Studies in Middle Eastern History – serie

In this impressive synthesis, William Harris narrates the history of the sectarian communities of Mount Lebanon and its vicinity. He offers a fresh perspective on the antecedents of modern multi-communal Lebanon, tracing the consolidation of Lebanon's Christian, Muslim, and Islamic derived sects from their origins between the sixth and eleventh centuries. The identities of Maronite Christians, Twelver Shia Muslims, and Druze, the mountain communities, developed alongside assertions of local chiefs under external powers from the Umayyads to the Ottomans. The chiefs began interacting in a common arena when Druze lord Fakhr al-Din Ma'n achieved domination of the mountain within the Ottoman imperial framework in the early seventeenth century. Harris knits together the subsequent interplay of the elite under the Sunni Muslim Shihab relatives of the Ma'ns after 1697 with demographic instability as Maronites overtook Shia as the largest community and expanded into Druze districts. By the 1840s many Maronites conceived the common arena as their patrimony. Maronite/Druze conflict ensued. Modern Lebanon arose out of European and Ottoman intervention in the 1860s to secure sectarian peace in a special province. In 1920, after the Ottoman collapse, France and the Maronites enlarged the province into the modern country, with a pluralism of communal minorities headed by Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims. The book considers the flowering of this pluralism in the mid-twentieth century, and the strains of new demographic shifts and of social resentment in an open economy. External intrusions after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war rendered Lebanon's contradictions unmanageable and the country fell apart. Harris contends that Lebanon has not found a new equilibrium and has not transcended its sects. In the early twenty-first century there is an uneasy duality: Shia have largely recovered the weight they possessed in the sixteenth century, but Christians, Sunnis, and Druze are two-thirds of the country. This book offers readers a clear understanding of how modern Lebanon acquired its precarious social intricacy and its singular political character.

Throughout the 20th century, Egyptian nationalism has alternately revolved around three primary axes: a local Egyptian territorial nationalism, a sense of Arab ethnic-linguistic nationalism, and an identification with the wider Muslim community. This detailed study is devoted to the first major phase in the perennial debate over nationalism in modern Egypt--the territorial nationalism dominant in Egypt in the early 20th century. The first section of the bookexamines the effects of World War I and its aftermath, which temporarily gave rise to an exclusively Egyptianist national orientation in Egypt. Subsequent sections consider the intellectual and politicaldimensions of Egyptian interwar years. Egypt, Islam and the Arabs is the first volume in a new Oxford series, Studies in Middle Eastern History. The General Editors of the series are Bernard Lewis of Princeton University, Itamar Rabinovich of Tel Aviv University, and Roger M. Savory of the University of Toronto.

This study of the rise of modern Arabic shows nineteenth-century linguistic changes in the eastern Arab world to mirror changing perceptions and responses to the West, and to act as a guide to the emergence of modern Arabic concepts, institutions, and practices. Arabists.

This comprehensive history of the Iranian Revolution views it in the context of an ongoing conflict between religious and political authorities dating back to the establishment of Shi'ism as the state religion of Iran in 1501. The historical context is seen as being critical in understanding the staying power of Khomeini's regime and its ruthless elimination of internal opposition to the Islamic Republic.The significance of the appearance of widespread popular discontent, the ideological differences among the ruling clergy, and the issue of Khomeini's succession are also considered, and the book concludes with a comparison between the Iranian Revolution and other famous historical revolutions.

In 1720 an Ottoman ambassador arrived in France to observe Western civilization and report on what he saw and how it could be applied in the Ottoman Empire. Based on his accounts, this book studies the impact of the West on the Empire, and of this Ottoman embassy on the two societies.

This is the first systematic economic history of the Fertile Crescent throughout the nineteenth century, a region encompassing what is now Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and a small part of Turkey. Charles Issawi, an authority on the Middle East, has compiled and edited a comprehensive selection of documents from sources in English and seven other languages (all translated), the majority published here for the first time. His own substantive chapter introductions and the 154 selections cover all aspects of nineteenth century economic life in the region: social life and organization, trade, transport, and public and private finance.

This book examines Syria's religious, intellectual, and political history during the period of transformation before World War I. Focusing on an attempt to reform Islamic belief and practice at the turn of the century, Commins shows how the reformers used debates over the religious law of Islam to advance their visions of a progressive Islamic state. Based on a wide variety of previously unpublished sources, the book will shed new light on a period that is of considerable importance for the modern history of the Middle East.

This is the most thorough and comprehensive history to date of the constitutional revolution of 1905-09, which resulted in the establishment of Iran's first parliamentary democracy, and which provides a crucial context for an understanding of the country's religious revolution of 1978-9.

This book examines a key period in the formation of modern Egypt, the early years of military rule following the coup of 1952. The Free Officers Corp, a group of junior officers, overthrew Egypt's parliamentary regime in July 1952 and over the next few years consolidated their rule, brutually supressing alternative political movements. Gamal Abdel Nasser, one of the young officers, emerged as the leader of the military junta and launched an ambitious programme for economic development, making Egypt a leader in Arab, African, and non-aligned politics, as well as a model for political mobilization and national development throughout the Third World.Focusing on the goals, programmes , successes, and failures of the young regime, Gordon provides the most comprehensive account of the Egyptian revolution to date. Besides bringing to light newly opened American and British sources on the period, Gordon's book is also informed by interviews he conducted with a number of actors and observers of the events.

In this thought-provoking interdisciplinary work, Shaun Marmon describes how eunuchs, as a category of people who embodied ambiguity, both defined and mediated critical thresholds of moral and physical space in the household, in the palace and in the tomb of pre-modern Islamic society. The author's central focus is on the sacred society of eunuchs who guarded the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina for over six centuries and whose last representatives still perform many of their time honored rituals to this day. Through Marmon's account, the "sacred" eunuchs of Medina become historical guides into uncharted dimensions of Islamic ritual, political symbolism, social order, gender and time.

Uriel Dann explores the political history of the formative years of the Jordanian state, uncovering the sources of its durability against forces seeking to alter fundamentally the traditional bases of Arab politics.

The period covered in this book saw Saudi Arabia emerge as the state we know today. With British backing, the Saudi state expanded from its Najdi origins eastweard, westward, northward and southward, embracing at the end of the period, the greater part of the Arabian peninsula. Kostiner focuses in particular on the development of the political role of the chieftaincy into a more centralized political structure. Ibn Saud emerged as the most prominent of the tribal leaders, shrewdly exploiting the revolts of religious zealots to gain supremacy over his rivals. Drawing on an impressive range of materials, The Making of Saudi Arabia is the most complete study of the creation of the Saudi state to date.

This book studies the six-year period in modern Jordanian political history when the Hashemite kingdom was in crisis. Based on exclusive interviews and newly-released archival resources, this stylish political history is the first scholarly study of the early years of King Hussein's rule when power rested in the hands of the King's advisers.

The rise to power of the imperial harem is one of the most dramatic developments in the history of the Ottoman empire. From the beginning of the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent in 1520 until the mid-17th century, high-ranking women of the Ottoman dynasty enjoyed a degree of political power greater than ever before or after.Leslie Peirce challenges the notion that the gender segregation of traditional Islamic society precluded women from playing anything more than a subordinate role within the household.In part one, Peirce examines the dynasty's reproduction policies and argues that the decisions about reproduction and the training or princes was tied to an ideology of power. Part two, examines the sources of women's direct and indirect political power. Peirce discusses how women participated in diplomacy, negotiating treaties and corresponding with figures such as Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medicis. Of equal importance, was women's participation in what Peirce terms `the public culture of sovereignty' by which is meant royal ceremonies and the patronage of artists.This book reinterprets definitions of sovereignty and political action to show the centrality of women. It makes an important contribution to the study both of the history of Turkey in the 16th and 17th centuries and to the study of women and politics.

Newspapers and journalism began in the Middle East in the nineteenth century and evolved during a period of accelerated change which shaped their unique political, social and cultural role. Drawing on a wealth of sources, this study for the first time explores the press as a Middle Eastern institution. It focuses on the circumstances that influences the growth of the Arab press, its own impact on local historical developments, and the long-term effects that early patterns of its emergence have had on later evolution.

This is the first in-depth study of the secret society called CUP (Committee of Union and Progress), based on their own papers. It pays special attention to the Young Turks as an intellectual movement which continues to influence the thinking of Turkish intellectuals in the 1990s. It also provides important insights into diplomatic relations between the Ottoman Empire and the so-called Great Powers of Europe at the turn of the century.

This is the first serious attempt to understand modern Iraq through a close examination of the political discourse used by the Ba'th regime and its leader, Saddam Hussein. By analysing political terms, concepts, and idioms as disseminated through the official Iraqi mouthpieces, author Ofra Bengio illuminates Iraq's political culture and the events that these expressions have both reflected and shaped. Not only does this study add to our understanding of the "Saddam enigma;" it also offers a more universal truth: that under any regime, political culture is built on public discourse. Saddam's Word will be of much interest to students of the contemporary Middle East, as well as to all other observers of Saddam Hussein and his regime.

Among the forces shaping today's international landscape, those of cultural differences and conflicts are perhaps the most prominent. Charles Issawi's latest collection of essays has been written in the belief that a study of the past encounters and conflicts between the world's major cultures can shed light on their nature and importance. Ranging in scope from the great ancient civilizations to Shelley's passion for the Middle East, from the economics of the Ottoman empire to the pre-eminence of English as an international language, this wonderful collection reflects the many interests of its author, though its main emphasis is on the Middle East, whose cultural conflict with the West cannot fail to be of special concern to us today.

This book aims to profoundly alter the accepted version of the history of post-World War II Pan-Arabic foreign policy. To this end, Doran convincingly demonstrates the absence of any true pan-Arabic front from the very beginning of the Arab League. Reconsidering Cairo's policy decisions during the critical years from 1944 to 1948, he proves that Egyptian national interests were always placed before the united Arab front against Israel. Even while participating in the 1948 war with Israel, Egypt regarded Zionism and the Palestine Question as less important than achieving independence from Britain and thwarting the expansionist aims of Iraq and Jordan. Ultimately, this study is a bold rethinking of twentieth-century Middle Eastern politics and history, with key implications for both the study of the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict and the volatile politics of the Middle East in general.

This book is a challenging re-evaluation of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, a seminal event in the late Ottoman Empire and in the emergence of the modern nation-states in the Middle East and Balkans. Breaking new ground, the book describes how the practical considerations forced the Young Turks to sacrifice many of their plans for social transformation. The book includes extensive new research from archives throughout Europe and the Middle East and will prove indispensable to anyone working on the political, intellectual, and social history of the Ottoman Empire and of the states that were established on its ruins.

Combining international and internal perspectives, this book analyses the transformation of the Ottoman Empire over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It views privatization of state lands and the increase of domestic and foreign trade as key factors in the rise of a Muslim middle class, which, increasingly aware of its economic interests and communal roots, then attempted to reshape the government to reflect its ideals. These ideals straddled modernist-Islamic and traditionalist cultural outlooks, and the religious and cultural differences between the Muslim and non-Muslim middle classes turned into class differences and ended in separatism. The book attaches special importance to a variety of Muslim revivalist-fundamentalist movements which were contained by the Ottoman government's own Islamist ideology and whose ideas, most notably the Nukshbandis supplied the ingredients for a new title of nationalist-religious ideology, mainly for the agrarian segment of the middle classes. The book analyses in great detail the British, French, and Russian policies in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Balkans, and how these relations in turn affected the Ottoman government's and society's ideological outlook, including the rise of Islamism and Panislamism. The reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II is studied for the first time in full detail, as a period of intense modernization in education, developments in transportation and communication, cultural-religious adaptation to the changed social structure, and increased cultural, economic, and diplomatic interaction with the West. Based on a wealth of original archival documents, records, memoirs, and published sources, the book is likely to become an indispensable reference for students of Islam, modern Turkey, and the Middle East, as well as for students of modernism and of encounters between civilizations.

This is the first serious attempt to understand modern Iraq through a close examination of the political discourse used by the Ba'th regime and its leader, Saddam Hussein. By analyzing political terms, concepts, and idioms as disseminated through the official Iraqi mouthpieces, author Ofra Bengio illuminates Iraq's political culture and the events that these expressions have both reflected and shaped. Not only does this study add to our understanding of the "Saddam enigma", it also offers a more universal truth; that under any regime, political culture is built on public discourse. Saddam's Word will be of much interest to students of the contemporary Middle East, as well as to all other observers of Saddam Hussein and his regime.

This book aims to alter profoundly the accepted version of the history of post-World War II Egyptian foreign policy. To this end, Doran convincingly demonstrates the absence of any true pan-Arab front from the very beginning of the Arab League. Reconsidering Cairo's policy decisions during the critical years from 1944 to 1948, he proves that Egyptian national interests were always placed before the united Arab front against Israel. Even while participating in the 1948 war with Israel, Egypt regarded Zionism and the Palestine Question as less important than achieving independence from Britain and thwarting the expansionist aims of Iraq and Jordan. Ultimately, this study is a bold rethinking of twentieth-century Middle Eastern politics and history, with key implications for both the study of the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict and the volatile politics of the Middle East in general.