JAMES E. MONTGOMERY: Al-Jāḥiẓ: In Praise of Books. (Edinburgh Studies in Classical Arabic Literature.) vi, 586 pp. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. £95. ISBN 978 0 7486 8332 1.

Abstract

Yugoslavia) revived linkages between religious and political identity that had been forged in the early post-Ottoman period. Irredentism became an important element in this quest leading to the bloodbaths of the 1990s. This decade was an important juncture for the Arab states as well. The First Gulf War, the new unipolarity in international relations, and concomitant globalization, coupled with impasses in the Palestine Question, further undermined the solidarity of Arab states, as the gap between popular sentiment and the regimes widened in individual countries. In Turkey, the global and regional dislocations coincided with the political and social ruptures that followed the military rule of the 1980s, including the Kurdish insurgency. The legitimacy deficit in the reconstituted political arena attenuated state authority everywhere and created political, moral and ideological vacuums into which religion moved as "the glue to hold society together" (p. 255). State, Faith, and Nation is an engaging and erudite book that will be as accessible to a general readership as it will be stimulating to students of the Middle East and the Balkans. The prose is readable, witty and provocative. Anscombe has digested several bodies of historiography and introduces some new insights from research in British and Ottoman archives. Many of us preach about bridging historiographies and moving beyond established nation-centric narratives. Anscombe accomplishes this masterfully.