This special issue originated in a series of conversations two years ago with IJMES editor Beth Baron regarding the Maghrib's positioning in historical scholarship on the Middle East generally and in our field's flagship journal more specifically. While IJMES has published a number of solo articles devoted to North Africa from a range of disciplines, we concluded that the journal's readers would welcome a corpus of recent work in the historical sciences for the modern period from roughly the late 18th century on. Emphasis upon the modern does not imply that other eras in North Africa's long history have languished for lack of renewed scholarly interest—far from it. The Punic and Roman empires are currently subject to vigorous reinterpretation in order to dismantle dominant colonial and Orientalist interpretations. Moreover, the literature on Muslim Spain and on medieval and early modern North Africa and Iberia, particularly the hotly contested idea of convivencia, has gone from artisanal to industrial production in terms of output. The regionalist frame for the special issue admittedly acknowledges a form of geographically informed “otherness,” but it does so in order to question that distinction. And although the call for papers had invited research whose primary (but by no means sole) focus was the peoples, societies, and states in what we now know as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, regrettably no submissions on Tripolitania/Libya were received.

Trade is often discussed in an Islamic context with reference made to Muslim merchants. However, the significance of Islam in specific commercial circumstances is difficult to assess. Some historians label trade as “Muslim” because it was conducted by Muslims; others do so because the trade originated and/or concluded with the boundaries of an Islamic state. The label Muslim may also suggest networking, a process more familiar in relation to Armenians or Jews. We can ask if the operative principles of Muslim networks were at all the same as those for the minority groups.

The course of events in the Middle East since 6 October 1973 has been as surprising and as unexpected as the very events of that day. In retrospect, of course, the surprises of that day have been depreciated and obscured by journalists, scholars, and politicians who have begun to treat the outbreak of the war as part of a chain of natural developments initiated in June 1967, or in May 1948, or in 1897 depending upon their historical bent. But hindsight notwithstanding, no one expected war to break out in the Middle East in 1973. For this reason, the decision to launch a war against Israel must be examined for what it was: a complex calculation encompassing not one or two but a broad range of considerations. The decision to go to war is never a commonplace decision, nor is it one taken lightly or made naturally – not even in the Middle East. Rather, it is a complex phenomenon whose threads must be unraveled in order to be understood.

Man has always sought to acquire information regarding his enemies, rivals, even allies, in order to understand their motivations, predict their actions, and behave according to the best of his own interests. In the Bible, we are told that Yahveh ordered Moses to send spies to the land of Canaan. Sun-Tzu's treatise on war, written five centuries B.C., comprises a chapter on intelligence. Leo VI's Taktika insist upon the importance of intelligence, while the Thousand and One Nights contains numerous accounts of Byzantine intelligence operations. Thanks to his spy-networks, the Mongol ruler Subotaï was well aware of conditions prevailing in Christian Europe. Moctezuma's spies kept him well informed as to the strength and whereabouts of the Spanish invaders. Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth l's chancellor, had set up a formidable intelligence service. As Hobbes put it, “spies are no less important to the sovereign than rays of light to the human soul for the discernment of visible objects.”

The archival material in Istanbul, which presents a unique picture of the mechanism of patronage in Islamic architecture, has evoked only sporadic attention from the time of Ahmet Refik's valuable publications of pertinent Ottoman documents. Indisputably, however, the greatest contribution has been that of the late Ömer Lutfi Barkan, whose direction of a team of researchers on the surviving account books for the construction of the mosque of Süleymaniye and its associated complex/külliye (foundation inscription dated 964'1556–1557, though the works almost certainly continued beyond this date) has resulted in the apperarance of a remarkable work, Süleymaniye Camii ve Inşaati, Vols. I, II (Ankara 1972–1979). The documentation covers a period of roughly seven years and gives virtually a day-to-day picture of the sequence of construction and the constitution of the labour force. This is not the only story the documents have to tell, as Barkan first pointed out almost twenty years ago.

Predictions of all sorts preceded the June War of 1967, some by the governments themselves, others by newspapermen and academics, many containing a substantial burden of error, others possessing an impressive degree of accuracy and insight. Analysts making these judgments read daily news accounts, noted official government statements, assessed rumors and intelligence leaks, observed levels of military activity, and then tried to estimate whether, when, and with what consequences war might occur.

Ever since Max Weber posited the ideal-typical distinction between Oriental and Occidental cities in his essays on the economic history of Europe, many historians of the Middle East have grappled with his model. The debate about the existence of the “Oriental” or, more specifically, the “Islamic” city and the validity of Weber's construct have led to the growth of a sizable body of literature on the topic. In this collection of their essays, Masters, Goffman, and Eldem approach this question from a different angle. They ask not so much whether the “Islamic City” exists, but whether there was such a thing as an Ottoman city. Based on their work on Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul in the 17th and 18th centuries, they come up with an answer that can be described as a qualified no.