Studies on Islam (review)

174 Reviews Ventadorn. With Bernart, Giraut shares the same ideal of a personal and reciprocal involvement with the domna. Sharman also situates Giraut in a nice tension with Marcabrun (some of whose ideas Giraut is seen to develop) and Jaufre Rudel, the poet of the amor de Lonh: 'Whereas Marcabrun and Jaufre Rudel were individuaUsts, GirauttikeBernart de Ventadorn, isfirstand foremost a court poet with a patron and a courtly audience in mind' (p. 33). Taken together with the section 'Giraut's conception of style' (pp. 37-44) and 'Giraut and the troubadours of his day' (pp. 44-46), the 'Theme of Love' gives an appropriate introduction to the complexity of the troubadours' conceptions of the importance of the various components of fin' amours cortesia , mesura, joi, joven and the like - for anyone so foolish as to still believe that to read one troubadour is to have read them all. Giraut was perhaps the inventor of a mixed genre, the so-called cansosirventes in which the poet counterpoised his personal situation with a moral comment on society. It was in his canso-sirventes and sirventes that Giraut integrated the concept offin'amors into a wider system of courdy and Christian values. Sharman has the twelve canso-sirventes of Giraut follow on directly the sequence of thirty-nine cansos d'amor before introducing the twenty-four sirventes which have a most useful sub-introduction of their own (pp. 355-363). Giraut de Borneil was a key troubadour just at the time when troubadour ideas on poetry and love were in a state of flux. Whereas Bernart de Ventadorn eschewed sen and mesura ('sense' and 'proportion') forfoudatz ('foUy', 'madness in love'), Giraut is seen to opt for a fine balance between sens andfoudatz. The 'maestre dels trobadors' has found a worthy editor in Sharman. Scholars who henceforth wish to refer to Giraut's poems wiU doubdess have recourse to her magnificent edition. M . J. Walkley Department of French Studies University of Sydney Swartz, M. L., ed. and trans., Studies on Islam, Oxford, O. U. P., 1981; paperback; pp. xiv, 284; R. R. P. AUS$24.95. The translation of these nine essays from French and German by eminent authorities on Islam into English, beginning with the pre-Islamic Bedouin worship of several astral divinities and cultic practices to the study of the HanbaUte Islam reorientated into the modern Wahhabi doctrines, calls for a warm welcome by scholars who cannot adequately draw upon non-English modern works. Although all the essays do not merit equal scholarly attention, they cover a wide spectrum of Islamic history and culture in the Middle Ages. A critical survey of modern studies on Muhammad by Maxime Rodinson examines succinctly the important publications on the Prophet in European Reviews 175 languages. Its notes (pp. 60-85) are equally important. The essay on the originality of the Arabian Prophet summarizes Christian and Jewish claims of the indebtedness of the Prophet to their respective faiths but does not fail to mention Tor Andrae's protests against this approach. He defines 'the task of the scholarly study of Muhammad as an attempt to understand how the Prophet as a result of the spiritual stimulation provided by his environment, forged numerous elements of the most varied sort into one living whole, original in the way in which the various components were combined' (p. 87). The essay on the role of traditionalism in Islam by J. Fueck examines critically the contributions of the early transmitters of the Prophetic traditions (ahadith) and their role in carving out a unique type of cultural unity in Islam which had expanded within a short period very extensively all over the globe. T w o essays of Ignaz Goldziher, one on CathoUc tendencies and particularism in Islam and the other on the attitude of orthodox Islam toward the 'ancient Sciences' go a long way towards showing that 'Though it may run counter to many widely held assumptions, it can be maintained that in Islam (with the exception of a fanatic minority) heresy-hunting and the persecution of erroneous views appeared less frequently than they do in communities concerned with doctrinal formulae' (p. 131). R. Caspar's essay on Muslim mysticism...