134 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 20:2 

Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: 

The Roots of Sectarianism 

Bruce Masters 

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 222 pages. 

1n this interesting and well-researched book, Bruce Masters analyses the his­
tory of Chris tian and Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire's Arab 
provinces and how they fared within a Muslim majority and hierarchy. By 

and large, this important study is a story of modernization, identity, and eccle­
siastical politics that focuses primarily on Christian communities in Aleppo, 

Syria. The book's main themes are somewhat familiar: How Christian and 
Jewish communities were in an advantageous position to benefit from 

increasing European influence in the Middle East, and how a secular politi­
cal identity (Arab nationalism) emerged in the Levant. The book's value lies 

not in its overarching thesis, but rather in the details of the story and the 

impressive research upon which this well-crafted narrative is based. 

Masters chronicles how the identities of Christians and Jews evolved 
due to their increasing contact with western influences, or, as Masters labels 

it, "intrusion." The status quo was forever transformed because many 

Christians began to distance themselves, economically and socially, from 

their Muslim neighbors. Masters, a historian who teaches at Connecticut's 
Wesleyan University, contends that the western intrusion altered Muslim 

attitudes toward native Christians. In the nineteenth century, local Christians 

would serve for some Muslims as "convenient surrogates for the anger that 
could only rarely be expressed directly against the Europeans." 

Although the Arab provinces experienced serious sectarian strife in the 
nineteenth century, these antagonisms were, by and large, absent in the 





136 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 20:2 

sectarianism and the transfonnation of the status of non-Muslims emerging 
much earlier than previous studies have maintained. Many of the general 

arguments presented do sound familiar. The book's strength lies in demon­
strating how some of these themes were negotiated in certain communities 
within the Ottoman Empire. 

This subject is not an easy topic. Masters points out that "to write or not 

to write about the history of non-Muslims living in Muslim states has 

become, and perhaps always was, all too often a political act." The study of 
this topic is made even more difficult because Ottoman Muslim literary 

sources are largely silent about the non-Muslims among whom the authors 

lived. Yet Masters overcomes this silence with his impressive usage of vari­

ous archival sources, such as court records, those of the Patriarchate (official 
records of the Christian Orthodox Church), and also of various contemporary 

Christian, Jewish, and Muslim writers. 

This is an important book that will contribute greatly to the social his ­

tory of the Ottoman Empire. In addition, it will be very useful for scholars 
conducting research in other areas of the Empire. 

Magnus T. Bernhardsson 

Hofstra University 
Hempstead, NY