This paper traces the emergence of folklore studies and ethnography in interwar Iran. It argues that these disciplines were part of larger nationalist projects of representing and speaking for the “masses.” The first part of the paper explores how and why a number of Iranian intellectuals engaged in folklore studies after a period of prolonged political activism in the first few decades of the 20th century. The second part of the paper examines cultural institutions established by the state, mainly in the late 1930s, in an attempt to appropriate and institutionalize folklore studies and ethnography for the purposes of nation building. These efforts were fraught with ambivalences because the “masses” were simultaneously praised as repositories of “authenticity” and looked down upon as a potential source of “backwardness.”

This article explores the role that Christianity played in the decolonization of Algeria and in particular how the complex relationship between Christianity and colonialism under French rule shaped the rhetoric and actions of Christians during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). Using the case of a 1957 trial in the military tribunal of Algiers in which twelve Europeans were charged with crimes ranging from distributing propaganda for the National Liberation Front to sheltering suspected communist and nationalist militants, I demonstrate how “Christian” rhetoric became one of the major means through which the conduct of the war and the defense of French Algeria were debated. While conservative defenders of French Algeria claimed that actions such as those of the Christians on trial led to the erasure of Christianity in North Africa, I argue that such actions and moral positions allowed for the continued presence of Christianity in Algeria after independence.

The history of the mountain hinterland of Sidon and Beirut—the area often referred to as the Druze Mountain—has hitherto been treated mainly as parochial Lebanese history, with inadequate reference to the Ottoman administrative context. Now that Ottoman archival material has become generally accessible, the subject needs to be revised in its light. In so doing one must keep in mind that most Ottoman chancery documents are normally orders issued in Istanbul for the governors of the provinces—in this particular case, the Syrian provinces—which were not necessarily acted upon, but which can serve to indicate the sort of problem that the Ottoman administration faced in a given province, whether or not they tell us what action was actually taken.This means that to attempt a reconstruction of the administrative history of a given Syrian region—or of any region of the far—flung Ottoman realm—purely on the basis of the Ottoman chancery documents, without taking into account what the local chronicles have to say, is bound to leave major parts—sometimes, perhaps, the most significant parts of the story in question—untold. On the other hand, to reconstruct such a history purely from what the chronicles relate, without reference to the official documents of the Ottoman chancery would leave much of the story unexplained or inexplicable. It is only by combining the two that one can gain a full historical picture of the subject under investigation. From this combination, what transpires, in the case of the sanjak of Sidon—Beirut, is an account of repeated Ottoman accommodations to local realities, made at the expense of administrative norms which existed in theory, but whose application in the different parts of the Ottoman world was far from uniform.

The literary works produced by Iranian women writers after the 1979 revolution, despite their diversity in artistic value and quality of narrative, commonly manifest a remarkable sensitivity toward women's issues and gender relations. The overall theme tying these works together seems to be the problematic of gender hierarchy and women's suffering expressed in a figurative language, transcending the extant male-dominated literary discourse. In these works, women's personal and private experiences become public. Their narratives articulate their protests against sexual oppression and reflect their struggle for identity. This phenomenon is noteworthy not simply because this is a literature produced by women about women, but also because this body of work displays a contrast with the literary works produced by women in the decades preceding the revolution. Pre-revolutionary works, under the sway of the dominant literary discourse, did not give rise to a feminist literary movement, for they emphasized sociopolitical issues more than specific gender issues. To be sure, there were themes related to women, but they were often presented in the context of socially conscious yet male-dominated committed literature. Women's literary paradigms before and after the revolution thus represent different literary discourses, and the Iranian Revolution of 1979 appears to be the major historical event that separates these two discourses and may well be responsible for the shift. In a strict sense, gender is socially constituted, and gender issues are in fact a type of social issue.

The degree of development (or, if you prefer, material civilization) of any society is set by the size of its surplus (the total amount it produces minus the amount needed for the bare subsistence of the population) and the uses to which the surplus is put. In Emerson's wise words, “The question of history is what each generation has done with its surplus produce. One bought crusades, one churches, one villas, one horses and one railroads.” The size of the surplus is, in turn, determined by four factors: the amount of energy available to the society, the society's technology, the mix of its economy, and the size of its population. Until comparatively recently, energy was, with the important exception of sailing ships, provided exclusively by human or animal power.1 Two important steps forward were the invention of the watermill and that of the windmill; their development will be discussed later. Nevertheless, it has been estimated that until the Industrial Revolution, some 80–85 percent of total energy was provided by plants, animals, and people.2 This means that the basic factors determining the amount of energy available to a society were the amount of land (arable, pasture, and woodland) it had at its disposal and the land's productivity. Land “was not simply the principal source of food for the population [the other being the seas and rivers] but also virtually the sole source of the raw materials used in industrial production”—fibers, hides, hair, wood, and so forth; almost all industrial workers were engaged in processing agricultural materials.

Given Gabriel Baer's 1962 study “Submissiveness and Revolt of the Fellah,” there should be no more talk of the political passivity of Egyptian peasants and their rural neighbors during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Baer demonstrates that rural uprisings were frequent and widespread during the years just before and on into the regime of Muhammad Ali Pasha. Furthermore, he describes three series of provincial rebellions which were significantly larger and better organized than any that preceded them. These three series of rebellions, which are associated with the village of as-Salimiyyah between Qina and Farshut in 1820–1821, with that of al-Ba'irat opposite Luqsur in 1822–1823, and with virtually the whole of Qina province in 1824, illustrate both that a very large number of people in this region would actively support an antigovernment leader during the 1820s and that these people were willing and able to establish effective and legitimate governmental institutions of their own on a local level.

The status of women in Arab society, and in other developing areas, is an important subject in which interest is growing. Not only has heightened awareness of feminist issues fostered a general concern for women's emancipation for greater independence and equality with men, but it is also increasingly recognized that the circumstances of women bear a significant relationship to the potential of a society to achieve broader developmental objectives. Relevant considerations include a need for women to enter the salaried labor force, which will increase the productive capacity of the nation; the fact that educated and employed women tend to have fewer children, which is also a major policy objective in many developing countries; and a need to assure that women's critical role in child rearing and early socialization is exercised by individuals who are educated, socially active, and high in self-esteem, which will increase the likelihood of positive personal and civic orientations being inculcated among the young.

By the time I completed fieldwork in Qatar in 2016, the Msheireb project that aimed to redevelop the heart of Doha was nearing completion of its first phase. The way this development project unfolded during this time was indicative of broader negotiations of Qatari cultural brokers with ideas of indigeneity and expertise: the project was rebranded from Dohaland, “The Heart of Doha,” to Msheireb (after the local wadi) in the first half of 2011, while the iconic Al Kahraba Street—the “spine” of the old city and the first street to be electrified in Qatar—was referred to in architectural notations as the “Champs-Élysées” of Doha. The politics of indigeneity of place-making in these negotiations reflected an unresolved unease with the cosmopolitan nature of expertise. This tension was related not necessarily to the ingenious remixing of traditional and modern concepts of cultural and environmental sustainability, but rather to the active erasure of foreign expertise. We see this, for example, in the active rebranding of the I. M. Pei's Museum (in reference to the Chinese American “starchitect” who designed it) in order to take its rightful “local” name, the Museum of Islamic Art. While these efforts would suggest an intention to localize expertise and build local capacity as part of national objectives, I argue in this essay that this mastering in fact obscures local expertise by dissociating it from the cosmopolitan context in which knowledge production is negotiated in Qatar.

This article deals with the origins, development, and popularity of boycott fatwas. Born of the marriage of Islamic politics and Islamic economics in an age of digital communications, these fatwas targeted American, Israeli, and Danish commodities between 2000 and 2006. Muftis representing both mainstream and, surprisingly, radical tendencies argued that jihad can be accomplished through nonviolent consumer boycotts. Their argument marks a significant development in the history of jihad doctrine because boycotts, construed as jihadi acts, do not belong to the commonplace categories of jihad as a “military” or a “spiritual” struggle. The article also demonstrates that boycott fatwas emerged, to a large degree, from below. New media, in particular interconnected computer networks, made it easier for laypersons to drive the juridical discourse. They did so before September 11 as well as, more insistently, afterward. Their consumer jihad had some economic impact on targeted multinationals, and it provoked corporate reactions.

In the 2011 wave of popular uprisings shaking authoritarian rule in the Middle East, mass societal mobilizations have been the crucial factor. But institutional actors, especially armies, are also playing an active role. Armies in the region have generally had less and less involvement in formal interstate wars and consequently have played more of a role, willingly or not, in underpinning regimes. Recent events demonstrate two patterns: armies that have refused to play this role (Egypt, Tunisia) and armies that have been willing, at least for some time, to answer the regimes’ requests to engage in repression (Bahrain, Yemen, Syria) or even civil war (Libya). How can we account for the military's growing role in civil strife or civil peace?

For contemporary Istanbulites, a trip south, across the Sea of Marmara, poses nothing exceptional or treacherous. The southern shore is often a day-trip destination for those seeking to relax or sightsee in the port towns of Yalova or Çanakkale. The Marmara's southern coast is also a stop on the road to warmer, more comfortable climes farther south, such as the holiday resorts of Kuşadası or Foça. The region stands in sharp contrast to the farthest reaches of eastern Anatolia, such as Van, Diyarbakir, or Mardin, where an insurgency by Kurdish guerrillas continues to claim lives.

The graduate history program of ‘Ayn Shams University has produced some of the finest scholarly studies in the field of Egyptian history in recent years. The program has been particularly receptive to the shift toward a social and economic approach within the discipline of history. It is noteworthy that for a number of years this program has been directed by two historians who were not themselves trained in this specialization. Dr. Ahmad ‘Izzat ‘Abd al-Karīm (the founder of the program) is an institutional historian, and Dr. ‘Abd al-Raḥlm Muṣṭafa (the current chairman) is a political historian

In his seminal and pioneering work, al-Risāla, al-Shafiʿi, the founder of juridical uṣul al-fiqh, laid down the following maxim:

God has obliged us to follow everything the Prophet instituted (sanna). And He has rendered adherence to this obedience to Him and turning away from it disobedience [to Him] for which He excuses no one.

This article examines the political economy of Cairo's emerging Arabic private printing industry during the third quarter of the 19th century. I use the constituent texts of the industry to demonstrate that it developed upon the speculative model of commissioning, whereby individuals paid printers to produce particular works of their choosing. Commissioning indicates that Egyptian private printing grew from local traditions for producing handwritten texts. Nevertheless, print commissioning differed from manuscript commissioning by requiring individuals to assume great financial risk. I explore the nature and implications of this divergence through a treatise published in 1871 by Musa Kastali, a particularly prolific printer who helped to professionalize Cairene printing. Musa's treatise details his legal battle with a famous Azhari commissioner, and is unique for describing a printer's business practices. It demonstrates the importance of situating printings within their socioeconomic contexts in addition to their intellectual ones, a task which cannot be done without an appreciation for the functioning of the printing industry at a local level.

In his “Note about the Term Effendiyya in the History of the Middle East” (International Journal of Middle East Studies 41 [2009]: 535–39), Michael Eppel clarifies his own use of effendiyya in an article he wrote for IJMES in 1998. In the 1998 article, Eppel emphasized the value of studying the effendiyya, or what he called the “Westernized middle stratum,” and its dominance in political life to better understand Hashimite Iraq (1921–58). Members of this group, he argued, benefited from modern education and donned Western dress. They were young state employees (officials, teachers, health workers, engineers, and, later, military officers) who adopted Arab nationalism and Pan-Arab ideology as a means to cope with their socioeconomic and political discontent. From the 1930s, Eppel noted, the effendiyya created the radical political atmosphere that lent backing to the “militant-authoritarian trends” that led to the pro-German Rashid ʿAli coup and the war with Britain in 1941. After World War II, they joined with other nationalist forces to lead the 1948 Wathba (uprising) against prolonging the Anglo–Iraqi treaty. In 1958, the army officers among them overthrew the monarchy. This “middle stratum” differed from the Western concept of the “new middle class,” and the indigenous Arabic term effendiyya, as employed by Eppel, endeavored to grasp the essence of this difference. It reflected a common experience that was the result of its members’ similar education, culture, and concerns rather than their economic status, social origins, and type of employment.

An essential principle of health posited by the modern Iranian middle class since its rise at the dawn of the 20th century was a strong link between a healthy body and a sound mind. This thesis was built on a reinterpretation of the maxim, aql-i salīm dar jism-i sālim ast (a sound mind lives in a healthy body), which drew on modern Western biomedical sciences, specially neurophysiology. Rather than mirroring a simple history of transfer of knowledge (from a creative West to a passive East), this maxim tells a fascinating, multifaceted story of acculturation. Indeed, the general thesis at the base of the present text holds that biomedical sciences were adapted in interaction with problems seen to be created by, and conditions believed to be necessary for, Iran's modernization (tajaddud). Shifting the focus of modern Iranian medical history to the intricate interplay between global and internal contexts and forces, this thesis maintains that these interactive patterns were directed at physical, mental, and moral health and disease. They thereby formed a strategy to “medicalize” modernization, addressing its central problem: how to accelerate it without causing social order to collapse, and thus to propel Iran into the ranks of the “civilized nations.” This novel strategy rose in the context of the modern middle class's distress about the chaos surrounding the Constitutional Revolution (1905–11) and the failure of its political focus to advance progress—that is, the belief that change is conditioned on science-driven sociocultural reforms. It was embedded in international colonial structures of scientific knowledge and political power yet, at the same time, was decisively shaped by internal problems. The content of biomedical sciences and medicine was adopted from Western countries. But their contextual objective—the management of modernization—though drawing on late-19th-century Western “medical model(s) of cultural crisis,” was decisively geared to meet Iran's specific circumstances.

During the past two decades, historians of the last Ottoman centuries have produced ground-breaking research documenting the increasing economic interaction between Europe and the Middle East. Relying on information about the empire's trade with Europe, scholars have concluded that the 19th century was a time of transformation–in culture, in politics, and in economics. By thus calling our attention to changing circumstances, these historians, economists, art historians, and sociologists have outlined a general landscape of upheaval and change.1 Monographs on Ottoman cities, focusing on the effects of international trade on coastal areas, have begun to sketch in the epicenters of massive economic dislocation.2

My roundtable contribution inevitably starts with a critique of the field the scholarly utility of which we as contributors wish to defend. The study of the antique sciences (including the history of archaeology and heritage) still has marginal standing in science studies. So does the Middle East as a geographical region, which until recently enjoyed little scholarly interest in the field. The persistent Eurocentric research agenda of science studies has been questioned, however, with the recent call for a “global history of science.” This ambiguous term has triggered new methodological challenges, but it has also created new trenches.