John Waldridge, The Leaven of the Ancients: Suhrawardi and the Heritage of the Greeks, SUNY Series in Islam (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999). Pp. 323

In the Leaven of the Ancients, John Walbridge studies the appropriation of non���Peripatetic philosophical ideas by an anti���Aristotelian Islamic philosopher, Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi (d. 1191). He proposes a comprehensive explanation of the origin of Suhrawardi's philosophical system, a revival of the ���wisdom of the Ancients��� and its philosophical affiliations ���grounded��� in Greek philosophy (p. xiii). Walbridge attempts to uncover the reasons for Suhrawardi's rejection of the prevailing neo���Aristotelian synthesis in Islamic philosophy, Suhrawardi's knowledge and understanding of non���Aristotelian Greek philosophy, the ancient philosophers Suhrawardi was attempting to follow, the relationship between Suhrawardi's specific philosophical teachings (logic, ontology, physics, and metaphysics), and his understanding of non���Aristotelian ancient philosophy and the relationship between Suhrawardi's system and the major Greek philosophers, schools, and traditions���in particular the Presocratics, Plato, and the Stoics (p. 8). Copyright �� 2003 Cambridge University Press