Yet another volume within the Library of Arabic Literature series by New York University in Abu Dhabi has been published. With this book, the series continues to move beyond the canonical authors of modern Arabic/Islamic studies (earlier volumes had covered many of the big names such as al-Shāfiʿī, al-Maʿarrī, al-Ṣūlī, Ibn Faḍlān and Ibn al-Jawzī) to venture into more obscure territory. The author of The Sword of Ambition, ʿUthmān al-Nābulusī (d. 660/1262), was first and foremost an administrator best known so far for his tax survey of the Fayyūm district in Egypt. Though not a work with any literary pretension, this “Doomsday Book” survey of the medieval Egyptian countryside has been crucial for our understanding of the tax system beyond Cairo and for Egypt's rural economy – superbly employed for these purposes by Yossef Rapoport in his Rural Economy project. The Sword of Ambition, in contrast, is a very different animal and here we do not see the authoritative administrator listing revenues. Rather, this is a polemic by an ousted employee using a wide range of different textual means to urge the ruler not to employ unable and corrupt administrators (especially Copts and recent Coptic converts to Islam), but rather turn to those who serve with loyalty and aptitude (especially ʿUthmān al-Nābulusī).

In his introduction, Luke Yarbrough convincingly places this text within the genre of Mirror for Princes advice literature even though it has a quite narrow thematic focus and lacks the wider ethical consideration typical of this genre. Neatly divided into four chapters the book mobilizes a wide range of material, starting with Quran and ḥadīth, but then branching out to numerous prose texts and poetry to reiterate its point as to the ruler's duty to remove those inapt for the task from office. Interestingly this material is often carelessly attributed by al-Nābulusī and the text was seemingly not written for a learned audience, but indeed for a ruler who might not have been too concerned about correct references. Al-Nābulusī presumably wrote this book (or one version of it) in c. 640/1242 after he had lost his position during a conflict with a powerful military commander over a riverfront estate in Cairo. Whether this book had its desired impact or not, al-Nābulusī quickly returned to his position and authored his Fayyūm “Doomsday Book” only three years later – a sequence sadly not fully addressed in the introduction.

In the wider context, The Sword of Ambition is part of a remarkable rise in polemics against Christian and Jewish administrators written in late Ayyubid and early Mamluk Syria and Egypt. Scholarship has known this phenomenon for a long time, but the field has so far failed to come up with a convincing explanation for it. It is thus not this book's fault that it also struggles to explain why al-Nābulusī authored it. The factors suggested range from the individualistic (embitterment over loss of influence and income) and rather broad assertions such as an “ideology of counter-Crusade” (though it is doubtful that such an “ideology” played a significant role in the late Ayyubid period).

The edition is based on the four known manuscripts of the work, which display a wide degree of textual variation and which are mostly undated. The introduction suggests that we are here dealing with manuscripts going back to multiple recensions by the author who kept reworking his text. Luke Yarbrough skilfully navigates this difficult manuscript tradition and establishes a convincing text, closely aligned with that of the Tunis manuscript most likely copied in the late Mamluk period. The orthography is standardized to Classical Arabic, which is current practice and makes for a smoother read. However, I wonder whether we should move towards editorial practices that are more faithful to the orthographic varieties present in the manuscript cultures we are working on. The critical apparatus is, seemingly in line with the series' policy, minimal, which does indeed make for a smoother read and a clearer page layout. The full critical apparatus is meant to be published on the series' website, but at the time of writing this review (June 2017) this was not available. While I see the rationale for “outsourcing” this material it seems to be quite risky to put such essential material into a rather unstable format.

The translation gives the reader a very good sense of the different linguistic levels the author employed in the course of his text. It reads smoothly (at least to a non-native speaker) and the text can very well be employed for teaching purposes. There are some minor publishing decisions which are regrettable, most notably not reproducing at least some folia of the manuscripts and the absence of an Arabic index. However, these are compensated by some very helpful supporting materials, such as the wonderful map of Ayyubid Cairo. Overall Luke Yarbrough is to be congratulated for a very fine piece of philological scholarship combining first-class edition with a wonderful translation.