The Caliphate : its .Rise, Decline, and Fall. From Original
Sources. By Sir William Muir, K.C.S.I. Third edition. (Smith, Elder, and Co. 16s.)—The third edition of Sir William Muir's history of the Caliphate is simply a reproduction of the second edition. That it should be required is not only testimony to the value of the work, but a sign of more interest in Saracenic history than was to be expected. It is, however, a really trustworthy and scholarly book, which will not be displaced by Syed Ameer Ali's recently published " Short History." The Syed's book covers wider ground, and is necessarily briefer in certain periods. Sir William Muir sticks closely to his title-subject, the Caliphate itself, and does not allow himself to diverge to the history of the numerous Mahommedan dynasties which gradually sapped the Caliph's power. His work is not a history of the Saracen Empire, but a history of the Caliphate, and principally of the early Caliphate. When we find that he gives three hundred pages to the first four Caliphs and first forty years of the Hegira, one hundred and thirty pages to the next ninety years (the great period of the Omayyads), and only one hundred and sixty pages to the five hundred years of the 'Abbasid rule, it is obvious that the latter portion of his history is considerably sacrificed to the more dramatic interest of the beginnings of Saracen empire. For the first century of Moslem rule, however, it forms (with the same author's "Annals of the Early Caliphate ") the best and most readable authority we possess, and no historical library can dispense with it.
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