0021-1818_islam_98-1-2-i-259

220 Reviews
vision of a just mujtahid. For all this, according to Vosuqi, “on peut considérer
le modèle proposé par l’ayatollah Lar\ comme les prémices de celui qui fut développé
plus tard par l’ayatollah Khomeiny” (p. 180).
As a concluding remark, it has to be said that the volume shows a clear predilection
for the mystical/spiritual and theo-philosophical dimension of and in
Shiism. This is not bad in itself, as it certainly is a peculiar feature of the period.
However, it seems to have become detrimental to the second section (Shi^i Jurisprudence)
which, quite surprisingly, is underrepresented, and not only in the
number of pages. Of its two contributions, the first (Mervin’s “La quête du savoir
à Najaf”) is a revised version of a previously published article (Studia Islamica,
1995) and tackles the more general subject of religious education in Najaf rather
than discuss specific fiqh issues. In the second one (Pazouki’s “Fiqh et soufisme
à la période qajare”), fiqh figures as a sort of by-product, however original, of the
much more relevant mystical activities of the Ni^mat Allah\ masters. References to
fiqh and usul al-fiqh are certainly found in several other contributions, as the intertwining
of mysticism, theosophy, jurisprudence, and political discourse was,
after all, typical of the time. A clear-cut division between them, then, would not
do justice to the period’s complexity and intellectual vitality. Still, the volume
would have benefited from more attention to specifically fiqh-related subjects; all
the more so, when we read in the in the introduction that “en matière de droit
islamique usuli quelques traités composés pendant cette période on marqué un
tournant, voire l’apogée de la discipline” (p. 10, emphasis mine).
This personal remark aside, the volume makes for enjoyable and engaging
reading by tackling subjects and themes on which the specialist of late modern
and early contemporary Shiism will find interesting perspectives and approaches,
and valuable insights.
Marco Salati: Venice, salati@unive.it
William Lancaster and Fidelity Lancaster, Honour is in Contentment:
Life Before Oil in Ras al-Khaimah (UAE) and Some Neighboring Regions (Studien
zur Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients). Berlin and New York 2011:
De Gruyter, 607 pp. ISBN 978-3-11-022339-2.
The first thing that needs to be said about William and Fidelity Lancaster’s Honour
is in Contentment: Life Before Oil in Ras al-Khaimah (UAE) and Some Neighboring
Regions is that everyone interested in the tribal society of the Arabian Gulf
should have a copy of it on their shelf. Rich in depth and texture, no one has