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Cities and Saints: Sufism and the Transformation of Space in Medieval Anatolia. By ETHEL SARA WOLPER. Buildings, Landscapes, and Societies Series, 3. University Park, Pennsylvania: PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2003. Pp. xviii + 134. $60.
Ethel Sara Wolper's new book is a beautiful volume, done in large format on glossy paper, with two columns of text on each page, several maps, and many black-and-white photographs. In conventional format, her text would probably run to about two hundred pages.
Wolper seeks to demonstrate that sufi architecture, particularly dervish lodges, transformed the urban landscape of Anatolia in the aftermath of the 1240 Baba Rasul revolt, in which a combination of Turcomans, sufis, and Christians rebelled against the Rum Seljuk sultan Kaykhusrau II, and the 1243 Mongol defeat of the Seljuks at Kose Dag. In a period of wrenching demographic change, she argues, the dervish lodge integrated urban populations and acclimated them to urban Muslim life. The book is divided into three main parts: "Buildings and Religious Authority in Medieval Anatolia," "Dervish Lodges and Urban Spaces," and "Audiences and Dervish Lodges." It focuses on the northcentral Anatolian cities of Amasya, Tokat, and Sivas without, however, offering a compelling justification for this...