Daily Life in the Medieval Islamic world.

• Author: Cheikh, El Nadia Maria
• Position: Book review

by JAMES E. LINDSAY. The Greenwood Press Daily Life through History. Westport: GREENWOOD PRESS, 2005. Pp. xxii + 299. $51.95

In his preface, James Lindsay states that this volume "is a general introduction to the Islamic world from the point of view of those who lived there. ..." The chronological framework extends from the seventh to the end of the thirteenth century. The volume comprises six chapters, a glossary of technical terms, recipes from medieval Arabic cookbooks, genealogical and dynastic tables, and a conversion table for Christian solar and Islamic lunar calendars.

The first chapter, "Major Themes in Medieval Islamic History," deals with some of the problems that historians confront when trying to understand early Islamic history, notably the problem of the sources. It emphasizes two points: First, while we have an abundance of literary sources that describe early events, there are very few documentary sources that date from the seventh century; and second, most of our literary sources come from within the Islamic tradition itself and are often contradictory. Lindsay, however, insists that for this project all is not lost, since "it is the traditional narrative of Muhammad's life and early community that serves as the essential story that gives meaning to Islam as a religion and serves ... as the underpinning of the daily life in the medieval Islamic world" (p. 8). Lindsay then gives an overview of the early Islamic conquests, ethnicity, geography and environment, the political character of medieval Islamic societies, the fragmentation of the caliphate, Islamic law, and Islamic mysticism. This topical overview aims to contextualize the discussion in the following five chapters. Islamic law, Shari'a, is particularly important, since "it gives insight into daily life and practice in the medieval Islamic world because it was understood to comprise the entire body of duties and obligations incumbent on all believers covering every imaginable aspect of daily life" (p. 25).

The second chapter, "Arabia," focuses on the world of the Hijaz in the seventh century and deals with geography and environment, camels and trade, housing and kinship. The discussion on housing, relying on the twelfth-century travels of Ibn Jubayr as well as on later nineteenth-century descriptions, leaves us with a very vague sense of what the situation may have been in the seventh century. The discussion on kinship values, by contrast, is quite useful. In...