Lane, George

English

SOAS Research Online

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studieshttp://journals.cambridge.org/BSOAdditional services for Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click hereKENNETH ALLIN LUTHER (tr.), C. EDMUND BOSWORTH (ed.): The history of the Seljuq Turks: from the Jami al­Tawarikh, an Ilkhanid adaptation of the Saljuq­nama of Zahir al­Din Nishapuri. xiv, 189 pp. Richmond: Curzon, 2001. £45.GEORGE LANEBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 65 / Issue 01 / February 2002, pp 140 ­ 262DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X02300077, Published online: 03 July 2002Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0041977X02300077How to cite this article:GEORGE LANE (2002). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 65, pp 140­262 doi:10.1017/S0041977X02300077Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/BSO, IP address: 212.219.238.14 on 30 Oct 2012161of date in their scholarly apparatus. Although the book's intellectual impactwould have been greater if it had appeared in print in the mid-1990s, this stilldoes not detract from the deeply personal research and ideas of itscontributors. In short, the volume is essential reading.    (tr.), .   (ed.):The history of the Seljuq Turks: from the Ja:mı:" al-Tawa:rı:kh, anIlkhanid adaptation of the Salju:q-na:ma of Z1 ahı:r al-Dı:n Nı:sha:pu:rı:.xiv, 189 pp. Richmond: Curzon, 2001. £45.Wheeler Thackston's translation of volume one of the Ja:mı:" al-Tawa:rı:khhaving appeared in 1998 and 1999, the major work of Rashı:d al-Dı:n is nowaccessible to an English-reading audience. The second volume of the Ja:mı:"al-Tawa:rı:kh is concerned with the histories of earlier rulers of Iran and theremaining peoples and dynasties of the known world. A French translation ofthe section on the History of the Franks (tr. Karl Jahn, Leiden, 1951) and anEnglish paraphrase of the section on the History of India (The Hague, 1965)have appeared, and it is a credit to Curzon Press' Studies in the History ofIran and Turkey series that they have now brought out a translation of Rashı:dal-Dı:n'sHistory of the Seljuqs. This very welcome translation should encourageinterest in the other, if possibly less important, works of the statesman andhistorian, Rashı:d al-Dı:n Fad1 lalla:h Hamada:nı:.It is generally accepted that Rashı:d al-Dı:n and his team here owe muchto the Salju:q-na:ma of Z1 ahı:r al-Dı:n Nı:sha:pu:rı:. Divergent views have beenexpressed about the true nature of this work and the editor of the work underreview, C. E. Bosworth, explains the main theories relating to the question ofthe Salju:q-na:ma. There has also been uncertainty over the extent to whichRashı:d al-Dı:n's compilers preserved the originals and used other sources.Work leading towards a critical edition of Nı:sha:pu:rı:'s original text, extant asthe Royal Asiatic Society's MS Persian 22b, is currently being undertaken byA. H. Morton, according to whom a substantial part of the Ja:mı:" al-Tawa:rı:khtext is derived from other and even Arabic sources. K. A. Luther (d. 1996)who completed his translation of Ahmed Ates1's edition (Ankara, 1960) in1971 was aware of the problems surrounding the authorship of the text buthe did not address them in a wholly satisfactory manner in his introduction,a criticism which can be levelled in turn at Bosworth himself in his own preface.Nı:sha:pu:rı:'s original work certainly became a major source for subsequentchronicles of this period and such histories as Ra:wandı:'s Ra:h1at al-s1udu:r,Mustawfı:'s Ta:rı:kh-i Guzı:da, the so-called Risa: la-i Juwaynı:, the Zubdatal-tawa:rı:kh of Rashı:d al-Dı:n's contemporary, Abu: 'l-Qa:sim Ka:sha:nı:, andAfd1al al-Dı:n Kirma:nı:, to name just a few, all rely on it for much of theirmaterial.Z1 ahı:r al-Dı:n Nı:sha:pu:rı: wrote his history of the Seljuqs early in the reignof T1 oghril III b. Arslan (1176–94), the ruler of Iraq, by which time the GreatSeljuq sultans were great in name only. A tutor to Mas"u:d and Arslan,presumably but not certainly the sultans, Nı:sha:pu:rı: hoped through writinghis chronicle to curry favour with T1 oghril and restore his faded fortunes.Luther argues, not altogether convincingly, that in many ways, in the tradition162 of Persian ‘men of the pen’, he was writing a ‘mirror for princes' and tryingto rekindle the teachings of Niz1a:m al-Mulk in his royal audience. In Luther'sview, he was a Persian traditionalist still coming to terms with Turkishascendancy, with Iran under the rule of Turan. The power of the sultans hadby this stage passed to their mamluks and atabegs, men, in the conservativeview of Nı:sha:pu:rı:, unworthy to rule given their status as slaves or sons ofslaves. Even the Ghaznavids had been dismissed since, their ‘king is the sonof a slave’ with ‘no great lineage’ and one whose ‘kingdom will not remainwith him’. (p. 33). Nı:sha:pu:rı: believed in the divine right of kings and hewished that his king should reclaim his birthright from the mamluks andatabegs. Abu: H1 amı:d Muh1ammad b. Ibra:hı:m, the continuator of his historyuntil T1 oghril's death in 1194, suggests that this was indeed the aim of theyoung sultan. ‘The Sultan wanted to bring the affairs of the realm back tothe principles of the past, as the rule of the sultans had been’ (p. 156). Thebook was to be ‘a book of counsel and a kind of political tract for royalty,as well as a source of historical information’ (p. 12).The text itself is short, clear and chronological. It does not differentiatebetween the eastern and western branches of the Seljuqs. However, its preciseand simple content is sometimes obscured by a translation which unfortunatelyreflects too perfectly the imprecision of the original Persian. This is particularlynoticeable in the confusing use of unattributable pronouns which can rendersome passages incomprehensible. Though Bosworth has corrected some of the‘infelicities of translation’ others remain. Thus we have Sultan Barkyaruq‘wearing only an undershirt like water on your hand’ (p. 71). The existenceof other peculiarities such as ‘that’ followed by direct speech contained inquotation marks (pp. 117, 131, etc.) suggest that maybe Luther had not fullyprepared the translation for publication.The book opens with a brief account of the ancestry of the Seljuqs andthen their migration from Turkestan into Transoxiana for reasons not fullysupported elsewhere. The description of the family's early prosperity andstrength also appears at variance with other sources (see C. E. Bosworth, TheGhaznavids, 1963). God's humbling of the Ghaznavids for their sins and theSeljuqs' subsequent elevation is followed by accounts of the early sultans,anecdotal and historical, as well as comment on the rewards of justice andthe losses incurred through heresy. Chapters are devoted to the reigns of theindividual sultans, mixing historical records with anecdotal illustrations ofinescapable divine will, with Alp Arslan whose ‘arrows never went astray’(p. 47) failing to ward off his assassin's fatal blow (p. 54), and Niz1a:m al-Mulkand Malik Sha:h whose pen-box and crown were bound together and weretwins, dying within a month of each other (p. 62), a coincidence inspiring thecomment, ‘See the power of God! Behold the weakness of the Sultan!’ (p. 62).Accounts of the struggles against the evil and insidious power of the Assassinsoccur frequently. However, in the later chapters dealing with the Iraqi sultansand their viziers, a time and place closer to home, the accounts deal morewith the actions and movements of the main players rather than reportinganecdotal incidents.Luther's translation will be welcome to both students of Rashı:d al-Dı:nand students of medieval Persian history. Though not the original Salju:q-na:ma, it still succeeds in opening up a major source of Seljuq history to awider audience and provides life and colour to a period previously hidden formany behind secondary sources. 

Review of Kenneth Allin Luther (tr.), C. Edmund Bosworth (ed.), 'The History of the Seljuq Turks: From the From the Jāmī' al-Tawārīkh, an Ilkhanid Adaptation of the Saljūq-nāma of Ẓahīr al-Dīn Nīshāpūrī'

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studieshttp://journals.cambridge.org/BSOAdditional services for Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click hereFRANKLIN D. LEWIS: Rumi: past and present, East and West: the life, teaching and poetry of Jalâl al­Din Rumi. 3 maps, 1 fig, 686 pp. Oxford: Oneworld, 2000. £26.99.George LaneBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 64 / Issue 02 / June 2001, pp 268 ­ 308DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X01240166, Published online: 24 September 2001Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0041977X01240166How to cite this article:George Lane (2001). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 64, pp 268­308 doi:10.1017/S0041977X01240166Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/BSO, IP address: 212.219.238.14 on 29 Oct 2012270 T N M Ethis polemic literally and came to identify the. . : The idea of idolatry‘associators’ with the idolatrous and polythe-and the emergence of Islam: fromistic Arabs of Muh1ammad's world. Hawtingpolemic to history. Cambridge: finds some support for his position from aCambridge University Press, 1999. most interesting source within the Islamictradition. It was the position of the greatxvii, 168 pp. £35.00.eighteenth-century reformer Muh1ammad ibn"Abd al-Wahha:b (d. 1206/1796) that the quranicFor over one hundred years Christian andattacks on ‘associators’ and idolators wereJewish scholars, driven by scholarly rather thandirected at people who regarded themselves aspolemical concerns, have been subjecting thehistory of the emergence of Islam, as widely monotheists.accepted by Muslims themselves, to rigorous Hawting carries forward his argument inexamination. Over the past thirty years some closely argued prose which is throughout fullyof the most important and challenging work in alert to scholarship in Arabic and in Europeanthis field has come from scholars at London's languages that relates to his case. He embraces,School of Oriental and African Studies and too, the insights which philology, epigraphy,from those sympathetic to its intellectual milieu. archaeology and modern biblical scholarshipIn 1977 Patricia Crone and Michael Cook can bring to the matter. He begins by settingproduced Hagarism: the making of the Islamic the context of current scholarship and examinesWorld, which sought to demonstrate the the problems of seeing the Quran, and theintimate links between the earliest forms of tradition which elaborated it, as evidence forIslam and Jewish messianism. In the same year, the nature of religion in the ja:hiliyya. He goesJohn Wansbrough, applying to the Quran the on to examine the accusations of associationismideas and methods of modern biblical scholar- and idolatry in the Quran finding them directedship, argued in his Quranic studies that the at backsliding monotheists. Then, turning toestablishment of the text and its acceptance as monotheistic polemic in general, he demon-scripture were part of the slow emergence ofstrates how the quranic polemic echoes itsIslam itself rather than an achievement whichpractice. In his last three chapters he examineshas been expressed in the life of the Prophet.both the nature of the Islamic literary traditionPatricia Crone in Meccan trade and the rise ofabout the idolatrous religion of the pre-IslamicIslam (1987) undermined the old sub-MarxistArabs and what can be learned from evidenceargument about the relationship between trade,from outside the Islamic tradition.changes in trade, and the rise of Islam; sheHawting concludes by asking the question,demonstrated the considerable difficulties ofif his argument about the unsatisfactory natureaccounting for the origins of Islam in seventh-of the Islamic tradition's description of thecentury central and western Arabia. Already,ja:hiliyya is right, and if the Quran itself isin the previous year, in work with Martinmuch more likely to be the outcome of internalHinds, God's Caliph, she had pushed back indebates amongst monotheists, how is it thattime the likely development of Sunni Islam bythe traditional understanding of the rise ofindicating the crucial importance of the struggleIslam came about? He is sceptical of the ideabetween the caliphs and the "ulama in thethat scholars were misled into understandingsecond quarter of the third Islamic century forthe quranic attacks on the ‘associators’ andestablishing the latter as religious authorities.idolators literally. He prefers to suggest thatThis was an understanding which Norman‘one possible reason for the emphasis on theCalder was able to help consolidate in his Earlyja:hiliyya, as it was conceived in the MuslimMuslim jurisprudence (1993).This book lobs another weighty shell into tradition, as the background to the Koranthe traditional understanding of the emergence would be to associate the revelation with theof Islam. Hawting argues that it is unlikely career of Muhammad who was rememberedthat Islam arose in a rather remote part of to have been active in Arabia....’ This con-Arabia which was, at the beginning of the clusion is put tentatively, and with modesty;seventh century .., beyond the boundaries of its implications are immense.the monotheistic world. Such an explanation is not supported by a thoughtful analysis of theQuran, by much recent scholarship, and bycurrent understandings of how monotheistictraditions emerge; moreover, it is an interpreta-tion which sets Islam apart, which suggeststhat the Quran is in all likelihood a miracle, awork of revelation. The emergence of Islam, he . : Rumi: past andargues, was the outcome of debates amongstmonotheists rather than arguments with idol- present, East and West: the life,aters and polytheists. The ‘associators’ (mushri- teaching and poetry of Jalâl al-Dinku:n), who are attacked in the Quran, were Rumi. 3 maps, 1 fig., 686 pp.monotheists whose standards fell below thoseOxford: Oneworld, 2000. £26.99.of true monotheism and hence in polemic werebranded idolators. Subsequent commentatorsThe author states clearly in the introduction toon the Quran and the authors of associatedliterature, however, interpreted the language of this long overdue volume that his is not ‘the271final and definitive biography of Rumi’ but if writings, has now dispelled these myths andnot the final, this biography will surely more reveals Tabrı:zı: to have been ‘a man well versedthan satisfy the needs of both scholars and the in the philosophical and theological discoursegrowing number of Ru:mı: fans while that of his day, though something of an iconoclast’definitive biography is being composed. In (p. 137). Lewis's is the first book in English toaddition to providing a very thorough bio- make use of the biography, a selection ofgraphy of the Sufi-poet Jala: l al-Dı:n Ru:mı:, writings and a critical edition of Tabrı:zı:'sLewis has compiled an invaluable cross-refer- lectures produced and edited in Tehran byenced source book for the study of not only Muh1ammad "Alı: Muvah1h1 id. Also for thethe work and teachings of Ru:mı: and the first time in English the work and influenceMevlevi order, but also of the proliferating of Ru:mı:'s earlier mentor, Burha:n al-Dı:nRu:mı: ‘industry’, both past and present. This Muh1aqqiq, is examined at length, and fromis a truly comprehensive book, labelled a ‘Rumi this study Ru:mı:'s traditional Islamic groundingbible’ by the author, that has led Julie Scott and Sunni background are emphasized. Burha:nMeisami so succinctly to opine of Lewis in her al-Dı:n Muh1aqqiq's work is quoted copiouslyforeword that ‘he appears to have read every- and his profound influence on Ru:mı:'s develop-thing, in every relevant language, both by and ment is demonstrated through contextual cita-about Rumi’ (p. xii). tions. Ru:mı:'s Islamic schooling was, of course,Lewis's biography of Ru:mı: incorporates initiated by his father, Baha: ' al-Dı:n Valad,not only the life and work of the poet's father, himself a cleric and preacher, and Lewis devotesBaha: ' al-Dı:n Valad, and of his son and a whole chapter to this often neglected man'ssuccessor, Sult1a:n Valad, but also of Burha:n teachings, writing, and spiritual life. However,al-Dı:n Muh1aqqiq Tirmidhı:, Ru:mı:'s early spir- though the three Ru:mı: hagiographers woulditual mentor (d.1241), and of the highly contro- paint their saint's father in glowing colours andversial figure, Shams al-Dı:n Tabrı:zı:, whose embellish his career in renown and fame, Lewisunaccounted disappearance is still the subjectdebunks these fables and portrays a moreof much debate.modest figure who did eventually find someThe three main sources for Ru:mı:'s life and deserved status and recognition in Konya attimes, which were written between twenty andthe age of 80.seventy years after the ‘Maula:na: 's’ death, Moving on from the world of Ru:mı: andcome under close critical scrutiny. His son,his family, Lewis devotes nearly a third of hisSult1a:n Valad (d.1312), a disciple, Ferı:du:nbook to the reception of Ru:mı: in the East andSepahsa: la:r (d.1295/1340?), and the MevleviWest, past and present. A chapter of his volumesufi, Ah1mad Afla:kı: (d.1260), all wrote hagio-explores the Mevlevi order founded in Konyagraphies concentrating more on Maula:na: 'sby Ru:mı:'s son Sult1a:n Valad, and which todayspiritual influence and the fantastical than oncan boast international following exemplifiedthe historically accurate details of his life. Lewisby the Mevlevi Order of America. However,studiously compares and contrasts the work ofRu:mı: has had a greater impact on the Islamiceach of these three intimates along with aworld than he has on America and Europe,wealth of other diverse source material toand Lewis has given a valuable overview ofunravel the mythical and legendary from thethis influence on Persian, Turkish and Urduplausible and verifiably authentic accounts ofliterature in particular and on the theosophyRu:mı:'s life. The discrepancies, the differingand thinking of the wider Muslim world inversions of events, and the relative weaknessesgeneral. Though less profound, Lewis does notand strengths of the various sources are all laiddismiss Ru:mı:'s influence in the West and heout for the reader's benefit while concurrently,Lewis's own conclusions and solutions to this presents an exhaustive study of the translationsmaze of material are also clearly expounded and adaptations of Ru:mı:'s work up to theand justified. This pattern of presentation is present day even including appearances inrepeated in all sections of this book and the cyberspace with a handful of web addresses. Inresult is extremely satisfactory. It leaves both fact, although a tongue-in-cheek attitude canthe casual and scholarly reader with a clear be detected and his own misgivings are notand conclusive view of what is often a confusing always hidden, Lewis gives a comprehensivepicture of events, and at the same time it gives survey of the present day ‘Rumi industry’ inan account and an analysis of the background all its aspects, considering the role of Ru:mı: inand alternatives to this view for the benefit of the New Age movement and the depiction ofthe scholarly reader. Ru:mı: and Shams Tabrı:zı: as gay icons as wellThe contextual details concerning the milieu as Maula:na: 's entry into popular culture andin which Ru:mı: lived are a very welcome his enduring presence as the subject of seriousaddition to this study. Lewis provides the fruits scholarly pursuit.of his own research into the work of the Evident in every page of this welcomemysterious Shams al-Dı:n Tabrı:zı:, with his own volume is the author's deep knowledge andtranslations of this hitherto often inaccessible understanding of his subject, demonstrated notmaterial, from which he gleans a great deal of least by his own numerous translations ofinformation concerning both mentor and man. Ru:mı:'s work scattered liberally throughout hisTabrı:zı: has often been portrayed as an text. One whole chapter is reserved for a criticalunschooled qalandar by such early comment- analysis of Ru:mı:'s poetry and includes fiftyators as the Herati poet, Ja:mı:, and anthologist, poems translated and annotated by Lewis.Dawlatsha:h, and later by European scholars Franklin Lewis's contribution to hissuch as E. G. Browne, J. W. Redhouse and subject is immense and is certainly as yetR. A. Nicholson. Lewis, basing his conclusionsunparalleled.on the descriptions found in Sult1a:n Valad,Afla:kı:, and from Shams al-Dı:n Ta:brı:zı:'s own  

Review of Franklin D. Lewis, 'Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teaching and Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi'

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Review of Franklin D. Lewis, 'Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teaching and Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi'

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