Review articles

Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics. Socialism, Nationalism and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917, Cambridge University Press, 1981

Michael M. Laskier, The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Jewish Communities of Morocco, 1862–1962, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1983, xv+372 pp.

Yehoshua Freundlich, ed., Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel, vol. 3, Israel State Archives, Jerusalem, 1983 LIV+758 pp. and Companion Volume, LXXV+229 pp.     

Reviews

The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane, Beatrice Forbes Manz, Cambridge, 1989, xi + 227 pp., including notes, maps, bibliography, index.

The Arts of Persia, ed. R. W. Ferrier, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989, 334 pp, $60.00.

Silent Boundaries: Cultural Constraints on Sickness and Diagnosis of Iranians in Israel, Karen L. Pliskin, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987, 283 pp., bibliography, index.

Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution, Misagh Parsa, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989, xiii + 348 pp., cloth $40.00, paperback $15.00.

Persian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Marie Lukens Swietochowski and Sussan Babaie, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989, 87 pp.

The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran, Said Amir Arjomand, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, 210 pp., appendixes, notes, glossary, bibliography, and index to p. 283, hardback $21.95.

Iran: From Royal Dictatorship to Theocracy, Mohammed Amjad, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1989, 179 pp., including glossary, bibliography, index, cloth $35.00.

Cry for My Revolution, Iran, Manoucher Parvin, Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 1987, pp. 383, $14.94.

Her Eyes, Bozorg Alavi, trans. John O'Kane, Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1989, 222 pp.

Iranian Short Story Authors: A Bio‐bibliographic Survey, John Green, Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 1989, viii + 250 pp., $29.95.

Asrar al‐tawhid fi maqamat al‐shaykh Abi Sa'id, Mohammad b. Monavvar, ed. Mohammad Reza Shafi'i Kadkani, 2 vols., Tehran: Agah, 1366 S./1987.

Colloquial Persian, Leila Moshiri, The Colloquial Series, London: Routledge, 1988, 222 pp., £6.95.

Land Reform and Social Change in Iran, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Utah: University of Utah Press, 1987, 246 pp.

Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. M. Nazif Shahrani and Robert L. Canfield, Research Series No. 57, Institute of International Studies, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1984.

Musaddiq's Memoirs: The End of the British Empire in Iran, Muhammad Musaddiq, ed. Homa Katouzian, London: Jebhe, 1988, lxxxvii + 340 pp., appendixes 46 pp., index 7 pp., cloth $50, paperback $30.

The Pilgrim's Rules of Etiquette, Taghi Modarressi, New York: Doubleday, 1989, 279 pp., $18.95.

Buying Security: Iran Under The Monarchy, Ann Tibbits Schulz, Boulder, San Francisco & London: Westview Press, 1989, xi + 192 pp.

Shi'ism: Doctrines, Thought, and Spirituality, ed., annot., and with an introduction by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Hamid Dabashi, and Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988, xviii + 401 pp., cloth $73.50, paper $24.50.

Expectation of the Millennium: Shi'ism in History, ed., annot., and with an introduction by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Hamid Dabashi, and Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989, xxxiii + 460 pp., cloth $73.50, paper $24.50.     

A cargo of lead ingots from a shipwreck off Ashkelon,Israel 11th–13th centuries AD

Shipwreck cargo of lead ingots, some marked, discovered off Tel Ashkelon, weighed about four tonnes. C14 analysis of charred wood from an ingot dated it to the 11th–13th centuries AD, Crusader times. Lead isotopic ratios provenanced the ingots to Mont‐Lozère, France. Various aspects of the lead trade are discussed, including: lead sources, extraction, casting, lead in the international maritime trade, weight units in medieval trade, prices, transportation, sale and storage, lead cargo and ballast, reconstruction of the wrecking event, salvage after the vessel was wrecked, Ashkelon as a trading coastal town in the 11th–13th centuries AD, and the possible destination of the cargo.     

THE SHTETL—THE JEWISH SMALL TOWN IN EASTERN EUROPE

The Jewish town (shtetl) in Eastern Europe existed for hundreds of years as an unique cultural world, a world completely vanished since World War II. The large majority of the towns was small—90% being no larger than 5,000 people. The Jews of the shtetl did not live to feel the full extent of technological change because most of them, their settlements and their entire culture were razed by the flames of the war. In this study, an attempt is made to reconstruct the spatial structure of the shtetl and the arrangement of the elements by using the Core and Periphery Model.     

Class and nation in the Jewish settlement of Palestine: the case of Merhavia, 1910–30

This article examines the relationship between ideology and settlement in early twentieth-century Palestine by tracing the evolution of one co-operative, Merhavia, located at the heart of the «ideological settlement core» in the northern Jezreel valley. The study begins by looking at how socialist Zionist ideology was redefined in order to endorse permanent settlement where earlier it had rejected it. The article then examines two phases of further ideological change. In the first, class-based strategies were replaced by national solutions which favoured an exclusive Jewish economy. In the second, an «ideology from below» in the form of egalitarian and collectivist values was asserted, with the effect of destroying the Merhavia co-operative while sustaining its main rival, the kibbutz. Far from marking a clash between «ideology» and «geographical realities» the new ideologies provided the most effective long-term solution for settlement, one that would hold sway for over half a century.     

The Bible and Leo Strauss

According to Leo Strauss, the Hebrew Bible is to be regarded as being in “radical opposition” to philosophy and as its “antagonist.” This is an influential view, which has contributed much to the ongoing omission of the Bible from most accounts of the history of political philosophy or political theory. In this article, I examine Strauss's arguments for the exclusion of the Bible from the Western tradition of political philosophy (i) because it possesses no concept of nature; (ii) because it prescribes a “life of obedient love” rather than truth-seeking; and (iii) because it depicts God as “absolutely free” and unpredictable, and so without a place in the philosophers' order of “necessary and therefore eternal” things. I suggest that Strauss's views on these points cannot be accepted without amendment. I propose a revised view of the history of political philosophy that preserves Strauss's most important insights, while recognizing the Hebrew Bible as a foundational text in the Western tradition of political philosophy.