Review of the hardback: '... it illuminates society in Palestine during this period. This is a major work of scholarship and we should be grateful that it is now available in English.' The Times Higher Education Supplement Review of the hardback: 'Gil shows himself a master of an enormous mass of Hebrew, Arabic Judaeo-Arabic and Syriac source material, and his book is, given its bulk, clearly laid out and easy to read ...' C. Edmund Bosworth, The English Historical Review