Michael Nizri's study of Ottoman politics aims to incorporate the ulema into the literature on the political weight of households following their ascendance around the mid-17th century. He does this through a carefully constructed biography of Feyzullah Efendi who served as sheikh ül-Islam throughout the reign of Sultan Mustafa II (1695–1703). This is an interesting choice of subject since, as Nizri points out, Feyzullah was considered an atypical member of the ulema by his contemporaries, and he paid with his life for this perceived aberration. Feyzullah has the unfortunate renown for being the third and final sheikh ül-Islam to have been executed, following the 1703 janissary protests known as the Edirne incident, which also led to the deposition of the sultan. The book is clearly organized and the scholarship is thorough, relying on Feyzullah's two autobiographies, the historical writings of his contemporaries, and the Başbakanlık archive.

Nizri contextualizes the career of Feyzullah within the familiar story of the rise of the vizier and pasha households, arguing that this model can be extended to the religious elite. In this respect, he ties together a tradition of scholarship on the ulema (their social origins, career paths, and the Ottoman organizational hierarchy), taking note of the similarities and divergences from the general 17th century patterns. In particular, Nizri emphasizes the importance of patronage in career advancement including descriptions of the members of Feyzullah's extensive entourage. Nizri provides almost encyclopedic detail on the ascent of Feyzullah (Chapter 1), before turning to a discussion of Feyzullah's household and its alliances within the ulema and with viziers (Chapter 2). Whereas marriage alliances within the ulema were quite common, Feyzullah diverged from this pattern through his additional unions with political families such as the Köprülüs.

Two other chapters recount how Feyzullah utilized his influential position to grant key appointments to members of his household. Not only did he show disregard for precedence and seniority, but he altered imperial protocols to demonstrate his ceremonial power over the sultan (Chapter 3) and was able to accumulate considerable wealth in part as a result of this position (Chapter 4). Nizri structures this as a “list of sources of his and his clients' income,” providing seven extensive tables based on archival records (p. 140). Yet his discussion of wealth goes beyond these calculations through insights into imperial food distribution and subsidies. He factors in how payments for appointments, gifts, tax farming, and real estate complemented ulema salaries, but were balanced with the financial obligations of maintaining a large household. The final chapter similarly draws from an archival base and includes tables in its recording of the numerous awqāf founded by Feyzullah in seven different cities. Through these, Feyzullah created teaching positions and Nizri considers the ulema thus employed and the students as dependents of his household. Considering the loss of salaried positions, confiscation of wealth and property following Feyzullah's execution, Nizri argues that these endowments were an astute strategy to preserve a portion of his wealth for his descendants.

The events surrounding the 1703 revolt that led to the sultan's dismissal and Feyzullah's brutal execution are the subject of scholarly interest, often considered an important turning point in Ottoman history coming shortly after the Ottoman's ceded territory in the 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz. While Nizri references Rifa'at Abou-el-Haj's book on the topic, it is unfortunate that he did not engage with the theoretical frameworks suggested by scholars such as Baki Tezcan and Sam White, in considering how Feyzullah's career and his actions shed light on different aspects of this debate.

One of the tensions within the narrative is to what degree Feyzullah was representative of the ulema as opposed to a divergence from what was deemed acceptable. Ottomanist scholarship has detailed the importance of patronage within imperial politics, and as such part of the hierarchical nature of Ottoman social life that extended, for instance, to job training via apprenticeships. Nizri contends that practices such as favoritism, the accumulation of wealth, and privileges were acceptable for the political elite, but not for an alim. For instance, in the final pages, Nizri asserts that Feyzullah's wealth was “no different from other high-ranking officials who made the most of their time in office to accumulate wealth and ensure the preservation and perpetuation of their power” while in the following sentence he states that Feyzullah was different due to his “limitless greed” (p. 215). Yet the fact that Feyzullah's peers expressed their disapproval of his influential position and wealth in their writings built upon what was by then an established practice within advice literature of criticizing favoritism (of which Mustafa Ali is a notable earlier instance). Nizri's reading of the sources does not question to what extent their conception of normative behavior may have been an ideal and a rhetorical trope. Tezcan contends that such criticism represented an attempt by the ulema to regain their political power that Mustafa II had hoped to curb by placing his tutor as the senior religious figure in the empire.

Despite his ability to grant lofty positions to members of his entourage, Feyzullah was not omnipotent, and not all of his clients did his bidding once in office. Yet aside from references to greed or power, and despite this personal slant, little is said about Feyzullah's motivations or his intellectual leanings. For instance, Nizri says that Feyzullah wanted to “assume responsibility for most of the empire's domestic and foreign policy” but does not elaborate on how Feyzullah may have envisioned those policies (p. 109). While such a focus on personality fits well with the genre of biography, it may have been more useful to consider Feyzullah as a pragmatic statesman, however unpopular. Through this framework, Feyzullah's story may offer insights on how the changing socioeconomic circumstances of the turbulent 17th century were processed by the ulema and how wealth allowed Feyzullah to blur the hierarchical lines at the top of Ottoman society.

To a certain extent, Feyzullah is depicted as a victim of the arbitrary (or despotic) power of the sultan, as Nizri suggests that Feyzullah's main motivation for his accumulation of wealth and assets was his “fear” (p. 188). Having been brought into the imperial entourage as Mustafa's tutor, the two men were quite close. Nizri states in the introduction that it was “primarily through the Seyhulislam that the sultan tried to curb the growing power of the households established by the viziers and pashas” (p. 1). The political agenda of the sultan is not fully elaborated in later chapters, and one is left wondering to what extent the sultan utilized Feyzullah to further his own efforts to reconcentrate power within the palace, and how their relationship was a strategic choice to maintain the allegiance of a portion of the ulema.

Overall, Nizri provides an informative account of Feyzullah's life. It includes a plethora of descriptions of the members of Feyzullah's household, framing their careers within the hierarchy of positions in the legal system. There are a few scattered references to women's contributions to developing and sustaining the household, and moments of intrigue as Nizri recounts how Feyzullah took advantage of his proximity to the sultan to punish his rivals. In the short epilogue Nizri mentions that despite Feyzullah's execution, the confiscation of his wealth, and the dismissal and exile of many of his sons and sons-in-law that the household was able to thrive. Two of his sons were appointed sheikh ül-Islam and his descendants attained positions of such importance that “up until the mid-19th century, Feyzullah's lineage (Feyzullahzades) had become one of the three leading ulema lineages” (p. 217). Again, it would have been interesting for Nizri to consider the implications of this for thinking about the household and Feyzullah's own legacy. Instead, the book maintains its focus on Feyzullah, his household, and the ulema of the late 17th century, and will be of interest to scholars concerned with these topics.