Book plug
Sir: I do not know all the foreign scholars that perplexed Paul Johnson in his review of the Braudel book (Books, 26 February), but I do know Louis Massignon. His doc- toral thesis on the Sufi mystic Mansur al- Hallaj, who was executed in Baghdad in 922, was published in 1922 as La passion de Hussayn ibn Mansur Hallaj and does not, I think, exist in English translation. Unlike, for example, Edward Said's Orientalism, it is not an easy book, but also, unlike Mr Said's essay, it is a great masterpiece; perhaps the greatest meditation on Islam ever to be published in Christendom. I recommend it to Mr Johnson and to all Spectator readers who have French.
Massignon's relations with T.E. Law- rence are beautifully discussed in Albert Hourani's recent book of essays, Islam in European Thought (Cambridge University Press, 1991).
James Buchan
37 Gloucester Crescent, London NW1
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