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Letters of a Su Scholar: The Correspondence of Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (16411731). By Samer Akkach. pp. 512. Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2010. doi:10.1017/S1356186310000118 The intellectual history of Muslim societies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is poorly studied. One gure who is beginning to emerge in western scholarship is Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (16411731) of Damascus. He left over two hundred books covering many elds of study He was also a remarkable personality, willing to challenge both the political and religious establishment and established social practice and prevailing public perceptions. Early western attempts to study his life and work are in PhD form and unfortunately unpublished: Bakri Aladdins Abdalgani an-Nabulusi (1143/1731): Oeuvre, vie et doctrine (Universit de Paris 1, 1985) and Barbara Von Schlegells Susm e in the Ottoman Arab World: Shaykh Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, (Berkeley, University of California, 1997). The rst published book-length study was Elizabeth Sirriyeh, Su Visionary of Ottoman Damascus: Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (RoutledgeCurzon: London, 2005). This was followed in 2007 by an excellent, though brief, treatment by Samer Akkach of the University of Adelaides School of Architecture, Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi: Islam and the Enlightenment (One World: Oxford). Akkachs Letters of a Su Scholar follows quite naturally from this. The letters in this collection entitled Wasail al-Tahqiq wa Rasa (The Means of Truth-Seeking and the Letters of Providential Guidances) were written and received by Abd al-Ghani between 1675 and 1703. Somewhat unusually, for such collections were usually compiled by disciples or pupils, Abd al-Ghani compiled them himself, in part it would appear because he wanted to record the admiration and support he had had from colleagues through the region, as opposed to the ill-treatment he received from the religious establishment in Damascus, and in part because he felt their content was of a general signicance which reached far beyond his personal concerns. This substantial book is made up as follows. An introduction discusses Abd al-Ghani and the culture of correspondence, embracing Abd al-Ghanis background, his intellectual concerns, the relationship between letter-writing, urban sociability and the public sphere, and nally the intellectual milieu which was dominated by the debate over ibn Arabis wahdat al-wujud (Unity of Being). Akkach goes to considerable lengths to explain this complex concept, and does so well. There follows a bilingual list of the seventy-two letters in the Wasail. We note that large number of correspondents were based in and around Istanbul, while others were from towns in Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, the Lebanon, the Hijaz and Egypt. Some were men of great eminence such as the Grand Vizier Mustafa Koprulu, Shaykh al-Islam Fayd Allah and the great hadith scholar, Ibrahim al-Kurani. There were notables of middling eminence such as Muhammad Afandi of Aleppo and the chief judge of Tripoli, but there were also others who are barely known. A good section addresses the content of the letters and this is followed by the 378 pages of the Arabic text of the Wasail. Several major letters, treatises really, begin the collection: On Understanding Islam, which addresses faith and belief; On Struggle, which addresses the great and the lesser jihad; and On Causality in which Abd al-Ghani discusses free will and Gods role in human action, explaining to Ibrahim alKurani, who was twenty-six years his senior, that he really did not understand al-Asharis position in this matter. There are two major letters on cosmogony and wahdat al-wujud. There are two on the Su practice of seeking solitude (khalwa), which shed light on Abd al-Ghanis personal religious experience. There is a fascinating letter on smoking, which was becoming established in West Asian towns at the time. Here, Abd al-Ghani argues in favour of it and against the narrow interpretation of his fellow ulama, who were opposed: In fact we have written a complete book, extensive with seven chapters, explaining in it this permissibility to the elite and to the public; this is despite the fact we do not smoke, nor do we like

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it, nor do we have any conict over it with anyone in the rst place. But our natures dislike of it does not, on its own, necessitate in us a legal dislike. Finally Akkach addresses Abd al-Ghanis piety, spirituality and ethics as expressed throughout his correspondence. His belief that piety was the most important characteristic that God demanded of all people, and his dismay at the social and religious decadence of his time. His belief, as a man who beneted from inherited wealth, that it was possible to be materially wealthy providing one was not snared by worldly affairs. This latter belief that worldly engagement need not be a hindrance to spiritual attainment Akkach describes as an urban spirituality, one which respected the realities of urban living. Concluding, Akkach emphasises Abd al-Ghanis concern both to use what he described as the new sense of religious rationalism of his time while also recognising the limits of human reason. In doing this we are reminded that Abd al-Ghani was responding to the rise of anti-mystical sentiment which came to a head with the Qadizadelis movement in Turkey. The letters of the Wasail, he declares, were attempts to counter the growing Islamic fanaticism with a powerful message of humility, tolerance and love. This is an outstanding edition which forms a natural complement to Akkachs biography of Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi. Francis Robinson Royal Holloway, University of London, and Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies

Between Social Skills and Marketable Skills: The Politics of Islamic Education in 20th Century Zanzibar. By Roman Loimeier. pp. xxxi, 643, Maps, 23 illus. Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2009. doi:10.1017/S135618631000012X This book sets out to examine the development of Islamic traditions of scholarship in Zanzibar, from its emergence as a centre of learning in the nineteenth century, through the way in which cooperation between religious scholars and British administrators came to dene the form and content of Islamic education in the colonial period, down to the way in which the revolution of 1964 led to the marginalisation both of traditional scholars and of established traditions of Islamic education. It begins with chapters on approaching Islam in the African context and on Zanzibar in its historical setting, which make clear rst that the British protectorate from 1890 to 1963 enabled many continuities, not least the dominance of Arabs and Indians in its economy and society, and second that major change came with the revolution of 1964 and the emergence of new African elites. This is followed by a substantial chapter which offers an overview of the actors in Zanzibars religious and intellectual history during the period. So we are introduced, for instance, to the host of teachers and students attached to the Qadriyya and Alawiyya Su orders, which in the nineteenth century made their way through Africa and down the East African coast bringing the ideas of Islamic reform of their generation. It is made clear how in this period of enhanced connectivity, particularly across the Indian Ocean, Zanzibar becomes part of an Islamic network which reaches on the one hand from Istanbul, Cairo and the Hijaz to Capetown, and on the other from the Congo to India and Southeast Asia. As Loimeier tells us, the scale of the world in which Zanzibar gured had increased substantially. But, after the revolution of 1964, the Hadhrami, Omani and Comorian families, who were prominent in this network had to leave. Their place came to be lled by scholars taught in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Sudan, men who objected to mawlid celebrations, dhikr recitations and other Su practices, in addition to any behaviour which hinted of western or African inuence. These Muslim activists came to be known as the watu wa bidaa the innovation people men of conscience. As time