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182 Reviews the need for a m o d e m studenttofindthem readable and theratherstylized tone of a Byzantine homily. The more literal the translation, the more likely it is that the m o d e m reader wtil be puzzled. The explanatory notes are valuable here. See, for example, the necessary explanation of Leontius' cryptic reference in the homily on Job: 'not because the athlete is weak, but because I a m giving m y consent in view of yourrequest'(p. 73). Leontius, a well-trained preacher, made constant use of Biblical references throughout his homilies and the volume provides a useful index of all passages where the Biblicaltextis cited verbatim. Old Testament references made are to the Septuagint. A Patristic index is also supplied, in addition to the General Index. For the Byzantinist this book is of great value, the more so because of the variety of incidental information attested to by Leontius. Those interested in the western medieval tradition will not however find it unrewarding. Although there is no systematic examination of the Latin homiletic tradition, there is evidence provided of Leontius' knowledge of works such as the bestiary descriptions in the Physiologus (p. 12) which were of significance in the medieval world. Alanna Nobbs School of History Macquarie University Ashtor, Eliyahu, Technology, industry and trade: the Levant versus Europe, 1250-1500, ed., B. Z. Kedar (Collected Studies Series, No. 372), Aldershot, Variorum, 1992; pp. x, 331; R.R.P. £47.50. Eliyahu Ashtor was for many years, until his death in 1984, one of Israel's foremost historians. A n Islamicist by training, he turned to all aspects of the interaction between Muslims, Jews, and Latins in the Meditenanean in the later Middle Ages, focusing particularly on economic relationships. He was a prolific scholar whose memorial festschrift lists 265 publications over a 55-year career from 1933 to his latest posthumous publication in 1988. Many of these were reviews, translations, and reprints, but nevertheless, eleven separate original books are included and there are also many famous and seminal articles. If anything, particularly in his later years, Ashtor was prone to excessive and overhasty publication. He was a man driven to publish who delighted in appearing at conferences with bundles of offprints to distribute to friends. Sometimes this lead to carelessness and inadequate historical methodology. This, however, does not detract from the enormous value of his herculean labours in the archives and primary sources for the history of the later medieval Mediterranean. This collection of Ashtor's last articles, originally published between 1977 and 1989, complements the earlier Variorum collections of his articles [The medieval Near East (1978), Studies on the Levantine trade in the Middle Ages Reviews 183 (1978), and East-West trade in the medieval Mediterranean (1986)]. It contains nine studies on the economic andtechnologicaldecline of the Muslim Near East in the Later Middle Ages, on Italian economic expansion, on Jews in late medieval commerce, and on the industrial and technological advance of the West. Perhaps the most original and stimulating of the studies presented here is number VI: "Levantine alkali ashes and European industries" (1983). Here Ashtor joined forces with an applied chemist to investigate the production of alkali ashes (sodium and potassium carbonates) for soap and glass making from the plants salsola soda, salsola kali, and hammada scoparia: small bushes which grew in the Middle East on saline soils. The ashes were exported all over the Western Mediterranean in the thirteenth tofifteenthcenturies for the soap and glass industries, particularly to Venice for the glass industry of Murano. This was an innovative and stimulating article. So also was number III: "Levantine sugar industry in the later Middle Ages—an example of technological decline" (1977). This looked at the technological and economic decline of sugar production in the Levant as a result of failure to keep pace with technological innovation in the West. It also remarked on the similar decline of the Levantine textile and paper industries. This theme of the economic and technological stagnation of Egypt and Syria in the Later Middle Ages was developed in three general studies published in 1981 and 1983: numbers I, II, IV. Much of what Ashtor wrote about...

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