Routes and Realms: The Power of Place in the Early Islamic World is a fascinating study of attachment to land and notions of belonging displayed in a variety of early Islamic texts. Zayde Antrim—who had previously focused in her dissertation and in earlier articles on the notion of belonging in 12th to 14th century Syria in particular—wanted “to understand the ways in which later authors invoked earlier authorities to legitimize their visions” of belonging at various levels (p. 5), and therefore works backward in Routes and Realms to elucidate the emergence of a discourse of belonging or “a discourse of place” in its foundational period in early Islamic societies.

In a clear and lucid introduction, she defines this “discourse of place” as the conceptual framework she will be using to “bring together a wide variety of found texts committed to the representation of territory in of itself, rather than as a setting or backdrop for something else” (p. 1) and sets out the “chronological parameters” for her project as “the loose period of the ninth through the eleventh centuries” (p. 5). Antrim recognizes that she is only “tracing the contours of the discourse of place in the earliest period of intensive written production among Muslims,” (p. 144) but in doing so, she hopes to be laying the groundwork for further research, certainly on the later centuries when this discourse of place, as it were, scaled new height and became somewhat more localized. And as groundwork, Antrim's book is thorough and painstakingly well documented and should serve as a solid foundation for further studies.

Antrim lays this groundwork by discussing the discourse of place at three levels, each representing the three parts of the book, and respectively entitled: “Home,” “City,” and “Region.” According to the author, each of these parts represents an important category of belonging as construed by those who engaged in that discourse of place. For each of these parts, Antrim examines different kinds of texts that best exemplify, represent and illustrate that particular “land-based” category of belonging. From poems and literary anthologies on the theme of al-ḥanīn ilā al-awṭān (longing for homelands), to religious faḍāʾil-type (merits) treatises and topographical histories devoted to particular cities, to travel literature, world geographies, and maps, Antrim casts her net widely to construct a complex web of relationships between different cities, regions, and disparate parts of the Islamic world. The texts she examines speak to both the inclusive and particular characteristics of each land, city, and region, while simultaneously emphasizing its universal and connective qualities with its surroundings and the rest of the Islamic lands. Moreover, the aim throughout is not simply to look at how the different texts represented territories, but also to do so with an eye towards how this representation was recognizable and relatable to audiences of these texts and resonant with their expectations and attitudes towards these territories as categories of belonging.

Although the focus of the study is on the early Islamic period, Antrim is aware of the modern political implications and ramifications of her study. In documenting a discourse of place—albeit a complex and multi-faceted one—of notions of attachment to homeland entrenched in texts dating from the early Islamic period and therefore centuries before European colonialism and the creation of many of the nation-states in the Middle East, she proposes an alternative narrative to the notion that nationalism or attachment to territory is a modern Western invention that has no indigenous roots in the region or that it is recent and largely ideologically motivated, as is often argued with relation to the Palestinians. Inasmuch as all nation-states are artificial creations, her study documents the existence of many and complex pre-existing indigenous notions of homeland in the region that Middle Eastern intellectuals and political leaders in the modern era were able to draw from “to make authoritative and attractive expressions of territorial nationalism” (pp. 146–47).

Antrim makes effective use of existing scholarship, both relating to early Islam and to the theoretical framework of the “discourse of place.” In many instances, she makes a point of distinguishing her approach from other scholars who studied aspects of the geography of the early Islamic world (e.g., André Miquel) while simultaneously acknowledging her indebtedness to them and to others who helped build the theoretical framework she is using (e.g., Travis Zadeh). Her footnotes are thorough and useful, and she provides a sizeable bibliography that would be of great use to anyone embarking on a similar study with relation to any later period.

The book is generally well written, convincingly argued, and contains minimal transliteration errors (though I noted, “iʿyan” for “ʿiyān” in the glossary). This reviewer finds it harder to assess the author's use of maps and its effectiveness in the last section of the book. The choice of the press to reproduce the maps only in black and white rather than in their colored originals was unfortunate and did not help in this respect.

In brief, I would highly recommend this book to students of early Islamic history. I think that, given its clarity of presentation, it would be accessible to advanced undergraduates, as well as to graduate students and established scholars in the field. Although the author does not provide facile answers to the question of belonging in early Islamic societies, the book goes a long way in clarifying the variety of notions of attachments displayed by early Muslims and will therefore be very rewarding for anyone willing to follow the author through her complex analysis of the myriad of surviving texts on the topic.