Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2020 -

Conquered Populations in Early Islam is a reminder to specialists of Muslim societies, and to scholars of identity writ large, that belonging and exclusion are as complicated as the people who have defined them. Crafting "a pointillist image of early Islamic history," Urban (West Chester Univ. of Pennsylvania) demonstrates that the liminal position of Muslims of slave origin is an ideal vantage point from which to examine the dynamism, rather than stasis, of Islamic identity in the religion's first centuries. Although every chapter of the book--especially those devoted to narrative biographies of slaves and freedmen, and to demographic analysis of prostitutes and concubines--is brilliantly researched, the most audacious and successful is arguably the provocative discussion of courtesans and scribes at the end. Here, Urban uses language as meticulous as the poetry and prose produced by her subjects to show how the linguistic expression of Arab ethnicity mobilized by singers and bureaucrats exploded an already contested notion of "Arab-ness" rooted in lineage. Incisively critical and refreshingly good humored, this is highly recommended for students and scholars of all levels. In fact, many of the footnotes alone might serve as a starting point for classroom discussion.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

In this meticulously researched examination of Arabic and French colonial sources, Rouighi (Univ. of Southern California) focuses on the need to historicize the process of "Berberization." He argues that interpreting the Maghreb as a coherent geographic unit, in which a single people known as Berbers were its original inhabitants, is flawed by lack of historical evidence and political specificity. Indeed, the region's residents never claimed a common identity, nor were they referred to by a single term in Arabic accounts until two centuries after the end of the Arab conquest. Furthermore, there is considerable variability among Berbers in language, region, economy, social organization, status, wealth, and political action. Rouighi insists that the work of making Berber into a category of identity must be analyzed within actual social relations of power. However, neither early Arabic sources nor Ibn Khaldun, centuries later, adequately considered specific political contexts or events in their characterizations of identity and social conditions. Further distortions of history and ethnicity resulted from French colonial efforts to racialize contrasts between subject populations and make invidious distinctions between Berbers and Arabs, creating a problem that persists today within national, regional, and international politics.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduates students and faculty.

How does a 40-year-old revolution keep inspiring a generation of teenagers and young adults weaned on Western pop culture and little interested in yesterday's martyrdom? Seeking to investigate this phenomenon, Bajoghli (Johns Hopkins Univ.) spent considerable time in 2013 and 2014 as a participant observer, surveying those tasked with producing the propaganda that is designed to reach young people with no living memory of the sacrifices their grandparents and parents made during the revolution and subsequent Iran-Iraq War in a language that appeals to them. The result is a lively book that offers great insight into the mindset and approach of the officials who try to keep the Islamic Revolution, and the regime it produced, alive by producing promotional material, documentaries about the Iran-Iraq War, and rap-filled music videos extolling the nation and its heroes. As the author reveals, though partly weary of the project they are engaged in, those who partake in this work still remain committed to the cause. Those who create this material, it turns out, believe in the nation more than in the regime and the religion that underpins it.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

In this significant, challenging, and critical analysis of Palestinians and Israelis, Lustick (Univ. of Pennsylvania) carefully argues that in reality there is only one state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Though it might have met the essential needs of each side, if given a chance, the long-heralded two-state solution of separate Palestinian and Israeli entities is dead. Following the theme of the dominant influence of the law of unintended consequences, Lustick analyzes the impact of Iron Wall policies designed to engender Palestinian acquiescence, the evolving Holocaust perception of victimhood limiting Israeli responses, and the restricting effects of the Israeli lobby in the US, all of which combine to undermine moderation in Israeli politics and effectively block the two-state solution. The unintended result is one state: Israel. We are left to ponder what type of state it should be, one that continues the current pattern of conflict management and violence or one that offers equal citizenship, which Lustick sees as a difficult but dynamic reality. While his conclusion may seem vague and idealistic, his acute background analysis of Israeli policies and practices, which have created the current situation, is compelling.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

This book is a fulsome political history of Sunni-Shi`a relations among Muslim communities since the death of Muhammad. Louer (Center for International Studies, Sciences Po, Paris) has written extensively on the subject of Shi`ism throughout the Middle East, having previously produced Shiism and Politics in the Middle East (CH, Jul'13, 50-6415), originally published in French in 2008. This book, which is also an English translation of the original 2017 French edition, is an excellent, readable, and highly accessible account of the topic. Louer takes seriously the historic development of Shi`a theology and its relationship to Sunni traditions, concluding that Shi`ism and Sunnism have an age-old "mimetic rivalry" in which each tradition developed in response to the other. She also analyzes the ongoing challenges of majority-minority relations in mixed societies, including six separate case studies of communities in Iraq, Bahrain, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, Yemen, and Lebanon. Succinct but comprehensive, this book is a unique resource as an essential overview of the history and present status of Shi'ism.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

While numerous books on the Crusades continue to be written, biographies are few and far between. Those that are published inevitably cover either one of the two most charismatic men who fought in the Crusades: King Richard the Lionhearted or Sultan Saladin, contemporaries who fought against each other during the Third Crusade in the late 12th century. Of the handful published in English, Phillips's biography of Saladin stands out as a superior volume. A historian of the Crusades, Phillips (Royal Holloway, Univ. of London) focuses on the conflict between Saladin and Richard, but properly contextualizes Saladin's actions. While A. R. Azzam's biography Saladin (2014) looks at the sultan's place in Islamic history, Phillips provides a nuanced study of Saladin in the Crusades and also analyzes depictions of Saladin through the ages, as detailed in the book's final section. The writing will keep readers engrossed throughout the study, aided by the author's drive to understand the motives of those being studied. This balanced and authoritative examination of Saladin's life is an important addition to the study of the Crusades.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

In this deeply layered history of 16th- through 18th-century Ottoman and Mughal society, Faroqhi, a renowned Ottoman historian, takes as an unexpected and intriguing starting point the problematic nature of source-use that confronts any comparative exercise, to examine similarities and differences of all manner of life in these two "World Empires." The result is a sympathetic portrait of the merchants, agricultural and urban laborers, soldiers, slaves, rulers, and courtiers who, together, constituted these multifaceted social entities. By demonstrating that the close analysis of ordinary subjects' daily lives by no means precludes narratives of polities--like the Ottoman and Mughal states--as intersecting parts of a global system, the book challenges conventional wisdom that comparative history is an either-or proposition: either concentrate on micro-historical actors or address broader, global arrangements. Instead, Faroqhi demonstrates that neither approach is effective without the other--be the historian's interest the organization of women performing artists, the negotiations of tax assessors, or the military labor market. This is a carefully wrought and unexpected combination of detailed social study, global systems analysis, critical historiography, and comparative history. An indispensable read for specialists in the field.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

With greater frequency WW I has been referenced in service to nationalist historiographies, to distinguish 20th-century nation-states from their imperial pasts. In those modern states emerging from the Ottoman Empire, especially Turkey and the Arab states, designating what had transpired during the war as an ethnic conflict proved crucial to such a violent process. This volume from Deringil (Lebanese American Univ.) encourages critical engagement with this distortive nationalist historiography through a careful analysis of five heretofore neglected memories of Ottoman-era soldiers. Witness to the manner in which "Turkish" officers interacted with a multi-ethnic population in the empire's Syrian territories (today's Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Syria), these five memoirs will serve the next generation of scholars as an invaluable window into the complicated relations maintained by a state at war with its diverse subject populations. As debates arose during the course of the war over the survival of an empire that had witnessed the rise of internal divisions along sectarian and ethnonational lines, Deringil's deep analysis of these postwar testimonials adds a new layer to the English-language scholarship on the still-understudied historiography that would co-opt such narratives. This should be required reading for students and scholars alike.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.