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in several variants. She provided me with a stream of books and articles to read, found many unusual and unexpected sources, as well as giving me consistent encouragement. Judy Delin explained complicated ideas in linguistics with such clarity that I could understand them, plus the directness to tell me when I should not use them. Michael Rice invariably gave me good advice on the texts I sent him, from his profound knowledge of many areas of the Middle East. Finally, my father, E. Oscar Wheatcroft, has read it all, an especial labor of love given his failing eyesight. Thankfully, his critical sense is still hyperactive and he saved me from many errors, such as having my galleys rowing in reverse, the result of landlubberly ignorance. None of them bear any responsibility for the flaws that remain.

I have also made myself a nuisance to many others with naïve questions that they answered with good grace. John Drakakis, Neil Keeble, Robert Miles, David Bebbington, Mark Nixon, Oron Joffe, in particular, must have dreaded my appearing round the corner at Stirling. This is also the first book I have completed with the full availability of e-mail and the Internet. While my colleagues have had some reason for answering my questions, those thousands of miles away who had never heard of me had no reason to do so. I am thankful for the help and advice of Carter Vaughn Findley, Jonathan Bloom, Dan Goffman, Robert Michaels, Larry Wolff, David Nirenberg, and Eva Levin. Others, like Stephen Greenblatt, Roger Chartier, Thomas Emmert, Hugh Agnew, Margaret Meserve, Nancy Wingfield, and Maiken Umbach, have had the misfortune to be pinned to a wall over a conference coffee break or interrogated over dinner. From John Keegan, I have understood, over so many years, to try and see things with clarity, regardless of the “fog of battle.” It was John who suggested my first book, so my gratitude extends back a very long way. From Colin and Charlotte Franklin, I learned the importance of feeling and touching books, and amid the riches of their “book barns” at Culham, learned well. Two people have helped me with research for this book, where either I did not have the time or the languages. Lina Barouch (whom Avi Shlaim shrewdly suggested) helped me enormously by assessing Hebrew material, reading the text, and advising me on it. She has a wonderful eye both for things that don’t work and for the inspired suggestion of something that might work. Anneyce Wheatcroft has never complained about being asked to burrow in the darker and dirtier parts of libraries and archives on my behalf. She too has the instinctive sense for unlikely but invaluable material. I am very grateful to them both.

I am very grateful to all those who have helped me by pointing out mistakes in the first printing of this book, in May 2003. Rana Kabbani, Jonathan Falla, Jonathan Benthall, and John Adamson have all been kind enough not only to remind me of literals, but also to suggest where another interpretation was better than the one I had offered. I have been very happy to adopt their suggestions, and thank them both for their courtesy and their careful reading. Carol Buchalter Stapp spent hours patiently disentangling the complex issues in the last chapter: her insights have been invaluable. I also want to thank John Torpey, who has generously responded to all my questions and uncertainties concerning the same endlessly revised and updated chapter.

Writing a book like this, which ranges over so many disparate areas and subjects, makes a real imposition on your friends. Rosemarie Morgan bore the brunt of the first phases. She smoothed access at Yale, provided endless hospitality, and employed an incisive critical pencil. Without her help, this book would have been much harder to write. John Brewer and Stella Tillyard have been the best friends (and hosts) anyone could have, in Florence and in Oxford. They have also contributed more to this book, from what they have written, from conversations, or from chance asides, than they could ever have realized. So too have Fuad Qushair