Chicago Studies on the Middle East – serie

Revolutionary Melodrama explores intersections between cinema and politics during the Nasser era, a period in which a military regime embarked upon the construction of a new civic identity for an independent Egypt. The way in which filmmakers participated in this venture provides the focal point, with their cultural production as the central texts which both shaped and were shaped by an emerging sense of a new Egypt. With the blessing of a "revolutionary" regime, filmmakers began to explore issues of social inequity, colonial and feudal exploitation, changing gender roles, religious and cultural traditions and, finally, the disappointments of the revolutionary project itself. No realm of cultural production holds greater import for the Nasser era than the cinema. Even those who are active in deconstructing the last vestiges of the Nasserist state trumpet the Nasser era as a "golden age" of the arts and media. The faces and voices on big and little screens, many still alive, some still working, constitute a pantheon who many Egyptians, young and old alike, feel will never be replaced. The author approaches his subject as a scholar of the early Nasser years who has turned his attention to questions of civic identity and its relationship to art and political symbology. The work is enriched and informed by extensive interviews with a large circle of people engaged in the production or analysis of Egyptian cinema and broadcast, then and now: directors, actors, critics, historians, scenarists, censors, musicians, writers, politicians, and government ministers. Egyptian film remains a largely ignored topic in an ever-growing literature on film and culture. This book sheds new light on what many consider to be the greatest era of Egyptian filmmaking, one that remains formative for many engaged in creating Egyptian films today.

Includes 18 illustrations. Commemorating the Nation is a study of the relationship between public commemoration and national identity in Egypt over the course of the twentieth century. Appropriating insights from recent theoretical discussions of collective memory and public commemoration, it examines the modes by which different Egyptian communities of memorythe state under successive regimes; rival political forces and movements; elite and non-elite groups within civil societyremembered and commemorated the Egyptian national struggle, its defining moments and heroic figures, in specific sites of national memory. The book's analysis ranges across the twentieth century, tracing the changing place of selected sites of national memory from the pre-World-War-I years through the decades of the parliamentary monarchy to the era of the Egyptian Republic. Each of its three main sections is devoted to a different form of commemoration. The first is the nationalist art of Egypt's "national sculptor" Mahmud Mukhtar (1891-1934) and how his monumental icons expressing the nationalist ethos, specifically his sculpture Nahdat Misr and his statues of the leader of the 1919 Revolution, Sa`d Zaghlul, have been represented and re-represented by successive generations of Egyptians. The second section analyzes the modalities through which the historic figures of Egypt's Nationalist Party, Mustafa Kamil (1874-1908) and Muhammad Farid (1868-1919), have been preserved and commemorated through the remainder of the twentieth century. The third section considers national holiday celebrations as sites of Egyptian collective memory, particularly the celebration of the July 1952 Revolution during the reign of Gamal Abdel Nasser and the commemoration of the 1973 Crossing of the Suez Canal under his successor Anwar al-Sadat. The book is the product of fieldwork in Egypt as well as of extensive research in Egyptian publications. By analyzing nationalism through the prism of public commemoration, the work extends our understanding of the shaping of national identity and the evolution of national imagining in modern Egypt. Although it focuses on Egypt, its findings have implications for the study of collective memory and public commemoration in general.

Illustrated with 3 plates. Ibn al-Farid (d. 632/1235) has long been venerated as a Sufi saint and poet whose verse stands as a high point in Arabic poetry. Several of his poems became religious and literary classics, among them the al-Khamriyah or Wine Ode. Perhaps the first and certainly the most influential commentary on this poem was the Sharh Khamriyat Ibn al-Farid by Dawud al-Qaysari (d. ca. 748/1347). Al-Qaysari was a direct spiritual descendent of the great Sufi master Ibn al-`Arabi (d. 637/1240), whose disciples read and reflected on Ibn al-Farids verse as part of their mystical studies. Al-Qaysari prefaces his commentary with a thoughtful essay on love, its various types, and their effects within creation. He then turns to a verse by verse commentary of the Wine-Ode in order to reveal the subtle, mystical meanings of Ibn al-Farids celebrated poem. The Wine of Love & Life by Th. Emil Homerin makes available for the first time the full Arabic edition and English translation of al-Qaysaris master-work of Sufi theology.

One of the most enduring political dilemmas in modern history, the Palestine question has had a tremendous effect on the evolution and development of all nation-states in the Middle East. Directly bound to both the once paramount ideology of Arab nationalism and incorporated into the doctrines of politicized Islamic groups, the loss of Palestine and its consequences have been bemoaned by both secular nationalists and religious "fundamentalists" alike as one of the greatest "catastrophes" Arabs and Muslims have had to face in the modern age. The magnitude of the Palestinian predicament and its complexity have almost necessarily dictated its tremendous impact on the entire Middle East, thus becoming the ostensible source of most problems in the region and the focus of most political pursuits to this day. Palestine in the Evolution of Syrian Nationalism analyzes the place of Palestine in the development of Syrian nationalism from the inception of Syria as a modern nation-state following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War. The author does not approach this issue solely in terms of analyzing any direct relationship between Syria and the Zionists, but rather as a means of understanding the centrality of this issue to the development of Syrian nationalism. Instead of emphasizing the Palestine question as an external problem with which the Syrian nation-state had to contend as an Arab and Muslim country, this study attempts to discover to what extent Palestine was genuinely understood to be inherently an internal Syrian issue. The book concludes that Palestine was viewed as an integral part of the Syrian nation and demonstrates the extent to which the issue of Palestine/Southern Syria was entrenched and intertwined in the Syrian understandings of nationhood and national identity. Thus, this study fills a critical gap by providing focus on a topic that is necessary to any future study of modern Syrian political history.

The long reign of Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad was one of the most productive periods for architectural construction, restoration and urban development in the medieval Near East. The building works of this ruler and his amirs transformed the fabric of the Mamluk capital, Cairo, and shaped its future development in decades to come. For most of al-Nasir Muhammads sultanate, Tankiz al-Nasiri ruled as governor of the Syrian province. Tankizs term was one of the longest for any amir to retain a single office and to remain in the good graces of this sultan, known for his mercurial nature. Tankiz played a critical role in Mamluk politics and Syrian history. His lengthy tenure also allowed him to give sustained attention to the built environment of the province. During his term, he undertook an ambitious program of construction that involved monuments, urban works and renewal projects. This book investigates Tankizs building program by identifying the works that he commissioned, exploring the nature of his participation in these works, and situating them within the broader contexts of architectural development in the region and patronage during the Mamluk period. The volume features over 80 photographs and other illustrations, including several in full colour. It is fully indexed and provides a wealth of references to primary and secondary literature.

A collection of essays on Ismaili and Fatimid studies in honour of Paul E. Walker, former Director of the American Research Center in Egypt.

The decline of the Mamluk Sultanate from the late fourteenth century is an important component of the larger transformation of the late medieval Levant. In this centralized state, the Mamluks political culture has traditionally been defined by that of the imperial capital of Cairo. The political decline of the sultanate in Cairo has, then, come to define the many-faceted transformations of the entire region with the waning of the medieval era. The dynamics of change far from Cairo, in remote settlements on the imperial frontier, are, by contrast, relatively unknown. This book explores the transformation of the Mamluk state from the perspective of the Jordanian frontier, considering the actions of local people in molding both the state and their own societies in the post-plague era. Through a critical analysis of a wide range of economic and legal documents of the late Mamluk and early Ottoman periods, as well as data on rural society generated by recent archaeological research, the work documents the complex, dialectical relationships that always existed between the Mamluk state and the tribal societies of Jordan, as well as the flexible strategies pursued by both to adapt to changing circumstances during the late medieval period. It is ultimately a provincial perspective on imperial decline, reform, and rebirth that sheds new light on the mechanisms of socio-political and economic change through the experiences of ordinary people living on the margins of empire. The book is illustrated with more than two dozen photographs and 6 maps.

This book aims to examine the structural changes in the state and society in Mamluk Egypt and Syria after the middle of the eighth/fourteenth century. Between 648/1250 and 922/1517, the Mamluk sultanate ruled Egypt, Syria, and the Hijaz, the central Middle East. During this period, the sultanate expanded its authority over the medieval Islamic world by defending Muslim society against the Mongols and the Crusades, protecting the two Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and reinstalling the Abbasid caliphate in Cairo, which had once been rendered extinct by the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 656/1258. The Mamluk sultanate reached the height of prosperity under the third reign of Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawun. The scope of the present book is from 741/1341 to 922/1517, that is, the period from the death of Sultan al-Nasir to the year of the sultanate's downfall after the Ottoman conquest of the area, respectively. This has previously been considered to be the "declining period" of the Mamluk sultanate, which suffered acutely from political disturbance and economic struggle . However, the author believes that the period after the middle of the eighth/fourteenth century was an important epoch not only for the historical development of the Mamluk sultanate but also in terms of medieval Islamic history as a whole.

This new paperback is a Revised Edition with new preface. When scholars of Middle Eastern and Islamic history consider Mecca or its region, the Hijaz, they tend to focus on either the first century of Islam, when the city and region became briefly the centre of an incipient empire, or the twentieth, when the city was the centre of the Arab Revolt. More than a thousand years of history in between are relatively unknown. The pre-modern imperial cities of Damascus, Baghdad, and Cairo quickly superseded Mecca as centres of politics and long-distance trade, leaving Islam’s premier holy city with its singular role as the destination of the great pilgrimage. Of course, the religious significance of Mecca attracted the attention of neighbouring rulers, such as the Mamluk sultans of Cairo, who claimed sovereignty over the city to enhance their reputations as paramount Muslim rulers in the later medieval period. Using sources composed by late medieval Meccan scholars alongside the more well-known Mamluk material, this study presents the history of late medieval Mecca and the Sharifs who ruled the city by examining their relations with local and global forces: their alliances with local groups in the Hijaz, their relations with the imperial centre of Mamluk Cairo, and their reliance on the maritime trade of the Indian Ocean.