Pre-Modern Religion, Philosophy & Law
Reprinted from the Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, Summer  2002 (with changes in orthography to HTML standards).
Copyright 2002 by the Middle East Studies Association of North America
Zwei Mystische Schriften des 'Ammar al-Bidlisi, by Edward Badeen. (Beiruter Texte und Studien, Band 68) 122 pages in German, bibiliography, indices. 205 pages in Arabic, bibliography, indices. Stuttgart, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1999. (Paper) ISBN 3-515-07102-4

Zwei Mystische Schriften is an edition of two works in Arabic by 'Ammar al-Bidlisi, who died between 590/1194 and 604/1207, and is buried in Bidlīs, eastern Anatolia. 'Ammar’s life and writings are not well known, despite his important position as a student of Abu al-Najib al-Suhrawardi (d. 563/1168) and master to Najm al-Din al-Kubra (618/1221). Badeen notes that Fritz Meier has discussed 'Ammar in his study of al-Kubra, but disagrees with Meier’s portrayal of 'Ammar as a Shi’ite, and presents convincing evidence to support his case. The first manuscript is entitled Bahjat al-Ta'ifa bi Allah al-'Arifa (46 fols), and the second is Sawm al-Qalb (23 fols). They are preserved together in Berlin, dating from the lifetime of the author, according to a copyist’s ijaza. Marginal corrections have been made by the copyist himself, and the spelling conventions used suggest a Persian influence. No other manuscript copies are mentioned by Badeen. Bahjat al-Ta'ifa is divided into thirty-eight sections, each identified by a subtitle. These subtitles reflect the sufi concerns of the author. The following are examples: “The uprightness of the prophets and the saints,” “The humility (maskana) of prophecy and the humility of sainthood,” “On sufism,” “On witnessing,” “On the heart and the affinity of sainthood with prophethood,” “On the varieties of revelation,” and “On the state of the Seal of saints.” The work Sawm al-Qalb consists of nineteen subtitled sections, along with seven short additional passages. The main title “Fasting of the Heart” alludes to the central role of the heart, which seems to play the same role as “self” (nafs) does for other sufi thinkers. The heart must abstain from temptations and indulgences, yet it may break its fast with pious and disciplined acts on the gnostic path. The goal of this discipline is made clear when 'Ammar concludes: “he who reaches his heart, reaches his Lord; and he who knows his heart, knows his Lord” (p. 40, Arabic text). Most sections of the work develop one aspect or another of 'Ammar’s mystical interpretation of fasting. The subtitles include, “On the reality of fasting,” “On the obligations of those fasting,” and “On the result of the heart’s fasting.”

Badeen has provided a sixty-four page survey in German of the basic mystical concepts present in the two works. Included here are such topics as the seal (khatam) of saints, the fasting heart, varieties of remembrance (dhikr) of God, annihilation and subsistence in God, spiritual guidance, mystical vision, gnosis, and union with the divine. Badeen also supplies a detailed paraphrase, fifty pages in German, of sections 1-16 and 27 of the Bahjat al-Ta'ifa, about half of the total contents. Perhaps it would have been better to shorten the survey section, and to offer a complete paraphrase. Nevertheless, Badeen has given us access to two significant mystical treatises, and has provided tools to assist us in approaching these texts.

Richard McGregor
Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale au Caire

Popular Preaching & Religious Authority in the Medieval Islamic Near East, by Jonathan Berkey. 142 pages, bibliography, index. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2001. $30.00 (Cloth) ISBN 0-295-98126-1

This slender volume is a companion to Berkey’s excellent 1992 study, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo. Some characters, such as the indomitable Ibn al-Hajj, appear again although in a more minor role. Two major protagonists who debate the central issue of the present book—whether ‘popular’ preaching and storytelling are legitimate forms of transmitting religious knowledge—are Ali b. Muhammad b. Wafa and Zayn al-Din al-Iraqi, both of whom lived in Egypt and died in 1404. The former, acting as defense counsel, belonged to a branch of the important order of Shadhiliyya Sufis; the latter, advocating the prosecution’s case, was a prominent Shafi'i jurist and traditionist.

Herein lies the valuable contribution Berkey has made to our knowledge of this particular period, place, and theme. The defense and prosecution cases of this polemic had apparently not survived the vicissitudes of time intact. Al-Iraqi's prosecution argument is said to exist in a manuscript preserved in Riyadh, but would seem not to have appeared as yet in a printed version; details of his polemic are contained, however, in extensive extracts in a work by al-Suyuti. There also exists a point-by-point rejoinder to al-Iraqi's argument contained in a single anonymous manuscript housed in the British Library. This source, as Berkey argues persuasively, contains the once lost defense case authored “almost certainly” (p. 18) by Ali b. Muhammad b. Wafa, famous son of the founder of the Wafa'iyya branch of the Shadhiliyya order. Thus, although the critics of popular preaching and storytelling have in general dominated proceedings, Berkey has attempted to place the whole debate in a broader and clearer perspective.

Following discussion of the nature of the early controversy, Berkey identifies some of the themes of the storytellers and preachers in the Late Middle Period (following Hodgson’s terminology). These include stories of the creation of the world; the linkage of historical events and personages to the cosmic order; tales of the prophet and his Companions; themes of poverty and a renunciation of worldly goods; and finally those on death, judgment and salvation. Berkey is conscious throughout of the paucity of knowledge concerning the circumstances in which such stories were recited and of the listeners’ reaction to them, but argues that they “must surely in many instances have acted as a kind of social safety valve, deflecting and deflating the various pressures experienced” (p. 68) by medieval audiences. Ultimately, the polemic boiled down to a question of power, authority, and control over who was qualified to transmit what kind of religious knowledge to whom, discussion of which is treated in the two final chapters of the book. What struck this reviewer concerning the book’s value beyond the medieval Near Eastern context is its relevance as a comparative tool for the study of modern contexts of power and religious knowledge in, say, nineteenth-century India and the rivalries between various reform movements there.

David Waines
Lancaster University, England


Aleviler/Alewiten, Vol. 2: Inanc ve Gelenekler/Glaube und Traditionen, edited by Ismail Engin and Erhard Franz. (Mitteilungen 60) 320 pages, index, illustrations. Hamburg: Deutsches Orient-Institut, 2001. (Paper) ISBN 3-89173-061-6

Aleviler/Alewiten simultaneously appears in Turkish and German, and presents the essays of twenty-three researchers from Turkey and Germany. Some of the contributors are academics, while others share the same religious identity as the group they study. Presenting different voices both from within and without is one of the greatest strengths of the volume, especially in terms of cultural representation. All in all, the articles presented in the book shed light on the Alevi, Bektashi, and Tahtaci cultures, especially foregrounding vigorous field research and personal experiences. All three sections (“Forms of Belief and Religious Life,” “Folk Beliefs and Practices,” and “Art and Craft as Reflection of Religion”) encompass a wide disciplinary scope, including folklore, anthropology, literature, ethnomusicology, and material culture. The trans-versatility of the present volume, not to mention the bilingual presentation of the articles, certainly draws an audience from across disciplines.

The first part presents articles by Mehmet Yaman, Musa Baran, Ali Yildirim, and Ilhan Cem Erseven on diverse issues—Musahiplik (initiation to brotherhood) rites among the Tahtacıs, religious rites such as kurban and the semah, and the legal system among the Alevis. Yaman presents an account of the buyruk, the orders of the Alevi, and the kurban, while Erseven concentrates on semah—comparing and contrasting it to games and dance, artistic expressions which mistakenly blur the venture of semah. He concludes that semah is essential to the Alevi identity and being, and it actually goes beyond dance and play.

The second part of the book contributes to the study of folk religion, presenting detailed ethnographic evidence on visiting sacred sites, such as the saints’ tombs as well as sacred animals and plants. Kutlu Özen, Ilyas Kücükcan, and Sinan Kahyaoglu write about Alevi and Tahtaci beliefs related to sacred places and things. Likewise, Ayhan Aydan’s focus is on folk healing in the Balikesir region of Turkey. Veli Asan’s article is on the burial practices of the Tahtacis, while Kemal Astare brings a historical perspective to bear in his comparisons between the Alevi Zazas and Zoroastrianism.

The third section presents different accounts of Alevi artists and craftsmen: Fatma Ahsen Turan’s article is a literary study on the love of Ehl-i Beyt (the family of Prophet Muhammed). Articles by Ahmet Yürür and Ayten Kaplan are ethnomusicological in perspective, as they focus on the Alevis and Tahtacis, while Ursula Reinhard takes a historical approach in her analysis of the Alevi music in Anatolia. Kemal Süzgec and Yakup Karahan contribute to the study of popular culture as they present the accounts of Alevi art and visual elements, as well as of Alevi comic strips and caricatures. Ismail Öztürk, Veli Asan, and Ibrahim Bahadır venture into the traditional living arts among the Alevis and Tahtacıs and the relationship between the Erkan and architectural symbolism. In a similar vein, Bircan Coskun looks at the influence of nomadic and sedentary patterns on the Tahtaci material culture. Selim Velioglu’s focus is on architecture, particularly on the designing of an Alevi cultural center. Carefully organized, well-thought-out, and well-written examples give a face to the closed communities of Anatolia. For many, Alevis, Bektashis, and Tahtacis might stand behind a mysterious veil with a misconstrued image of the ‘other.’ Each article, however, sheds light on the cultural-religious plurality of Anatolia, and certainly demystifies the cultures of various unorthodox groups who live in contemporary Turkey.

Hande Birkalan
Yeditepe University, Istanbul

Essays on Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism, by Jean Kellens. Translated by Prods Oktor Skjærvø. (Zoroastrian Studies Series, No. 1) 131 pages, bibliography. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2000. $19.95 (Paper) ISBN 1-568-59129-2

Essays on Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism, a collection of Kellens’s articles published between 1987 and 1994, was translated from French into English by Skjærvø, a younger colleague of Kellens. It transmits Kellens’s major arguments about ancient Iranian religion to an English-speaking audience. Highly technical, it will appeal mostly to scholars within that field. Kellens focuses on textual evidence within the Gathas and the Yasna Haptanhaiti, two of the original Zoroastrian liturgical texts. These texts, constructed as ritual poems, are written in Old Avestan, an ancient Iranian language with no known antecedents or geographical source, and are approximately three-thousand years old. There is dispute over specific points of grammar and vocabulary in the texts’ translations. Since each of the texts is relatively brief, small differences provide a broad range of often conflicting interpretations. Kellens, like other scholars in the field, compares the language in these texts with similar linguistic constructs in the Indian Vedas and extrapolates back from the next set of texts in Young Avestan, although this match is not always exact. Kellens cautions against creating anachronisms by imposing Young Avestan concepts (several hundred years more recent than the Gathas and the Yasna), or even modern Zoroastrian mental constructs, on Old Avestan culture and religion. He questions whether one needs to see Zarathustra, and other figures mentioned in the Old Avestan texts, as strictly historical, or whether Old Avestan religion was either revolutionary or even dualist, as has been traditionally thought. In one of his main arguments, he contests the idea that original Zoroastrianism was strictly dualist or monotheistic, or even polytheistic, but asserts, instead, that it was fluidly henotheistic.

One needs a strong background in languages to follow Kellens’s arguments, since they revolve around internal, linguistic evidence within the Old Avestan texts. Unfortunately, Skjærvø does not give the reader an overview of the field’s historiography, or the current theories in it. Since Kellens frequently disagrees with his colleagues, this gap leaves the outside reader confused. In his articles, of course, Kellens only provides his colleagues’ viewpoint from his perspective, and in passing. He frequently compares his viewpoint to that of Mary Boyce, for example, who takes a broader focus, including archaeology and other mythical traditions. Kellens’s tight focus makes comparisons of his hypotheses to other current theories in the field difficult for the reader, especially since both Kellens’s and Boyce’s works are somewhat dated. The main work that Kellens cites from Boyce was published in the 1970s (though she has published more recently). The latest of Kellens’s articles translated in the book dates from 1994. Despite its lack of historiographical discussion, Essays on Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism provides a decent (if not comprehensive) bibliographical overview of Zoroastrian studies at the end, including a full list of Kellens’s works. Both date to 1999. Essays on Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism is useful to any reader interested in ancient Indo-European linguistic studies, or in the origins of dualistic religious thought.

Paula Stiles
St. Andrews University

Knowledge and Liberation in a Muslim World: An Introduction to Ismaili Philosophical Theology, by Nasir Khusrau and Faquir M. Hunzai. 129 pages, index. New York, NY: I. B. Tauris, 1998. $32.50 (Cloth) ISBN 1-86064-217-9

Nasir-i Khusrau is familiar to most of us as a poet, traveler, and an observer of the Fatimid court of Cairo in the eleventh century CE. What is often forgotten is that he also was a skilled theologian and philosopher. In translating and editing Freedom and Liberation, under the auspices of the Center for Ismaili Studies, Hunzai makes a valuable addition to the growing corpus of scholarship on Nasir. Nasir’s philosophy is important since his positions on time, the nature of existence, and God’s position outside of existence or non-existence are different from both his fellow Ismailis and from other Islamic and Greek Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Aristotelian schools. Freedom and Liberation is not a complete philosophical opus. Rather it is a work that attempts to answer questions that are left unclear in his larger work Zad al-Musafirin. In so doing he exemplifies some of his most unique ideas; thus this work is an excellent piece for an initiation into Nasir’s philosophy.

Hunzai presents a translation and an edited version of the text. There is little to quibble about with the translation. The text is rendered in readable English with the difficult or confusing concepts transliterated to help the specialist (and often the beginner as well) along. Although the Persian text has been edited before (by Said Nafisi), Hunzai has attempted to correct various errors. In the absence of an alternate manuscript, Hunzai attempts to correct both errors of translation and other more mundane orthographical and typological errors by comparing the text to Nasir’s other philosophical works.

The analysis section of the work is helpful. Hunzai compares many of Nasir’s points of view with those of Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, Ibn Sina, and Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, thus placing the work firmly in the context of ancient, Islamic, and Ismaili thought. Hunzai also uses a few examples from modern authors to suggest different paths taken on these same issues. All in all, this approach constitutes an interesting placing of the work. The introduction by Parviz Morewedge gives a brief historical overview, and also puts the work in its Greek and Islamic framework.

Two minor matters would have added to the value of this work. Neither the “Introduction” nor the “Analysis,” compares this work to other medieval formulations that are present in Christianity and Judaism. A mention of Thomas Aquinas or Moses Maimonides for instance would have helped to guide the student of medieval philosophy and to make this work more valuable for those doing comparative studies among religious traditions. Secondly, many of those who might read this work come to Nasir through his poetry. Thus some discussion of the connections between Nasir’s philosophy and his poetry would have been helpful. These points, however, do not detract from the essential value of the work itself. I found this to be a useful and lucid translation for those interested in a knowledge of Islamic and Ismaili philosophy and theology.

Rachel T. Howes
University of California, Santa Barbara


Ibn ‘Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam, by Alexander D. Knysh. (SUNY Series in Islam) 449 pages, notes, bibliography, index. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999. $27.95 (Paper) ISBN 0-7914-3967-4

Ibn ‘Arabi’s significance to Muslim mysticism and theosophy has long been acknowledged. Recent scholarship, reflecting increased interest in the Greatest Master’s thought and life, has concentrated on editing and translating his numerous works, mapping the contours of his complex imagination, interpreting difficult passages or images from his texts, defining the unique language and terminology they employ, and establishing a reliable biography. Informed by the methodologies of ‘history of ideas’ and religious studies, most of this work has assumed or simply posited, if ever considered relevant, Ibn ‘Arabi’s importance to and influence on medieval religious culture and intellectual history more broadly. Knysh’s important and much needed book departs from previous scholarship by addressing directly the cultural role of Ibn ‘Arabi’s mystical legacy as a focus of intellectual and religious controversy in subsequent centuries.

Knysh documents the course of the controversy, its stages historically, the arguments deployed, and the often political motives of the contending scholars by examining Arabic biographical and polemical writings (following here the invaluable editorial work of Osman Yahia). His use of biographical sources is skillful, reflecting more recent re-examinations of the cultural and social logic of scholarly biographies, though many of the insights of Chamberlain’s Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus (which he cites approvingly) seem to escape his implied conceptualization of ‘ayan social practices. But much more than a report establishing the wide influence of Ibn ‘Arabi’s theosophy and long life of the polemical images used to discredit him and anathematize his followers, Knysh’s work represents an important advance on studies of intellectual production in medieval Islamdom that so seldom successfully combine searching analysis of abstract and conceptual arguments with plausible and relevant social, political, and cultural history. This achievement is particularly remarkable in a book studying the continuity of a polemical discourse over several centuries and across geographical environments as diverse as al-Andalus, North Africa, Central Asia, Egypt, and Yemen.

Although Knysh disavows writing intellectual history early in the introduction, his book engages equally Ibn ‘Arabi’s complicated spiritual and intellectual universe and the interpretive readings of diverse medieval Muslim thinkers. His treatments of Ibn Taymiyya and al-Taftazani’s anti-monistic metaphysical critique of the Fusus al-Hikam as expressions of concern over socially destabilizing heresy (zandaqa) illustrate Knysh’s adeptness at recognizing the central importance and implications of medieval philosophical and theological arguments, providing clear explanation and relating these intellectual problems to social and political tensions. This result is enabled by the methodological shift from exclusive privileging of the texts and their author to attention to their reception. The results are illuminating, and this sort of scholarship deserves imitation. The book also serves its purposes well with its clear, fluid, and, in many places, elegant prose, marred only by the sloppy proof editing that missed many typographical and even syntactical errors.

There are some weaknesses to the project. It emphasizes the ‘con’ in the debate without searching out as energetically the more muted but widely and popularly disseminated ‘pro,’ which contributed equally, dialectically, to the image of Ibn ‘Arabi. Also, Knysh acknowledges that the project fails to cover the polemical reception of Ibn ‘Arabi’s legacy comprehensively by treating only Arabic sources, claiming that non-Arabic sources depended upon the polemical pattern fashioned early on in Arabic texts. This approach seems misleading; a more thorough review of interpretive communities in Anatolia and especially South Asia (Sirhindi only the most well-known) would seriously alter the portrait and, perhaps, have contributed to less dichotomous characterizations of the Ibn ‘Arabi controversy. Although, as Knysh admits, Ibn ‘Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition leaves many questions unanswered, the work is littered with sharp insights, the kernels of possible answers or, at least, useful directions for future scholarship.

Adnan A. Husain
New York University

The Biographical Tradition in Sufism: The Tabaqat Genre from al-Sulami to Jami, by Jawid A. Mojaddedi. (Curzon Studies in Asian Religion) 230 pages, bibliography, index, appendix. Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 2001. $85 (Cloth) ISBN 0-7007-1359-X

Tabaqat works were biographical compilations which provided information for prominent Muslim figures in the early centuries of Islam, and have frequently been used by historians as ‘databanks’ which can be mined for information. Through a detailed study of the six most important examples of the tabaqat genre which describes notable Sufi mystics, Mojaddedi focuses on the issue of their composition. The result is a demonstration of how the intellectual and cultural context of the various works’ composition influenced their presentation and, therefore, the historicity of their content.

Mojaddedi divides The Biographical Tradition in Sufism into six chapters for each of the six most important tabaqat works, beginning with al-Sulami’s (d. 1021) Tabaqat al-Sufiyya, Abu Nu`aym’s (d. 1038) Hilyat al-Awliya', and the subsequent work of Abu Isma`il al-Ansari’s (d. 1089) Persian-language Tabaqat al-Sufiyya. He then focuses on other types of works which combined tabaqat biographies with the genre of Sufi instructional manuals, such as the works of al-Qushayri (d. 1072) and Hujwiri (d. ca. 1074), and rounds out his study with the later-period work of Abdurrahman Jami (d. 1492). By focusing on two representative biographies included in all six works, those of Abu Yazid al-Bastami (d. 874) and Abu’l-Qasim al-Junayd (d. 910), Mojaddedi compares how the presentation of these two pivotal Sufi figures (often seen as oppositional poles by later generations) were presented in the various tabaqat works. Each section also includes a study of the strategies of composition and the ‘architecture’ of the works in question.

Al-Sulami’s Tabaqat al-Sufiyya represented an important first step in the development of the Sufi tabaqat genre. Mojaddedi concludes that its primary mission was not to faithfully record the history of the early generations of Sufis, but rather to situate these figures within a chain of authority that reached back to the era of the Prophet and his successors. Nowhere is such reworking clearer than in the Sufi manuals composed by al-Qushayri and Hujwiri. Al-Qushayri in particular limited the biographical section of his work to uncontroversial anecdotes about the piety of various figures, and reserved the more contentious issues for a later section of the work, intended for more advanced students on the mystical path. Hujwiri, on the other hand, sought to establish inclusive constructs in the form of classifying the various types of Sufis into groups, thereby allowing various mystical ideas and practices to be reconciled with each other.

In the case of Abu Nu`aym and Abu Isma`il al-Ansari’s works, Mojaddedi notes the interpolation of materials and additions to the structure of the works that often seem out of place. This line of reasoning suggests that they were “a work of many hands,” meaning that numerous authors and students of the two ostensible authors made their own subsequent additions to the work using different organizational strategies. From such interpolations and misplaced information, Mojaddedi argues that we can trace the strategies and methods used to compile such works (pp. 63, 91-4).

The work of Abdurrahman Jami represents an exception here, as it appeared some four centuries after the composition and redaction of the other five works under study. Nevertheless, Mojaddedi argues that his work represents yet another example of how a tabaqat writer could creatively rework the past. The Biographical Tradition in Sufism raises important concerns about the tabaqat genre and how it should be utilized as a source for the historiography of Sufism. It is bound to stimulate controversy within the field, especially for those whose previous scholarship will be brought into question.

John J. Curry
Ohio State University

Between Bible and Qur’an: The Children of Israel and the Islamic Self-Image, by Uri Rubin. (Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam 17) 318 pages, index, bibliography. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1999. $29.95 (Cloth) ISBN 0-87850-134-7

Between Bible and Qur’an examines crucial aspects of the Islamic attitude toward the Other. The book’s viewpoint remains by and large within the context of Islamic sources and examines the relationship between Biblical and Qur’anic elements present in such sources. A crucial aim of Rubin in examining this relationship is to reveal the way in which Muslims in Islamic texts defined themselves vis-à-vis their monotheistic predecessors in world history.

The texts Rubin chose establish an unequivocal historical connection between Muslims and non-Muslims, Arab believers and Israelites. The texts are mostly hadiths (Shi`i as well as Sunni) and they are studied from a literary point of view. Rubin anticipates that the literary study of the Islamic historical perception will be valuable in the field of Middle Eastern studies for a revaluation of the Islamic attitude toward Christians and Jews, and for an examination of the tension between the Bible and the Qur’an. The Islamic historical perception that thus emerges from this direct connection between Muslims and non-Muslims is shown to be of a dynamic nature indicating stages, according to the author, in the formation of the Islamic self-image. Accordingly, the author arranges the book’s material to express the stages of formation, and brings to light three main levels of discussion: Children of Israel, Arab believers, and Bible and Qur’an. With a well-conceived structure, reflected in its carefully detailed table of contents, Between Bible and Qur’an is suitable for the layman as well as the expert in the field.

Rubin begins with traditions that evince a massive Biblical presence, since such traditions are commonly regarded as reflecting early stages in the development of Islam. Thus chapter one analyzes traditions from Isaiah and Ezekiel, as well as traditions that use the Jewish messianic theme of the lost tribes of Israel. Chapter two deals with traditions in which the messianic theme is expanded and projected back into the life of Muhammad. Chapters three and four remain within the Hijazi sphere of the Prophet’s life, but demonstrate the dynamic transition from a universal to a particularistic perception of Islam. In these traditions—based exclusively in the Qur’an—the image of the Children of Israel changed from virtuous to sinners, inferior to the faithful Arabs. Chapter five contains further aspects of the idea of Arab superiority which revolve around the Qur’anic scene of Moses and the broken tablets. Chapters six through ten continue the theme of the sinful Israelites, but the relationship between them and the faithful Muslim is shown to have changed again. The traditions in these chapters place Muslims and non-Muslims in the same realm of sin and punishment. Focused as they are on conditions of schism within the Muslim community (that is, pointing to Khawarij, Qadaris, and Shi`is), the traditions indicate that the divided Islamic community was destined to suffer the same fate of sin and punishment as the Jews and Christians. Finally, the “Summary” strings together the conclusions of the book, discussing them in line with the three main levels involved in the development of the Islamic self-image: the Children of Israel, the Arab believers, and the Bible and Qur’an.

Dr. Rebecca B. Molloy
Independent Scholar