The subtitle says it all. This volume is not a general treatment of waterways in Iraq and Iran but only in the lower Mesopotamian plain and its extension into Khūzistān: the lower Euphrates and Tigris rivers, including the Blind Tigris and the Shaṭṭ al-ʿArab, and the Dujail/Kārūn, Jarrāhī and Karkhe rivers in Khūzistān. There is no discussion of the middle Euprates and Tigris, the Greater or Lesser Zab, or the Diyāla-Nahrwān system in Iraq, let alone of the Hilmand, Hari-rud or Zayandeh-rud rivers in historical Iran.

Nevertheless, this is the first major re-examination of the rivers of the lower Mesopotamian plain during the early Islamic period since archaeological surveys and satellite images of the region have become available. The original focus of this project was on the Sawād of Iraq; its extension into lowland Khūzistān was opportunistic, having to do with the author's involvement in a project in Khūzistān led by Hermann Gasche and Cécile Baetman that provided new geological and archaeological data.

Apart from the information itself, the main strength of this work lies in its interdisciplinary method. As an avowed philologist, the author's focus is on texts, but he integrates and confronts the texts with data derived from geological corings, archaeological settlement surveys, remote sensing, aerial photographs, satellite imagery, and the accounts of modern travellers. According to Verkinderen the grid provided by tenth-century Arabic geographers is a fiction that floats above the ground. The main aim of his study was to tie this floating grid tighter to the ground by providing more fixed anchor points. He engages in a close critical, judicious and comparative scrutiny of geographical and historical texts to establish the locations of river branches and canals and preserves the options when contradictions cannot be resolved. He makes effective use of historical accounts, especially of the Zanj rebellion, to reconstruct the land- and water-scape in the third/ninth century. Appendix 1 has an excellent illustrated discussion of the maps in the Arabic geographical manuscript tradition.

This is a well-argued work of historical geography that gives a fairly realistic picture of the evolution of the rivers of the lower Mesopotamian plain during the first two Hijrī centuries, and constitutes a useful reference while leaving many questions open.