96 Short Reviews and Book Notes

A short review will not do justice to Hultkrantz's many topics . His phenomenologyturns out to be much the same thing as ordinary ethnography . Had be cut back on themore imposingly phrased, but essentially run of the mill generalizing, he would haveachieved a crisper empiricism .

R. H. BARNESUniversity of Oxford

Richard C . Martin, Islam: A Cultural Perspective, Prentice-Hall Series in WorldReligions, Prentice-Hall International 1982. 178 pp. £5.95

It is rare to Lind a full-length introduction to Islam by a non-Islamicist . But whateverRichard Martin may lack in terms of first-hand knowledge of languages and texts isabundantly made up for by his accurate and intelligent use of up-to-date secondarymaterials in a general religious studies perspective . Within the compass of a mere 166pages, he has succeeded in encapsulating a much broader view of Islam as religion,culture, and society than is normally found in introductory works . Many of the detailsabout the life of the Prophet, the collection of the Traditions, the formation of the lawschools, or the regulations of fqh that are the stock-in-trade of many books and abeginner's bugbear have been abandoned in favour of a wider approach which brings insuch disparate elements as Ibn al-Ráwandi, the Shii ta`ziya, or the character of theIranian bazaar . All of these and other topics are dealt with perceptively and in a mannerthat shows the author has grasped the essentials of the matters he writes about . His useof basic sociological and anthropological concepts such as the `Great Tradition' and`Little Tradition' or religious studies distinctions between, for example, `history' and`sacred history' all serve to illuminate even familiar topics in a fresh manner. There are,of course, minor errors, but these are few: the Táj Mahal was neither a palace nor amosque (pp . 26-27) ; the termJdhiliyya has more the connotation of `age of barbarism'than `Time of Ignorance (of God)' (p . 91) ; it is misleading to group Rilmi and Ibnal--`Arabi together with Suhrawardi as `Ishriigis' (p . 102) ; and Ibn Hanbal's Musnadnever became one of the six canonical collections ofhadth (p. 104) . In general, this is byfar the best short introduction to the subject to appear in many years .

DENIS MncEOINDepartment of Religious Studies, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne

A. Rosalie David, A Guide to Religious Ritual at Abydos, Modern EgyptologySeries, Aris and Philips Ltd . 1981 . xiv + 182 pp .

A revised format with redrawn line figures and additional plates marks the secondedition of this successful work, previously entitled Religious Ritual at Abydos and reviewedin detail by John Hinnells (Religion 5/1, Spring 1975, pp . 89-90) . Although there ismuch of Egyptological interest for specialists, the author provides a precise scene byscene account of the ornamentations in the temple, with numerous line-drawings,which is entirely accessible to the non-Egyptologist . It is therefore an excellent practicalintroduction to aspects of ancient Egyptian religion .

M. P.