The Venture of Islam, Volume 1 : The Classical Age of Islam (Venture of Islam)

Rating:
Summary: A useful book
Review: A useful book is one wants to know history of Islam. It is by a non-muslim author but it still is useful.

Rating:
Summary: Good in its way
Review: I was referred to this series when taking a history of Classical Islamic Civilization course in college, and wanted a more detailed treatment of the material. I am not an expert by any means on Islamic civilization, but I did a fair amount of scrounging for other scholarly works on this topic, and this is the only one I came up with.

This three volume series by Marshal Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, is a remarkable effort. Writing in the 1960s, he was unsatisfied with the terminology used in Islamic studies, believing that terms like "Caliphate" and "Arab Empire" were either inexact, vague, or carried incorrect connotations. So the first part of the first volume is dedicated to his own particular vocabulary, which failed spectacularly to catch on but is useful and much more precise.

The history itself is probably the only good, in-depth survey of Islamic civilization from the years before Muhammad to current days (the 6th - 20th centuries CE, although I'm not sure how far vol. 3 actually goes). The treatment of political/economic and cultural/religious matters is comprehensive. Since the book is organized thematically within a given chronological period (a few hundred pages), it can be hard to keep track of the material as he moves back and forth, but a finger on a page with a timeline of Caliphs works well.

The writing certainly isn't going to inflame your mind, but it gets the job down relatively efficiently. A few long sentences are the only feature I remember that some people might find difficult (aside from his custom vocabulary, as I mentionned above). This would be a good work to study after a brief, readable survey and before newer works on narrower subjects. I made it about halfway through the second volume before I got distracted by something else, and had no problem getting that far.

Rating:
Summary: The best of Hodgson's 3 Volumes
Review: Marshall Hodgson's work is not necessarily for beginners. Rather than recount a straightforward narrative, he lays out a theoretical framework based on environmental zones and economic factors. In terms of the history of orientalism, this was a major contribution in that is posited a basis for Islamic history other than religion.

Of the three volumes, Volume III is largely out-dated, while Volume II has held up the best since the work's publication. Perhaps the most serious problem is that Hodgson doesn't pay much attention to the development of Islamic societies in Southeast Asia and Africa, though he does include India, a major step for the 1970's. His chapters on Sufism and literary culture are among the work's strengths.

Those interested in a serious understanding of the Islamic world will work through Hodgson at one time or another. Those wishing for a strong, more casual introduction are better off with something like Ira Lapidus's A History of Islamic Societies or The Oxford History of Islam.

Rating:
Summary: Sometimes hard going, but an important work nonetheless
Review: Marshall Hodgson, a professor at the University of Chicago, was a major 20th century scholar of Islam. His three volume history of Islamic civilization was published posthumously by the U of C Press. But, even before it came out in book form, xeroxed copies were being used as textbooks in the school's courses in Islamic Civ. That's where I first encountered it (and struggled through it) many years ago.

As other reviewers have pointed out, Hodgson is not always an easy read. His style is dense and ponderous. Nontheless, Hodgson's work was a milestone in Western scholarship about Islam and its history. He provides a wealth of information and a thorough, coherent account of the development of Islamic civilization. Unlike many books, Hodgson pays attention not just to political entities and dynasties, but also to the intellectual and artistic achievements of the societies.

Islam and things Islamic have been sorely neglected in most people's education. Even in our current post-9/11 climate, what most people know about Islam doesn't extend much beyond stereotypical (and largely inaccurate) ideas about jihad. If they're really sophisticated, they may know a little about Sufism and the mystical poetry of Rumi. But there is so much more to Islam and to Islamic civilization (if in fact one can even talk about a single Islamic civilazation). Whatever this books flaws, one could do far worse to start one's education here.

I kept my xeroxed for many years after I finished my coursework. But I finally lost them, and now I'm replacing them with the real books.

Rating:
Summary: The best of Hodgson's 3 Volumes
Review: This book's chapters are dense. Of the three volumes of The Venture of Islam, however, it is the one that has held up the best under modern scholarship.

Rating:
Summary: Impressive Scope and Insight - A Magisterial Work
Review: This review pertains to all three volumes in the Venture of Islam series.

Hogdson set himself a rather bold and difficult task: (1) to tell the story of Islam from its foundation until the mid 20th Century (2) to deal with all the lands of Islam and not just the Arabs, the Turks or the Persians (so his account does not suffer from specious generalization from one geographic area or major ethnic group to the whole) and (3) to write a comprehensive history - political, social, intellectual (to give a complete account of Islam).

By and large, Hodgson achieved his vision. The scope of his scholarship and range of his intellect is truly impressive. The work provides a very thought provoking account of the development of the Islamic world.

There are four particularly noteworthy aspects to his work:

(1) The book (like McNeill's "Rise of the West") does not address its topic in isolation, but rather shows how the major citied civilizations of the world influenced one another. This is one of the strengths of the book - placing Islam squarely within the currents of world history.

(2) This is an original, not derivative, work. It is based on an analysis of primary sources (accounts from the period he is studying) rather than a repetition of the conclusions of later Muslim or Western scholars. This results in several refreshing challenges to common "wisdom" on Islamic history.

(3) His analysis of the nature of agrarianate civilization is useful not only for understanding the development of Islam but of other civilizations as well. His discussion in Book 3 about the rise of the West and the fundamental shift from agrarian to modern technical society is particularly thought provoking.

(4) His discussion about how various groups in the Islamic world reacted to the challenge posed by overwhelming western superiority is very illuminating not only about some of the contemporary problems we face in the Middle East but in a larger sense about the reaction of other non western peoples to the West.

The book does have some drawbacks. First, its sheer bulk and discussion in detail of the various strands of civilization can be daunting and perhaps cause the reader to lose his way or interest. Second, Hodgson has a "social science" approach to writing history. What this means is that he insists on defining terms very carefully in the first 69 pages of Book I to ensure precision of meaning in their later usage. Personally, this was the most difficult part of the book for me.

As I view Amazon ratings as guides to the general non-specialist reader, I have assigned his work four stars.

For a historian of the Middle East or a university level student, this book probably would rate five stars for the sheer intellectual breadth and Hodgson's theories - which even if not accepted in whole cloth will at least spark some very serious thinking.

The non-specialist reader needs to make a real commitment in terms of attention. This is not an easy book, but if you make the effort, you will find not only your mind but also your perspective stretched.

As you consider whether to buy this book, one further thought. Hodgson died before the work was in final form. A colleague of his Reuben W. Smith, III, took time from his own scholarly pursuits to finish Hodgson's work. If you understand anything about the academic world, you will understand the sacrifice that Smith made in that "publish or perish" world. The book does not carry his name but that of Hodgson. He believed that Hodgson's ideas were worthy of transmission to the larger public. That may be reason enough to buy this magnificent work.

Rating:
Summary: Vol.2 of the finest English survey of Islamic civilization
Review: This review really applies to all three volumes. Hodgson's work is not for those new to Islamic studies, and his writing style is complex. Few are the sentences that lack at least one subjunctive clause. But his adoption of key Arabic terms in his narrative; his broad geographic sweep, from Andalusia and the Sahel through Nile and Oxus to India and Indonesia; and his comprehensive consideration of political, social, religious, cultural, and economic aspects of civilization make for a series as broad and deep as this student of history could want. It took me several years to read the whole set, as only recently did I have enough interest in the artistic and philisophic (falsafah) traditions.

Rating:
Summary: Archetypal Islamic History for Hodgson's Generation
Review: When surveys of Islam are mentioned, Hodgson's three volume work is the most formidable of the three often mentioned-the other two being either that of Lapidus or Hourani (although Hourani's history is limited to Arab history only). This first volume focuses on Hodgson's justifications for his own idiosyncratic preferences which he obviously aspired to be broadly accepted in the field as well as writing the early history of Islam through the absolutist tradition of the Abbasid dynasty. His awkward terminology has in general not been adopted although his insistence on rigor and uniformity in the transliteration of Islamic languages has become standard, and the general outlines of the history that he presents have stood the test of time. Most may leave this book behind, being bogged down in the first hundred or so pages of caveats and academic hair-splitting; however, those who persevere onwards will find the going gets better when the actual history begins wherein the analysis and information conveyed are generally profound.

Throughout Hodgson's rather phlegmatic march through the history of the central Islamic lands (being Muslim Spain, North Africa, and the lands from the Nile to the Oxus River), there is undoubtedly a dusty quality to his work that shows his methodology to be at least a generation behind the times. It is evident that he was influenced strong by the rise and fall of civilizations world history of the likes of Toynbee, and there is some indication that were it not for his untimely death that he would have wished to write just such a history. Though this is a weakness in part of his work-weak because its broad strokes necessitates a glossing over many technical and philosophical issues (the devil and often the more interesting question are in the details)-it did at it time overcome many of the faults of Orientalist scholarship of and prior to his time by integrating Islamic history in the broader streams of human civilization with antecedents and inherited legacies rather than the usual misrepresentation of Islamic civilization as sui generis.

I still recommend Lapidus over Hodgson because Lapidus is more up to date, a single volume and bibliographically also more recent, although Hodgson's work has more style and continuity and coheres better than Lapidus's disjointed text.