Book Reviews 

Arabian Mirrors and Western Soothsayers: 

Nineteenth-Century Literary Approaches 

to Arab-Islamic History 

Muhammed A. Al-Da'mi 

New York: Peter Lang, 2002. 235 pages. 

This is a superb book. With penetrating insight and an eloquent style, al­

Da'mi explores the crucial role that Arabo-lslamic history played in the 

arguments of such prominent British and American "men of letters" as 
Thomas Carlyle and Washington Irving. The book opens with a preface, 

in which he lays out his rationale and purpose, and contains seven chap­

ters, in which he develops his argument. 

AI-Da'mi seeks to deepen our understanding of nineteenth-century 
Oriental ism by exploring the works of leading intellectual writers of that 

time: not the professional historians, but the "men ofletters" who used his­

tory to expound their arguments, but with a kind of literary licence not 

available to a proper historian. His main argument is that the writers used 
Arabo-Islamic history not simply as an exotic or a romantic flourish, but 

rather as an integral and important aspect of their discourses to comment 

upon their own time. For example, Carlyle praises the Prophet as a heroic 

leader, as a way to warn the British of the dangers of utilitarianism and 
materialism; Ralph Waldo Emerson likewise does this to send a message 

to the young American nation; Cardinal John H. Newman to alert Europe 

to the Ottoman threat; and so on. 
Al-Da'mi convincingly points out that we can neither understand 

these writers nor the age itself adequately without properly comprehend­

ing this aspect of their writings. This is an important rectification to tra­

ditional western scholarship, which typically leaves out all mention of 
anything non-European in its study of its own intellectual history. (Walter 

E. Houghton's classic work on the Victorian age, The Victorian Frame of

Mind, 1830-1870, has in its index only one entry for Prophet Muhammad





Book Reviews 175 

ceptions about Islam, they essentially left that era's fundamental attitudes 
intact. For example, while they viewed Prophet Muhammad in a more 

admiring fashion, they still failed to take Islam "seriously as a revealed reli­
gion." In fact, Carlyle viewed the Qur'an as a "kind of wild chanting song." 
Thus, concludes al-Da'mi, in the end they failed to understand what they 
read. They concentrated only on those themes of Arabo-Islamic history that 

could make their own arguments with their contemporaries more persuasive 
(e.g., the spread of empire, the romantic Bedouin, the despotic sultan, 
polygamy, slavery, and the like), while ignoring other aspects (e.g., the sci­
entific and cultural achievements of the Arabo-lslamic civilizations, and 

such intellectual thinkers as Ibn Khaldun and al-GhazaJi). AI-Da'mi com­
pares the western use of Arabo-Islamic history as one that can be instructive, 
but that is essentially a dead history, with that of contemporary Arab/Islamic 
scholars who see in the same events inspiration for revitalizing a moribund 

Islamic community. 
There is a poignancy to reading this book, as the author is an Iraqi 

who attempts to contribute to a positive dialogue of civilizations that 

would serve to bring people together and erase stereotypes on both sides. 

He obliquely points out to his Arab/Muslim readers that Muslim scholar­
ship should not overlook positive trends in western treatments of Islam. 
In his preface, he apologizes, inbetween brackets, for not to having the 

most up-to-date scholarship due to the "absence [in the late 1990s) of 
incoming publications to Iraq." And as I write this review, the US is 
bombing Iraq in its "war of the willing." Would that academic scholarship 
had the ability to build bridges, create dialogues, remove suspicions, and 

contribute to the flourishing of the glo bal village. 

Katherine Bullock 
Department of Political Science 

University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada