Gesellschaft Und Individuum in Damaskus 1550-1791 (Book Review‪)‬

Gesellschaft und Individuum in Damaskus 1550-1791. By LUTZ BERGER. Kultur, Recht und Politik in muslimischen Gesellschaften, 10. Wurzburg: ERGON, 2007. Pp. xii + 366. [euro]45. The stated aim of Lutz Berger's work on "Society and the Individual in Damascus" is to study the world view and mentality of the Damascene 'ulama' class between the sixteenth and eighteenth century on the basis of biographical texts. Very quickly in the introduction it becomes clear, however, that his subject is actually much vaster: Berger sees the genre and topics dealt with by his writers (for the most part Ibn Ayyub, al-Burini, al-Ghazzi, al-Muhibbi, al-Muradi, Ibn Kannan, al-Budayri, with numerous incidental references to others) as being in direct continuity with the tradition of historical and biographical writing throughout Islamic time and space, and understands their texts as the culmination of this tradition on the eve of the Arab Middle East's entry into modernity. The result is a wide-ranging exploration of themes in Islamic civilization which, while grounded in an extensive review of at times very heterogeneous primary and secondary sources, presents a number of problems regarding the main purpose of this book.