Green's book is the latest survey of Sufism's history. Its four chapters are arranged chronologically, from “origins” to “globalization.” Its endnotes and “Further Reading” mention at least half a dozen recent histories and surveys of Sufism, so Green must explain why another is needed. He argues that his book uniquely presents Sufis “as powerful and influential social actors rather than conscientious objectors acting from the margins of society” (pp. 5–6). Accordingly, the author conceives “Sufism as primarily a tradition of powerful knowledge, practices and persons” (3), and he downplays its “antinomian” and “marginal” aspects in favor of viewing Sufism as a “social and religious ‘establishment’” (6). Sufism's social, political, and cultural influence on societies in which it is embedded thus rests on three types of power: “discursive, miraculous and economic” (ibid.). The workings of these three powers are traced in the narrative that follows. Finally, the author proposes to regard Sufism as a sum total of various relationships, namely “between [Sufi] saints and their followers, between the readers and writers of Sufi texts; between the Prophet, the mediating master and the humble believer; between the subjects and objects of the devotion that has been the emotional heartbeat of Sufi tradition” (9–10). Special attention is given to the processes of the tradition's adaptation to vastly different social and cultural environments over the longue durée (8–11, see 130). The book's geographical breadth makes it truly “global” (12)—it explores the truly worldwide reach of Sufi individuals, teachings, and institutions.

To any scholar of Sufism and Islam generally, Green's methodological premises make perfect sense, and in fact they are not so novel. The author uses as his polemical foil the now seriously outdated approach to Sufism of Arthur J. Arberry (1905–1969) (1, 6), yet over the past fifty years what has prevailed among Western scholars of Sufism is the much more nuanced and broad “civilizational” vision of Islam and Sufism of Marshall Hodgson (1922–1968). Surprisingly, Hodgson's seminal treatment of Sufism in his Venture of Islam is absent from the author's narrative and footnotes, but the author nonetheless makes good on his promise to provide a comprehensive and contextually grounded survey of Sufi tradition in its relations with various historical actors, socio-cultural environments, and institutions.

The first two chapters, as Green acknowledges (e.g., on 11), cover a well-travelled territory. Like previous studies of Sufism's early formation, he emphasizes here that Sufism and Sufis appeared before the name itself (e.g., 16); that later Sufi writers appropriated heroes of early Islam to construct a socially and religiously acceptable yet distinctive “tradition” of Islamic faith and practice (15–18, 42–44); that Sufism emerged from the pietistic milieu of the Hadith folk, popular preachers, and Qur'an readers (25–26); that Iraqi-style Sufism competed with and, eventually, integrated or suppressed regional versions of ascetic-mystical piety (44–52); and that the concept of “friendship with/proximity to God” (wilaya or walaya) was crucial to Sufism's claim to a special (and superior) type of religious authority and to its subsequent success in attracting a large popular following (47–48, 92–103). These are indeed “places” where, to quote the author, “individual readers find themselves on familiar ground” (11).

Nevertheless, some points Green makes do call for critical comment. First, his rigid juxtaposition of Sufism (tasawwuf) and asceticism (zuhd) on page 23 (asserted by Christopher Melchert and denied by Berndt Radtke) is debatable. The two coexisted in relative harmony and, as the author himself shows, individual Sufi masters chose to stress one or the other. Second, the idea that individuals bearing the sobriquet “sage” (hakim) constituted a cohesive and definable mystical movement in Eastern Islamdom is a conjecture that needs more evidence. One can, for example, argue that there were at least three renowned hakims from that area around 950, all of them legal scholars and theologians with no known mystical or ascetic propensities. Another point that requires more research is the assumed link between Shafi'ism and Sufism (p. 50), bearing in mind that at least two major exponents of “Sufi science” cited by the author (see 52) were almost certainly Hanafis. Finally, I have a minor quibble with the author's anachronistic use of some distinctly modern terms; my list includes “intelligentsia” (42–43, passim) to describe the merchants, scholars, courtiers, and craftsmen of the Caliphate's urban centers; “franchise” to describe the spiritual method and metaphysical teachings of some Sufi masters and brotherhoods (62, 87, passim); and “public intellectual” to describe al-Ghazali (d. 1111). Finally, it is a bit of a stretch to call Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) “a Sufi legal scholar” (101; see 125).

In the book's final two chapters—4 (1100–1400) and 5 (1800–2000)—Green focuses on the emergence of Sufi brotherhoods and “sanctification of God's friends” (92, passim), a process that he describes as “vernacularization of Sufi teachings” (103, passim). Here Green gives special attention to the ambivalent relations between the ruling establishments of the major Muslim empires (Ottoman, Safawid, and Moghul) and Sufi leaders and institutions. Here, too, the author traverses a pretty well traveled territory, although his ability to integrate into his narrative an amazingly vast body of the latest academic literature on the subject, as well as his own research on Sufism in the Indian Subcontinent, renders this part of the book particularly valuable for students of Sufism. These pages (141–47, 163–67, 192–95) constitute one of the volume's major strengths. Another lies in the author's concerted effort to show Sufis as agents of both Islamization of frontier areas and “vernacularization of Islam” across centuries and continents.

Naturally, when the author ventures into the geographical areas outside of his immediate academic purview (e.g., Central Asia, the Volga Region, and the Northern Caucasus) he occasionally treads on a shakier ground. For example, his discussion of Imam Shamwil's (Shamil's, d. 1871) jihad against the Russian Empire is too terse to do justice to the subject, and repeats the unproven idea that Sufism was the primary vehicle of Muslim anti-colonial resistance to the Russian conquest of the Caucasus (204). More seriously, the author makes frequent use of a highly problematic, patently retrospective notion of the “crisis of conscience” (128, 154–61) in Muslim societies following 1591 (the end of the first Muslim millennium; see 188). The “crisis” is deployed to explain such different phenomena as later Sufism's rigid hierarchism and bureaucratization, its cozy relations with the ruling establishment, its resultant loss of popularity among some social groups, and the rise of Wahhabism and other anti-Sufi discourses in latter-day Islam. It would be more productive to view recent Sufism as, in part, a victim of its own success—challenging the socio-political status quo almost inevitably entailed an attack on its most visible (and controversial) symbol, which Sufi Islam had become.

In the final analysis, Nile Green's Sufism fulfills its goals. His erudite discussion of the recent vicissitudes of Sufi Islam in both the Muslim world and in the West (220–26) is particularly welcome and timely.