Der reine Gottesglaube: Das Wort des Einheitsbekenntnisses by Richard GramlichReview by: Annemarie SchimmelJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 110, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1990), p. 173Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/603988 .

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Brief Reviews of Books 173

This book makes clear to us the very precise barrier an ecosphere produces. Iran is the natural limit in the east for this study since in the Subcontinent species change enor- mously. Not many Indian birds move to the west and the bay-backed shrike, for instance, is one of the few species that spends the summer in the Middle East, and the winter in India. But just as there is some pressure on the eastern Middle East by Indian birds, so in North Africa there is avian pressure from equatorial Africa. And it is for this reason that one would question the validity (though not the convenience) of arranging a bird book according to the religion of the people who inhabit those lands. Though the grouping "Middle East" suits the framework of our tradi- tional thinking, it is puzzling to our scientific minds. Iran and Morocco have their ecological differences.

We are aware of the changes of earlier ranges. The rose- colored starling has retreated to northern Iran and Soviet Central Asia. Yet a hundred years ago this bird was in great abundance throughout the Middle East. In a passage from Ibis (1882), Canon Tristan comments on the rose-colored starling: "I came across marvelous flights of this bird in northern Syria. . . near the ancient Larissa, in countless myriads, all traveling westward.... The locusts were there, and on one occasion we rode over some acres alive with young locusts, which absolutely carpeted the whole surface. One of these flocks suddenly alighted, like a vast fan dropping on the earth and dappled it with black and pink. soon they rose again. We returned and not a trace of locusts could we find."

There are a few complaints which must be registered. One cannot go directly from picture to text since page references are only from text to picture. The birds in a single plate are not always drawn to scale, nor do the plates consistently follow phylogenetic order (nightjars, for instance, are placed with thrushes). And the plates too often tell too little of the story: the booted and olivaceous warblers differ in the plates only in that one faces to the left, and the other faces to the right.

JOHN A. C. GREPPIN

CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY

Der reine Gottesglaube: Das Wort des Einheitsbekenntnisses. By RICHARD GRAMLIcH.Veroffentlichungen der Orienta- lischen Kommission, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, Band 34. Wiesbaden: FRANZ STEINER

VERLAG, 1983. DM 24.

In this small book, Richard Gramlich offers the first translation of the treatise At-tajrrd f T kalimat at-tawhi-d by Ahmad Ghazzali, the younger brother of Abti Hamid al- Ghazzali, a man noted for his sermons and for his subtle

Sawdnih, reflections on love (which were translated by Gramlich in 1976). Although Ahmad Ghazzali has been accused of giving Satan a most positive place in his thought, this claim certainly cannot be substantiated by this book, which is a straightforward explanation of the secrets of the profession of faith, Ia ildha illi'lldh as it is realized in ever deeper layers of the heart, soul, and sirr, the innermost core of the heart. Its message is that everything is created for man, and man for the recognition of God's unity as it is expressed in the shahada. Ahmad Ghazzali built up his argument with Qur'anic quotations, leading the reader back to the Day of the Primordial Covenant (Sura 7/171), when some souls replied to the divine address "Am I not your Lord?" happily and joyfully, and others only reluctantly; thus, the two groups upon whom divine mercy (fadi) and divine justice ('adl) were to operate later became separated still in pre-eternity. The profession of God's unity is indeed the beginning and end of human existence, as the author argues with more than a dozen quotations from the Qur'an, proving that the shahada is the "good tree" and the word of true prayer, the divine promise and the firm fortress. In several places the reader finds parallels to Riimi's H MT ma

fThl, which is natural, since Rimi's father belonged to the silsila of Ahmad Ghazzali. It should have been mentioned in a footnote that two of the quoted verses are by al-Hallaj or at least very close to his poetry.

The book is a welcome addition to our knowledge of mystical interpretations of tawhJd, and we are grateful to the translator for making it available from four manuscripts (three of them in Berlin, one in the India Office).

ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Abut Kalam Azad: An Intellectual and Religious Biography. By IAN HENDERSON DOUGLAS. Ed. by GAIL MINAULT AND

CHRISTIAN W. TROLL. Delhi: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS,

1988. Pp. xi + 358. Rs 190, $27.50.

This book appears at just the right moment, that is, on the hundredth birthday of Abul Kalam Azad, a Muslim leader of India who was, as the author emphasizes, "hard to understand." It is perhaps for this reason that Douglas's Oxford dissertation remained unpublished for two decades, until it was carefully edited and updated in the light of more recent research. The book offers a biography of Azad, born in 1888 in Mecca, where his family had settled after the "Mutiny" of 1857; he grew up in Calcutta in a family of spiritual leaders. His theological concepts were reflected in his widely read journal, al-Hilal. Azad became active in politics, was several times confined in prison and, believing in the unity of India, adamantly opposed the idea of the

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