596 Reviews Carl F. Petry, The Criminal Underworld in a Medieval Islamic Society. Narratives from Cairo and Damascus under the Mamluks, Chicago: The Center for Middle Eastern Studies 2012. (Chicago Studies on the Middle East, 9). ISBN: 978-0-9708199-8-7 / Bernadette Martel-Thoumian, Délinquance et ordre social. L’état mamlouk syro-égyptien face au crime à la fin du IXe – XVe siècle, Bordeaux : Ausonius Éditions 2012. (Scripta Mediaevalia 21). ISBN : 978-2- 35613-065-5. Reviewed by Albrecht Fuess, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Marburg, Germany, albrecht.fuess@staff.uni-marburg.de https://doi.org/10.1515/islam-2017-0041 “It Takes Two to Tango”: Double Crime (Re-)Search in the Mamluk Empire In 1981 Carl Petry published his “The Civilian Elite of Cairo in the Later Middle Ages”. Around ten years later Bernadette Martel-Thoumian followed up with her book “Les civils et l’administration dans l’etat militaire mamluk (IXe/XVe siecle)”. Since then these two authors, who, according to reliable sources, have never met in person, have worked on such closely related topics of society and institutions of the Mamluk realm, especially in the fifteenth century, that studies of criminal wrongdoing became inevitable. In 2012, within several months, each of them published a monograph dealing with crime and punishment in the Mamluk Empire. Such suspicious circum- stances turn the reviewer into a criminal investigator, charged first of all with finding out who copied from whom. However, after thorough research the present detective has to acknowledge that there is no plagiarism involved, at least nothing which can be detected with today’s technology. But for now, it just seems that two scientific minds exploring the same research area have discovered the same topic at about the same time. After all there is some logic to it, as both in the last decades moved from the study of civil administration to the judiciary, thereby discovering corruption and fraud, cul- minating in obvious crime. Put differently: When you deal with issues of public administration your hands get dirty quickly. However, what both authors have analyzed and presented in their respective works are in fact sound examples of historical writing. The scope of their analy- sis differs, making it worthwhile to read them together in order to obtain a more complete picture of the Mamluk crime scene. Bereitgestellt von | Philipps-Universitätsbibliothek Marburg Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 01.11.17 13:10