Les Arabes: Histoire et civilisation des Arabes et du monde musulman des origines à la chutedu royaume de Grenade racontées par les témoins by Marc BergéReview by: Herbert L. Bodman, Jr.Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 102, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1982), pp. 212-213Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/601180 .

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212 Journal of the American Oriental Society 102.1 (1982)

Les Arahes: Histoire et civilisation des Arabes et du monde musulman des origines a la chute du rovaume de Grenade racontces par les tcmoins. By MARC BERGS. Pp. 702 with many illustrations in black and white and 32 color plates, appendices. (Histoire ancienne des peuples, 2.) Paris: EDITIONS LIDIS. 1978.

Heretofore Marc Berg6 of the University of Bordeaux III has been known for his monographic work on the tenth century writer Abo Hayydn al-TawhTdT, several of whose works he has translated. An accomplished Arabic stylist and erudite humanist, al-TawhTdi has demonstrably been the inspiration for Les Arabes. The tenth century writer's intimate acquaintance with the broad range of discussions and con- troversies that embellished the numerous salons of Baghdad at its cultural apogee are reflected in the encyclopedic span of Berges massive and elegant book: political history, the growth of the Arabic language and its literature, Islam with its beliefs and practices, achievements in philosophy and science, "the search for beauty" in art, architecture and music, the panoply of lifestyles, economic diversity, and governmental administration. Berges remarkable empathy with al-TawhTdi, "notre chayh," extends to the entire society of that time: the French prose fairly exudes enthusiasm as Berg6 leaves his survey of an aptly symbolic "forty" dynasties to plunge into an extensive discourse on Arabic as a vehicle of expression. He is much more comfortable remarking about the art of breeding horses and providing menus for the gastronomic delights of Bi3yid Baghdad than he is when explaining the economy, the government or such important concepts as qivas and i/md'. These sections may be teasingly brief, at times resembling a collection of notes.

Interlacing Berg6's text are translated excerpts, often of considerable length, from al-TawhidT and a host of other original sources. These provide a substantial depth of cultural flavor and form one of the assets of the volume: it is both a text and a book of readings. Yet it may have been taken too far, for at times the translations alone carry the burden of explication.

Les Arabes is also unusual for the emphasis given to the history and culture of the Islamic west, as indicated in the subtitle when it sets the terminus of the survey at the fall of Granada in 1492. Such a focus may be the product of Berges early acquaintance with North Africa. Born and raised in Morocco, he apparently absorbed an intimate understanding of Arabic and its generous capacity for nuance. It was, as he put it in another book, a "chance encounter" with al-TawhTdT that broadened his horizons, a process continued by study in Paris, Beirut, Damascus, Cairo and Tunis. Throughout Les Arabes runs not only careful analyses of terms and the semantic fields of their roots but also repeated witness of Berg6's passionate attachment to the Arabic language.

Herein lies the major problem with this book: the virtual identification throughout of Islamic civilization with the Arabs, who are furthermore defined as, in essence, anyone who wrote in Arabic. The subtitle establishes that the book is about both the Arabs and the Muslim world, but in the text itself these distinct concepts are fused in such adjectives as "arabo-musulman" and "arabo-islamique." No conceptual rigor informs this agglutination, so Berg6 seems undisturbed when he describes the Islamic art of India as "arabo- musulman" and speaks only of Persian and Turkish "influ- ences" (p. 414). Nor does he seem bothered by his paradoxical acknowledgement that from the tenth century on the Persian language attained dominance in the Iranian part of his Arabo-Muslim sphere (p. 427). He accepts the Ghurids as one of his forty dynasties but fails to note that their "bril- liant" literature was not in Arabic, while among the Arab achievements in astronomy, it is implied by association, was the fifteenth century observatory of Ulugh Beg in Samarqand (p. 330). The curiously inadequate section on Sufism, given al-TawhTdi's devotion to it, includes Jalal al-DTn RirmT but ignores the pivotal al-Junayd. Nowhere does Berg6 precisely define what he means by "la civilisation arabo-islamique." Arabs, Muslims and the Arabic language seem all somehow to be the same thing to him, although he quotes Louis Gardet's analysis of the conflicting claims of Arabs, Turks and Persians to the heritage of Ibn STna (p. 343).

Again by implication, Berg6 associates the principal French Islamists--Cahen, Gardet, Massignon, Lombard, Laoust, and the Sourdels among others-by quoting from them extensively. An effective passage from George Marqais regard- ing the unity of Islamic art, for example, is placed in Berg6's Arabo-Muslim context (p. 402). It would be surprising if such luminaries-as well as Montgomery Watt and Gustave von Grunebaum-would or could have subscribed to Berg6's degree of "Arabistic bias," in the phrase of Marshall Hodgson.

Given the classical grammarians' search for "pure" Arabic among the Bedouin, it is not altogether unexpected that Berges absorption with the language has made him a stereo- typical Bedouin romanticist. It is there that he sees the roots of Islamic civilization, neglecting the crucial role of the Meccan and Medinan town dwellers on the one hand and the Qur'an's castigation of the Bedouin on the other. The romantic image is carried to the extreme of including stills from the movies Lawrence of Arabia and The Message among the lavish illustrations accompanying the text.

The color illustrations are magnificent but those in black and white are often poorly reproduced. Their placement is helter-skelter, rarely tied to a relevant text, and the criteria of selection is puzzling. Many are from the Yemen and Oman, areas seldom mentioned in the text. Often captions may have little to do with a photograph, as when Arab intellectual openness is illustrated by an Iranian madrasah (p. 336).

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Reviews of Books 213

It is unfortunate to have such confusions included in a volume so obviously intended for a non-specialist audience. They tend, of course, to perpetuate the already far-too- numerous distortions current in the West about the Muslim world. And it is especially unfortunate that the non-specialist audience will miss the charming touch of irony on the dust jacket of Les Arahes: the miniature depicting the Ka'bah is encircled by a text in elegant Ottoman Turkish!

HERBERT L. BODMAN, JR.

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL

Ismd'Tli Contributions to Islamic Culture. Edited by SEYYED HIOSSEIN NASR. Pp. xii + 265. (The Imperial Iranian

Academy of Philosophy Series on Ismaili Thought, V). Tehran: IMPERIAL IRANIAN ACADEMY OF PHILOSOPHY.

1977. ?7.50.

Covering a wide range of topics whose common denomi- nator is the Ismd'Tlr fact within Islamic culture, this unique collection of essays by leading scholars of various disciplines, which was sponsored by the family of the Aga Khan, suc- cessfully demonstrates the fruitfulness of a new comprehen- sive approach to Ismd'clism. After a brief Introduction by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, John Andrew Boyle opens the series with "The Ism'TlITs and the Mongol Invasion," a succinct account of what is undoubtedly the most crucial period in the political history of Ismd'Tlism. This is followed by "An Outline of the Political Philosophy of the Rasd'il of the Ikhwin al-Safa"' by Hamid Enayat, a well-balanced discus- sion cautioning against concrete identification of the ideal "utopian" state of the Ikhwan with a particular historical movement. Three subsequent major contributions, by Wilferd Madelung, Henry Corbin (represented in a very read- able translation by James Morris) and Pio Filippani- Ronconi, are related to religion proper. In "Aspects of Ismd'TlI Theology: The Prophetic Chain and the God Beyond Being," Madelung shows the difference between the Aristotelian-Avicennian tradition and the more Neoplatonic, revelational theology characteristic of orthodox Ismacili doctrine. The latter, adopted by Shahrastani and Nasir al- Din al-Tuisi while he adhered to Isma'Tlism, might also have influenced such Ithnr 'Asharl thinkers as Rajab 'All TabrlzT, who had been studied in this light first by H. Corbin. Corbin himself, with "The IsmaVCII Response to the Polemic of Gha- zMl",' sets the balance right against Ghazdll's and Goldziher's anti-bdtini bias. It is indeed Ghazdli who appears as the true "heretic" in the Ddmigh al-batil wa-hatf al-munddil, a refuta- tion of the MustazhirT, written by the fifth YamanT DaCT, cAll b. Muhammad b. al-Walid (d. 612/1215). However, some of the points made by Ghazdll, especially the "Iranian" connec- tion, are considered by Corbin as an indication, not certainly

of ''Ismd'TlT heresy," but of a spiritual necessity-felt by the Ishrdqivvin as well as the Ism5'Tlls-"to connect the line of ancient Iranian prophecy to the line of Semitic prophecy in the Bible and the Qur'dn." A similar view is expressed by Filippani-Ronconi, whose profound analysis of "The Cos- mology of Central Asiatic Ismc'Tlism'' opens interesting in- sights, although his interpretation of the Umm al-kitdb seems neither historically nor philologically entirely convinc- ing. The transition from religious metaphysics to science is made by Alessandro Bausani's somewhat sketchy but rich and thought-provoking essay on "Scientific Elements of Is- m'TlIT Thought: The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity (/kh- wan al- ,5af')." As Bausani points out, there is a surprisingly "modern" appeal to this thought, opposed as it is to both atheistic and religious materialism. Straightforward history of science is the subject, then of the two following articles by Sami K. Hamarneh ("Medicine and Pharmacy Under the Fitimids," a very informative survey!) and 'Abd al-Hamid Sabra ("Ibn al-Haytham and the Visual-Ray Hypothesis"). Sabra shows that Ibn al-Haytham accepts visual rays only as "imaginary" lines despite a passage to the contrary found only in the Latin translation of the Optics. Fdtimid culture, of course, cannot be fully understood without a considera- tion of its art. In a masterful synthesis entitled "Fatimid Art, Precursor or Culmination," Oleg Grabar distinguishes three levels: the Egyptian, the Mediterranean and the "Islamicate" (using M. Hodgson's term). At least on the first and the third of these levels, Grabar concludes, Fdtimid culture was both the culmination of the past and the forerunner of future de- velopments. Finally, in a concluding essay by Aziz Esmail and Azim Nanji on "The Ismd'IlTs in History," emphasis is placed on a certain Islamic continuity.

Except for a somewhat confusing transcription system used only in the last article, the editing is on the whole done very well. One would certainly have expected to find an in- dex in such an important contribution to knowledge!

HERMANN LANDOLT

McGILL UNIVERSITY

The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism. By HENRY CORBIN.

Translated from the French by Nancy Pearson. Pp. 174. Boulder and London: SHAMBHALA. 1978. Paper, $6.95.

The present translation of Lhomme de lumnire dans le soufisme iranien (Paris: Henri Viaud, Librairie de MWdicis, 1971; originally published as Physiologie de I'homme de lumijre dans le soufisme iranien in Ombre et Lumnire, Academie Septentrionale, Paris: Desclee de Brower, 1961, 135-257) proves that the effort to make the oeuvre of the late Henry Corbin (1903-1978) available in English-three books, plus two papers from the Eranos Yearbooks have

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