Herrscher-Gemeinwesen-Vermitder: Ostiran und Transoxanien in vormongolischer Zeit.

• Author: SCHNEIDER, IRENE
• Position: Review

Herrscher-Gemeinwesen-Vermitder: Ostiran und Transoxanien in vormongolischer Zeit. By J[ddot{U}]RGEN PAUL. Beiruter Texte und Studien, vol 59. Beirut and Stuttgart: FRANZ STEINER VERLAG, 1996. Pp. viii + 322. DM 120.

Paul's study is a major contribution to the much-needed clarification of the administrative and political history of Islamic states. It is, as the author himself puts it, about the "reach" of state power. Contrary to the majority of studies on the topic, the author does not intend to examine state power according to theoretical literature (like M[bar{a}]ward[bar{i}]'s Ahzk[bar{a}]m al-sult[bar{a}]n[bar{i}]ya, etc.) but rather on the basis of political reality. Furthermore, he proposes to do so not by concentrating on the ruler and his person, but by investigating the views of the ruled and their relation to the ruler and the state. He focuses on the local elites in the eastern provinces, i.e., Iran and Transoxania (820-1210 A.D.), and sets out to investigate how subjects envisaged their relationship to the ruler. The questions the author poses are: How far did the influence of the central state penetrate into the provinces? Where exactly did the domain of the local elites begin and what was the intermediary function of the local elites with regard to the central state apparatus and the provincial network? This perspective, which brings the provinces, not the central power, into focus, is new, most promising, and at the same time fascinating. Up to now studies on state and society relied on the normative literature about the state (cf. T. Nagel: Staat und Glaubensgemeinschaft im Islam, 2 vols. [M[ddot{u}]nchen, 1981]). Studies on social and regional groups with a view of their relation to the state apparatus are rare. We hardly know anything about political realities in the Islamic states of the middle ages, let alone in the provincial and rural regions. J[ddot{u}]rgen Paul's new perspective provides us with a fresh approach to compensate for this deficit and is therefore worthy of praise.

Owing to the lack of sources dealing directly with the subject, the author had to make use of a broad array of materials, ranging from historiographic, geographic, and hagiographic literature, and [insh[bar{a}].sup.[contains]]-collections, to secondary literature in all languages, including important works in Russian. One of the book's merits derives from the way the author has gathered valuable information by a critical appraisal of this...