Review

Reviewed Work(s): Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam by Patricia Crone
Review by: Carl F. Petry
Source: The American Historical Review , Feb., 1989, Vol. 94, No. 1 (Feb., 1989), pp. 188-
189
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1862197

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 Near
the acceptance of Muhammad's message should
be understood in a thriving tribal context rather
than as the manifestation of widespread social
malaise-a phenomenon Crone cannot detect in
the sources. She attributes the success of a prophet
such as Muhammad in the early seventh century to
a nativist reaction against foreign penetration
(Sassanian and, to a lesser degree, Byzantine).
Because of simultaneous Arabian receptivity to
and resentment of foreign ideas, peninsular soci-
ety was uniquely open to the right man with the
right message.
All of this is heady stuff, and quite welcome
after so much debunking of scholars and scrutiny
of traditions. Indeed, I believe that this final thesis,
vague as it is, might have inspired the reader
weary of trudging through lengthy unraveling of
arguments and excursions into sources had it been
introduced at the outset. But I am not convinced
that the orientation of Arabians toward practical
religion in which "tribal gods were ultimate
sources of phenomena observable in the world,
not ultimate truths regarding the nature and
meaning of life" (p. 237) denied their capacity to
embrace such truths when offered in an idiom
comprehensible to them. If Watt "came up with a
socioeconomic change of the requisite kind" (p.
237) to suit his own predisposition, Crone seems
equally insensitive to the possibility of an indige-
nous, yet profound spiritual experience when she
rejects his case. Nonetheless, on a foundation of
meticulous research, Crone has provocatively cri-
tiqued one of the most hallowed traditions in early
Islamic historiography. No serious student of this
period can afford to ignore this work.
CARL F. PETRY
Northwestern University
(p. 42), writes Hayrat-i-Nameh (wonder of the
DENIS WRIGHT. The Persians amongst the English:
Episodes in Anglo-Persian History. London: I. B.
Tauris. 1985. Pp. xix, 273.
Considering the long history of Britain and the
much longer history of Iran, Anglo-Persian rela-
tions are a relatively recent phenomenon. An
Iranian, whose name is no longer remembered, is
supposed to have visited Britain in 1238. Almost
four hundred years passed before a second Per-
sian set foot on the "blessed isle." Another two
centuries went by before continuous diplomatic
relations were established. Thus, any story of
Anglo-Persian relations must be the story of the
last two hundred years. In that brief period,
however, Britain played a most important role in
Iran's history, and Iran's fate was of great concern
to Britain.
Denis Wright does not pursue the great issues of
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East 189
Anglo-Persian relations. He is fascinated by the
interaction of a few Persian visitors with their
English hosts. He follows in the footsteps of James
Morrier, although Morrier published his observa-
tions as fiction, and of nineteenth-century journal-
ists who eagerly commented on the two visits of
Naser ed-Din (Nasir al-Din) Shah. In a few in-
stances, when available documents permit, Wright
tells of the reaction of Persian visitors to Western
civilization, British life, and British institutions.
Those are perhaps the most interesting and in-
structive passages in the book.
The enormous gap between the cultures of
Qajar Iran and Victorian Britain made mutual
understanding between the Persians and the En-
glish almost impossible. Even Lord Curzon saw
Iran through a narrow slit of his European helmet
that effectively protected him from fully under-
standing the society he so brilliantly described in
his magisterial work. Edward G. Browne, the
renowned Cambridge Orientalist, may have been
the only Englishman to enter the inner life of the
Iranians. The Persians of Wright's book were not
philosophers, historians, or literary people. They
wrote but little of their experiences, and what little
they wrote testified to their remoteness from Eu-
ropean culture and the superficiality of their ac-
quaintance with it. As a result, much of Wright's
book deals with trivialities that amount to little
more than light entertainment. It is long on anec-
dote and short on analysis.
The book contains its quota of minor errors.
The author is inconsistent in transliterating from
the Persian and mistranslates some words (munshi
is scribe or secretary, not teacher [p. 34]). He
places Finkenstein in Russia instead of in Prussia
book) for Hayrat-Nameh (Book of Wonders) (p.
67), and refers to "Tsaritsyn, now Stalingrad,"
although the city has long since been renamed
Volgograd (p. 123).
Still, this is a pleasant, though not a very signif-
icant, footnote to a very important story.
FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH
Yale University
A. B. GAUNSON. The Anglo-French Clash in Lebanon
and Syria, 1940-1945. New York: St. Martin's.
1987. Pp. xi, 233. $29.95.
Students of World War II are familiar with Win-
ston Churchill's comment that of all the crosses he
had to bear that of Lorraine was the heaviest. A. B.
Gaunson's interesting study adds insight into that
remark. It leaves the reader suspecting that if the
Free French, especially Charles de Gaulle, had
spent as much energy fighting the Germans as