril Glasse. New York: Harper & Row, 1989, 0-06-063123-6. The first major reference work on all aspects of Islamic culture, religion, history and law - nearly 1200 entries - written for Western readers by a practicing Muslim. (MA91)

The Concise Encyclopaedia of Islam, Revised Edition. Cyril Glassé; introduction, Huston Smith. 2001, Stacey International, 1-900988-06-2, £45, hb. New Encyclopedia of Islam. Cyril Glassé. 2001 (rev. ed.), Altamira, 0-7591-0189-2, $89.95, hb
This single-volume reference work on Islam, in a newly revised edition, is a vigorous and exhaustive compendium not only of the religion, but also of the cultures associated with and inspired by it. A graduate of Columbia University and a lecturer on comparative religion, Glassé, in 1200 entries, unfolds Islam’s remarkable depth and breadth as a religion and as a force in philosophy, science and the arts. Erudite and thoroughly engaging, the author’s style is captivating to scholars and casual readers alike. (MA03)

A Concise History of the Crusades.Thomas F. Madden. 1999, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 0-8476-9429-1, $22.95, hb; 0-8476-9430-5, $12.95, pb.
This excellent short history of the crusades to the Holy Land rejects the notion that most crusaders’ primary motivation was mercenary rather than religious, and nicely balances military with political history. Madden interestingly discusses the difficult diversion of crusader fervor to domestic targets such as the Albigensians, and argues that the papacy’s fixation on Muslim expansion left the church vulnerable to the internal threat of Protestantism. (MA01)

A Concise History of the Middle East. 8th ed. Arthur Goldschmidt Jr. and Lawrence Davidson. 2005, Westview Press, 0-8133-4275-9, $45 pb.
This introductory textbook for college students studying the Middle East does its job well, and it is also a useful gateway for non-students who want to understand the re-gion behind the news. At 559 pages, it grows larger with each edition, but retains its clarity and its concise, highly readable style. Goldschmidt and Davidson survey the full sweep of Middle Eastern history from early Byzantine times to April 2005, and describe the birth and growth of Islamic civilization with balance and realism. They caution readers against drawing unjustified conclusions about the present day from past events, pointing out, for example, that the Prophet Muhammad’s disputes with Jewish tribes “did not poison later Muslim–Jewish relations nor did Muhammad’s policies cause what we now call the Arab–Israeli conflict.” The book features cogent profiles of diverse key figures in the region’s history, from the Prophet’s wife ‘Aisha to the science-oriented caliph Ma’mun to Egyptian nationalist Ahmed Urabi to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. The book’s most recent chapters read more like press accounts, with a minimum of historical analysis and perspective, and the authors try to remedy this by introducing occasional “mini-debates” in these later chapters, each scholar presenting a different viewpoint on an issue. The technique is distracting, perhaps confusing, for newcomers to the region’s history. One of the work’s greatest strengths is its detailed bibliographic essay, which recommends a treasure-house of excellent reading material on the major topics in every chapter. (Robert W. Lebling) (MA06)

Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, 1453-1924. Philip Mansel. St. Martin's Press, 1995, 0-312-14574-8, $35, hb; John Murray, 1995, 0-7195-5076-9, £25, hb. Throughout the Ottoman half-millennium covered by this richly detailed, well researched history, no city captured the imagination like Constantinople and, for much of the era, few rivaled it in global influence. It was, writes Mansel (a specialist in court histories), "the only capital to function on every level: political, military, naval, religious (both Muslim and Christian), economic, cultural and gastronomic." One of the reasons may have been its diversity, explicitly encouraged by Mehmet the Conqueror—himself of mixed race—and extended by his son, Beyazit II, who opened the Empire to the Jews expelled from Spain. Scholars, laymen and Turkey-bound travelers will all find this book useful and a pleasure to read. (MA97)

Cooking at the Kasbah: Recipes From My Moroccan Kitchen. Kitty Morse. 1998, Chronicle Books, 0-8118-1503-X, $22.95 pb.
Moroccan-born Morse returns to her family home in the kasbah—the walled old city—of Azemmour to present a selection of only 70 recipes that nonetheless provides a thorough, and thoroughly delicious, introduction to Morocco’s astonishing cuisine. Her clear instructions are adapted to American kitchens (canned tomatoes, food processors), and make it seem entirely possible that a novice could prepare such wonders as bistilla b’djaj or a vegetable-rich, ginger-flavored Casablanca couscous. Morse includes lists of basic ingredients, basic techniques, us mail-order sources and a few menus. The book is also beautifully produced, with excellent photographs by Owen Morse and Laurie Smith. (SO00)

Costumes of Morocco. Jean Besancenot. London: Kegan Paul International/Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 0-7103-0359-9. The first translation into English of the finest study ever done of Moroccan costume, originally privately published in 1942. Superb color paintings show costumes of 10 peoples; they are accompanied by text that provides social and cultural context. (MA96)

Couscous: Fresh and Flavorful Contemporary Recipes. Kitty Morse. 2000, Chronicle Books, 0-8118-2401-2, $16.95 pb.
This is an entirely different undertaking from Morse’s authentic-Moroccan collection above: Here this one-woman culinary embassy presents 50 couscous recipes, only a handful of which come directly from North Africa. The rest are her own contemporary, even trendy, inventions, adaptations or fusions: curried couscous croquettes, couscous marinara with Italian sausage, raspberry couscous trifle and so on. The book thus demonstrates that Moroccan ingredients and flavors are not only delicious and healthy, but also extremely adaptable, as Morse presents intriguing novelties and variations that may indeed revolutionize your kitchen, as the cover claims. You’re certainly not likely to run into pineapple-banana couscous tamales with coconut-cream topping very often—and they’re probably wonderful. (SO00)

Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. Edward W. Said. New York : Pantheon, 1981, 0-394-51319-3; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981, 0-7100-0840-6. An eloquent spokesman for the Arabs writes about Western, and especially American, responses to the Muslim and Arab worlds since the early 1970's. (MA91)

Cradle and Crucible: History and Faith in the Middle East. National Geographic Society; Daniel Schorr, introduction; David Fromkin, Zahi Hawass, Yossi Klein Halevi, Sandra Mackey, Charles M. Sennott, Milton Viorst and Andrew Wheatcroft, contributors. 2002, National Geographic Society, 0-7922-6915-2, $30 hb.
This five-chapter history of the Middle East ranges from prehistory to the clichéd “Century of Strife, 1920–2002”; additionally, it devotes a chapter to each of the three major faiths and illustrates it all with characteristically beautiful historical and contemporary photography. While it will prove one-stop shopping for many a student report, it is not an entirely well-thought-out endeavor: Daniel Schorr begins his introduction expressing frank curiosity that he was selected for his task—perhaps for his nearly 87 years of age, he guesses diplomatically, or perhaps it was for his status as a wise and dispassionate observer-at-large, the last of the generation of Edward R. Murrow. To the serious reader, though, the book has a generic tone which dulls the impact of the otherwise insightful individual writers, all of whom are better read in the context of their own more detailed works—unless your school report is due on Thursday. (MA03)

Crescent. Diana Abu-Jaber. 2003, Norton, 0-393-05747-X, $24.95 hb.
The author, a teacher at Portland State University, follows her first novel, Arabian Jazz (nominated for the PEN/Hemingway Prize), with this flavorful account of Sirine, an Iraqi-American chef at a Lebanese restaurant in Los Angeles. Unmarried and approaching 40, guarded by a doting uncle devoted to traditional storytelling and by a matchmaking boss, Sirine finds herself falling for a handsome Arabic-literature professor. Their courtship rekindles unresolved issues involving the death of her parents and her cultural identity, all played out against the fragrant and noisy backdrop of Nadia’s Café, the second home of the local Arab-American community. Poignant and filled with vividly drawn characters, Abu-Jaber’s novel is a lush and sensual Middle Eastern feast, both for the senses and for the heart. (MA03)

Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds. Stephen Kinzer. 2001, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 0-374-13143, $25 hb
This is a skilled journalist’s account of the development of modern Turkey and the problems, ambiguities and complexities it faces. With great affection for the country, Kinzer analyzes the intersection of political and social forces, and the roles played by such entities as the “Kemalist priesthood” and its secularism; the military, which regards social issues as affecting national security; Islamist political parties; and a middle class heavily dependent on the state. Though he is too accepting of the “standard model” of modern Turkish history, he does see both the repression and the vibrant democracy of the country, and believes that a new social contract is possible that will allow Turkey to reach its enormous potential. (SO02)

The Cruelest Journey: Six Hundred Miles to Timbuktu. Kira Salak. 2004, National Geographic, 0-7922-9790-3, $26 hb.
Salak kayaks alone down the Niger River from Segou, the same route taken by Scottish explorer Mungo Park two centuries ago. (He died en route in unexplained circumstances.) She relies on local people for food and lodging on the way and encounters storms, sorceresses, hippos, rapids and both friendly and unfriendly people. She writes fluently of both those meetings and her own emotions and mental explorations as she travels. (SO05)

The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives. Carole Hillenbrand. 2000, Edinburgh University Press, 0-7486-0905-9, £80 hb; 0-7486-0630-0, £29.95 pb.
The author calls this book “an outline,” but in fact only specialists will need to go beyond its 650 heavily illustrated pages, in which she covers Muslim reactions to the first crusade, the development of the Muslim counter-crusade, the role of the concept of jihad, and the Muslim reconquest. Less linearly, Hillenbrand also deals with Muslims’ stereotypes about crusaders and Muslim reactions to their culture, and with the continuing effect of the crusades on the minds and opinions of present-day Muslims. Her sources are widespread—the contemporary ones all Islamic, the modern ones also Western—and mostly textual, but they do include monuments and artworks. The book is equipped with lists, glossaries, chronologies and footnotes, and constitutes all one is likely to need for a foray into the territor