This slim book aims to shed light on the emergence of the ʿAlids as “a distinct social force” (p. 2) and better to situate the role of the Prophet's family in medieval Islam, from the coming of the Abbasids to the rise of the Seljuks. The introductory chapter defines the structure of the book. Bernheimer's study focuses on the eastern half of the Muslim world, from Iraq to Central Asia, in part because of an imbalance in the source material that makes it more difficult to follow ʿAlid trajectories in the Islamic West. Bernheimer is well aware of the limitations of the use of “ʿAlids” (ʿAlawī) as a category, and also of the ambiguity of the terms sayyid and sharīf in the sources, and concentrates largely on Ḥasanids, Ḥusaynids, and Ṭālibids. Her work aspires to offer a social history of the ʿAlids, from their rebellious movements in early Abbasid times to their emergence as local elites from the third/ninth century onwards and their subsequent rise as social and cultural elites up to the late fifth/eleventh century. In so doing, Bernheimer expands in particular on the work of Kazuo Morimoto and of Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, to whom she is clearly indebted.

Chapter 2 is devoted to Ṭālibid genealogies and their role in defining social boundaries. Bernheimer notes that proximity to the Prophet had to be affirmed increasingly over time, which prompted the rise of Ṭālibid genealogies from the mid-third/ninth century onwards. The ʿAlids were of course not the only ones with strong genealogical claims and they tend to be discussed after the Abbasids in most genealogies. Bernheimer traces the first Ṭālibi genealogy back to the murky figure of the Ḥusaynid Yaḥyā b. al-Ḥasan al-ʿAqīqī (d. c. 277/891), in the context of an intense competition towards legitimacy between ʿAlids and Abbasids. From this perspective, this discussion would have benefited from more engagement with the Anonymous History of the Abbasids, which preserves important evidence of the competition between ʿAlids and Abbasids. More broadly, the struggle for the definition of the concept of ahl al-bayt predates the Abbasid period (see in particular Moshe Sharon, “The Umayyads as ahl al-bayt”, JSAI 14, 1991, 115–52, duly listed in the bibliography but never integrated into the discussion), and it would have been helpful to frame the argument in a wider context taking into account recent debates about the construction of identities in early Islam. Be that as it may, the genre of ʿAlid genealogies flourished from the fourth/tenth century onwards, becoming a true “industry” (p. 31). This prompted not only disagreements between genealogists but also the rise of false claimants and false genealogies. Bernheimer analyses some strategies used to forge false genealogies as well as specific punishments reserved for those who engaged in such falsifications. The incentive for such forgeries was not only a matter of prestige, but also of financial reward, since the family of the Prophet was exempted from a variety of taxes and entitled to a share of the khums, not to mention contributions and offerings by individual Muslims.

Chapter 3 turns to ʿAlid marriage patterns. Elaborating on Asad Ahmed's work, Bernheimer surmises that the fundamentally different trajectories of Ḥasanids and Ḥusaynids in late Umayyad and early Abbasid times can largely be explained by their marriage strategies. The endogamous Ḥasanids produced a line of rebels whereas the exogamous Ḥusaynids tended towards quietism, generating a line of imams. The pattern changed from the late second/eighth century onwards, after which the ʿAlids “married almost exclusively within the family” (p. 35). The drawing of increasingly firm boundaries around the Prophet's family is well illustrated by the decline of some wedding alliances: marriages between Ḥusaynids and the Banū Makhzūm stopped around the mid-second/eighth century, while marriages with the Banū al-ʿAbbās also sharply declined as Abbasid–ʿAlid relations were deteriorating from the third/ninth century onwards. Prior to that point, however, wedding alliances between Ḥusaynids and Abbasids were significant and may suggest some level of Abbasid coercion. This eventual restriction of marriages within the family was not reflected in the law, where the notion of kafā'a, equality or suitability in marriage, became the main element in Sunni madhhabs. Shiite literature imposed no legal constraints even though, in practice, “social convention made it very difficult for a sayyida to marry outside the family” (p. 50) and endogamy was increasingly seen as a way to protect the family's interests.

Chapter 4 concentrates on the institution of the niqāba, the headship of the ʿAlid family. The origins of this office remain poorly understood but seem to point towards Kūfa and the Ḥijāz in the second half of the third/ninth century, perhaps in connection with the killing of Yaḥyā b. ʿUmar in 250/864–5 or with al-Muʿtaḍid's (r. 279–289/892–902) efforts to protect the ʿAlids. The naqīb's office was “ceremonial and social rather than judicial” and remained important even under “fiercely Sunni rulers” (p. 53). Al-Māwardī (d. 450/1058) offers the most thorough description of the office and reveals the importance of the function at least under the Būyids. In most cases the niqāba was held in a family for several generations and sometimes “the pattern of succession was explicitly hereditary” (p. 58).

Chapter 5 focuses on the rise of ʿAlids as local nobility in the context of the collapse of the Abbasid state. Following Richard Bulliet and others, Bernheimer shows that scholarship was a central strategy to access and maintain elite status. Moreover, writing about the descendants of the Prophet was religiously meritorious, which might partly explain the generous presence of ʿAlids in the faḍā'il literature and in local histories. Bernheimer highlights, with Devin Stewart, that these ʿAlids were not necessarily Shiites, but rather commonly Sunni and especially attracted to Shafiʿism. Since “virtually all Muslim communities agreed on the special position of the descendants of the Prophet Muḥammad”, it increased the ʿAlids' “ability to bridge differences between Sunnis and Shiʿites” (p. 87).

More could certainly have been said in terms of strategies of social distinction and with regard to the use of cultural capital. The broader question of the redemption of ʿAlid memory in Abbasid historiography should also have been taken into account when approaching the source material. Yet Bernheimer successfully demonstrates how “the rise of their ʿAbbāsid cousins to the caliphate” forced the ʿAlids to “delineate even more clearly what it meant to be part of the kinsfolk of the Prophet” (p. 88), thus constructing the first family of Islam.