The Middle East Remembered: Forged Identities, Competing Narratives, Contested Spaces.

• Author: Rippin, Andrew
• Position: Reviews of Books - Book Review

The Middle East Remembered: Forged Identities, Competing Narratives, Contested Spaces. By JACOB LASSNER. Ann Arbor: UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS, 2000. Pp. xvii + 428. $54.50.

The Middle East Remembered brings together many strands of Jacob Lassner's work over the past thirty-five years into one cohesive book. The theme of memory is, of course, the historian's natural ally. Here it is considered in the context of the construction of history by classical Muslim writers as well as by modern historians in dealing with the emergence of Islamic identity and the construction of Jewish-Muslim relations. Most of the chapters in this wide-ranging and impressive work are developments of previously published articles; all of the chapters were given in oral format in the first instance and many will be familiar to American Oriental Society members as versions of (frequently humorous) talks given at annual meetings.

There are two main sections in the book, the first dealing with Islamic themes and the second with Jewish themes. The former is concerned mainly with matters up through the third hijri century, although considerations of modern times add an extra dimension to some chapters; the latter deals with issues arising from Jewish life within the Islamic world and especially the Jewish reaction to the Muslim appropriation of the narratives of their past.

The construction of history is the focus of the first three chapters. Here, Lassner's clear prose allows for a masterful treatment of the issues, starting with the nature of Muslim historical sources, moving to the modern historian's role and then working out the theory in a detailed study of the Abbasid dawla. Lassner's discussion of the Muslim reckoning of time in chapter one displays his skill as a historian and what can best be described as his "sensible" approach to contentious historiographical issues. Whether discussing the establishment of the hijri calendar or the significance of the "year of the elephant" for dating, Lassner is always careful not to say more than the evidence allows and he constantly reminds his readers of those limitations, while, at the same time, he rightly asserts the significance of the evidence that does exist. Lassner is also able to summarize well. His description of the Muslim approach to annalistic history, for example (pp. 18-19), points to the narrowly focused conception of time that sees history as dependent upon individuals and groups and their moral strengths...