On 9 November 1956, a poem in colloquial Arabic appeared in the month-old Cairo daily al-Masāʾ. The poet was an unknown named Hamid al-Atmas, a carpenter from the Delta city of Damanhur. Entitled “That's It, I'm Off to the Battlefield,” al-Atmas's poem celebrated the worker as soldier, for British and French troops had just landed in Port Said. The narrator states that he will put down his tools—as will many laborers and craftsmen—to go and fight. Following victory, he will return to his shākūsh (hammer) and mingār (plane). This, he stresses, is a people's struggle.1 The point is made no less subtly through the poet's choice of language: the narrator's diction is based on that of shop, home, and street.

1.1. Among the most obscure aspects of the past of Arab towns, that of the number of their population at different periods of their history must be mentioned. A better knowledge of their demography would no doubt bring more accurate answers to the main problems of urban evolution (expansion or decline, prosperity or decadence) as, through lack of well-founded figures, they have often been resolved by authors from general impressions or even from a priori attitudes. The first really serious statistics go no earlier than the end of the eighteenth century (Description de l'Egypte) for Cairo. For earlier periods, the only available sources for a long time were the evaluations provided by chronicles or travel accounts which proposed more or less fanciful and often divergent figures, the more reasonable evaluations often being a question of chance, or being considered so only because they confirmed the users' prejudices.

The year 1973 was clearly a turning point in the recent economic history of the Middle East. On October 1 of that year, the price of Arabian Light, a representative type of Middle Eastern crude oil, stood at $3.01 per barrel. On October 16, following the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli war, the price rose to $5.12. By January 1, 1974, the price had reached $11.65, as OPEC further exploited its opportunities for cartel profits. In consequence, there was an international transfer of purchasing power—from oil importers to oil exporters—unprecedented in its scale and suddenness. The Middle East has been the major beneficiary of this transfer. Other Middle Eastern countries benefited indirectly, as the oil states expanded their demand both for imported commodities and for immigrant labor, and stepped up their programs of financial assistance to less favored parts of the region. So 1973 saw the start of an acceleration of Middle Eastern growth that was both rapic and widely diffused.

This article explores the so far little explored animal dimension of the significant social, economic, and ecological transformations that occurred in Western Anatolia in the late Ottoman Empire. It focuses on how the use of the hybrid, one-humped “Turcoman” camel transformed the way in which trade and transport operated in the region. In light of Ottoman, Turkish, and European sources, it suggests that the camel was a visible yet often underestimated actor in the incorporation of Western Anatolia into global markets and integrating the camel as important history-shaping actor into the historical narrative allows us to better grasp the complex relationships that existed between humans, nature, and technology and to change the way we think about the Ottoman Empire.

Long before the French Revolution, an anonymous geographer of the 10th century had already imagined the “boundaries of the world”—(ḥudūd al-ʿālam)—as comprising distinct regions. According to this unknown figure, each territory varied from another “First, by the difference of water, air, soil, and temperature (garma-va-sarma). Secondly, by the difference of religion, law (sharīʿat) and beliefs (kīsh). Thirdly, by the difference of words (lughāt) and languages. Fourthly, by the difference of kingdoms (padshāʾī-hā).” These criteria, as well as natural barriers—mountains, rivers, deserts—allowed the author of this work to divide the world into tracts much like nation-states today.

In Jordan, tribal dispute settlements have played a pivotal role in the management of various types of grievances between individuals since long before the establishment of the modern state. To varying degrees, Jordanians—from the East and West Banks, Muslim and Christian, urban and rural—cherish the kinship networks associated with these procedures, and the ʿaṭwa (truce) and ṣulḥ (reconciliation) processes remain time-honored mechanisms for preventing revenge and making amends for wrongs committed. However, under the state's influence, the purpose of observing tribal settlements is evolving within an increasingly heterogeneous society. Drawing on documentary analysis combined with ethnographic material from across the kingdom, this article investigates the current status of tribal dispute resolution traditions among different sectors of the population. I argue that observance of such traditions can signify conformity with the hegemonic values that the state promotes as well as resistance to aspects of state control.

In the winter of 1910, the Salonikan Judeo-Spanish newspaper La Tribuna Libera published a plebiscite in which it asked its readers to decide where the future of Ottoman Jewry lay: nationalism, assimilation, or Zionism. The paper's appeal was an effort to settle the battle that had raged in the Judeo-Spanish press of the empire in the preceding eighteen months over the growing clash between Ottomanism and Zionism. According to the paper, the situation was “bordering on fratricide,” threatening to engulf Ottoman Jewry entirely.

Students of Islamic history have long demanded that more attention be given to social and economic affairs, and it cannot be denied that substantial progress is being made inthe field. Nevertheless, many gaps remain that will have to be filled in by detailed investigations of various periods and regions, notions, nad relationships. An attempt will be made in this article to elucidate the functioning of a faction, or ṭā⊃ifa in Central Asia in the second half of the 15th century. This ṭā⊃ifa was the system of patronage and protection installedby Khwaja Ahrar, a famous shaykh of the Naqshbandi silsila.

A recent burst of interest in revisionist interpretations of early Islamic and especially Abbasid history may be attributed in large measure to the availability of a number of fresh source materials, one of the most important of which is an anonymous history of the Abbasid family. A number of problems surrounding this work are still far from being satisfactorily resolved, including the questions of its title, the date of its composition, the identity of its author, and its historical and historiographical value.

This article explores the role of Islam in contemporary Jordanian charities and social welfare organizations. In what ways do these organizations relate to Islamic traditions in their work? What role do religious convictions play in the construction of modern selfhoods among their employees and volunteers? Do these constructions relate to broader, globally relevant, social imaginaries? The article tries to answer these questions by applying a novel analytical framework to qualitative data from fieldwork conducted among Jordanian charities and social welfare organizations. We treat these organizations as “social sites” for the reinterpretation of Islamic traditions in the context of global modernity as well as for the construction of meaningful forms of modern selfhoods among their members. In doing so, we argue that these specifically Islamic identity constructions can fruitfully be understood with reference to different types of globally relevant social imaginaries.

Machiavelli, in The Prince, compared the Ottoman Sultan's authority with that of the King of France and found the latter wanting.

All the Turkish monarchy is governed by one ruler, the others are his servants, and dividing his kingdom into ‘sangiacates’, he sends to them various administrators, and changes or recalls them at his pleasure. But the King of France is surrounded by a large number of ancient nobles, recognised as such by their subjects, and loved by them; they have their prerogatives, of which the king cannot deprive them without danger to himself.

This article explores the political subjectivity of Kurdish children in urban Turkey. Often referred to as “stone-throwing children,” since the early 2000s Kurdish children have entered Turkish public discourse as central political actors of the urban Kurdish movement. I suggest that the politicization of children can be understood in the context of transformations in age and kinship systems within the Kurdish community that were shaped by the forced migration of Kurds in the early 1990s. Focusing on the experiences of Kurdish children in the city of Adana, I argue that memories of violence transmitted by displaced parents, combined with the children's experiences of urban life, including exclusion, discrimination, poverty, and state violence, necessitate a reevaluation of how childhood is conceived and experienced within the Kurdish community. In a context where Kurdish adults often have trouble integrating into the urban context, their children frequently challenge conventional power relations within their families as well as within the Kurdish movement. In contrast to a dominant Turkish public discourse positing that these children are being abused by politicized adults, I contend that Kurdish children are active agents who subvert the agendas and norms of not only Turkish but also Kurdish politics. The article analyzes the ways Kurdish children are represented in the public discourse, how they narrate and make sense of their own politicization, and the relationship between the memory and the postmemory of violence in the context of their mobilization.

One of the most important arenas of the ferment in contemporary Arab social thought is Egypt. Egyptian writers have been contributing to a rapidly growing body of literature on state and society. Its themes include methodological issues, the nature of the ideal Islamic society; the elite–mass gap; the state's role in public life; the appropriate model for socioeconomic development; and the social bases of Islamist movements.

Dissent between the clerical establishment and lay followers is not an infrequent phenomenon and has often focused on church appointments, leadership, and political issues. In the Middle East, such tensions are found between churches usually led by European clergy and their predominantly Arab congregations. Here we combine historical and geographical research methods to investigate a neglected source of contention—that of property held by the church. We reconstruct, analyze, and present detailed case studies of long-term disputes over real estate between the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem (its Greek patriarch and clergy), and its lay Arab community, known as Rum Orthodox, Roman Christians, or Greek Orthodox, and which number about 71,000 members.

On 22 May 1990, the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) carried out their old pledge to unite into a single Republic of Yemen. This historic event occurred less than three years after the YAR, seemingly secure and comfortable in its separateness, celebrated its silver jubilee in 1987. This article traces and assesses political development and socioeconomic modernization in the YAR over this more than 25-year period, and hazards some guesses on the implications of these changes for current efforts to implement Yemeni unification.

The study of women in the history of the Middle East has been subject, until recent times, to a benign neglect born of the general of scholarship in the field and common misconceptions, shared by historians of other regions as well, about the study of women. First and foremost, the general backwardness of Middle East historiography, widely attested to in periodic surveys of the state of the art, consigned women, along wiht many other groups and classes in society, to a minor, if not totally insignificant, place in history. Concentration on visible political institutions, diplomatic events, and intellectual currents of the high, as opposed to popular, culture effectively wrote all but upper-class males out of the historical process. That Middle East history remained, to a large extent, confined to this rather narrow sphere long after historians of Europe and the Far East had embarked on studies of social and economic history is related to the origins and the orientation of the field itself.

“Religion is poetry plus, not science minus” is a bon mot that I find not only charming but perceptive. Taking a cue from that way of putting things, let me develop a suggestion that an accurate historical awareness will add to, not subtract from, our understanding of in this case scripture. At one time, the historical or historicist interpretation of religious matters was seen as subtracting; as leaving something out. It was called “reductionist”; and was contrasted with theological, or with phenomenological or other, assessments. I will contend, rather, that a true historical view enhances, rather than reduces, our apprehension of humanity's spiritual life. I hope to show how this is so.

This article examines Ottoman Armenian attitudes toward the Tanzimat reforms, particularly in relation to the situation of provincial Armenians. Even though implementation of the reforms was slow and marked by setbacks, the promises embedded in them raised expectations of change among Armenians in both Istanbul and the provinces. In response, individuals in these areas equipped themselves with knowledge of the language and principles of the Tanzimat. They interpreted and utilized these for their own purposes, sometimes not as the Ottoman government intended. In this sense, the Tanzimat was not merely a top-down state project; it was also pluralized through interactions between the government and its subjects. Exploring how non-Muslims negotiated the Tanzimat enables reconsiderations of the Muslim-elite-centered historiography on the reforms.

The books that are the subject of this review essay comprise three new contributions and one revised edition about a topic that has become paradigmatic in defining scholarly and political approaches to key areas of Middle Eastern history. It has shaped studies of the historical and ideological roots of Arab nationalism, the Arab–Israeli conflict, and the emergence and perseverance of authoritarian regimes in the modern Middle East. The ways that politicians, intellectuals, political movements, and the Arab public related to Nazism and Nazi anti-Semitism have been used to contest the legitimacy of 20th-century Arab political movements across the ideological spectrum. Historians have theorized about the involvement of individuals such as Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini in the crimes of Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Adolf Eichmann; the roots of Arab nationalist doctrine in German Volk ideas; the mimicry of Nazism in organizations such as the Iraqi al-Futuwwa and Antun Saadeh's Syrian Social Nationalist Party; and Arab public sympathies for Nazi anti-Semitism dating from the 1930s or even earlier. Until recently, European and Anglo-American research on these topics—often based on a history of ideas approach—tended to take a natural affinity of Arabs toward Nazism for granted. More recent works have contextualized authoritarian and totalitarian trends in the Arab world within a broad political spectrum, choosing subaltern perspectives and privileging the analysis of local voices in the press over colonial archives and the voices of grand theoreticians. The works of Israel Gershoni have taken the lead in this emerging scholarship of Arab nationalism. This approach was also the common denominator of a research project on “Arab Encounters with National Socialism,” which the Berlin Center for Modern Oriental Studies (Zentrum Moderner Orient) hosted from 2000 to 2003. Its members included the author of this review and the authors of two of the books under review (Nordbruch and Wildangel). The project used indigenous Arabic sources, especially local newspapers, for a close scrutiny of Arab reactions to the challenge of Nazism in a period when Arabs, especially nationalists, perceived that quasicolonial regimes undermined the ostensibly democratic and liberal ethos of the British and French Mandate powers.

The irruption of Persian-language blogging since 2001, known to its participants as Weblogistan, has been accompanied by enthusiastic claims that weblogs are promoting previously nonexistent forms of expression, thereby rupturing traditional Iranian social, cultural, religious, and political norms. The political scientist Fereshteh Nouraie-Simone juxtaposes Weblogistan against the conditions of theocratic rule as “a public social space that allows free expression of self outside the confines of the politically manipulated physical space.” In a 2005 book, which includes translated weblog postings, Nasrin Alavi takes this line of interpretation even further, asserting that by making “it possible for young Iranians to express themselves freely and anonymously,” Weblogistan “is nothing less than a revolution within the Revolution.”