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The Book in the Islamic World: the Written Word and Communication in the Middle East, edited by George N. Atiyeh. 305 pages, illustrations, figures, notes, appendix, index. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. $19.95 (Paper) ISBN 0-7914-2474-X

work on the Abbasid army. The sources Amabe does employ he exploits exhaustively and for the most part convincingly. He is particularly skillful at summarizing the relevant historiography and identifying the key issues to be addressed, and he treats these problems with the perspective of a global historian—he is at times quite bold, for example, in comparing the caliphate to Roman and Chinese imperial systems and assuming that Islamic history is not "peculiar" but operates on common historical principles. In general, he sees the main dynamic of history in this period generated by competition for the spoils of empire, the increasing autocracy of the Abbasid state and the struggle of local noblemen to preserve their privileges in the face of this centralization of power. Throughout, he is especially concerned to downplay the importance of religion in contrast to military and material factors, to discount peasant and popular elements in resistance to Abbasid rule and to minimize the significance of slave involvement either in revolts or in the Abbasid army. Although it is nowhere made explicit in the book, one senses that these ideas are rooted in Japanese scholarly debates over Marxist historiography as well as in reaction to Orientalist models for interpreting Asian history.