gangrene of the extremities. This was most likely Buerger's disease, which is known to afflict Ashkenazi male Jews, rather than Raynaud's Disease, which is more prevalent in women. It is highly likely that Essad Bey denied his Jewish ancestry to doctors who were treating him, which led to the misdiagnosis of Raynaud's instead of Buerger's. Little was known in the early 1940s about Buerger's disease, especially that the disease could be reversed if the patient stopped smoking. Essad Bey, who was known to be a heavy smoker, died a painful death at the age of 36. Islam Nussimbaum had a romantic view of Islam, seeing it as part of the grand cultural heritage of "the East", to which he felt connected through his Jewish heritage, and a bulwark against the evils of Western modernity and Bolshevism. Writing about his childhood in Azerbaijan, he notes the emotional response he had in looking at the old palaces in Baku: I saw the broad expanse of the sandy Arabian desert, I saw the horsemen, their snow-white burnooses billowing in the wind, I saw the flocks of prophets praying towards Mecca and I wanted to be one with this wall, one with this desert, one with this incomprehensible, intricate script, one with the entire Islamic Orient, which in our Baku had been so ceremoniously carried to the grave, to the victorious drumbeats of European culture.... Throughout my entire childhood, I dreamed of the Arabic edifices every night... I do know that it was the most powerful, most formative feeling of my life. Confusion surrounds the details of Essad Bey's conversion to Islam. There are at least three accounts that attempt to explain his alleged conversion: (1) When Essad Bey was 17 years old, he officially obtained a certificate of conversion as "document of proof" in a declaration to Imam Hafiz Shuku (1871-1924) of the former Ottoman Embassy in Berlin on August 13, 1922. (2) However, later accounts circulated that Essad Bey did not convert to Islam but simply reclaimed his religious identity since he had been born a Muslim. (3) Essad Bey converted to Islam along with his family when he was eight years old. In 1924 in Berlin, Nussimbaum helped found an Islamic student group Islamia, where he met other Muslims: Arabs, Turks, Iranians, Afghans and Indians, as well as converts like himself. They "spoke out about the wretched situation of Muslims in