Book Review - Mustafa Tuna, Journal of Islamic Studies (original) (raw)

actively called for the modernization of their province. Thus, while the state certainly forced them to co-finance the water scheme, it was also locals who had called for this and other infrastructural measures and who were at times volunteering funds provided the state complemented their efforts. The last part returns to the question of mobility, discussing passports, tickets (thus taking up again the earlier theme of how to organize and limit mobility), as well as the conflicts with the Bedouin caused by imperial communications such as the telegraph and rail. The epilogue traces the development of the Aajj after the end of the Ottoman empire, and the long process it took to completely disentangle Aajj organization from Western imperial influences. Here, as elsewhere in this elegantly written and eminently readable study, the author connects infrastructural questions with new fields in the wider study of history, such as environmental history or technopolitics. He thus opens welcome conversations across regional borders. However, these conceptualizations do not always add much in terms of new perspectives or substance with regard to the history at hand. This is partly linked to the fact-not of the author's making-that he is moving in a very crowded field, as I have tried to show by mentioning just the most recent scholarship on some of the major topics. Probably as a consequence, Low at times seems to paraphrase rather closely some of the extant scholarship in Turkish, perhaps because he follows the same sources. 7 Oftentimes, it does not become clear in the text if sources are quoted from the original, from other studies or other sources which report on conversations (e.g. pp. 214f., 217f.). While he makes sure properly to show his sources, some of his debates resemble shadow-boxing. Low repeatedly argues that unnamed 'historians' claim certain matters which he then contradicts (e.g., pp. 87, 111, 308). Finally, and this is a comment on the publisher rather than the author, the lack of a bibliography means that all references are hidden in the footnotes. This makes it unnecessarily cumbersome to gain an overview of the literature used (which seems to exclude most scholarship in French and languages other than English or Turkish). These criticisms should not deter readers who will find this a very useful and analytically argued book. It makes a well-written and welcome addition to the multilingual field of studies considering the Arabian Peninsula in a global perspective.