BOOK REVIEWS 259 MauHl lzzi-Dien St Davids's University College, Lampeter Ahmad b. Yabya b. Jabir b. Dawud al-BaladhurT: Ansab al-Ashraf Edited and annotated by KHALIL ATHAMENA. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1993. Pp. 324. Price HB not given. 965-222-317-4. This book is numbered vol. 6B on the English side of the cover while on the Arabic side it is 2/6! It contains what appears to be a thorough piece of scholarly editing of Baladhurfs history of the career of Hisham b. fAbd al-Malik, the Umayyad caliph (724-43). Baladhuri, who died in 279/892, recorded many important historical events, some not mentioned by other historians. He also included, as was the normal practice of the time, many stories, poems, and metaphors as well as Qur'anic verses and ahadtth. This edition is an important contribution to the history of Baladhuri, and may be viewed as a continuation of Professor Goitein's edition of Ansab al-Ashraf, first published in 1936. The fact that the editor used the same manuscript as Goitcin when he edited die fifth volume gives an important dimension of uniformity to this sixth volume. Unfortunately the editor does not offer any information about the abovementioned Turkish manuscript or about its author, since he considered it 'not necessary'. This assumption forces the reader to do some homework before reading the book if he is not acquainted with the author and his work, famous though they are. The second manuscript used in this edition was MS. No. 7 JalawT of Ribat in Morocco. The editor does not tell us when or where this manuscript was written. However, according to Zirikll (1986, i. 276), it was written in Damascus in one volume, and F. Sezgjn (1983, i. 2. 153) added that it was written in 661 AH in 467 pages. This new edition deserves our appreciation, but as with any work of research there is room for improvement. Some detailed comments follow. The system of editorial symbols is not always clear. When the editor wishes to indicate a lacuna in the original text, he sometimes uses these symbols [' '] (5), while at other times he just mentions the omission in a footnote (63). This difficulty could have been avoided by including a list of symbols. Another problem occurs when footnotes have not been moved from one page to the Downloaded from http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/ at Hebrew University Library Authority on February 11, 2016 with a historical note of the prc-Islamic system of arbitration that was applied to Islamic law. Some useful cases of arbitration are included here, such as the case of LIMCO v. The Government of Libya that ended in judgement according to the Islamic maxim derived from Qur'an 5:1 and 2:177 which is similar to the Latin pacta sunt servanda (pacts are to be observed). The book as a whole is a serious work of scholarship that I feel could have made a major contribution to the subject, given just a little extra attention to its editing and compilation.' Despite this, it remains a very valuable source of reference for both the ordinary reader and those who are experts in the field of Islamic law. Z6o BOOK REVIEWS next. It is sometimes difficult to establish which footnote belongs to which page when the notes are concerned with variant readings in the manuscripts. The problem is exacerbated when the footnote number does not correspond with the number on the page (e.g. 63 n.2). Many difficult words are left unexplained. An index of headings would have been helpful. Finally it must be reiterated that the work is a scholarly and laudable effort. Mawil lzzi-Dien St David's University College, Lampeter The greater part of the late Nicholas Lowick's scholarship is to be found in the many articles which he published in a wide range of periodicals. (Publication of his long-awaited book on the coin-types of the early Abbasid caliphs is, thanks to the efforts of colleagues and friends, expected shortly.) The appearance of this volume of collected articles, reprinted in the Variorum series in 1990, is therefore greatly to be welcomed. A companion volume entitled Coinage and History of the Islamic World, containing the rest of Lowick's articles, appeared in the same year. The nineteen articles included here arc grouped under three headings: 'Islamic coins in Europe', 'Coinage of Central Asia during the 10th and 11th centuries', and 'Coin finds and hoards and the trade of the Gulf and the Indian Ocean'. The four articles in the first section give a taste of the many aspects of the subject of Islamic coins found, and occasionally imitated, in various parts of Europe: eighth- or early ninth-century English imitations of Abbasid dinars; finds of silver dirhams from Cuerdale, Lancashire, and Co. Westmeath, Ireland, which were conveyed to their ultimate resting-place from Islamic lands by way of the Baltic; and the hoard of mainly eleventh-century Fatimid gold dinars, found with Norman tans, from Agrigento in Sicily. Here, as elsewhere in the volume, the various papers do not of course constitute a full study of the topic suggested by the section heading; rather they illustrate aspects of it. The most coherent section is the third, for the coinage of the Gulf was a particular enthusiasm of Lowick's, partly fired by his work on the excavation at Siraf. Here are gathered substantial hoardreports, the detailed listings preceded by illuminating introductions that are helpful for the numismatist and the non-numismatic scholar alike. The final paper, on some hitherto unknown issues struck in the name of the Fatimid caliphs in Multan, illustrates Lowick's characteristic well-judged scholarship in setting this new material in context, and his brilliance in deciphering the well-nigh impossible. Helen W. Brown Ashmolean Museum, Oxford Downloaded from http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/ at Hebrew University Library Authority on February 11, 2016 Islamic Coins and Trade in the Medieval "World By NICHOLAS LOWICK. Edited by Joe Cribb. London: Variorum, 1990. Pp. xii+300. Price HB not given. 0-86078-267-0