Biographical Dictionary of the Middle East

Shimoni surely wins the prize for writing and compiling reference books dealing with Middle Eastern politics. He co-edited the fine Political Dictionary of the Middle East in the 20th Century (1972), then wrote the even better Political Dictionary of the Arab World (1987; reviewed in ORBIS, Fall, 1991); now we have his excellent Biographical Dictionary of the Middle East. The coverage extends from 1900 to the present, from Morocco to Iran, Turkey to the Sudan, with the occasional outsider included as well (T. E. Lawrence, Edward Said).

The closest approximation is Bernard Reich's Political Leaders of the Contemporary Middle East and North Africa (1990; reviewed in ORBIS, Summer 1990), but the volumes hardly compare. Reich relies on many contributors, Shimoni wrote most of the entries himself. Reich offers only 70 biographies, almost all of them well-known, Shimoni provides information on some 500 individuals, many of them little-known even to specialists (for example, Tevfiq Aras and Ahmad Muhammad Nu'man). Reich sticks to politics, while Shimoni includes cultural figures as well (Adonis and Nizar Qabbani, to name just two). Reich's contributors stick to the facts, Shimoni concisely sketches characters too (Pinhas Lavon, we learn, was "a brilliant brain within a troubled soul"). All this makes the Biographical Dictionary the best in the field.

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