A review by doel7
The Public Sphere in Muslim Societies by

4.0

This book was quite good and was a bit ironic, being a book written entirely by Jews from an Israeli university writing about Islamic society. Although one might think that they might have a bias given the Palestinian-Israeli crisis, they are scholars and act as such in their analysis. The book covers the various Islamic societies across different time periods and regions and how the Muslim public sphere changed over time. The public sphere, by definition, is when the official sphere and the private sphere come together. It brings together the ruling class and the common people and it creates an interaction between the two. For many years the Islamic world was seen as despotic and totalitarian, where the sultan or caliph was the only source of power and everyone acquiesced to his authority. Not only this but there was no interaction between the ruler and his people. This book does a very good job of proving that this theory of "Oriental despotism" is in fact false. The various authors of this book, especially Miriam Hoexter and Haim Gerber, make the point that this theory is false because there was plenty of interaction between the two primarily through the waqf system, which were set up mostly by the ruling class for the benefit of the people. Not only this but the ruler could not impose his will on the people like a despot could because he was always bound by the sharia and if he overstepped those bounds, say by confiscating waqf land, he could be overthrown by the ulema and the people. The most interesting fact I will take from this book is that in 1675 there were 2,500 complaints were sent directly to the Ottoman sultan from the people all over the empire. They were usually complaints about the appointees of the sultan, saying that they were not being just or were not working within the sharia. The fact that these complaints did not dry up over the years show that the sultan did on some level address these complaints. This shows that the sultan cared about the people and he was not entirely above them. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in defusing the stereotypes about Islamic empires.