The subject of a promotional campaign by Harvard University Press, Empires of the Sand purports to challenge established scholarship with respect to the drawn-out demise of the Ottoman Empire from 1789 to 1923. The Karshes argue that European imperialism was more benevolent than threatening and coexisted with Middle Eastern imperialisms—Ottoman, Egyptian, or Arab. In their view, European imperial powers “shored up” the Ottoman Empire rather than sought to deprive it of territories under its domain during the 19th century. To be sure, there was some European “nibbling at the edges of empire” (Algeria, Tunisia, Libya), but these incursions had little impact on the Ottomans; Cyprus (1878) is ignored. The only true “infringement on Ottoman territorial stability,” the British takeover of Egypt, happened by “chance not design,” with the blame attributed to Sultan Abdul Hamid's mismanagement of the crisis. The same story of Ottoman incompetence and attempts to manipulate European powers explains Ottoman loss of territory in the Balkans.

Mehrzad Boroujerdi's Iranian Intellectuals and the West explores the works of three generations of Iranian writers and academics who contributed to the formation of a counter-Western “nativist” discourse. It opens with an exposition of the concepts that constitute the theoretical grid of the book and provide the title of its first chapter. “Otherness, Orientalism, Orientalism in Reverse, and Nativism.” Informed by contemporary critical theories, Boroujerdi argues for the centrality of the “other” to the formation of modern self-identity. Re-encapsulating the main theses of Said's Orientalism, he recounts that “the Islamic world came to be perceived as the embodiment of all that was recently left behind in Europe: an all-encompassing religion, political despotism, cultural stagnation, scientific ignorance, superstition, and so on” (p. 7). He then explains “Orientalism in reverse,” a concept formulated by the Syrian critic Sadik al-Azm. Preferring this clumsy concept to “Occidentalism” or “self-Orientalizing,” Boroujerdi defines Orientalism in reverse as “a discourse used by ‘oriental’ intellectuals and political elites to lay claim to, recapture, and finally impropriate their ‘true’ and ‘authentic’ identity” (pp. 11–12). As a counter-narrative of Orientalism, this discourse “uncritically embraces orientalism's assumption of a fundamental ontological difference separating the natures, peoples, and cultures of the Orient and the Occident” (p. 12). Boroujerdi attributes the popularity of Orientalism in reverse to the “seductive lure of nativism,” which is defined as “the doctrine that calls for the resurgence, reinstatement, or continuance of native or indigenous cultural customs, beliefs, and values” (p. 14). Surprisingly enough, Boroujerdi does not divulge that this seductive and pervasive “ nativism” has no discursively significant equivalent in Iranian cultural politics.

This short collection of essays provides new insights into the medium of political cartoons in the Middle East, where it has long played an important role. Drawing on materials from Turkey, Iran, and Tunisia, contributors “focus on the multiple cultural spaces that political cartoons in the Middle East creat across societies” (cover text).

Jeffrey Nedoroscik's book is a sensitive sociological survey of life in Cairo's City of the Dead, where more than 500,000 people are now enlisted to reside. In an attempt to both demystify and account for this phenomenon, Nedoroscik argues that life in the City of the Dead is as old, and as rich, as life in Cairo itself. Today, residence in and among the family tombs stretching across some five square miles at the base of the muqattam Hills, constitutes an informal housing sector that has developed as a response to Cairo's severe housing crisis. Historically, though, the cemetery also teemed with life as a religious center housing some of the Muslim world's most important monuments, and a site of temporary and permanent shelter to relatives to the deceased, guardians of tombs, itinerants, the poor, the sick, Sufis, and other religious leaders.

Few people can speak to the complex issue of Palestinian identity in Jordan with the degree of background of Adnan Abu-Odeh, a West Bank Palestinian who has made his mark in the Jordanian political establishment by serving in the Directorate of General Intelligence (mukhabarat), the royal diwan, the cabinet, the Senate, and Jordan's delegation to the United Nations, and as an adviser to King Hussein and his son King ⊂Abdullah II. Over the course of more than three decades of public service in Jordan, Abu-Odeh has been an inside observer and, at times, a direct participant in many of the major episodes in the Hashemite kingdom's recent history. He has also been a controversial and sometimes outspoken figure for both Palestinians and East Bank (Transjordanian) Jordanians.

Tony Cordesman has become a veritable institution among Washington policy analysts. Few are more prolific, especially in the area of comparative analysis of weapons systems. He can be depended on to produce data-rich, comprehensive, lavishly documented studies of military doctrine and usage, intentions to acquire or produce weapons systems, and willingness to abide by international arms-control regimes. These two books are no exception. They include indepth analyses of conventional and non-conventional weapons systems. It is the latter that makes these books so important to analysts of regional weapons development and arms control. Cordesman examines Iraqi and Iranian acquisitions, from purchase, absorption, production, and use of conventional weapons to efforts to acquire nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons—the so-called weapons of mass destruction—and the requisite ballistic-missile–delivery systems.

This book is a most welcome addition to the literature on Russian–Israeli relations. Although Yaacov Ro⊃i, in his study Soviet Decision Making in Practice: The USSR and Israel 1947–1954 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1980), covered the 1947–53 period thoroughly, and although there is an extensive body of literature on Russian policy toward Israel (and the rest of the Middle East) after the 1967 war, a gap has existed for many years in the scholarly coverage of Russian–Israeli relations from the death of Stalin in March 1953 until the June 1967 Six Day War. Yosef Govrin, a retired Israeli Foreign Office official who specialized in relations with the USSR, has gone a long way toward filling this gap. Having the advantage of access to the Israeli archives and internal political debates, Govrin presents a balanced picture of the Soviet–Israeli relationship, pointing out where, in his opinion, both Israel and the USSR made mistakes in developing their ties. He also goes into great detail on the question of Soviet Jewry (more than half of the book), noting how Israel's efforts to get the Soviet government to allow Jews to emigrate to Israel was a serious complicating factor in the relationship, although the primary cause for the USSR's breaking of diplomatic relations with Israel in June 1967 (Govrin was first secretary of the Israeli embassy in Moscow at the time) stemmed from Moscow's backing of the radical Ba⊃athist regime in Syria, which helped precipitate the 1967 war.

Yitzhak Rabin left a complex and paradoxical legacy. The man who for decades embodied a national security policy based on forceful deterrence adopted, in the 1990s, a rhetoric of coexistence and cooperation. Rabin began to articulate positions identified with the Israeli left: that the Palestinians were at the heart of the Israeli–Arab conflict, and that the conflict was at least partly a product of “psychological walls” on both sides. Despite his traditionally hawkish views and staunch opposition to recognizing Yasir Arafat and the PLO, Rabin oversaw a reversal of policy toward Israel's former arch-enemy. Indeed, it was Rabin's stature as “Mr. Security” that made the Israeli–PLO Declaration of Principles possible. Unlike Shimon Peres, his rival for Labor Party leadership, Rabin's unrivaled role as an architect of national security policy and practice afforded him relative immunity to charges of excessive dovishness. Efraim Inbar, professor of politics at Bar-Ilan University, offers a lucid account of Rabin's contribution to Israeli security. Concluding that Rabin's approach to security was pragmatic, ad hoc, and without an overarching strategic vision (p. 169), Inbar nevertheless begins from the premise that for Rabin and other leaders of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), the anarchic environment of Middle Eastern politics conditions Israel's security needs. In this environment, governments consider international law and treaties unreliable, so “self-help” and deterrence are the sole path to security. For Rabin, “What has assured Israel's existence…is primarily Israel's comprehensive power, with military might as the decisive element” (p. 11).

In his book, The Taliban Phenomenon, Kamal Matinuddin does not offer a central thesis regarding Afghan politics or the Taliban movement. Rather, he discusses a number of important questions pertaining to the Taliban movement. Since the rise of the Taliban, their identity has been disputed. The opponents of the Taliban claim that many members of the movement are natives of Pakistan. In contrast, the supporters of the Taliban assert that they are ethnic Afghans. Matinuddin's discussion of the origins of the Taliban addresses this controversy. According to Matinuddin, during the 1980s a large number of Islamic seminaries (d―in―i mad―aris) were established in Pakistan. The government of Pakistan and oil-rich Arab states paid for most of the expenses of these institutions. In 1997, about 220,000 students were enrolled in these seminaries. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a large number of young Afghan refugees registered in these institutions. When the Taliban movement began, not only Afghan students (Taliban) of these seminaries joined the movement, but Pakistani Taliban from these institutions also joined their Afghan colleagues in their efforts to take control of Afghanistan. Thus, according to Matinuddin, the Taliban movement is an Afghan phenomenon, but occasionally Pakistani Taliban help their Afghan colleagues in the battlefield. However, Pakistani Taliban do not take orders from the government of Pakistan.

Jørgen Nielsen's Towards a European Islam provides a very good introduction to the role that Islam plays in the experience of most non-European immigrants to Western Europe. As Nielsen correctly notes, there is an overwhelmingly Muslim character to immigration in the region, but few of the recent studies on immigration have looked systematically at the issue of the role religion plays in the lives of these newly arrived migrants. This relative silence is surprising given that there are an estimated 9 million Muslims in Western Europe, which makes them the largest religious minority in the region. Nielsen's book, therefore, is a healthy corrective for a literature that too often ignores this important question. The book's greatest strength is its description of the complex process by which Muslims seek to integrate their religious values and practices into social and political cultures that are not well suited to accommodating those views.

In his review of my book Religion and Politics under the Early⊂Abbasids, Saleh Said Agha seriously misunderstands several of my arguments, then sets out to refute his versions of these arguments. The constraints of space do not permit me to take note of all his criticisms and misconstructions, though I should like to mention and clarify a few of them.

Sabri Sayari's review of my book The Kurds and the Future of Turkey concludes that “despite some … merits,” my book “fails to make a significant contribution to the existing scholarship and knowledge about an important and complex issue.” Given some of the criticisms he has made to arrive at his conclusion, one might instead conclude that my book fails to make the contribution Sayari, the executive director of the Institute of Turkish Studies, would have liked it to make. Because my subject concerns an increasingly important issue, I believe it would serve a useful scholarly purpose for me to reply to his criticisms.

I must express my surprise at the offensive tone of Michael Gunter's reply to my review of his book The Kurds and the Future of Turkey, since, in addition to my criticisms, I did enumerate some of the merits of his study. I can only assume, therefore, that he has either misunderstood my comments or chosen to ignore the favorable points I made and focus instead only on the critical ones.