Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria.

• Author: Schilcher, Linda Schatkowski

The mind of Damascus revealed: Commins' study is one in which words are taken very seriously indeed, and real personalities emerge from the amorphous, faceless late-Ottoman period as social theory merged into Arab Nationalism. Commins has concentrated on three endearing ulama--the Qasimis--a father and his two sons, who lived relatively brief and nearly contemporary lifespans on the fringes of the elite, on the fringes of the empire, on the fringes of an intellectual awakening, and on the fringes of texts. The author seems quite literally to have read everything they read, everything they wrote, and everything that was written about them. And he did most of this while sitting in their living room in Damascus.

We learn of the arguments in treatises with titles such as "Removing the Affliction from the Entire Community"; "Warning the Gullible by Refuting Specious Arguments for Ritual Wine's Purity"; "Testimonies of Truth on Supplicating the Lord of Creation." And there are poems which include declarations such as:

I follow the truth and I am not

Satisfied with men's opinions.

I consider emulation ignorance

And blindness in all instances.

We follow the brain waves of these gropers as they wangle space on the new-fangled newsprint of the Ottoman world; finding expression, when silenced, in letters abroad; and discourse, when otherwise underemployed, around smuggled rags from Cairo. The wallflowers of medieval Damascene madrasas and zawiyas--until now known by little more than the pentagons, squares and diamonds on topographers' maps--began to listen and rub their eyes, and "more ominously, people began to speak darkly of an alleged secret agenda" from a group of ulama who dared to gather and discuss "Removing the Affliction" and had to pretend they weren't what they really were, namely, mujtahids. These were the days when one could ill afford to be branded soft on Wahhabism, the reform movement exciting Arabia and questioning the legitimacy of the Ottoman regime.

Religion was no longer just the route to a sinecure--they were all filled up anyway. Hardly stultifying and somber, as conventional wisdom would portray the late Ottoman period, these were heady times. Religion had a message not only for the summer and winter rooms of notables' urban palaces, but also for the suq, the baths and the pasha's entourage, including the Sultan's spies. Here are some of the paradoxes for contemporary Western sensibilities: kindly reformers and progressives...