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Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought By DANIEL BROWN. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. 185. Price HB 30.00. 0-521-57077-8. In essence, this book deals with how modern Muslims are dealing with change. Since for Muslims the Qur'an is effectively 'untouchable' and must be accepted as it is, it is the Sunnatraditionally the second source of Islam after the Qur'anwith its controversies over attribution and content, that emerges as the natural battleground in their struggle to 'preserve, adapt, or redefine their social and legal norms in the face of changed conditions' (1). Thus, as Brown says, the Sunna is very much 'the fulcrum on which the central debates over religious authority turn' (3). As the title Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought implies, Brown concentrates on the modern period, although he recognizes the clear antecedents to modern discussions in the early arguments about Sunna. The first chapter gives a brief introduction to these early arguments, while the second deals with the more immediate antecedents of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The next three chapters are concerned with specific issues related to discussions about Sunna, namely, the boundaries of revelation (i.e. to what extent the Qur'an is sufficient in itself), the nature of Prophetic authority (i.e. to what extent the actions of the Prophet are binding on the Muslim community), and the authenticity of hadtth. Chapter Six deals with 'Sunna and Islamic Revivalism', while Chapter Seven forms a conclusion to the whole. Brown classifies views on these issues into three main categories: those of the conservatives, the 'deniers of hadtth', and the revivalists respectively. The conservatives (usually not mentioned by name but rather as a group) are those who wish to defend the tradition as it stands; the deniers of hadtth (e.g. Muhammad Tawftq SidqT in Egypt and Ghulam Ahmad Parwez in Pakistan) are those who, for various reasons, wish to sec the influence of this tradition considerably restricted; while the revivalists (e.g. Abu l-'Ala* al-Mawdudl in Pakistan and Muhammad al-Ghazall in Egypt) form a son of middle ground, wishing to maintain certain key aspects of the tradition, but not wishing to be bound by it in the same way that they consider the conservatives to be. These last two positions are well handled by Brown, who emphasizes their common suspicions about the whole classical tradition of Islamic learning (28 ff., 121, et passim) and their common tendency to 'humanize' the Prophet (i.e. to minimize his divine authority) and to reject anything 'miraculous' in their defence of a basically rationalist world-view (e.g. 65, 72). (We feel justified in referring to the two groups together because of these shared underlying characteristics. Indeed, one feels that where for the conservatives Islam is Islam, with no need for any fundamental alterations, the other two groups both react to the West by wanting to change Islam, the one wishing to 'Westernize' Islam by adjusting or even doing away with some of the basic obligations in order to accord with Western norms, while the other wishes to 'Islamize' the West by creating 'Islamic' versions of essentially Western institutions, such as

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'Islamic' banks, 'Islamic' universities, 'Islamic' parliaments, etc., thus also ending up with an effectively 'Westernized' Islam.) It is one of the strengths of the present book that a clear link is made between modern and medieval discussions of Sunna. As Brown says:
The parallels between medieval and modern discussions of Sunna are striking; in all discussions of Sunna approaches to Sunna have tended to fall into certain well-defined patterns. The arguments of Parwez closely follow the approach of the ahl al-kalam, who sought to discredit the historicity of hadith and to subordinate it to the Qur'an. MawdudI and Ghazali emulate the eclectic approach of the ahl al-ra'y, insisting on a high degree of latitude in their approach to hadlth. The Ahl-i-Hadlth resemble the Zahiris in many respects. (138-9)

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However, one would disagree with the immediately following suggestion that 'The reason that ancient and modern debates about Sunna look so similar is quite simply that modern interpreters of Sunna have quite consciously reached back into the tradition to justify their viewpoints' (139). One would prefer instead to see the 'well-defined patterns' that he refers to as recurrent ways of human thinking that merely appear in different guises in different ages. Despite this stated link, and the author's overt intention to restrict himself primarily to modern Islamic thought, one feels that the early discussions about Sunna are too important in this context to be reduced to an introductory chapter. For they are the stuff of the debate, and a deeper understanding of them is necessary in order for the later discussions to be correctly understood. One particular problem that arises in this context is that earlier authorities are mostly referred to via secondary sources rather than directly. Thus, for example, we are given plenty of information about Abu Hanlfa's views on hadith via the writings of Shibtl Nu'manl (e.g. 114, 124), but no attempt is made to assess the views of Abu Hanlfa from his own writings: we are thus dependent on Shibtfs interpretation for our own understanding of Abu Hanlfa. This may work as a presentation of ShibtTs views, but if Abu Hanlfa's views are an important part of his argument, it would seem important to understand them in their own right. Similarly, we are told that Muhammad al-Ghazatl holds that 'mutawatir Sunna, i.e., the sunna 'amaliyya, takes precedence over hadith reports, even if the latter are sound', and that it is in this spirit that 'the Malikls consider the practice of Medina a more solid proof of the Sunna of the Prophet than isolated transmissions' (122-3). This is indeed a correct view of the MalikI position, but one wonders very much from the rest of Brown's discussion whether al-Ghazall is promoting anything like the concept of the practice ('amal) of Madina. Rather, he seems in fact to be using the argument to reject many of the judgements of early fiqhand with it a large portion of Madinan 'amalas becomes apparent from his views on qisas and women's evidence, to mention but two examples referred to by Brown (116 ff.). Furthermore, the tripartite picture that Brown gives us of 'Sunna before al-ShafiT (9 ff.) seems to me to be incorrect in one very important aspect. One can accept his second and third pointsthat in the later, 'classical' view Sunna is effectively equated with hadtth when this was not the case before, and that this reliance on the texts of hadtth results in a certain rigidity in the scholars'

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views about what is and is not authoritative. But one cannot accept the more important first point that 'early Muslims did not give Muhammad's Sunna precedence over the Sunnas of other prominent Muslims, notably the early Caliphs and his other Companions' (9). Rather, as Brown himself acknowledges elsewhere, the early arguments about Sunna were not about whether to emulate the Prophet, but how to do so (138). Contrary to the claims of Schacht (upon whose arguments Brown builds at this point), the early arguments about Sunna were not about various people's authority as opposed to the authority of the Prophet, but rather about how this 'Sunna of the Prophet' had been most accurately transmittedwhether by text or by actionand how it should be defined. This is evident from Malik's use of the term Sunna in the Muwatta'', which, on a closer inspection than Schacht gave it, turns out to have a very 'organic' and essential link with the Sunna of the Prophet: it is not, as Schacht surmised, an expression of post-Prophetic Madinan practice (in contradistinction to some of Malik's other terms) but refers to that part of Madinan 'amal understood as going back to and originating in the time and practice of the Prophet. Since Malik's book contains the most 'communal' use of the word Sunna (it was what led Schacht to his idea of 'local practice'), and yet this 'communal' use can be shown to be an expression of Prophetic rather than local practice, Schacht's, and therefore Brown's, arguments necessarily fail. We affirm that Sunna for the Muslims was always intimately connected with the Sunna of the Prophet and was not a free-for-all, communal affair, even though it did allow for some limited input from, in particular, the Rightly Guided Caliphs. Thus in a sense the book falls down on its strongest point. For, although the link is made between the ancient and the modern, this misunderstanding of the early arguments leads to a necessary misunderstanding of the later situation developing from them. For once this non-textual, 'ancient' Madinan position is understood, the increasingly more textual Iraqi and, later, Shafi'ite reactions to it can also be understood, and, from them, the arguments of today. What is different between the ancient and modern arguments is that all sides in the ancient arguments accepted the basic outlines of the fiqh whose details they were arguing about, whereas the modern arguments seem often to be aimed at rejecting that fiqh, as suggested above. Thus, for example, the arguments of S. M. Yusuf and Fazlur Rahman (101 ff.), which seem to reflect the 'old' meaning of Sunna, end up saying something very different. If Rahman, for instance, was truly 'resurrecting the methodology of the pre-Shafi'T legists and thus reestablishing the ancient understanding of Sunna' (103), one would not expect him to reject one of the main underpinnings of that Sunna, namely, the traditional definition of riba as 'any amount of interest on certain categories of loans' (106). (Malik, for instance, makes it quite clear in his Muwatta1 that any amount of usury, whether great or small, is forbidden, backing up his statement by a quotation from the Qur'an.) Furthermore, as Brown puts it: If authentic Sunna is proven by continuous practice, what is the proof of continuous practice? Does hadlth have any role to play in validating correct practice? Yusuf fails to address these problems and in the end falls shon of offering a coherent or persuasive

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argument for how the 'living Sunna' is to be rediscovered by contemporary Muslims within the hadlth or apart from it. (102)

One cannot help feeling that what applies to Yusuf applies also to Rahman, and that Malik's Muwatta', combining both validated practice and validated hadlth, might have provided both with an answer, as it did for Shah Wall Allah al-DihlawT (23). It would also provide a solution to Brown's 'Traditionists vs. legists' debate (112 ff.), since Malik is the archetypal traditionist and legist all in one. One also feels obliged to noteand this is unfortunately a common occurrence in books of this naturethat issues are generally discussed in a very theoretical way with few specific examples; when such examples are given, the issues immediately take on a much greater degree of clarity. Thus, for example, when Brown mentions the recent discussions in Pakistan over whether the stoning penalty (rajm) should be included in the national, Sharta-based law, the issues become very clear. He notes how the theoretical issues of 'the definition of Sunna, the problem of authenticating hadlth, and the question of the relative authority of Sunna vis-a-vis the Qur'an immediately became matters of controversy before the court' (136), but that the real issues were something else: 'Public discourse on the issue shows that those who opposed rajm had a variety of reasons for their opposition: they thought the penalty cruel and barbaric, they considered stoning anachronistic in a modern society, they feared such a penalty made Pakistan appear backward. The rules of debate, however, required that the issue be discussed in terms of Sunna' (137). What is also interesting in this particular instance is that one can sec very similar patterns in early, pre-Shafi'ite arguments about rajm. The Khawarij objected to the practice of stoning, ostensibly because it was not in the Qur'an. But perhaps one should also recall the moralistic stance of some of them with regard to the status of Surat Yusuf, which they held was not part of the Qur'an, presumably because they considered it to have sexual overtones which were inappropriate to the context of the divine word. The instance of stoning is, fortunately, well clarified. Others, however, are not. Thus the discussions about differences in how the prayer should be done (e.g. 29, 39, 123) not only seem to betray a misunderstanding of the issues involved but also fail to explain the principles behind the different opinions. For example: 'reciting the fatiha out loud along with the prayer leader' (29; my italics) does not make sense as it is, and presumably refers either to (a) reciting it after the imam when his recitation is out loud (which the Shafi'Ts do, but not the HanafTs), or (b) reciting it at the same time as the imam when the recitation is silent (which, again, the HanafTs do not do); likewise, kneeling 'on only one knee' (39) during the prayer docs not seem to make any sense; and presumably the reference on p. 123 is not to the HanafTs' and Malikls' disapproving of 'exchanging greetings in the mosque during the khutba' (123) but rather to their disapproval of doing the prayer known as tahiyyat al-masjid (literally 'greeting the mosque') when the imam is giving the khutba. Again, one feels that a clearer understanding of the 'ancient' issues and their proponents would have resulted in a clearer exposition of modern discussions of the same.

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Finally, one notes Brown's concluding remarks that 'the revivalist approach to Sunna promises flexibility and relevance combined with authenticity' and that it is 'an approach well suited to the increasing demands in both Pakistan and Egypt for a vision of society that is at once authentic to Islam and adapted to the modern situation' (141). Recalling Malik's famous comment that 'the last of this community will not thrive in any other way than the first of them did', one cannot help thinking that it is not an adaptation to the modern situation that will bring about an authentic Islam, but rather an adaptation of it. Yasin Dutton University of Edinburgh
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The Citadel of Cairo: A New Interpretation of Royal Mamluk Architecture. By NASSER O. RABBAT. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995. Pp. 408. Price HB US $103.50. 90-04-10124-1 The Citadel, which was the seat of power in Egypt from the early thirteenth century until the nineteenth, still rises proudly and dominatingly over Cairo. Its long and chequered history is proclaimed by the variation of its walls, its gates and towers of different forms and periods, and its surviving inscriptions and structures. The mosque of Muhammad 'All now rides over all most obviously and may be taken to represent a moment in the Citadel's history which for the historian was the most fateful, because that enlightened despot swept away the vestiges of many previous structures and made the reconstruction of much of the Citadel's history problematic, if not impossible. There have of course been earlier attempts to tackle the Citadel's story, notably those of Casanova and of Creswell. The latter in volume 2 of his monumental The Muslim Architecture of Egypt dealt only with the northern enclosure in any meaningful way. Nasser Rabbat has picked up the torch with this ambitiously comprehensive work. After a preface and lists of figures, plates, and short references, and a note on transcription and dates, eight chapters follow: 1. Whence the Citadel; 2. The Citadel Today; 3. The Ayyubid Sultanate Acquires a New Center; 4. The Early Mamluk Period; 5. The Citadel under Qalawun [sic] and al-Ashraf KhalTl; 6. The Citadel in al-Nasir Muhammad's Reign: First Construction Period (131025); 7. The Citadel in al-Nasir Muhammad's Reign: Second Construction Period (133341); 8. The Citadel and the Mamluk System. Then come a glossary (with some idiosyncratic definitionsis there justification for the translation of rawshan (pi. rawashin) as 'corbel' rather than 'projecting window'?), a note on primary sources, a bibliography, and index. The author expressly states that 'a more appropriate approach for our purposes is the chronological one.' Chapter 2's coming where it does is not contradictory, because it is concerned in survey fashion with what the Citadel today allows us to see of its past or what clues it gives us to an understanding of it. This chronological approach, however, involves Rabbat in what appears to be historical matter of minimal relevance and a questionable nature. The