At the time of its first modern census in 1993, Oman had one of the world's highest fertility rates (6.9 children per woman) and over half of the population was under the age of fifteen and yet to enter its peak childbearing years. In response, Oman introduced a Birth Spacing Program in 1994, encouraging couples to space births by at least three years and making a wide range of modern contraceptives available throughout the sultanate. Although the program was ostensibly designed to promote reproductive and child health, it clearly had a demographic agenda. By 2006, the fertility rate had dropped to 3.2 children per woman and the contraceptive prevalence rate had increased sharply. However, these changes cannot be attributed solely to the Birth Spacing Program and must be seen in the broader context of delayed marriage and extraordinary gains in social well-being, health, and female education.

In the fall of 1969 the Libyan monarchy was overthrown by a group of young military officers headed by Mouamir Quadafi. In the months prior to the revolution the tribal-based Monarchy had found it difficult to cope with the stress of rapid social and economic change, and had found itself immobilized by the conflict between Libya's traditional tribal and religious elite and a small but influential modernizing elite composed of students, technocrats and younger military officers. This new elite, a byproduct of Libya's oil wealth, had become particularly distressed by the arbitrariness and inefficiency of the Monarchy, the severe maldistribution of the oil revenues, and the existence of what they felt to be a poorly planned and managed development program which had largely failed to penetrate Libya's predominatly rural areas.

The cultural heritage of any one nation constitutes its collective experience and memory. Passed down from generation to generation, it contains a multitude of institutions, beliefs, and values that continue to act on the minds of people and affect their behavior. As an expression of the national identity, it is usually very wary of sudden change and prefers undisturbed continuity, its legitimate aims being self-preservation and the very existence of the nation as a group. It has its own checks and balances to allow any dose of change when the need for such arises. By an intricate historical process, it develops its own principles of inclusion and exclusion so that any change accepted or any change rejected will not affect its capacity for continued life and growth, but will rather enhance it.

It is too soon to measure the influence of G. E. von Grunebaum on developing trends in Islamic scholarship. But it is not too soon to assess the legacy of his writings. The assessment is bound to suffer from subjectivity and perhaps even border on the presumptuous. And I must confess at the outset that in this paper I have not ruled out a degree of inferential and impressionistic judgment, which in the end may only reflect my own limited vantage.

Post-World War II studies of Egypt's economy devote considerable attention to her population growth and agricultural development. Such attention is necessary in that Egypt, (though) so limited in its habitable land, has experienced a quadrupling of population during the present century; and, as its most important sector is still agricultural, more than half of that population is concentrated in rural areas. Therefore, studies have focused on the effects of population pressure on the distribution of agricultural income, on the agrarian reforms of 1952 and 1961, and particularly on population growth and policies.

Owen Lattimore, the premier chronicler of China's inner-Asian frontier, designated by the term ‘frontier feudalism’ a particularly significant and recurrent process in the social history of that area. By it he meant the pattern in which nomadic Turko-Mongol chiefs either sold their allegiance as ‘wardens of the march’ and border guardians to Chinese emperors in return for titles and land investitures, or else conquered territory along imperial frontiers in their own names. Ineither case, the chiefs' authority over his followers then changed from a kin-oriented tribal base to a patron–client-oriented feudal base, as his followers became peasantized and lost their ability to move away from the chief – anability that underlay what Lattimore viewed as the much more fluid tribal–nomadic social order and polity. To Lattimore frontier feudalism was an important vehicle in the establishment of social and political stratification along ethnically differentiated lines (as tribesmen settled down as rulers of a subordinate peasantry).It also created articulation between state and tribal polities and served as a major factor in the sedentarization of nomads (Lattimore 1962a, b). In this connection one recalls the proverb recited to Genghis Khan's son and successor, Ogotai, by an adviser: ‘The empire was created on horseback, but it cannot be governed on horseback’ (Grousset 1970: 257).

The change from an agriculturally based economy to one based primarily on industrial and services sectors requires a complex transformation in technology of productions, physical and human capital structure, social and political institutions, and cultural attitudes. Although broad similarities exist, no two countries have traced an identical path. One major economic and ideological concern in such a transformation is the fate of private property in general and land ownership in particular. Furthermore, the degree of redistribution of political power and material wealth of existing or emerging groups constitutes an important characteristic of the transformation itself. Thus, an important and interesting link in the chain of probable events is the occurrence or non-occurrence of land reform. The nature and degree of land reform, if it happens, or the variety of its substitutes, if it does not, provide vital clues to the specificity of the political economy of development.

On Wednesday evening, 17 October 1850, at the height of ʿId al-adha, the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice, riots broke out in Aleppo in northern Syria, starting with Muslim riots in the Christian quarters of Judayda and Saliba. For two days, Muslim rioters looted homes and churches in these and other Christian quarters in the city, killing and wounding a number of the inhabitants. Only on Friday did the riots cease, but the insurgents then presented a list of demands to the authorities as a pre-condition for the restoration of order to the city. Their principal demands were that the authorities‧ intention to impose military conscription on Muslims be revoked, that the ringing of church bells and the carrying of crosses in public religious processions be banned; and that the owning of Muslim slaves by Christians be prohibited. The Ottoman governor, Mustafa Zarif Pasha, at first consented to the demands of the rioters, and even took certain steps to restore calm to the ruffled atmosphere, such as declaring that the firda head tax, one of the inflammatory factors that had contributed to the riots, would be transformed into a property tax.