The field of Syriac Studies has long been weighed down by the notion, promoted by earlier generations of scholars, that the Syriac churches produced nothing of literary value after the early fourteenth century, at which time they were well down the steep slope of inexorable decline. Carlson's valuable book not only challenges this still-ingrained view by telling the story of Syriac and Armenian Christianity in the post-Mongol period; it also situates that story in the wider context of Middle Eastern and Islamic history, challenging that field to take better account of the multireligious diversity that remained a fact on the ground in the Middle East well into modernity.

The book's narrative thus operates on two tracks. The first, comprising the first three chapters, offers a political and social history of northern Iraq and eastern Anatolia – what is today the Kurdistan region divided between Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran – in the particularly turbulent century or so after the disintegration of the Mongol khanates. This is no simple task, as the region in question was a frontier zone between the larger Mamluk, Timurid, and early Ottoman states; the mishmash of competing local dynasties makes the prospect of a coherent narrative a challenge. Here, one of the book's greatest strengths comes into view: its wide and novel source base, and its innovative use thereof. Carlson relies especially on the colophons of locally produced Syriac and Armenian manuscripts, which comment on recent events of interest. Combined with the few available chronicles, Persian decrees issued by local sultans, and the earliest Ottoman tax surveys of the following century, Carlson is able to offer a rough narrative political history, describe the ad hoc methods by which Muslim rulers dealt with their Christian subjects, and paint a portrait of the sometimes fraught, sometimes indifferent relationships between Christian and Muslim populations. The author's framework throughout this section of the book is diversity: he makes the case that the region's history cannot be properly understood without greater attention to that social fact, which Islamic Studies as a field too often glosses over.

It should be clear from the foregoing that the range of the author's linguistic expertise is impressive. It is also essential for studying the particularly difficult history of this corner of the Middle East; it is hard to think of many other scholars who would be able to carry out such a study. This expertise is further on view in the book's second half, which – after an intervening chapter on social theory, on which more below – comprises five chapters treating the theology, ritual, and ecclesiastical organization of the Church of the East in the period of focus. (The Church of the East or East Syrian church, often labeled “Nestorian” by outsiders, was the predominant Syriac church in northern Iraq and eastern Anatolia.) Here Carlson makes use of a host of fifteenth-century sources still in manuscript, including a major Syriac theological survey by the little-studied Ishaq Shbadnaya as well as multiple lectionaries and liturgical books. Methodologically, Carlson engages in what we might call historical thick description: he offers a beat-by-beat account of the points of theological and ritual concern that his fifteenth-century sources exhibit. In chapters five, six, and seven especially, there is little that will surprise most readers, as the sources deal with exactly what we would expect of a well-developed Christian intellectual tradition: the Trinity, the nature of Christ, baptism, the Eucharist. Some readers might wonder whether the extent of the thick description offered in these chapters is necessary, given the predictable character of the content. Anticipating this critique, Carlson avers that his goal is not to chart historical changes in theology, but to give a full accounting of a non-western Christian tradition on the basis of its indigenous materials.

By contrast, chapter eight stands out as a model for how to situate theological sources in a changing social context. The subject is the East Syrian ecclesiastical hierarchy and its adoption of hereditary patriarchal succession – effectively, a system whereby the sitting patriarch would appoint a relative, usually a nephew, to succeed him. Carlson first establishes that earlier East Syrian canon law had instituted stringent rules for the ordination of new patriarchs, which ensured that the authority of apostolic succession continued to flow through the patriarchal line and out into the body of the Church of the East. The political disruptions of the post-Mongol period made it impossible to follow the canonical rules, which required ordination in distant Baghdad, and so the ecclesiastical hierarchy began to frame its legitimacy and authority in more “secular” modes familiar from surrounding institutions – manuscript colophons report priests associating with village chieftains, and the patriarchate turned to a form of hereditary succession that paralleled the operation of dynastic politics and Muslim religious offices. The chapter is thus a masterful depiction of historical change resulting from the interaction between theological principles and social institutions.

Throughout the book's second half, Carlson frames his study as an investigation of the Church of the East's “community concept,” an original theory he lays out and defends in chapter four. The book is to be commended for engaging with critical social theory, to which much of Syriac and Islamic Studies remain notably averse. I yet wonder whether the notion of the “community concept” adds much to Carlson's substantive historical analysis. The theory might be taken too easily to suggest that any community is defined by a single, uncontroversial checklist of characteristics, despite Carlson's explicit contention that it is flexible enough to account for intracommunal debate.

Whether or not other scholars take up Carlson's theory, his monograph is exceptionally rich and deserves to be read closely by scholarly audiences in both Syriac and Islamic Studies. The book is a model for piecing together narrative history and explaining historical change on the basis of disparate source materials that appear intransigent but richly reward studied attention.