Bethany Walker: Jordan in the Late Middle Ages. Transformation of the Mamluk Frontier. (Chicago Studies on the Middle East.) xii, 338 pp. Chicago: Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Chicago, 2011. ISBN 978 0 9708199 7 0.

Abstract

, 1974, 166-230). The "politics of pilgrimage" are seen almost exclusively through the lens of the affirmation of political authority, or lack thereof. If the question of delegation of authority is occasionally touched upon, nothing is said about the challenges of exercising power at a distance in a pre-modern context. The possibility of connecting the ḥ ajj with a form of itinerant kingship is also overlooked, perhaps as the consequence of the total neglect of what anthropologists have taught us about power in motion (on itinerant kingship under the Umayyads see A. Borrut, Entre mémoire et pouvoir: l'espace syrien sous les derniers Omeyyades et les premiers Abbassides (v. 72-193/ 692-809) (Leiden: Brill, 2011, 383 ff.)). Finally, several aspects of the ḥ ajj are not addressed, i.e. its economic dimension, the various pilgrimage roads, not to mention the question of other early Islamic sites of memory. The question of the Prophet's tomb could for instance have been discussed following L. Halevi, Muhammad's Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society (New York, 2007). Overall, the book offers a good deal of precious information on an important topic but largely fails to make full use of it.