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The Ottoman City Between East and West: Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul. By EDHEM ELDEM, DANIEL GOFFMAN, and BRUCE MASTERS. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1999. Pp. xvi + 244, illus. maps. $59.95.
In this fine volume, Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters challenge the prevalent assumptions about what characterizes an "Islamic," "Arab," or "Ottoman" city. In doing so, they reject previous models of Middle Eastern urban development, whether Weber's idea of undifferentiated Islamic cities lacking in civic culture, or the more nuanced ideas of Lapidus and Hourani, who both emphasized the importance of local notables. The authors also question the use of Arab cities as normative models for the Ottoman period, a usage dictated in part by the available sources and in part by modern nationalist sentiment. Instead of offering a new normative model for Islamic or Ottoman cities, Eldem, Goffman, and the Masters draw on the methods of American urban historians to present narrative surveys of three cities that portray complex social, economic, and cultural dynamics. The cities they chose are Aleppo (Masters), an Arab Ottoman...