This book is a powerful reading of early Islamic Iran history and the author makes a strong argument of this scope. The author is approached the question on the economic feature of the historical transformation in early Islamic Iran from a different angle. In this book, Richard Buttiet integrates technology, camel, and quantitative approach to investigates the relationship between the flourishing cotton industry (a primary basis of the ulama’s wealth) in Iran during the ninth and tenth century, Islam, and urbanization in one hand and the climate change, the industry of camel cross- breeding, and the dominance of Turkic tribes in the eleventh century on the other hand. The book consists of five chapters that covers broad- sweeping arguments and data. …show more content…
The author explains that unlike other scholars of Middle East who generally shape their argument on the individual agency like conquers, heroes, Jurists, theologian, and others, he focuses on the ordinary people who do not play active role in politic or religion. This is interesting because most written sources include only people who has agency or connected to the source of agency but people who shape the body of the community are marginalize or absent in those texts. The author, in this book invoke an innovative and painstaking approach and attempts to study those marginal people and this is one of the strength of this work. As the title of the book imply, Bulleit invokes human studies, animal studies, and environmental history method to make wide- ranging arguments that rethink scholarly understanding of the history of early Islamic