bout de papier, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1990), pp. 42–44
A History of Islamic Societies, Ira M.
Lapidus, Cambridge University Press, 1988,
917 pp. plus preface, glossary, bibliography –
and index, US$42.50.
I met Professor Lapidus on only one occasion, in 1969 when he attended a conference held in honour of the 1000th anniversary of the founding of Cairo. For a young graduate student, this was an opportunity to see and meet the illuminati of my chosen field. Dr. Lapidus did a small group of us a great favour when, over spaghetti and bottles of Stella beer or Rubis d’ Egypte wine, he let us in on a great professional secret. One didn’t have to be fluent in classical Arabic to do research. It was enough to skim the pages, translating with a dictionary only those passages in which certain key words were found. If this was good enough for Dr. Lapidus and his two books (which have become classics), then it was good enough for us. Now, almost twenty years later, his newest book is out. With this text, he again does students of the Islamic world a favour by saying it isn’t necessary to spend years studying before beginning to make sense of the area. Just begin with this book and pursue only those topics you need or in which you are interested.
To put it simply, the book is massive and no one would describe it as an easy read. I do not believe, however, that it was intended that a single person would read the entire text. This is no book for an idle dilettante, but it is a guide for an earnest diplomat faced with a frustratingly alien society.
In the preface, Dr. Lapidus says that he intends to provide a coherent overview of Islamic history. And, indeed, in a very sketchy way history is presented. Yet at the same time, more completely and more importantly, Dr. Lapidus lays out the growth and evolution of a disparate, vibrant and complex group of societies linked by both a common faith and rather tenuous historical ties. In this single volume, he draws together those elements that unite these peoples, while giving due regard to those factors that still separate them. The ability to find quickly useful information is the strength of the book. With judicious use of the Table of Contents, the Index and the Glossary, one can pursue questions as they come to mind. It should be noted that although it is nowhere so stated, the book and its main thrust were surely dictated by the Western realization in the mid-70’s that Islamic Fundamentalists were a potent political factor in a broad range of countries.
I would suggest that few persons, especially members of the Canadian Foreign Service, are particularly interested in the concept of the ruler in the 16th century Funj Sultanate of Sudan. But for someone assigned to Southeast Asia and faced with militant Islamic revivalists for the first time, a description of the intrusion of Islam into the indigenous societies of present day Malaysia and Indonesia may be important. All students of the Islamic world are faced today with the basic demand of the Islamicists for the imposition of shari’s law. An understanding of the development of this corpus of religious law, its division into schools, its central concepts and its relationship with Islamic society makes a conversation with a fundamentalist much more rewarding. For a political officer expected to seek out and understand a local movement or incident, a half an hour spent finding out what a fatwa is may be critical.
Many parts of the book are excellent, I found the section on Iran to be particularly illuminating, especially with regard to the historical background of the 1979 revolution. Many Westerners, faced with the collapse of what had seemed to be a constant in a region beset by change, have forgotten that, despite the Shah’s pretenses to a heritage stretching back over millenia, the Pahlavi dynasty began only in 1925. Even more importantly, most of us never realized that for the past 200 years, the struggle between the religious hierarchy (the Mullahs) and the state had been the principal feature of Iranian society. The Ayatollah Khomeini did not appear from a vacuum and a more accurate understanding of the modern history of Iran, even if gained from twenty pages of text, may better equip one to seek parallels elsewhere.
The Glossary is first rate and the Index complete enough to be useful (only the most obscure references seem to be left out). Admittedly, only a handful of references were checked, but I found no errors of pagination, although some could be expected in a book of this size. On a minor note, I will, however (as a purist) quibble at Al-Tabari, the greatest of the early Arab historians and commentators on the Koran, being described as a poet.
There are, however, other, and rather more significant, weaknesses. The overall organization of the book is confusing and detracts from the reading. Dr. Lapidus obviously recognized this as a problem and devoted several pages of the preface to explaining how and why he structured the book as he did. The portions of the book dealing with the Islamic regions of Central and Inner Asia I thought to be weak; although this may be due to the limitations of the source material from which the author and his colleagues worked rather than indicative of their judgement on the importance of the region in question. The Bibliography, to which the curious or the dedicated might turn for further reading, is strong on the classics, but short on more modern, analytic titles, i.e. just those most readers might want. I found the Conclusion to be particularly disappointing. I wasn’t sure if the author was certain how to end the book. He was both drawing together ideas that were spread throughout the text and at the same time bringing forward important new topics, such as the role of women in Muslim societies, that had not been properly touched on earlier.
Despite these last points, I would suggest that this book could well be added to Mission libraries in those countries where Islam is increasingly a political force. Consulted early in a posting and as necessary thereafter, it would serve a valuable function as a reference work.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1990), pp. 42–44. Read the rest of this issue →
