In 1968 the first international conference on Shiism took place in Strasbourg. Organized by Robert Brunschvig and Toufic Fahd, some of the leading scholars on Islam and Imāmī Shiism of that era were gathered together. Two years later, the proceedings of this conference were published in Paris. Forty years later, Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi from École Pratique des Hautes Études at the Sorbonne and Meir M. Bar-Asher and Simon Hopkins from the Hebrew University brought together a number of current experts on Islam and Shiism to publish a Festschrift in honour of Etan Kohlberg, one of today's leading experts on (classical) Shiite Islam, marking the fortieth anniversary of the anthology published in 1970. Because Le Shīʿisme imāmite quarante ans après is a hommage à Etan Kohlberg, it begins with a laudation by Frank H. Stewart, including Kohlberg's biography and emphasizing his scholarly achievements, as well as a list of publications. Although this anthology offers at least a partial representation of the state of the art of modern “Western” research on Shiism, many experts on and topics regarding Shiism are missing. Not all of the contributors are experts in Shiite Islam, a consequence of the book's character as a Festschrift which gathers together friends and colleagues closely connected with Etan Kohlberg. What we have here is a very fine volume presenting a collection of excellent articles regarding different aspects of Shiism and its development through the ages. The contributions are written in either English or French; unlike the 1970 publication there are no contributions in German. Contributors were free to choose their own system of transcription/transliteration and, as should be the case in a scholarly work, they all opted for diacritics.

Most readers will probably not read the entire book (although this is highly recommended) but pick out those articles which appeal to their individual scholarly interests. Therefore, an impression of the various subjects attended to in this anthology is given here. Several of the twenty-one contributions deal with individual Shiite scholars, some of them still little known, who lived between the eighth and fifteenth centuries and who are renowned either for their collections of hadiths (Amir-Moezzi on the Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays; Ansari on the Kitāb an-Nubūwa by ash-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq/Ibn Bābūya), their esoteric writings (Lory on Rajab Borsī), their collections of akhbār and fictional writings (Madelung on Sayf b. ʿUmar), their anti-philosophical stance (Schmidtke on a manuscript consisting of writings by the Banū al-ʿAwd), or their treatises explaining the causes of various aspects of life (Vilozny on the Kitāb al-ʿIlal by Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Barqī). Shiite scholars living and working in the Safavid realm, their impact and theological thoughts are discussed by three authors: Jambet, who reflects on Mullā Ṣadrā's views on tauḥīd; Newman, who concentrates on Bāqir al-Majlesī including the Risāla al-dhahabiyya (allegedly composed by the eighth imam) in his Biḥār al-Anwār; and Devin Stewart, who analyses three polemical exchanges between Ottoman diplomats and Shiite scholars at the Safavid court – a contribution that also relates to Sunni–Shiite controversies. In his contribution, Capezzone disputes the thesis that the Sunnite madrasa took the place of the Shiite dār al-ʿilm when the Saljuqids replaced the Buyids as de facto rulers in the Abbasid Empire. Another subject under consideration is the relationship between Twelver Shiism, Ismailism and the Nuṣayrī-ʿAlawiyya. Bar-Asher sheds light on the rapport between the Nuṣayrī-ʿAlawiyya and Twelver Shiism from the ninth century until Ḥāfiẓ al-Asad's coup d'état in Syria in 1970; Daftary shows how al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān created Ismaili law and points to its links with Zaydite and Twelver Shiite rulings; De Smet looks at Adam as first prophet and legislator in early Ismaili thinking. Taking another subject from the vast pool of issues regarding Shiite Islam, Brunner illustrates the importance of dreams in nineteenth-century Shiite thought as a bond between individuals of the past (not least the imams) and the present (mainly Shiite jurists). In relation to the jihād theories of early Qajar jurists, Gleave focuses on the work of the Akhbārī Mīrzā Muḥammad and his short Persian essay Kitāb al-jihād. Crone goes back to the Islamic source per se and analyses how exegetes of diverse times and creeds tried to understand and interpret Quran 2.256 (lā ikrāha fī al-dīn). Venturing into the modern world, she explores how Sunni modernists and Islamists cope with the verse and those parts of the tradition that contradict the reading of the verse as a grant of religious freedom, and how a modern historian might read it. Three articles deal explicitly with Shiite–Sunnite controversies: Hakim takes a closer look at how Abū Bakr and ʿUmar are viewed by Sunnites (the question of the ʿUmarān) and Shiites; Ende discusses twentieth-century Shiite thoughts on rapprochement (taqrīb) in relation to the third shahāda added to the adhān by Twelver Shiites; and Litvak considers internet sources to examine current anti-Shiite polemics. Finally, yet importantly, the three remaining contributions attend to political developments in nineteenth–twenty-first century Iran and Iraq. As Nakash demonstrates in his contribution, the Shiite revolt of 1920 should be considered when discussing the highly contested subject of power sharing in today's Iraq. Arjomand analyses Shiite constitutionalism as it developed in the theological setting in Iran beginning with the Constitutional Revolution, and its different stages throughout the twentieth century. Finally, Richard gives a chronological overview of the life and intellectual development of Mojtahed Shabestarī, one of the most interesting thinkers in contemporary Iran.

All contributions to the anthology presented to Etan Kohlberg are worthy of detailed review. Since this cannot be done here, it is left to the scholarly community to appraise each one appropriately.