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Islam: The View from the Edge
Bulliet abandons the historian's habit of viewing Islamic history from the center, that is, focusing on the rise and fall of imperial dynasties. Instead, he derives an understanding of how and why Islam became -- and continues to be -- so rooted in the social structure of the vast majority of people who lived far from the political locus and did not see the caliphate as essential in their lives.
236 pages, Paperback
First published May 16, 1995
About the author
Richard W. Bulliet
240 books44 followersRichard W. Bulliet is a professor emeritus of history at Columbia University who specializes in the history of Islamic society and institutions, the history of technology, and the history of the role of animals in human society.
Richard grew up in Illinois. He attended Harvard University, from which he received a BA in 1962 and a PhD in 1967.
Several of his books focus on Iran but deal also with the larger Muslim world, including The Patricians of Nishapur: a Study in Medieval Islamic History (1972), Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History (1979), and Islam: the View from the Edge (1994). His books on a broader view of Islamic history and society include Under Siege: Islam and Democracy (1994) and The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (2004). His book (1975) brings together his interest in the histories of technology, animal domestication, and the Middle East, dealing for example with the significant military advantage early Muslim armies gained from a slight improvement in the design of cloth camel saddles. He would return to the history of animal domestication with his Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships (2005).
He is the writer and editor of books of more general interest as well, including The Columbia History of the Twentieth Century (editor, 1998), The Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East (co-editor, 1996), and The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History (co-author, 1997). He has also written several novels which draw on his knowledge of international politics and the Middle East, and is a promoter of the validity of comics as an art form.
His first fiction book, Kicked to Death by a Camel (1973), was nominated for an Edgar for “Best First Mystery”. His other fiction includes Tomb of the Twelfth Imam (1979), The Gulf Scenario (1984), The Sufi Fiddle (1991), and The One-Donkey Solution (2011).
Bulliet’s commentaries and opinion pieces on the Middle East have appeared in such newspapers The Guardian, New York Times International, and Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Richard grew up in Illinois. He attended Harvard University, from which he received a BA in 1962 and a PhD in 1967.
Several of his books focus on Iran but deal also with the larger Muslim world, including The Patricians of Nishapur: a Study in Medieval Islamic History (1972), Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History (1979), and Islam: the View from the Edge (1994). His books on a broader view of Islamic history and society include Under Siege: Islam and Democracy (1994) and The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (2004). His book (1975) brings together his interest in the histories of technology, animal domestication, and the Middle East, dealing for example with the significant military advantage early Muslim armies gained from a slight improvement in the design of cloth camel saddles. He would return to the history of animal domestication with his Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships (2005).
He is the writer and editor of books of more general interest as well, including The Columbia History of the Twentieth Century (editor, 1998), The Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East (co-editor, 1996), and The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History (co-author, 1997). He has also written several novels which draw on his knowledge of international politics and the Middle East, and is a promoter of the validity of comics as an art form.
His first fiction book, Kicked to Death by a Camel (1973), was nominated for an Edgar for “Best First Mystery”. His other fiction includes Tomb of the Twelfth Imam (1979), The Gulf Scenario (1984), The Sufi Fiddle (1991), and The One-Donkey Solution (2011).
Bulliet’s commentaries and opinion pieces on the Middle East have appeared in such newspapers The Guardian, New York Times International, and Süddeutsche Zeitung.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 28, 2015
Very well-researched, though a bit too academic, the book details the lives of Muslims in not-so-Muslim Persia, and how the edge stabilizes. Giving an account of Islamic history that is not focused on the governmental center, he demonstrates the importance of scholars in easing the transfer and forming the Muslim community in mixed religious cities; a model which I heard an American Muslim scholar describe as similar to that happening in the U.S. as we speak. All that remains to be seen; as for the book, it remains a great extraction of a historical pattern.
December 14, 2016
Professor Richard Bulliet has written a frequently uneven but generally interesting and stimulating book.
“Islam, the view from the edge” is an attempt to correct what Bulliet calls “the view from the center”. “The view from the center” begins with the Holy Prophet’s call to Islam and his establishment of the first Islamic state, passes through the rightly guided caliphs, the Umayyad and the Abbasids and is a record of conquests and the comings and goings of kings and caliphs. But this picture tells us little about the gradual winning of hearts and minds across the vast areas conquered by the Arabs in the name of Islam. How did this come about? How did the process appear to the common people and how did these people at the “edge” of Islamic society create a detailed picture of their religion when such a picture was neither available in the Quran nor provided by church or state? The answer to these questions is “the view from the edge”.
The book is based primarily on biographical dictionaries and family histories from the region around Nishapur in northeastern Iran. The author’s own life-long study of Islam is used to provide a layer of commentary and explanation to this material. Bulliet paints a detailed picture of how the Arab conquest was followed by an initial phase of slow growth of converts to Islam till a critical mass was reached (over two hundred years later!) and there was a phase of explosive increase in conversions until, finally, the process of new conversions slowed down again. He speculates a bit about the psychological profile of those who convert to a new idea when its rare to do so versus those who jump on the bandwagon when it has become fashionable to convert, versus the hard-cases who continue to hold out when most of their peers have converted. This process is not unique to conversion to Islam: something very similar happens when people adopt a new technology or any other new idea. What he considers striking in this story is the lack of dictation from the “center”. He claims that the Umayyad caliphs had little interest in doctrine and made no effort to create a standard theology of their own (this may be true of Muavia, but arguable when it comes to Abdul Malik onwards). Instead, the local converts used a variety of sources to learn what the new religion expected them to do. Bulliet highlights the role of “hadith transmitters” in this phenomenon but also shows how the expectations of the locals and their experience of their own ancestral religions colored this process. He especially emphasizes the important role the Khurasanis subsequently played in creating the madrassa system and thus stabilizing and unifying Islamic theory all over the Middle East (in his version, the Arabs apply little or no pressure at any stage). There is information too about the role of the Sufis and of the popular storytellers. His background as a historian of technology likely plays a role in his theories about cities that outgrew their food supply, which he claims were already falling apart long before the Mongols arrived to finish off the job.
Professor Bulliet thinks that by the 14th century, the “edge had created a center”. The religious understandings that developed had become the “great tradition” of Islam. retroactively projected back to the time of the prophet, this center now set a standard against which new “edge developments” were measured. The new edge developments in India, East Asia and Africa continued to be locally influential, but these new edges develop within a broader Islamic community, which slowly but steadily pulls them in towards the (now well defined) central orthodoxy.
The book is an interesting account of how this orthodoxy took shape in one influential area in Khorasan and Bulliet clearly thinks it offers insights into what may have happened in other parts of the Islamic world. But it has its weaknesses. For example, professor Bulliet expects his readers to be more than a little familiar with the broad course of Islamic history. And the book veers between broad generalizations and very specific histories somewhat haphazardly. Finally, his account of the evolution of Islam at the edge is interesting, but the conclusion that something similar is still going on is contradicted by his own account of the growth of madrassa orthodoxy (a phenomenon with which the earlier community obviously did not have to contend). Professor Bulliet is convinced that whatever its final shape, the shape of “the answer” in the Muslim world will be a religious one (“Islam is the solution”) and not a relegation of religion to the personal domain by “secular modernity”. But he seems to have no interest in discussing WHY this should be so? What (if anything) is uniquely different about Islam? Perhaps he is one of those who feel that “secular modernity” is a failure everywhere, therefore bound to fail in Islamic lands too? or is something special about Islam? either he has not considered this question or he finds it uninteresting. But still, the book is an interesting viewpoint about Islam and its history.
“Islam, the view from the edge” is an attempt to correct what Bulliet calls “the view from the center”. “The view from the center” begins with the Holy Prophet’s call to Islam and his establishment of the first Islamic state, passes through the rightly guided caliphs, the Umayyad and the Abbasids and is a record of conquests and the comings and goings of kings and caliphs. But this picture tells us little about the gradual winning of hearts and minds across the vast areas conquered by the Arabs in the name of Islam. How did this come about? How did the process appear to the common people and how did these people at the “edge” of Islamic society create a detailed picture of their religion when such a picture was neither available in the Quran nor provided by church or state? The answer to these questions is “the view from the edge”.
The book is based primarily on biographical dictionaries and family histories from the region around Nishapur in northeastern Iran. The author’s own life-long study of Islam is used to provide a layer of commentary and explanation to this material. Bulliet paints a detailed picture of how the Arab conquest was followed by an initial phase of slow growth of converts to Islam till a critical mass was reached (over two hundred years later!) and there was a phase of explosive increase in conversions until, finally, the process of new conversions slowed down again. He speculates a bit about the psychological profile of those who convert to a new idea when its rare to do so versus those who jump on the bandwagon when it has become fashionable to convert, versus the hard-cases who continue to hold out when most of their peers have converted. This process is not unique to conversion to Islam: something very similar happens when people adopt a new technology or any other new idea. What he considers striking in this story is the lack of dictation from the “center”. He claims that the Umayyad caliphs had little interest in doctrine and made no effort to create a standard theology of their own (this may be true of Muavia, but arguable when it comes to Abdul Malik onwards). Instead, the local converts used a variety of sources to learn what the new religion expected them to do. Bulliet highlights the role of “hadith transmitters” in this phenomenon but also shows how the expectations of the locals and their experience of their own ancestral religions colored this process. He especially emphasizes the important role the Khurasanis subsequently played in creating the madrassa system and thus stabilizing and unifying Islamic theory all over the Middle East (in his version, the Arabs apply little or no pressure at any stage). There is information too about the role of the Sufis and of the popular storytellers. His background as a historian of technology likely plays a role in his theories about cities that outgrew their food supply, which he claims were already falling apart long before the Mongols arrived to finish off the job.
Professor Bulliet thinks that by the 14th century, the “edge had created a center”. The religious understandings that developed had become the “great tradition” of Islam. retroactively projected back to the time of the prophet, this center now set a standard against which new “edge developments” were measured. The new edge developments in India, East Asia and Africa continued to be locally influential, but these new edges develop within a broader Islamic community, which slowly but steadily pulls them in towards the (now well defined) central orthodoxy.
The book is an interesting account of how this orthodoxy took shape in one influential area in Khorasan and Bulliet clearly thinks it offers insights into what may have happened in other parts of the Islamic world. But it has its weaknesses. For example, professor Bulliet expects his readers to be more than a little familiar with the broad course of Islamic history. And the book veers between broad generalizations and very specific histories somewhat haphazardly. Finally, his account of the evolution of Islam at the edge is interesting, but the conclusion that something similar is still going on is contradicted by his own account of the growth of madrassa orthodoxy (a phenomenon with which the earlier community obviously did not have to contend). Professor Bulliet is convinced that whatever its final shape, the shape of “the answer” in the Muslim world will be a religious one (“Islam is the solution”) and not a relegation of religion to the personal domain by “secular modernity”. But he seems to have no interest in discussing WHY this should be so? What (if anything) is uniquely different about Islam? Perhaps he is one of those who feel that “secular modernity” is a failure everywhere, therefore bound to fail in Islamic lands too? or is something special about Islam? either he has not considered this question or he finds it uninteresting. But still, the book is an interesting viewpoint about Islam and its history.
April 21, 2020
The style of writing is a bit tedious but it's worth it. The perspective offered in this book gives further depth to our understanding of muslim history and present.
The best way to go about this book is to read it after you've read a book about muslim history as a whole.
The best way to go about this book is to read it after you've read a book about muslim history as a whole.
January 4, 2012
Bulliet argues that Islam's growth and development in the 9th-14th centuries was affected, if not primarily driven, by activity away from historical centers. The strength of Bulliet's argument lies in his primary source research of Islamic teachers and leaders in Iranian localities, as he demonstrates the influence that the Iranian "edge" had on Islam's development during this period of time and the unique qualities of Iranian Islamic practice that allowed for its influence. After the 14th century, he argues, the Islamic institutions that are formed out of Iranian influence stabilize. This book is an important contribution to the field of Islamic and Middle East history, however it is not very accessible to those outside of academia, as it is a tedious read and requires a solid foundation in Middle East and/or Islamic history.
December 10, 2012
One of the few academic books that I have been unable to put down. Bulliet gives a fascinating look at the evolution of Islam not in terms of great caliphates and mighty thinkers, but by looking at the complex social fabric of Persian society. An absolute must-read for anyone interested in the history of Islam or the Middle East in general -- although some of his claims are difficult (read: impossible) to prove and must therefore be taken with a grain of thought (i.e. the different correspondence between different pottery styles and different legal schools), the perspective he employs will change your life.
November 30, 2016
I had to read this for school and could not get through very much of it. It is written in a disjointed way that made it difficult to follow as it would bounce between showing actual historical documents that told a story and analyzing these documents and the deeper meaning behind them. I would agree with Bulliet's main point that Islamic culture is shaped from the edge and through interactions with other religions and new converts but I ended up gathering the main ideas from class discussion since I could not read this book.
September 24, 2007
First two chapters were great - all about the hadith and how it is a result of questioning by non-Arab Muslim converts. After that it got too specific and rather boring.
January 8, 2009
Important for students and scholars, Bulliet frames the development of Islamic history through who and what constitutes "the edge" of Islam.
March 7, 2012
Changed the way I look and study Islamic History.
September 14, 2012
Though in modern times with technology the difference between center and edge has blurred. Perhaps that is the scholar's intention.
March 5, 2013
Bulliet is perhaps the best living historian on the Middle East. Each of his insights is gold.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews