Book Reviews

88 Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 42, No.1, Fall 2018 Book Reviews Edited by Nadia Barsoum The Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa SALAFISM IN LEBANON: Local and Transnational Movements by Zoltan Pall UK, London Cambridge University Press 2018, 251 pages. The past two decades have seen an increasing association between Lebanese Salafism and violence, with less attention being paid to Salafis who focus on peaceful proselytization. In reality, it is these Salafis whose influence has dramatically grown since the eruption of the Syrian conflict that profoundly affected Lebanon as well. Based on extensive fieldwork, Zoltan Pall offers insights into the dynamics of non-violent Lebanese Salafi groups and examines the importance of transnational links in shaping the trajectory of the movement. In particular, by analyzing Salafism as a network, we see how the movement creates and mobilizes material and symbolic resources, and how it contributes to reshaping the structures of authority within the country’s Sunni Muslim community. This book traces the evolution and dynamics of non-jihadi Salafi groups in Lebanon. The historical dynamics of Salafism globally have been crucial in shaping the structure of the Lebanese Salafi scene due to its dense transnational linkages, especially at the Arabian Gulf. The author will provide insights into how both the global split of Salafism into a politically quietist and activist faction and the external transformation of the movement in Kuwait, Arabia Qatar and Saudi led to the fragmentation of the Lebanese Salafi. DELHI IN TRANSITION, 1821 AND BEYOND: Mirza Sangin Beg’s Sair Al Manazil edited, translated and annotated by Shama Mitra Chenoy, India, New Delhi n. Oxford University Press 2018, 220 pages. His work is an annotated translation of Mirza Sangin Beg’s Sair-ul Manazil which is one of the last works on Delhi written in Persian. The editor introduces the text to the readers and then proceeds with the translation on the basis of comparison of the four existing copies of the text including the Berlin manuscript which is being consulted for the first time. It depicts the early nineteenth-century Delhi as a city in transition. The original work was commissioned by the English East India Company between 1818 and 1820 and it documents the layout of the city and the author’s observations regarding the buildings, habitations, bazars, localities , residences, individuals, as well as anecdotes of city life and expressions of rich local cultures. 89 THE GREAT CONVERGENCE: ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORIES OF BRICS edited by S. Ravi Rajan, Lise Sedrez. is the result of a collaborative effort in which environmental historians from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa came together to offer new perspectives on the new and somehow intriguing entity. These scholars forged a dialogue from their own historical traditions to find common threads and common challenges . The contributors to this volume focus on three basic themes that can serve as building blocks for future research: the State, the Civil Society, and the Academia, that is, what has been written in each country on the relations between nature and society over time. The historical perspective is crucial for understanding the environmental and social challenges , which might be faced by the BRICS nations in the years to come. The past matters. It matters in understanding threads in policy making—on why certain ideals and frameworks emerged and endured. It matters to explain institutional evolution, and the efficacy or not, of governance. It matters to understand social acceptance and resistance, and of the emergence of what is often dismissed as irrational human trends. CONTESTING ANTIQUITY IN EGYPT: Archaeologies, Museum & the Struggle for Identities from World War I to Nasser by Donald Malcolm Read. Egypt, Cairo: American University Press 2015, 491 pages. Drawing on rich archival and published sources, extensive interviews, and material objects ranging from statues and murals to photographs and postage stamps, this comprehensive study by one of the leading scholars in the field will make fascinating reading for scholars and students of Middle East history, archaeology, politics, and museum and heritage studies, as well as for the interested lay reader. The sensational discover looks at the ways in which Egypt developed its own archaeologies— Islamic, Coptic, and Greco...