Page:The Moslem World Vol XI.djvu/113

Rh Chapter III is a masterly summary of the history and doctrines of the Koran, and is followed in Chapter IV by a vivid sketch of the development and diffusion, both political and religious, of Islam among the nations.

Not its style alone, but the beauty of its form causes the book to smack of Miiller's embellished masterpiece and to stand out in unrivalled distinction among recent introductory manuals. Bound in fine linen, white and marine-blue, chastely entitled and decorated with gold, its enamelled pages gleam with the most exquisite craftsmanship of printer and engraver. It would seem that the most reluctant reader would be tempted by the aesthetic glamor with which the subject is invested. Here is Mohammedanism decked in its most artistic and alluring attire.

The wealth of illustrations, enclosed in so small a compass, is amazing. Mosques, museums and monuments, all the way from Turkestan to Spain, from Hadramaut to Holland, bring tribute to the author's attempt to spread before the untraveled reader the most picturesque symbols of Moslem achievement within its vast arena. There are 166 illustrations in all. They range from the crude Sabasan tablets, Aramaic steles, Nabatjean ruins and Cufic inscriptions of pre-Islamic Arabia, to the clustered pilgrim-shrines of Medina and of Mecca; from the Bedouin tents and rock-hewn dwellings of the Arabian desert, to the architectural splendors of Cairo, Konia and Constantinople; from the ivory bas-reliefs of Baghdad, to the domes and minarets of Damascus; from Timur's tomb in Samarkand, to Sheikh Safi's faience-windowed mosque in Ardebil; from the frescoes of the "forty-pillared hall" of Abbas the Great at Ispahan, to the sumptuous sanctuary of Selim II at Adrianople; from the glittering towers of mediaeval Jerusalem to the glorious screens and stalactite arches of the Alhambra. Portraits are given of important historical leaders, Mohammed the Prophet, the sceptered Tamerlane, Suleiman the Magnificent and his consort Roxelane, Mohammed II—conqueror of Constantinople, Bayazet—"the thunderbolt of the Bosphorus," the black-bearded Boabdil of Granada, with his bespangled tunic and his jewelled sword; also, other beturbaned sultans, and even as modern a personage as the heir-apparent to the throne of Bahrein. Particularly fine are the nineteen prints of typical Arab buildings, landscapes and inhabitants, from the collection of the German traveler, Hermann Burkhardt, whom death overtook in Yemen in 1909. The colored plates include gorgeous title-pages and elaborately chased covers of de luxe Turkish editions of the Koran, brilliant Persian manuscripts, prayer-carpets and wall-tapestries of scarlet, old rose, green and gold; and, richest of all, the frontispiece, an illuminated Persian miniature of the 16th century, representing Mohammed's ascent to Heaven. The five colored maps show the bygone kingdoms of the Caliphate, the shifting boundaries of the Othman dominion from 1359 to 1913, and the parts of the world now religiously occupied by Islam.

A word must be said about the seductiveness of such a book. Overemphasis on the beautiful has its dangers even in historical writing. It is to be feared, an unsophisticated reader would get from Dr. Mann a far too roseate view of what Mohammedan civilization has been and is. From these fair pages one catches nothing of the stench of the bazaars, the poverty, illiteracy and social squalor of the masses in Moslem countries; nothing of the dirt and dilapidation, the stupor and stagnation of the average Mohammedan town; nothing of the stifling miasma of repression, monotony and deterioration—the moral