Cambridge Middle East Library – serie

On 31 July 1988 King Hussain of Jordan renounced all administrative and legal ties with the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the River Jordan, initiating a turning point in the Middle East peace process. In this study, Madiha Madfai explores Jordan's role in the USA's peacemaking efforts during the Carter, Reagan and Bush administrations. She examines the events culminating in the action of 1988 and convincingly demonstrates a history of anger, anguish and frustration with the Middle East peace process that lay behind the Jordanian decision. Dr Madfai also assesses the effects the American-Jordanian relationship had on stability in the Middle East.

This book is about the land and people of parts of the interior of Syria and Jordan. At the beginning of the nineteenth century most of the people were nomads and only a small proportion of the land was cultivated. Today nomads are few, peasants are numerous and nearly all the land that will bear a crop is under cultivation. This study shows how the present situation came about as the state extended and strengthened its hold on the countryside, the economy of the country developed, landlords and peasants took up hitherto uncultivated land and nomads settled down to become farmers. The concluding chapters discuss the effects of population growth, mechanised farming and overgrazing on the semi-arid environment and its inhabitants. Norman Lewis combines geographical, historical and ethnographical material derived from an immense variety of sources, including unpublished manuscripts and fieldwork undertaken over a period of forty years.

The Azerbaijan crisis of 1946 represented a landmark in the early stages of the Cold War and played a major role in shaping the future course of Iran's political development. In this book, originally published in 1992, Louise Fawcett presents a comprehensive study of the five-year struggle for control of Iran which culminated in the crisis of 1946. Dr Fawcett examines both the Iranian domestic scene and the role played by the three great powers. She explores the causes, course and consequences of the Azerbaijan crisis from an Iranian perspective. Dr Fawcett then argues that the Iranian crisis was a far more complex affair than was once realised. It brought into play the competitive and often conflicting relationship between not only the United States and the former Soviet Union, but also between Britain and these two superpowers. This study is firmly located within the extensive international relations literature of the Cold War. Iran and the Cold War is an ideal text for students and specialists of both international relations and Middle East studies.

Essaouira was founded n 1764 by Sultan Sidi Muhammad b. Abdullah as his port for developing trade with Europe. Through a group of Jewish middlemen, it served as a link between Europe, Morocco and su-Saharan Africa. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries its fame rivalled Tripoli, Tunis and Algiers. Based on extensive untapped archive in Morocco, papers of Jewish merchant houses and consular records of Britain, France and the United States, this book gives an account of the city in its heyday. Essaouira was an opening to foreign penetration, but it was also important to the Moroccan government, because potentially dissident regions became tied to its commercial and political activities. The control of the sultans was undermined as foreign powers imposed liberal trade and intervened in Moroccan affairs. This study of a specific city and region throws light on the problems of traditional societies in the age of European economic imperialism.

At the core of this book is an attempt to explain a conflict in Oman in the 1950s and 1960s between two claimants to authority: the Imam of the Ibadi sect in the interior and the Sultan with his capital at Muscat on the coast. The crisis, precipitated by two rival oil companies, acquired wider dimensions because the Sultan was supported by the British, whilst the Imam was eventually backed by Saudi Arabia. In his analysis of the roots of this conflict John Wilkinson traces the themes of regional identity, tribal organization and political authority over some 1200 years of history in south-eastern Arabia. The constitution of the Imamate has periodically unified the tribes of central Oman into a form of statehood capable of creating an overseas empire. But in spite of the accruing wealth, notably from Eastern Africa in the nineteenth century, the institutions necessary for permanent government were never created.

Originally published in 1987, this book examines the consequences of the nineteenth-century economic penetration of Europe into the Ottoman Empire. Professor Pamuk makes subtle use of a very wide range of sources encompassing the statistics of most of the European countries and Ottoman records not previously tapped for this purpose. His economic and quantitative analysis established the long-term trends of Ottoman foreign trade and European investment in the Empire. The later chapters focus on the commercialisation of agriculture and the decline as well as the resistance of handicrafts. Geographically, most of the volume focuses on the area within the 1911 borders of the Empire - Turkey, northern Greece, Greater Syria and Iraq. Professor Pamuk compares the relationship of the Ottoman Empire to the world economy with that of other parts of the non-European world and concludes that the two distinguishing features of the Ottoman case were the environment of Great Power rivalry and the ability of the government to react against European pressures.

Womanpower unveils the lively but little-reported debate on women's position in the modern Arab world. It paints a picture drawn from individual stories as well as from national development programmes and attempts to explain why the process of social change in the region has been slow and uneven by linking it to political and economic developments. By illustrating particular themes - personal status laws, development policies, political rights - with examples from specific countries, Nadia Hijab builds up an informative overview of the Arab world today. The title sums up the two-pronged approach: the process of integrating women into the modern work-force and of empowering them to enjoy equal rights and opportunities. The book argues that those seeking equal rights for Arab women cannot isolate this aim from the search to liberate Arab potential and resources and for democratic political systems. The Arab world is a region in search of an identity. The book discusses the differing views of liberals and conservatives, most of whom are concerned that Arab identity be developed in an indigenous context rather than by slavish imitation.

This is a comprehensive political analysis of the PLO. A correspondent in Beirut from 1976 to 1981, Helena Cobban has been able to study developments at close quarters and use documentary sources and first-hand recollections which have never been included in previous Western analyses of the movement. The book maintains that one key to understanding the development of the PLO is an examination of the development of its predominant member-group, Al-Fateh. The first part focuses on the history of Fateh, showing how its interests and the PLO's became intertwined. The latter part discusses the interrelations between the Fateh leadership and various factors which affect and are affected by its performance, such as the internal Palestinian opposition, the Arab milieu, and the resistance movement inside the Israeli-occupied areas. The final chapter draws together all the strands to arrive at the precise sources of the Fateh leadership's relative stability, as well as to assess its effectiveness in key areas of its operations.

This account of Egyptian society in the reign of Muhammad Ali traces the beginnings of the nation state in Egypt. It considers Muhammad Ali as part of a social group whose economic interests led them in the direction of trade with Europe as a means of raising money for further investments. They attempted to increase agricultural exports and to use the profits to create industry; then, following the logic of imperialists, their next step was to seek to conquer the surrounding areas to find markets for their industries and sources of raw materials. These policies brought them into conflict with their suzerain, the Ottoman sultan, and with England, since England needed markets in the Middle East. England sought to destroy the new regime in Egypt as a means of exerting influence on the region. In carrying out these economic changes, the country underwent a series of internal developments that were to revolutionize the structure and shape of Egyptian society. The rules of landownership were altered and large estates were formed, Egyptian fallahin were drafted into the army, and the administration was Egyptianized, establishing the groundwork for a nation state.

The protracted Arab-Israeli war and the central importance of security to Israel have given a major role to senior military personnel. Yoram Peri, a former adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, demonstrates in this book that state control over the military in Israel has been weak, and a pattern of civil-military partnership has emerged. This changing relationship involved the inner rivalries of Israel's Labour Party in particular. Clashes and accommodation between the politicians and military leaders are traced through the changing Governments from Ben Gurion to Begin, and, finally, Dr Peri examines the situation in Israel in the 1980s. Dr Yoram Peri was European representative of the Israeli Labour Party. He completed his doctorate at the London School of Economics.

The nineteenth century in Egypt was a period of rapid social and economic change, brought about by the country's developing ties with the European economy. Focusing on lower-class women, this study traces changes in the work role and family life of peasant women in the countryside and craftswomen and traders in Cairo, and explores the world of the slave woman. The effects of capitalist transformation on women are studied in detail, using material from the Islamic court records. The effects of the Egyptian process of state formation and colonial rule are discussed: the growth of the state apparatus, its social services and repressive means, brought new kinds of intervention into women's lives. The book provides a unique account of the very active economic, social and political roles of nineteenth-century women, from the peasant and street pedlar to the slave of the harem.

This book challenges the assumption that men write of war, women of the hearth. The Lebanese war has seen the publication of many more works of fiction by women than by men. Miriam Cooke has termed these women the Beirut Decentrists, as they are decentred or excluded from both literary canon and social discourse. Although they may not share religious or political affiliation, they do share a perspective, which holds them together. The author traces the transformation in consciousness that has taken place among women who observed and recorded the progress towards chaos in Lebanon. During the so-called 'two-year' war of 1975-6 little comment was made about those (usually men in search of economic security) who left the saturnalia of violence, but with time attitudes changed. Women became aware that they had stayed out of a sense of responsibility for others and that they had survived. Consciousness of survival was catalytic: the Beirut Decentrists began to describe a society that had gone beyond the masculinisation normal in most wars and achieved an almost unprecedented fernininisation. Emigration, the expected behaviour for men before 1975, was rejected. Staying, the expected behaviour for women before 1975, became the sine qua non for Lebanese citizenship. The writings of the Beirut Decentrists offer hope of a way out of the anarchy. If men and women could espouse the Lebanese women's sense of responsibility, the energy that had fuelled the unrelenting savagery could be turned to reconstruction. But that was before the invasion of 1982.

In this new edition, Olivier Roy expands his penetrating study of the history, ideology and structures of the Afghan resistance movement to mid-1989. He examines the evolution of the military and political situation inside Afghanistan during the last years of the Soviet presence and discusses relations between the Afghan resistance and the Islamic fundamentalist movement. The situation created by the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan is also explored, and in a new conclusion Professor Roy assesses to what extent the war has altered the traditional fabric of Afghan society.

King Abdullah played an active role in the partition of Palestine and, as a result, has always been viewed as one of the most controversial figures in modern Middle East history. This book is the first in-depth study of the historical and personal circumstances that made him so. Born in Mecca in 1882 of a family that traced its lineage to the Prophet Muhammad, Abdullah belonged to the Ottoman ruling elite. He grew up in Istanbul and returned to Mecca when his father was appointed Sharif in 1908. During the First World War he earned nationalist credentials as a leader of the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Owing to his alliance with Britain in the revolt, he emerged afterwards as a contender for power in a Middle East now dominated by Britain. Despite grandiose ambitions, Abdullah ended up as Britain's client in the mandated territory of Transjordan. His dependence on Britain was exacerbated by his situation in Transjordan, an artificial creation with no significant cities, no natural resources, and little meaning beyond its importance to British strategy. Within the constraints of British interests, it was left to Abdullah to make something of his position, and he spent the remainder of his life looking beyond Transjordan's borders for a role, a clientele, or a stable balance of interests which would allow him a future independent of British fortunes. He found all three after 1948 when, in conjunction with the creation of Israel, he came to rule the portion of Palestine known as the West Bank.

On 31 July 1988 King Hussain of Jordan renounced all administrative and legal ties with the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the River Jordan, initiating a turning point in the Middle East peace process. In this study, Madiha Madfai explores Jordan's role in the USA's peacemaking efforts during the Carter, Reagan and Bush administrations. She examines the events culminating in the action of 1988 and convincingly demonstrates a history of anger, anguish and frustration with the Middle East peace process that lay behind the Jordanian decision. Dr Madfai also assesses the effects the American-Jordanian relationship had on stability in the Middle East.

This book uncovers the rich, fascinating and complex world of Ottoman manufacturing and manufacturers in the age of the European industrial revolution. Using a wealth of sources from Ottoman, European and American archives, Professor Donald Quataert explores the technological methods of producing cotton cloth, wool cloth, yarn and silk, how these changed throughout the nineteenth century, the organisation of home and workshop production and trends in the domestic and international markets. By focusing on textile manufacturing in homes and small workshops, the author reveals a dynamism that refutes traditional notions of a declining economy in the face of European expansion. He shows how manufacturers adopted a variety of strategies, such as reduced wages and low technology inputs, to confront European competitors, protect their livelihoods and retain domestic and international customers.

This book asks why in recent years the social and economic upheavals in Kuwait and Qatar have been accompanied by a remarkable political continuity. Professor Crystal investigates this apparent anomaly by examining the impact of oil on the formation and destruction of political coalitions and state institutions. Partly based on a year's fieldwork in the Gulf and making full use of Arabic and Gulf sources, Oil and Politics in the Gulf goes far beyond previously published accounts of the region in its analysis of the effects of oil on domestic politics.

The End of Empire in the Middle Eastis an original and perceptive study of Britain's withdrawal from her last Arab dependencies - the Sudan in 1956, South West Arabia in 1967 and the Gulf in 1971 - based upon a combination of first hand experience and extensive research. Glen Balfour-Paul opens by outlining Britain's position in the Middle East at the end of the Second World War. He then presents in three separate chapters a detailed account of the forces that culminated in withdrawal from each of the countries. In the final chapters, the author compares and contrasts the three episodes in terms of Britain's evolving attitude to empire, public pressures from within and outside the territories, the tensions that arose between policy makers in London and those executing their decisions, attitudes of British officials to their task and the political and economic aftermath of independence.

In 1962, after the war of independence, the new rulers of Algeria inherited a country which had both the manpower and the financial resources needed for development, because of its reserves of oil and natural gas. During the last 26 years there have been discussions and experiments revolving around two problems: whether the economy should be controlled by the government or should be one in which private enterprise (the multi-national companies and their local agents) play a larger part; and whether the main emphasis of economic policy should be on heavy industry or on agriculture and consumer industries. This book gives a detailed account of the discussions and changes of policy and analyses the experiments and their results. Dr Bennoune argues that the rapid development of basic industries provides the only path by which countries in the Third World can hope to attain real independence, and that this policy demands a degree of public participation that only a democratic government can generate.

Jordan was the most deeply affected of all the Arab nations by Israel's victory in the 1967 war, in which huge tracts of Arab land, including the West Bank, Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights, came under Israel's control. Yet this is the first study to consider the war from the Jordanian perspective. It analyses the reasons for Jordan's unreserved and, to many, unexpected participation and provides a detailed description of the dramatic three days of war, including an analysis of the effects of Egyptian control of the Jordanian-Israeli border. Samir Mutawi's use of interviews with surviving Jordanian participants - politicians, military commanders, intelligence personnel and, most importantly, King Hussein - as well as Jordanian army records and books and memoirs in Arabic provides a new perspective on the war and on Jordan's position in the immediate post-war period.

Severe epidemics of plague, cholera, and typhus swept across Tunisia between the years 1780 and 1900. The society was galvanized into action: medical practitioners, religious authorities, and political leaders all tried to deal with the deadly crises. Muslims had, over many centuries, evolved ideas concerning the origin, prevention, and treatment of epidemic diseases that differed somewhat from those of their European counterparts. With European economic and political expansion that accelerated after the Napoleonic Wars, Muslims found themselves confronted not only by a new source of political power but by a new set of medical ideas. This study traces the medical confrontation through the society's response to epidemic disease.

This is the first comprehensive study of the life and works of Muhammad Baqer as-Sadr - an Iraqi scholar who made an important contribution to the renewal of Islamic law and politics in the contemporary Middle East. Executed in 1980, Sadr was the most articulate thinker and a major political actor in the revival of Shi'i learning, which placed Najaf in Southern Iraq at its centre. Dr Chibli Mallat examines the intellectual development of Sadr and his companions who included Ruhullah al-Khumaini and assesses Sadr's innovative approaches to the study of law, economics and banking. The author convincingly demonstrates how Sadr's ideas and activities were influential in the rise of political Islam across the Middle East and played an important part in the Iranian revolution of 1979.

No idea has captured the imagination or expressed the hopes of Arabs in the twentieth century as has Arab nationalism, and perhaps no subject has received so much attention from historians of the Middle East. But, while many historians have explored its intellectual sources, few have considered the social and political environment in which Arab nationalism evolved as an ideological movement. This study attempts to correct the imbalance and, in the process, provides a fascinating interpretation of the rise of the ideology of nationalism within the Arab world. The book focuses on the social and political life of the great notable families of Ottoman Damascus, who, before World War I, played a crucial part in translating the idea into political action. Dr Khoury explains how such long-term factors as the Ottoman reformation, European economic expansion and agrarian commercialization in Syria encouraged rival and socially differentiated networks of influential families to merge into a cohesive upper class. Under the umbrella of a reinvigorated Ottoman central authority, this class of landowners and bureaucrats produced a new urban leadership, which dominated local politics after 1860.

Previous studies of nineteenth-century Egypt have often been premature in identifying the existence of an independent nation state. In a way which will permanently affect our view of Egyptian history, this book argues that in the mid-nineteenth-century period Egypt was still an Ottoman province, with a provincial Ottoman elite which was only gradually becoming Egyptian. Part one discusses the creation of a dynastic order in Egypt, especially under Abbas Pasa (1848-1854), and the formation of an Ottoman-Egyptian ruling class. Part two deals with the non-elite groups, the vast majority of Egypt's population. A final chapter offers a convincing picture of the social and cultural life of the period in a way which has never before been attempted in a Middle East context. The author's valuable knowledge of Ottoman and Arabic as well as European documents and his use of a wide variety of sources, including police and court records, chronicles and travel literature, have enabled him to make an important contribution to a neglected period of Egyptian history and indeed to our understanding of other provinces and dependencies in the region.

Why do states in arid regions fail to co-operate in sharing water resources when co-operation would appear to be in their mutual interest? Through in-depth analysis of the history and current status of the dispute over the Jordan River basin, Miriam Lowi explores the answers to these critical questions.

This book is a study of the foreign policy of South Yemen, the most radical of Arab states, from the time of its independence from Britain in 1967 until 1987. It covers relations with the west, including the USA, and with the USSR and China, and also highlights South Yemen's conflicts with its neighbours, North Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Oman. The author provides a detailed analysis of the foreign relations of one of the USSR's closest allies in the Third World and shows how conflicts within the country relate to changes in foreign policy. South Yemen has traditionally not been an easy country to study, both because it is so secretive and because the revolutionary regime still arouses such strong passions. Professor Halliday was able to visit the country and to make an outstandingly thorough study of the foreign policy of an Arab state.

This book uncovers the rich, fascinating and complex world of Ottoman manufacturing and manufacturers in the age of the European industrial revolution. Using a wealth of sources from Ottoman, European and American archives, Professor Donald Quataert explores the technological methods of producing cotton cloth, wool cloth, yarn and silk, how these changed throughout the nineteenth century, the organisation of home and workshop production and trends in the domestic and international markets. By focusing on textile manufacturing in homes and small workshops, the author reveals a dynamism that refutes traditional notions of a declining economy in the face of European expansion. He shows how manufacturers adopted a variety of strategies, such as reduced wages and low technology inputs, to confront European competitors, protect their livelihoods and retain domestic and international customers.