A consideration of the contemporary musical soundscape in Syria provides unique insights into how Syrians of multiple classes and generations discriminate between critical points in their own past, who they perceive they are today, and how they might think about their future. This review, based on fieldwork in Syria conducted between 1997 and 2001, suggests that people in Syria can use music to negotiate the following complex issues: 1) the struggle between an identity rooted in the modern nation-state of Syria and one rooted in the more traditional concept of ‘Bilad al-Sham’ (roughly ‘the lands governed from Damascus,’ a region that included all of modern Lebanon, as well as portions of Turkey, Palestine, and Jordan); 2) the struggle between a Syrian identity and an Arab identity; and 3) the maintenance of a strongly Arab and necessarily anti-Western canon.

“But You Might Discover Secrets that we don’t know we have,” he said with unmistakable irony. He knew that my project, concerning museums of a century ago, would most likely not uncover any deep dark secrets, much less any that would fall within the realm of any legal statute of limitations. And yet he also knew that there are few statutes of limits when it comes to the patrimony of cultural property, a patrimony which, as Turkish museum administrator, is his to protect in the name of the state and in the name of its citizens—and even to protect from those citizens, of which I am one. Yet in the supposition that I would most likely not uncover any secrets, and in full consciousness of the irony of his statement, he would still not allow me, an ‘outsider,’ free access to documents, in this case uncatalogued and as yet unseen, and which nonetheless I had designated as mine through their proximity to my project. The limits of my access were as arbitrary, by some standards, as the limits of my project: as many documents from century-old registers as I could list on two sides of a blank page. “Can I write extra small?” I asked, and we laughed in complicity, even though this time it was I who was fully conscious of the irony that the limits on these documents were not good news for my project, yet that his assertion of control provided one of the most important insights around my research: the nature of possession and the economy of a ‘free’ flow of information.

Dr. Ebrahim Yazdi, who played a pivotal role in the Iranian revolution of 1979, and who is today a leading figure among Iran’s liberal political dissidents, visited the US in early November 2000 and spoke at several American universities, including Ohio State University. During his visit, we hosted a small reception for Dr. Yazdi at a home in central Ohio and had the opportunity of engaging him in an extended conversation about the events of the revolution, his personal relationship with the Ayatollah Khomeini, his views on the current political situation in Iran, and his thoughts on the future of Iran’s relationship with the US.

It is with great sadness that I review this wonderful work because its author, Charles Issawi, is no longer with us; this was the final book he published before he died. The nine articles that comprise the volume were all written during the last two decades of his life. Even though many were published in various journals and edited volumes, as collected together here, they reveal the depth and breadth of knowledge of this most distinguished scholar.