Book Reviews : FRANCIS ROBINSON, The 'Ulama of Farangi Mahall and Islamic Culture in South Asia, Delhi, Permanent Black, 2001, pp. 267

This volume will be of interest to anyone concerned with the role of the traditionally educated Islamic leadership, the ’lama, in colonial India. It is comprised of eight articles, of which one, &dquo;Abd al-Bari and the Events of January 1926’, is new to this volume; the others were published between 1984 and 1997. Five of the articles focus on the Lucknow-based Farangi Mahalli family of llama. For these Robinson utilises official sources as well as the rich sources of family memory and written records, including a short-lived journal and Urdu biographies and biographical dictionaries composed in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Three of the articles have a larger focus. One deals with India as part of a larger ’PersoIslamic’ cultural area. Another compares the roles of the lama in Dutch Indonesia and British India. The third identifies the shared scholarly and mystical worlds of the early modern Muslim empires. The studies are informed by the great breadth and learning Robinson has honed over the years, not only through his specialised research on modern Indian history, but also through his production of two excellent encyclopaedic works, the Atlas of the Islamic World since 1500 ( 1980) and the Cambridge Illustrated History of the Islamic World (1997). The articles on Farangi Mahall deal with the family’s intellectual and spiritual role, the institutions that supported them, and their activities as leading national political figures in the decade after the First World War. Although present in India since the early years of the Delhi Sultanate, Farangi Mahallis emerged as intellectual leaders in the early eighteenth century. Early in the century, they received