550 REVIEWS
example, he is able to point out that Arculfs
account of the Saracen eclesia (sic) in Damascus
does not tally with the accepted view that the
Arab conquerors shared the church of St. John
there with the Christians. Again, the fact that
Arculf was apparently in no danger from the
Sinai Saracens at the time of their festival, but
had to find a safer route back to Palestine once
the festival was over, is related to Islamicist
discussions of the sacred months of the
Jahiliyya. Discussing Willibald's account of his
imprisonment in Hims, various Arab/Muslim
personages are identified by name or office, even
the anonymous cubicularius of the preses of
Emessa (identified as the hajib of the amir of
Hims) being supplied with a name by reference
to the Ta'rikh of Khalifat b. Khayyat.
In such discussions the author shows a
familiarity with the older Islamicist literature,
especially that in German. The above cited
reference to Khalifat b. Khayyat is unusual,
most of the information on Arab-Muslim
affairs being drawn from the secondary
literature such as the works of Wellhausen,
C. H. Becker, and Hitti. One result of this, it
seems to me, is that there is a disparity between
the attitude towards the Latin sources and that
towards the Arabic. The former is characterized
by an awareness of such problems as manu-
script traditions and redaction, and of topoi and
etymology as generators of historical' fact'; the
latter is treated more as a body of inert informa-
tion without the literary problems associated
with the Latin works.
One particularly interesting case concerns the
account in the Fredegar Chronicle of confron-
tations between the Byzantines and the Arabs in
the course of the Arab conquest of Syria. The
complex compositional history of this Frankish
source is discussed in some detail and the argu-
ment put forward that the relevant portion of it
may be the earliest account of the Arab invasion
of Syria to have survived (it is suggested it may
be as early as A.D. 641). The chronicle reports
two clashes, which Rotter identifies as the
battles of Ajnadayn and Yarmuk and in con-
nexion with which he refers to Becker's well
known study of the Arab conquests, and it
alludes to two anonymous Arab leaders, whom
Rotter identifies as ' quite probably' Abu
'Ubayda and ' certainly' Khalid b. al-Walld.
Apart from the fact that traditional Muslim
sources do make two confrontations between
Arab and Byzantine forces crucial for the fate of
Syria, and that these two confrontations are
usually associated with Ajnadayn and Yarmuk,
the detail which seems to have influenced Rotter
in making his identifications is a reference to the
' sword of G o d ' {gladius Dei) in connexion with
the second of the confrontations. We are told
that in response to his earlier defeat at the hands
of the Arabs the emperor Heraclius (Aeraglea)
gathered a huge army which emcamped over-
night facing the Arabs, waiting for battle the
next day. During the night, however, the army
was assailed by the ' sword of God', more than
half were killed and the remainder fled, leaving
the Saracens free to lay waste the province. In
Muslim tradition, of course, the hero of the
conquest of Syria, Khalid b. Walld, is known
variantly as the Sword of God or the Sword of
Islam, and Rotter suggests that the report in the
Fredegar Chronicle is a reflexion of this fact: a
misunderstanding has led to Khalid's trans-
formation into the literal ' sword of God'.
The assumption is that the expression was a
sort of by-name borne by Khalid and that he
already had it at the time of the conquest of
Syria. However, this can only be speculative
since there seems no contemporary evidence
and it might equally be that the designation was
only applied in Muslim tradition retrospec-
tively, as part of the process of establishing a
religious interpretation of the conquests.
Whether or not this was so, a similar interpreta-
tion, with a different emphasis, was held by the
other monotheistic traditions, and it could be
envisaged that the idea that the conquests were
in some sense a manifestation of the sword of
God might easily develop independently in dif-
ferent communities. The expression would be
familiar from the Bible, where the idea occurs in
connexion with the notion of divine punish-
ment, and it could be that the Fredegar
Chronicle is merely reflecting a common view
that Byzantine defeat by the Arabs was a
punishment for the sins of the Byzantine
church. Whatever the explanation, it does not
seem legitimate to assume that ' Fredegar' is
merely reflecting Muslim tradition, particularly
since, if Rotter is right, that chronicle is con-
siderably earlier than any Muslim source.
The main concern of this book, however, is
the collection and analysis of relevant material
from the Latin sources and in this Rotter has
performed a valuable task. I am unable to judge
its comprehensiveness, but the range of material
adduced is wide and non-specialists will surely
appreciate the table of sources with details of
different editions and the bibliography of
secondary works. (Benjamin Z. Kedar's
Crusade and mission (Princeton, 1984), the early
pages of which discuss some of the same
material as Rotter, is a surprising omission from
the bibliography.) Rotter's analysis of the Latin
material is always interesting even if one does
not find some of it necessarily convincing. His
suggestions regarding the etymology and sig-
nificance of the terms Saracens and Agarenes
(p. 70, n. 10), deriving the former from Dusares/
Dhu '1-Shara and the latter from Arkhe/Petra,
do not seem any more persuasive than the
numerous other suggestions which have been
made.
G. R. HAWTING
DANIEL GIMARET: Les noms divins en
Islam: exegese lexicographique et
theologique. (Patrimoines Islam.)
448 pp. Paris: Editions du Cerf,
1988. Fr. 295.
Great claims are made for this study on its
back cover:
' . . . piety, theology and Muslim Mysticism
are essentially based upon the knowledge and
the invocation of the divine names. Until the
publication of this book, one lacked a system-
atic and detailed expose on the divine names,
on the lists of these names that are used in
prayer (and a good number of lists that are
studied in this book are still unpublished up
to this date), on the history of these lists and
terms that are made use of and their
 REVIEWS
philosophical and theological meaning. This
book is a " pillar " that has no equivalent in
the West, and in the Arab World itself, of a
complete understanding of Islam.'
Detailed this book certainly is, and its size
both formidable and impressive, by an author
whose studies to date, to my recollection, have
not hitherto been so concentrated on coming to
such close grips with so complex a volume of
Arabic material. The mastery of Gimaret in
handling technical ideas and terms have none
the less been favourably commented upon in
previous reviews in the Bulletin. In his introduc-
tion, the author makes more modest claims and
in a disarming fashion admits that his study (for
various reasons with, presumably, limitations of
length amongst them) does not discuss certain
topics.
On page 10, we are told that this book began
as a course which was taught at the Ecole
Pratique des Hautes Etudes between 1984 and
1987. The book is principally addressed to
Arabist and Islamist, ' habitue a la translitera-
tion scientifique de cette langue '. Furthermore,
the author ' ne vois pas comment un non-
arabisant absolu pourrait etre concerne par un
tel travail'. This would of course exclude the
work from being of interest to those who are
concerned with furnishing reading lists for
students who are embarking upon courses in
religious studies. The content, besides demand-
ing a good command of French, implicitly
demands a good command of Arabic. This may
explain why the bibliography is largely a list of
primary sources. Other articles and books that
touch on this theme are hidden in footnotes
during the discussion, which lasts for more than
four hundred and twenty-six pages. Gimaret
also makes it clear that the significance of the
divine names for Sufis is a subject that is largely
omitted from his discussion. It is briefly referred
to on page 23 and Ibn 'Arab! has seven lines on
page 34. Otherwise,' Un autre grief qui pourra
m'etre adresse est d'avoir pratiquement evacue
de mon etude, en depit de references nombreuse
a Qusayri et Gazali, tout l'aspect " spirituel"
mystique, et partant, peut-etre, plus authen-
tiquement " religieux" du commentaire des
noms divins. Mais ceci est voulu. Non que je
meprise la litterature soufie, bien au contraire;
mais c'est un domaine que je connais mal, oii je
me sentirais fort maladroit. II serait tres sou-
haitable qu'un jour prochain quelque chercheur
plus averti entreprenne l'analyse d'un comment-
aire de ce type, par exemple chez Ibn Barragan
ou Ibn 'Arab!' (p. 10). Instead, lexicographical
commentary furnishes the whole pivot of the
discussion. The latter is impressively and
systematically accomplished, commencing with
a survey of Arabic works which are devoted to
the theme of al-asma al-husna, the debate over
the origin and the differing approach of the
theses of qiyds and tawqif, the evidence from
hadith, the traditional lists and the Qur'an, the
problem of the order of the names and, between
chs. vii and xxiv, a thematic exegesis of the
names themselves. At the end of this detailed
and extremely informative survey there are in-
dexes of names, the Qur'anic references and
technical terms, and of persons, schools and
sundry communities.
While this is clearly not a beginner's book, it
551
is a valuable work of reference in Islamic
studies. It is solidly factual and furnishes many
interesting insights into the minutae of debate
between Muslim sects and competing commen-
tators. Considering the volume of text that has
been read and digested in order to accomplish
this study, one is affected most favourably by
the systematic rigour of the arrangement, the
density of the detail and the undoubted
thoroughness of this work.
H. T. NORRIS
EDWARD ULLENDORFF: The two
Zions: reminiscences of Jerusalem
and Ethiopia, x, 249 pp. Oxford
University Press, Oxford and New
York, 1988. £19.50.
This beautifully written and eirenic book
contains reminiscences of Edward UllendorfFs
experiences in Jerusalem and Ethiopia during a
period of just over a decade, first as an under-
graduate in the late 1930s at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, then while on war
service in Eritrea from 1941 to 1946, and finally
while employed—by the Hebrew University and
later by the Palestine Government—in
Jerusalem from 1946 to 1948. The title of the
book derives from the fact that in Ethiopian
tradition the country is known as ' the Second
Zion'. The two worlds that E.U. describes have
both now long since disappeared: the situation
in Jerusalem had already undergone dramatic
transformation by the time he returned there in
1946, while Ethiopia suffered violent and irrevo-
cable change in the events of the revolution of
1974. The narrative thread that holds this work
together comes to an end in 1948, but the
volume has been written in the light of E.U's
subsequent experiences of the people and the
places to which he refers, and in particular in
the light of return visits to Ethiopia in the
period from 1958 to early 1974.
In chapter i (of the first of the two parts into
which the book is divided) E.U. manages to
convey in a remarkable fashion what it was like
to be in Jerusalem in the late 1930s. He both
offers general reflections on the situation in
Jerusalem at that time and gives some fascinat-
ing details about his own personal life and some
impressions of the people with whom he came
into contact—officials and others who lived in
the small cluster of houses at North Talpioth
where he had his lodgings, and residents of the
nearby suburb of Talpioth whom he met from
time to time. The latter included Joseph
Klausner, M. H. Segal, Mrs. Hemdah Ben-
Yehuda, the widow of the man generally
regarded as the father of modern Hebrew, and
particularly the writer Agnon. Chapter ii is con-
cerned with the Hebrew University, which in the
late 1930s had only recently been established.
Apart from some brief observations on the
University itself, on student life in Jerusalem at
the time, and on some of his fellow undergrad-
uates (Joshua Blau, Samuel Stern, L. Kopf,
E. E. Kutscher, Yigael Yadin), the bulk of the
chapter is taken up with vignettes of J. L.
Magnes, the first President and virtual founder
of the Hebrew University, and of some of the
scholars on the staff: Leon Roth, Martin Buber,