Resources

Reprinted from the Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, Winter 2000 (with changes in orthography to HTML standards).
Copyright 2000 by the Middle East Studies Association of North America
A Historical Guide to World Slavery, edited by Seymour Drescher and Stanley Engerman. 412 pages, illustrations, index. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998. $75.00 (Cloth) ISBN 0-19-512091-4

A Historical Guide to World Slavery is intended to fill a need in historical studies, which have witnessed in recent years an increasing interest in the study of slavery and related forms of dependence and slave societies. The guide facilitates the systematic comparative study of slavery on a global and cross-cultural basis and is thus organized around geographical or generic topical themes. The entries, concerning particular regions divided topically or topics divided regionally, are of various lengths and differ in the amount of detail provided.

Slavery in the Islamic world is treated mainly within articles on particular regions (for example, Africa: East Africa; Europe: Middle Ages) or on topics such as Concubinage, Eunuchs, Slave Trade; Trans-Saharan Trade. The most extensive entry and the one article that treats slavery in the Islamic world in its own right is the section of the article on Law which deals with Islamic law. Here the author, John O. Hunwick, has based his coverage on the views of the Maliki madhhab, since it is “the school with the most elaborated law on slavery, and the one most widely followed in Africa, the continent that produced the majority of slaves over the ages, and a region where slave ownership was also common” (p. 249). Although the Islamic world is certainly not entirely neglected, this guide nevertheless betrays, by the number of entries and the detail of coverage, a decided tilt toward the Atlantic trade and its sources, even though Barry Higman, author of the entry, “Demography,” recognizes that the second most travelled route carried the slave trade toward Muslim areas of North Africa, Arabia, India, and the long distance trade across the Sahara, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean.

More astonishing to a Mamlukist is the nearly total neglect of this particular slave system. The reasons for this omission can only be guessed: the precise definition of slavery that guided the conceptualization of this work may have excluded Mamluk military slavery; a predominating interest in domestic, agricultural, or artisanal slavery (as opposed to military slavery) perhaps fed the aim of facilitating comparative study of the institution, especially as found in Europe and the Americas. The authors of this guide are certainly aware of mamluks and the Mamluk sultanate, as shown by brief references to them in several entries. This awareness, however, is only partial. The history of the institution is nowhere discussed. Nor does there seem to be any recognition of the widespread use of the mamluk system throughout the Islamic world for over one thousand years. Among the authors cited, and rightly so, are Robert Brunschwig and Bernard Lewis, but missing are any references to David Ayalon’s foundational work on mamluks and the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt, or to the studies of Patricia Crone, Daniel Pipes, and Shaun Marmon. It is a shame that this relatively well-documented and studied slave system was not brought to the attention of a wider audience.

Linda Northrup
The University of Toronto
Approaching Ottoman History: An Introduction to the Sources, by Suraiya Faroqhi. 262 pages, index, bibliography. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999. $24.95 (Paper) ISBN 0-521-66648-1
Dazzled by the poetics of post-modern theory, a student’s eyes often glaze over as discussion turns to the nuts and bolts of research. Alas, painstaking reconstruction invariably precedes critical deconstruction, especially in a field like Ottoman history where the challenges of pre-modern scripts compound the interpretation of texts and registers. Despite the obvious need, primers on historical methodology—as distinct from paleography manuals and lexicons—are exceedingly rare. It is all the more unusual to find a scholar of Faroqhi’s stature willing to step up to the plate. Her efforts have resulted in a compact desk reference listing major archives and libraries (with the notable exception of Iranian and Indian facilities) for Ottoman history; and a bibliography of the state of the field, with particular reference to Asia Minor. Eight chapters throw a lifeline to students foundering before their first research project.

Faroqhi appreciates the contributions of theory, but she prefers to err on the side of empiricism. In her introduction, she explains the great dilemma of Ottoman historiography. On the one hand, orientalism has taken a great toll on the field (pp. 15-19). On the other, the application of social scientific models yields diminishing returns. Although I do not think that Hayden White will get us out of this jam, her remarks stand: historians must allow the raw materials of history to transport them beyond preconceptions (pp. 22-25). Appropriately, it is sources, not models, that set this volume’s agenda. Chapter four provides a good example of this approach. Devoted to rural history, it begins with an evaluation of modern techniques, including tree-ring studies and cadastral surveys (pp. 82-103), to determine baseline trends in population and production. Only at the conclusion does the author entertain the debates concerning peasant society (pp. 104-9). This emphasis on the building blocks of history is long overdue. Nonetheless, the increasing sophistication of tools for gathering and evaluating socio-economic documents properly argues for more team research, a sterling example of which is the interdisciplinary efforts of F. Zarinebaf-Shahr, J. Bennet, and J. L. Davis to reconstruct agrarian relations before the Greek Revolution.[1]

Naturally, Ottomanist colleagues will point to omissions and question emphases. Yet, restraint and reiteration are virtues. The volume’s organization lends itself easily to classroom use with appropriate documents. By focusing on better known secondary works, the author reassures the novice and demystifies the field for the non-specialist. Moreover, critical digression—‘reflexive historiography’—helps readers appreciate the forces that produced contemporary history-writing. It is precisely the accessibility of ideas and texts, including substantial attention to European sources, that makes this volume an excellent choice for undergraduate classes in such subjects as cultural studies, historiography, and historical sociology.

In any field of history, the appearance of such an innovative primer on method would be regarded as a signal pedagogical event. For Ottoman studies, suspended between philology and post-colonial theory, the production of a text of such charm, candor, and utility is nothing short of miraculous.

Ariel Salzmann
New York University

[1] An Historical and Economic Geography of Ottoman Greece: Southwestern Morea in the Eighteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Hesperia Supplements, forthcoming).
An English Persian Dictionary, 3rd Edition, by Dariush B. Gilani. 640 pages. Bethesda, MD: IBEX Publishers, 1999. $35.00 (Cloth) ISBN 0-936347-95-3
According to his preface, Gilani had three primary goals in compiling this voluminous dictionary. These were to focus on the pronunciation of Persian words rather than the English words which have been customarily the focus of the majority of the English-Persian Dictionaries published previously, to find exact Persian equivalents for each English word, and to emphasize the frequently used words in American English rather than the British English that has been ordinarily the core of previous English-Persian dictionaries.

Each of these goals is in itself worthy, but nearly impossible to accomplish. The emphasis on the proper pronunciation of the Persian words and their transcription in phonetics, is undeniably a laudable effort. This aspect of the dictionary alone would make it the first choice for a beginner in Persian; yet, no dictionary intended for beginners of Persian can do without giving the past and present roots of the verbs. At least an appendix should be included in which the irregular verbs are given in their entirety, and the rules for regular verbs are explained so that novices can conjugate the verbs on their own according to the given models.

Finding exact Persian equivalents can make the dictionary most accessible to beginners, but there needs to be greater consistency in the Persian equivalents, for example, if the translation of the word “absolution” is given as “bakhshudegi,” then the translation for the verb “absolve” should be given as “bakhshidan,” so that the beginner can comprehend and develop a sense of the structure and grammar of the language. Such consistency is absolutely essential for the intended readership of the dictionary who has minimal knowledge of the language. On the other hand, “the presumption that the reader does not know the Persian alphabet and its grammar” (p. vi) might turn out to be quite misleading, because it would appear to confine the use of the dictionary to beginners without giving them sufficient tools to build on their limited knowledge of the language.

Gilani has been most successful with his emphasis on the frequently used words in American English. This aspect of the dictionary makes it appealing to the American users, establishing it as potentially a good choice for elementary Persian classes in the US. Readers would have profited from a list of grammatical abbreviations, and a clarification of their usage, because sometimes the logic of the sequence of the abbreviations in front of a word is not at all clear, and one often could mistake it to be a typographical error rather than a meaningful reference. For example, “assault” has been given both as n. and vt., but only the verbal meaning is provided. It needs to be pointed out that unfortunately the number of typos are exceedingly high and this certainly lowers the dictionary’s stature as a dependable reference book.

Firoozeh Khazrai
Princeton University
One Thousand & One Persian-English Proverbs, 2nd edition, compiled and illustrated by Simin K. Habibian. 256 pages, bibliography, index. Bethesda, MD: IBEX Publishers, 1999. $16.00 (Paper) ISBN 0-936347-92-9
The new edition of One Thousand & One Persian-English Proverbs is the latest addition to a long line of compilations of Persian proverbs which have proliferated both here and in Iran in recent decades. This edition is certainly superior to the previous one, since it has the literal translation into English of almost all the Persian proverbs, and in addition has an index of the English proverbs. There are one hundred and eleven illustrated ‘quiz proverbs’ with an answer key and literal translations into English at the end. The book is certainly a welcome addition in North America, but unfortunately certain aspects have been overlooked.

Proverbs are part and parcel of the Iranian culture and everyday speech, and their understanding can lead to a more profound insight into language and the culture. These proverbs always had a strong affinity with Persian poetry and literature, and have retained a symbiotic relationship with them over the centuries. Since Soleiman Haim published his Persian-English Proverbs in 1956, no comparable bilingual book has been published which could replace or complement it; and from a scholarly point of view the task of any future compiler could only have been complementing Haim’s work. The shortcoming of Haim’s work was that he had not cited any sources for individual English proverbs, and had overlooked some sources for the Persian proverbs. Unfortunately, the present compiler has failed to mention the individual sources of both Persian and English proverbs. This problem is serious in the case of Persian where the exact line of the poem (or of the literary work) is quoted. I deem it essential for the intended readership of the book to be informed of the sources, because they can see firsthand what an essential role poetry (and written literature in general) plays in the culture, and if they wish they can do further reading into the context of the proverb.

One also wishes for some kind of categorization other than alphabetization of the proverbs; for example, the compiler could cross-reference the proverbs which imply the same meaning (such as, “To come out of the ditch and to fall into the well” [p. 48] and “To escape the thief and fall into the hands of the soothsayer” [p. 51]). Sometimes both the Persian translation, and the English equivalent are ambiguous, and in these instances an explanation is warranted. Some of the proverbs selected are quite unusual in Persian; in a short collection, pervasiveness must be the criterion for inclusion. In at least one case—“Blood would wash the blood” (p. 108)—the opposite is usually cited in Persian from Mulana “It’s impossible to wash blood with blood.” Further, there are repetitions which seem to have been overlooked during the revision (p. 180 and p. 192; p. 195 and p. 204; p. 178 and p. 209). Also, one wishes for more careful editing of typographical errors as well as avoiding omissions, such as in the index of the English proverbs.

Firoozeh Khazrai
Princeton University
An Introduction to Koranic and Classical Arabic: An Elementary Grammar of the Language, by Wheeler M. Thackston. 258 pages, appendices, vocabularies, indices. Bethesda, MD: Iranbooks, 1994. $20.00 (Paper) ISBN 0-936347-40-6
This Introduction is a comprehensive beginning grammar of classical Arabic which emphasizes the vocabulary and usage of the Koran. It presents the grammar in forty graded lessons comprised of grammatical explanations, vocabulary grouped by part of speech, and vocalization and translation exercises. Most of the later lessons feature, in addition, reading selections from the Koran. The work also includes supplementary readings from hadith literature (pp. 253-58), a general index, an index of f-c-l patterns, and English-Arabic and Arabic-English vocabularies. It also includes a number of useful appendices: A: classes of broken plurals, B: conjugation of weak verbs, C: verb charts, D: Koranic orthography, E: Koranic periodization marks, F: pausal forms, G: the writing of hamza, H: the days of the week and the Syro-Mesopotamian months, I: summary of verbal syntax, and J: mandatory phonetic changes.

The book follows a traditional approach, the grammar/translation method. It does not include material for speaking and listening exercises, though one may of course listen to recordings of the Koran and memorize and/or recite passages. Nor does it contain material of contemporary or general cultural interest. It assumes a fairly high level of grammatical and linguistic sophistication on the part of the student. Appendix J, for example, which presents a list of the historical phonetic changes which produces the attested Arabic forms, such as *qawalta > qulta “you said,” while enthralling budding linguists, may be incomprehensible or stultifying to the average student.

The advantages of An Introduction to Koranic and Classical Arabic are logical organization, clear explanations, manageable size, self-sufficiency (one need not lug around a dictionary or verb charts in addition to the book), and rapid coverage of the bulk of Arabic grammar. In addition, it presents a number of topics not covered in other introductory texts, such as the explanation of the abjad numerical system (pp. 244-45) and discussions of Koranic orthography and periodization marks—the letter miim indicates a necessary pause, laa indicates one cannot pause, jiim indicates pausing is permissible, and so forth (it seems odd, in this connection, that Thackston does not explain that jiim stands for ja’iz “permissible,” and so on). The broken plural charts (pp. 259-63) and the summary of verbal syntax (pp. 285-86), essentially a chart setting forth the main uses of perfect, imperfect, subjunctive, and jussive verbs, should be of great help to students and would be a useful addition to other introductory texts.

For students who are interested in the Koran in particular, who want to learn to read as quickly, or who have significant experience learning languages, this work provides a very good introduction to classical Arabic.

Devin Stewart
Emory University