CHRISTOPHER S. TAYLOR, In the Vicinity of the Righteous: Ziy―ara and the Veneration of Muslim Saints in Late Medieval Egypt, Islamic History and Civilization, Studies and Texts, vol. 32 (Leiden, Boston, Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1999). Pp. 280. $93.50 cloth.

Abstract

This book, based on a Ph.D. thesis submitted at Princeton University about ten years ago, is a welcome contribution to historians' relatively narrow preoccupation with Islam as practiced rather than the Islam of textual production. Its author, currently associate professor of religious studies at Drew University, sets out to describe and analyze a vital practice of Islamic piety that is the cult of Muslim dead “saints” (ziy―ara) in Egypt between 1200 and 1500 C.E. The choice of the topic is certainly pertinent, for, as Taylor notes, the saint phenomenon has not received the study it deserves. Goldziher's pioneering article, although written more than 100 years ago, remains to a large extent unsurpassed, and most of the research since has been done on the geographic peripheries of the Islamic world and largely in a modern context.