Amira Bennison's The Great Caliphs joins other recent general works on early Islamic history. The list includes Hugh Kennedy's When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2004); Vernon Egger's two-volume A History of the Muslim World (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2004, 2008); and, the most recent, Alexander Knysh's Islam in Historical Perspective (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2011). The decision by a single publisher—albeit one with a global reach—to market two such works suggests a considerable audience. The trend, with its likely connection to the events of 9/11, the conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and the so-called “war on terror,” has had at least this positive result: the availability of richer pedagogical material than was true a decade ago.

The books by Knysh and Egger are designed explicitly for classroom use, whereas those by Kennedy and Bennison target a wider audience of lay historians alongside students. Knysh's Islam includes more on religious topics per se, while Kennedy's When Baghdad Ruled has the sharpest focus, treating exclusively the early Abbasid caliphate and Baghdadi court society. Bennison's net is wider: she writes of Abbasid (and, more broadly, Arab/Islamic) patterns against the long backdrop of ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern history and, in turn, the impact of Abbasid patterns on later Near Eastern/Islamic (and European/Christian) society. Her strokes are broad. This reviewer is currently using both the Bennison and Kennedy texts in a course on Baghdad and the Abbasid caliphate; the two books complement each other well. Each makes good use of recent scholarship; each is written appropriately and is sensibly organized. Kennedy's is the livelier of the two texts: he makes frequent and direct use of akhbār, the bulk of which derive from the English translation of al-Tabari's History. This, in turn, allows one to take up Arabic/Islamic historiography, for which Chase Robinson's Islamic Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) offers a challenging but thorough introduction. The merits of Bennison's book include, alongside a felicitous style, a rich body of detail. It is obvious that the author has read widely.

Bennison sets her sights on two objectives. The first, again, is to situate Abbasid patterns in as broad a frame as possible. She attaches perhaps unequal weight to the Mediterranean world; there is too little here on Iran, inner Asia, and steppe society's part in the formation of Islamic civilization. Specialists need no such lessons but, for students, the opposite is true. Bennison is perhaps inconsistent on this score: her opening chapter, “A Stormy Sea: the Politics of the ʿAbbasid Caliphate,” provides a useful summary of Islamic history from its origins to the Crusades and the Mongol assault on Baghdad (1258). The account is necessary but hardly original; it would help, in any case, to say more about, first, the dilemma of reconstructing the early period from Arabic/Islamic sources and, second, developments outside the core territories of the Arab/Islamic Empire that gave shape to its frontiers. One is prepared here for greater reference to Sasanian and Byzantine patterns. Such references, however, arise mostly in subsequent chapters.

The rest of the book is organized topically, with chapters on Arab/Islamic urbanism, the composition of Abbasid-era society, the vital role of trade and traders, the many facets of Arab/Islamic intellectual life, and, briefly, the extent of Arab/Islamic influences upon medieval Europe.

Bennison's discussion of the urban environment, illustrated with the author's own photographs, is well done. Consistent with her approach, Bennison devotes only paragraphs to the great palatine centers (Baghdad and Samarra). Here, again, she builds the case for Byzantine and especially Sasanian influences on Abbasid society and state and the subsequent adoption of Abbasid patterns, notably on the part of the Fatimids and (Spanish) Umayyads. Bennison comments at some length on smaller, provincial centers (e.g., Shiraz, Basra, Cairo, Fes, and Cordoba). The chapter draws at length on the unfortunate translation of al-Maqdisi/Muqaddasi's Ahsan al-Taqasim (The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions [Reading, U.K.: Garnet Publ., 2001]) (pp. 80–81). A new translation, with the proper apparatus, is very much in order. Bennison's chapter on the urban social landscape contains detailed comments on gender relations, slavery, and the lower strata of Abbasid-era society. Given the relative disinterest of the Arab/Islamic sources in treating nonelite society, this had to be a difficult chapter to write. Her comments on taking slavery seriously, as a significant facet of Abbasid social organization, are on the mark.

Bennison's second objective is to upend long-held Western views on Islam and Islamicate society. This is the least satisfactory aspect of the book. The problem is not that Bennison has chosen her target poorly. Quite the contrary: shallow, ill-formed perceptions of Muslims, the Islamic faith, and Near Eastern society persist both in Europe and the United States. Indeed, as Representative King (R-N.Y.) reminds us, the view of Islam as utterly Other seems to flourish. It is rather that Bennison seems to assume that readers will understand such references as “the insidious Orientalist tendency to consider the twisting . . . alleys of premodern Islamic . . . cities as material manifestations of the irrational mind of the ‘Oriental’” (p. 55). Comments of the sort are scattered throughout and seem often out of date (name the undergraduate who reads Sauvaget or von Grunebaum). If a new edition is planned, it would do to have the topic set aside or more clearly treated. It would also do to acknowledge that the study of Islamic history has moved many paces ahead in the last half century. If negative views of Islam and Muslims persist, then is it still chiefly the fault of the academy?

Preparing a new edition would also allow correction of numerous details. Regarding the Samarran Turkish forces, for example, it is misleading to see them as having assumed sole control over the imperial armed forces (pp. 33, 36–37). Al-Yaʿqubi's description of Samarra makes clear the presence of Khurasani and Transoxanian units, many led by their own notables. I also know of no early reference to the Turkish units, in their “forays” across early Baghdad, as drunk (p. 37). The reference to the ʿAbbasid complex [of] al-Qataʾiʿ” (p. 79) is also misleading; it was Tulunid (and much of it subsequently destroyed by an ʿAbbasid assault).