Byzantium and the Arabs in Sixth Century, vol. 2, part 1: Toponymy, Monuments, Historical Geography and Frontier Studies.

• Author: Kaegi, Walter E.
• Position: Reviews of Books - Book Review

Byzantium and the Arabs in Sixth Century, vol. 2, part 1: Toponymy, Monuments, Historical Geography and Frontier Studies. By IRFAN SHAHID. Washington, D.C.: DUMBARTON OAKS RESEARCH LIBRARY AND COLLECTION, 2002. Pp. xxxvi + 468, maps, plates. $50.

Potential readers should understand what Shahid does not seek to do in this book, volume 2, part 1 of Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century (henceforth BASIC). He does not pretend to have written a continuation or chronological extension of earlier volumes, or a cohesive narrative from beginning to end. He has not produced a microanalysis of secular or ecclesiastical events or developments. He has not offered a description of the Ghassanid Arabs from the perspective of anthropology or other social sciences. He has not written a history of the rise of Islam, although some of his essays should help to illumine aspects of the context in which Islam arose and spread. He has not reevaluated political and military institutions other than the frontier (except on p. 380) in this volume. It is not a longitudinal analysis of relations between the Ghassanids and imperial authorities in Constantinople. Earlier volumes of Byzantium and the Arabs, including Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, followed a chronological approach. Here Shahid assembles and interprets some material that did not receive extensive analysis in earlier volumes of BASIC, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century (BAFOC), or Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fifth Century (BAFIC), as well as topics that reviewers had queried. Thus these selected studies fill gaps not adequately covered in earlier volumes and also update discussion of specific issues in the light of more recent scholarship and discoveries. This is not the final section of BASIC. There will be a part 2 that will cover other topics that require additional investigation.

In many ways this volume of BASIC is a compilation of materials for the study of various topics, not a narrative. It comprises three sections: "The Federate Sedentary Presence," "Frontier Studies," and "Historical Geography," each of which has subsections. It will be of interest to a diverse group of scholarly readers: historians, lexicographers, geographers, scholars of early Christian studies, including monasticism, archaeologists, specialists on the Ghassanids and on Middle Eastern toponymics, Quellenforschung, and to Arabists, Islamicists, scholars of Arabic literature, especially Arabic...