Near East 0 1 stantially reduced the Middle Eastern population, main determinant of the history of Egypt in the perhaps by more than one-third of its total by the Middle Ages. early fifteenth century. More important, and in ANDREW S. EHRENKREUTZ contrast to Christian Europe, there was no dis- University of Michigan, cernible recovery therafter, owing to a number of Ann Arbor adverse factors which the author closely analyzes, including a careful study of the case of the Mam- l This well researched and cogently ar- gued book is certainly a major contribution to the JOHN E. woons. The Aqquyunlu—Clan, Confederation, vast, if somewhat uneven, literature on the Black Empire: A Study in 15thl9th Century Turko-lranian Death. It is unlikely to be superseded in its chosen Polities. Chicago: Bibliotheca Islamica. 1976. Pp. x, Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/82/5/1301/123045 by guest on 01 October 2021 field. 348. $20.00. C. R. BOXER University of Michigan, John E. Woods demonstrates in his work on the Ann Arbor Akkoyunlu the excellent results obtainable when a researcher is well trained both as an Orientalist and as a historian. His notes and bibliography PAUL BALOG. Umayyad, Abbásid and Trdrinid Glass show deep familiarity with a wide range of sources, Weights and Vessel Stamps. (Numismatic Studies, both original and secondary, in Arabic, Persian, number 13.) New York: The American Numis- and Turkish. European sources, especially Vene- matic Society. 1976. Pp. 322, Iv. $45.00. tian, are in evidence also, but this work could not have been written without access to the indigenous This new book by Paul Balog constitutes an im- Near Eastern materials. Woods is to be con- portant addition to the heuristic tools essential for gratulated for his assiduous use of these manu- the study of Medieval Egyptian history. Basically scripts, documents, and printed works, each of it consists of a rigorously compiled and impeccably which contains language pitfalls that can cause presented catalogue of over nine hundred speci- one to lose heart and give up in despair. His per- mens of glass weights and pharmaceutical mea- severance alone merits our acclaim. sure stamps. This presentation is especially signifi- There is, however, more to admire here than cant since it contributes another 4o percent to the personal fortitude. Woods has managed to pro- corpus of known Umayyad glass and nearly 5o duce a coherent and consistent political narrative . percent to the corpus of the `Abbásid and of anon- from sources that are often biased, incomplete, ymous weights and measure stamps. Also, the inaccurate, and contradictory. Much was at stake eight issues of the Ttiltinids in Balog's catalogue in a region comprising eastern Anatolia, western are all here published for the first time. Iran, and parts of Syria and Iraq. There the Otto- Apart from the catalogue and the fifty-five plates mans, Marhluks, Timurids, and Turkman tribes (good reproductions of specimens with legible in- contested for dominion. Boundaries were Huid, al- scriptions) the book contains an informative meth- liances mercurial, treachery rampant, and lead- odological and historical introduction. In it Balog ership alternated between being charismatic and sketches the story of earlier achievements in the spasmodic. Out of this cauldron emerged the Ak- area of Medieval Egyptian metrology, and offers a koyunlu to exercise hegemony over an ever-widen- reconstructive analysis of the system of weights ing area. Woods follows this fascinating story from and measures, based on the interpretation both of its inception in the mid-fourteenth century to its survived specimens and on literary evidence. He conclusion at the beginning of the sixteenth with also produces a detailed chronology of the officials the rise of the Safavids. The chief protaganist is whose names appear in the inscriptions on the Uzun Hasan who cast himself in the role of an glass weights and stamps. Finally, he provides his Islamic world conqueror in the mold of Tamer- book with extremely useful indices in English as lane. well as in Arabic: of the officials, of drugs, of pious Uzun Hasan adhered to the political philosophy legends, of honorary titles in the form of in- that treated sovereignty as a family affair. During vocations. He thus makes the evidence extracted their lifetime such rulers parcelled out apanages to from the difficult and scattered body of such pro- royal princes, with succession usually being de- saic source materials easily accessible to interested cided by the will of God through civil war. Woods historians. describes this system in detail, but offers no ex- This rich body of information by Balog marks planation as to why it was adopted and adhered to another important step in modern methodological in the first place, and why succession was not efforts to arrive at some statistical standards which regulated in a more orderly fashion in order to would enable us to evaluate quantitatively the div- provide for a more stable political order. Perhaps ersified operations of the Nile valley economy—the that is too much to expect in one book..