Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Middle East Studies Association Bulletin.

http://www.jstor.org

Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA)

Review Author(s): Khalid Yahya Blankinship Review by: Khalid Yahya Blankinship Source: Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, Vol. 21, No. 2 (December 1987), pp. 185-187Published by: Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23060435Accessed: 25-07-2015 15:23 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

This content downloaded from 24.122.7.167 on Sat, 25 Jul 2015 15:23:59 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

History and Economics before 1900 185

book contains the revised and expanded version of papers prepared for that conference. It is a thesaurus, a treasury, of material for students of the Christian and Muslim Near East, and it marks a turning point in the

study of Byzantine and Ottoman social history. In order to discuss an area on the basis of both Byzantine and Ot

toman documentary resources, this pilot project limited itself to three sites

for which numerous late Byzantine records, mostly monastic, have sur

vived: villages in Macedonia, the island of Lemnos, and the hinterland of

Trebizond. While the authors emphasize the peripheral position of these

areas, they are nonetheless able to frame, and in part answer, provoca tive questions about the "core" lands of the two empires. With the excep tions of chapters based on chronicles and European records (by Professors

Vryonis and Topping) and on court records (by Professor Jennings, from

Trebizond), the project team's two primary sources were Byzantine char

ters (the province of Professors Bryer, Lefort, Dimitriades, and Haldon) and Ottoman mufassal defters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the

special reserve of Professor Lowry, who generously provided data for his

colleagues. The results, in the fields of agricultural history, village organization,

income and taxation, and demography, are highly interesting and worth

discussion, speaking as they do of both unexpected change and unexpected

continuity. For those who have an interest in the impact of conquest on a society, as well as in the acculturation of conquerors, this collection is an

essential contribution. Further, the generosity of the authors, who present not only their interpretations and conclusions but also publish much of

their data, allows the essays to be read as a set of lessons on method, valuable to young Byzantinists and Ottoman scholars both. This book is a fascinating achievement. Rudi Paul Lindner

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

God's Caliph: Religions Authority in the First Centuries of Islam,

by Patricia Crone and Martin Hinds. 155 pages. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1986.

In this work, Crone and Hinds further develop the thesis about the nature

of caliphal authority in the early Islamic state first put forward by Cook and Crone in Hagarism (Cambridge 1977). The thesis here elaborated is that the early caliphs, rather than being mainly political leaders, were actually looked on as divinely-inspired spiritual leaders as well from almost the

beginning. According to the authors, this effective religious authority of the caliphs was only undermined by the gradual development, first traceable in

the early second century of the hijra, of the religious and legal tradition

MESA Bulletin 21 1987

This content downloaded from 24.122.7.167 on Sat, 25 Jul 2015 15:23:59 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

186 Book Reviews

represented by the Prophet's sunna as elaborated by a nascent class of

religious scholars. These latter are said to have "usurped" the caliphs' law

making authority, thereby paving the way for the caliphate's downfall. The

authors are non-committal about why and when the caliphal institution

arose in Islam, stating only that it was fully in force by the time of 'Uthman.

This conforms with the idea previously elaborated by Crone in Slaves on

Horses (Cambridge 1980), for example, that practically nothing can be

known about the earliest period of Islam.

Though the authors have presented much of interest, particularly in

the considerable amount of material they have marshaled from the early Arabic sources, many problems mar their analysis, including an arbitrary treatment of the evidence, sweeping overstatements that beg the question, and a possible hostility to the subject. Certainly it is reasonable and

necessary to question the early sources, especially literary ones, and try to understand the motives behind them. But in this work the authors

mostly question the sources opposed to their own viewpoint. For example, they present the caliphate as a stable, unchanging insti

tution, enjoying a complete religious authority from the beginning that

was only gradually undermined by the appearance of the 'ulama and the

Prophet's sunna. Thus, they make no allowance for the likelihood that

the institution evolved over time and that the extravagance of the caliphs' claims to absolute authority became greater as their unpopularity grew. This evolution of the caliphs' own view of themselves would account for

Walid II's letter (pp. 118-126), with which he tried to force an unpop ular succession on the Umayyad house and Syrian army by a menacing

presentation of his claimed prerogatives and an emphasis on the need for

obedience, which implies that loyalty to the caliph was already in short

supply. Crone's and Hines's claim that the letter is a paradigmatic state

ment of normal caliphal absolutism (pp. 26-28) thus egregiously ignores its

context. It is odd that they present a view of an unchanging ideology of

the caliphate from its inception, in the light of Crone's earlier works.

Another problem is the authors' claim that the Prophet's position

grew in importance through the intervention of the religious scholars, who

wanted to validate their concept of the Prophet's sunna. Thus, they assert

Muhammad became the chief prophet of Islam "at the expense of previous

prophets and subsequent caliphs alike" (p. 40). But, as the founder of Islam, it is most likely he was of paramount importance in defining its norms from

the outset. Against this the authors cite such evidence as Hajjaj's statement

that it would be more meritorious to circumambulate the caliph's palace than the Ka'ba (pp. 28-29). This is probably anti-Umayyad propaganda meant to defame Hajjaj, and indeed is taken from a Shi'i source, but the authors have not seen fit to question the motivation for its transmission, instead weaving it immediately into their argument.

MESA Bulletin 21 1987

This content downloaded from 24.122.7.167 on Sat, 25 Jul 2015 15:23:59 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Mariam Sheibani

Mariam Sheibani

History and Economics before 1900 187

The same tendency is shown in greater degree by the authors' assertion, based on the evidence of panegyrics by court poets, that loyalty to the

caliph was necessary even for one's personal salvation in the hereafter. Citations from the diwans of early poets are impressively marshalled for evidence (pp. 30-40). But poetic flatteries can hardly be taken as proof of religious doctrine, all the more so when the same extravagant caliphal claims continued to be made right down through 'Abbasid times, when

Islam's fundamentals had been clearly established and the caliphs stripped of all authority. Besides, exaggerated flatteries were also lavished on mere

governors, who had no place in any religious scheme. Thus, once more, the authors have brushed aside the context of the sources they cite.

Most worrisome here, though, is the tendentiousness exhibited by the

authors' handling of the evidence. Discussing the term 'isma, they state

"the metaphor conveys that it was the caliphs who saved the believers from error in both a political and a religious sense" (p. 38). Yet the examples cited, quite to the contrary, all seem to imply protection primarily in a

physical sense, as in the Qur'an (11:43 and elsewhere). Also, the word

salam is tendentiously translated as "salvation," an unusual meaning for

it, despite the suitability of its more common, physical meaning "safety" in the verse given (p. 40). One verse of Jarir, "Were it not for the caliph and the book he recites, people would have no judgements established for

them and no communal worship," is cited as a proof-text no less than four

times (pp. 33, 40, 44, 102) and is taken to imply that the caliph is the sole source of law and that ritual worship is invalid except under him. Yet this

surely overburdens this hyperbolic verse, which in any case can be more

easily taken to mean only that the caliph established security in the land, thus allowing law and religious rites to be practised. Taken individually, these distortions of evidence suggest too much eagerness to prove a point;

together, they reveal a pattern of polemical intent in place of academic detachment.

The authors condemn the sacred law codified by the 'ulama as "stul

tifying" and suggest that things would have been better if the medieval

Muslims had been able to live under stable, passively accepted despotisms like those of the Roman principate and medieval Europe (p. 109). This seems to favor a Western model of development, as is indeed confirmed

by the comment that "representative" bodies might have developed out of

the reforms of Yazid III (p. 108). It is also confirmed by the claim about the "ideological intransigence of Islam vis-a-vis the Western world today"

(p. 110), a disputable point, for the Muslim world might equally well accuse the West of "ideological intransigence."

Khalid Yahya Blankinship

University of Washington

MESA Bulletin 21 1987

This content downloaded from 24.122.7.167 on Sat, 25 Jul 2015 15:23:59 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Mariam Sheibani

Mariam Sheibani

Mariam Sheibani

Mariam Sheibani

Article Contentsp. 185p. 186p. 187

Issue Table of ContentsMiddle East Studies Association Bulletin, Vol. 21, No. 2 (December 1987) pp. 155-306Front MatterShar'a Court Registers and Land Tenure around Nineteenth-Century Damascus [pp. 155-169]Notes &TopicsTRANSLITERATION FONTS FOR THE MACINTOSH [pp. 171-171]CENTER FOR STUDY AND DOCUMENTATION OF ISRAELI SOCIETY [pp. 172-172]

BOOK REVIEWSAnthropology and SociologyReview: untitled [pp. 173-174]Review: untitled [pp. 174-175]Review: untitled [pp. 175-177]Review: untitled [pp. 177-178]

History and Economics before 1900Review: untitled [pp. 179-180]Review: untitled [pp. 180-181]Review: untitled [pp. 181-183]Review: untitled [pp. 183-184]Review: untitled [pp. 184-185]Review: untitled [pp. 185-187]Review: untitled [pp. 188-188]Review: untitled [pp. 189-190]Review: untitled [pp. 190-191]Review: untitled [pp. 191-192]Review: untitled [pp. 192-193]

Modern History, Political Science, and EconomicsReview: untitled [pp. 194-195]Review: untitled [pp. 195-196]Review: untitled [pp. 196-197]Review: untitled [pp. 197-198]Review: untitled [pp. 198-199]Review: untitled [pp. 200-201]Review: untitled [pp. 201-202]Review: untitled [pp. 202-204]Review: untitled [pp. 204-205]Review: untitled [pp. 205-206]Review: untitled [pp. 206-208]Review: untitled [pp. 209-211]Review: untitled [pp. 211-212]Review: untitled [pp. 212-214]Review: untitled [pp. 214-215]Review: untitled [pp. 215-216]Review: untitled [pp. 216-217]Review: untitled [pp. 217-219]Review: untitled [pp. 219-220]Review: untitled [pp. 220-221]

Humanities and Research ToolsReview: untitled [pp. 222-222]Review: untitled [pp. 222-223]Review: untitled [pp. 224-225]Review: untitled [pp. 225-226]Review: untitled [pp. 226-228]Review: untitled [pp. 228-229]Review: untitled [pp. 229-230]Review: untitled [pp. 230-231]Review: untitled [pp. 231-233]Review: untitled [pp. 233-234]Review: untitled [pp. 235-236]Review: untitled [pp. 237-238]Review: untitled [pp. 238-242]Review: untitled [pp. 242-244]Review: untitled [pp. 244-245]Review: untitled [pp. 245-247]Review: untitled [pp. 247-248]Review: untitled [pp. 248-249]Review: untitled [pp. 249-250]Review: untitled [pp. 250-251]Review: untitled [pp. 251-252]Review: untitled [pp. 252-253]Review: untitled [pp. 253-254]Short Notices [pp. 255-258]

REVIEWS OF AUDIO-VISUAL MATERIALSReview: untitled [pp. 259-263]Review: untitled [pp. 263-264]

NEWS OF THE ASSOCIATION [pp. 265-267]RECENT CONFERENCES [pp. 268-282]CORRIGENDA: RECENT CONFERENCES [pp. 282-282]NEWS OF FELLOWS AND SCHOLARS [pp. 283-300]COMMUNICATIONSEgyptian Politics under Sadat [pp. 301-302]Unlawful Gain and Legitimate Profit in Islamic Law [pp. 302-304]

IN MEMORIAMMehmed avuolu: 15 January 1936 July 1987 [pp. 305-306]

Back Matter