Vincent Cornell's Realm of the Saint is a masterly work, indisputablyauthoritative, the result of more than twenty years of research on Sufism in Morocco andAl-Andalus. Drawing on a critical reading of a vast array of textual sources, includinghagiographies, histories, didactic treatises, devotional works, and poetry, this book brings to lightmaterial that has been virtually untouched in academic studies on Moroccan Sufism. As Cornellpoints out, Morocco has become a paradigm for the anthropological analysis of Sufism, but thevast archival resources of Morocco had been hitherto largely untouched by academicians.Through detailed analysis of the lives of many Sufi saints as presented in hagiographical literature,exploring both the ideological and sociological dimensions of sainthood in the Moroccan context,he convincingly argues that the “doctor” versus “saint” topos thatprevails in the anthropological literature does not do justice to the reality of pre-modernMoroccan Sufism. He also deconstructs the centrality of “maraboutism” andrurality in Moroccan Sufism. Cornell compares his findings with studies of saints in Europe byscholars such as Peter Brown and Thomas Heffernan, as well as with the Weberian theories ofcharismatic leadership that have prevailed among social scientists, displaying an extraordinaryrange of competence in the literature of several academic disciplines. It is a rarity to find a scholarof Cornell's deep understanding of Arabic and Islamic tradition who also places hisresearch within the broader context of the study of religion. Nevertheless, scholars outside Islamicstudies are unlikely to read this book because of its length, excessive detail, and frequent use ofArabic terms, despite the presence of a glossary of technical terms at the end of the book.