Although some may assert that it is too early to assess the impact of Anwar al-Sadat's liberalization policies on the Egyptian economy, I believe there is enough evidence to measure the important trends that have arisen in their wake. And while the statistics and conclusions may be regarded as tentative, they delineate a picture.

“There is a smell of money around this place.” With this sentence J. R. Frickers, head of Mobil Oil in Egypt, gives us a feeling for the atmosphere that prevailed in Egypt in 1974. The oil price hike of December 23, 1973, created billions of-dollars in surplus funds for Saudi Arabia and the other Arab oil-producing states.

The use of mass media to shape public opinion, disseminate public information, and transform political culture, has grown tremendously in developing countries during the last two decades. Many of these countries have raised the slogan of “creationg a new man,” that is, one with skills, attitudes, and values that are conducive to development. In this respect, they have relied on mass media as a major purveyor of modern influences and as one of the most effective agents of political resocialization.

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 emergence of feminist thought in Egypt at the turn of the last century has often been remarked upon, but there has been little rigorous analysis of its social context and background. As keen an observer as Gabriel Baer has ventured to write that in nineteenth-century Egypt “evidently the traditional structure of the family and the status of women did not undergo any change at all.” On the face of it, however, it seems highly unlikely that the expansion of the urban and rural middle classes, the emergence of private property, the period of state capitalism, and the onset of colonial rule could have left women unaffected.

Little is known about the twelfth-century poet called Qasmūna the Jewess. She was one of a constellation of Arabic-writing women poets of medieval Spain, and is the sole representative of her faith from whom we have surviving verses. These are collected in the fifteenth-century anthology of women's verse compiled by as-Suyūtu, who drew upon the Nafh at-tub of al-Maqqaru. The sketchy biographical data that as-Suyūtu records show Qasmūna as a witty and intelligent young woman who received an excellent education from a doting father named Ismā'il ibn Ba@dālah. Indeed, the first of the three poetic texts we have from her is the product of a collaboration between Qasmūna and her father. In addition, she was endowed with great physical beauty, as becomes apparent in her poetry.

The seizure of the grand mosque of Mecca on 1 Muharram 1400/20 November 1979 by a group of Muslim fundamentalists protesting alleged religious laxity in Saudi Arabia raised the issue of Islamic revival in the very birthplace of the Islamic faith. This dramatic action and the ensuing battle for control of the holiest site in Islam, the Kaaba, caused concern and anxiety among hundreds of millions of Muslims. It turned the minds of many to the phenomenon of religious revival. The attack on the Meccan Haram also showed that the revival of Islam was an issue for all Muslim countries, for Saudi Arabia was already one of the most publicly devout and religious nations in the world. If the Saudi government could be seriously accused of a lack of religious fervor, even though the accusers in Mecca were few in number and ultimately unsuccessful in their military action, then other Muslim states might well be liable to even more severe challenges.

The fellah has never used tractors, reapers, binders, and threshing machines, and it is unlikely that he ever will. He is too poor, and in any case feels no need of intermediaries between him and the soilH. H. Ayrout, The Egyptian Peasant, 1963.

Father Ayrout might be surprised by the Egyptian countryside today! Agricultural mechanization has been spreading rapidly, especially since 1973. Although national tractor censuses are notoriously unreliable because of the problems of treating old machines, current official estimates place the number of four-wheeled tractors at 25,000. Over 1,000 tractors have been manufactured at the Nasr works in Helwan every year since 1973; the number of tractor imports has quadrupled in the same period (see table I).

The term “grammar” is ambiguous. This essay explores the meanings of the term in general and concentrates on its relevance to Modem Hebrew. The gap between the lexical meanings and the speakers' knowledge of grammaticality is demonstrated as being a result of the close linkage between Biblical Hebrew grammar and Modem Hebrew norms.

Yaḥy¯a Ḥaqqī's first article of literary criticism appeared at a time when the critic was still more or less exclusively concerned with explaining a text, or with justifying the rival merits of “ancient” as opposed to “modem” literature. In 1921 Mā.zinī and 'Aqqād had published their Ad-dīwān: kitāb fī an-naqd wa al-adab which constituted a significant step away from the traditional mold of literary criticism. The primary motivation of the madhhab jadīd seems to have been an attack, not always purely literary, on the neo-Classical trend as exemplified in the poetry of Shauqī, Hāfiz and Ismā'il Sabrī. The Diwan School, as it came to be called, required that the poet express his true feelings in an imaginative way without resorting to pure description or stereotyped imagery confined within traditional poetical forms.

Even now, seventy years after publication, the significance of Becker's article “Der Islam als Problem”1 is still very difficult2 to realize completely. The article is short but it presents a historical and cultural perspective more dense in meaning than many thick volumes could be. It was an attempt to bid resolute farewell to a great number of previous conceptions about the nature of the Muslim religion, which had acquired an almost axiological status

Studies of legislatures in developing countries have to contend with a great deal of cynicism owing, in part, to a political controversy concerning the role of the legislative institution in the Third World. The executive branch, which is generally dominant in developing nations, often uses the legislature to legitimize executive actions. Legislators who agree to serve the executive in this fashion often exaggerate or misrepresent the importance of the legislature in their political system. Conversely, opposition groups, who are frequently excluded from the political process in Third World countries, denigrate the role of legislatures and often exaggerate their ineffectiveness. Scholars have mostly ingnored the role of legislatures in the process of development.

This paper examines the relatively neglected rural history of Syria. It concentrates on the Hauran, a dry-farming region of hills and plains south of the Damascene oasis between the northern Jordan's tributaries and the eastern desert. Although the Hauran is today no longer a region of primary economic importance to Syria as it once was, it is of historical interest because it was the very first of greater Syria's outlying rural zones to be integrated into the developing modern Middle Eastern economy.

The Hauran is, moreover, of comparative interest because it held a position in Syria's political economy then which bears many resemblances to the positions held by younger hinterland regions now. The parallels between the situation of the Hauran then and the Syrian north and northeast now, for example, are indeed many.

In his extensive work on Iranian society and its problems, Aḥmad Kasravî (1890–1946), Iranian scholar, jurist, and social thinker, identified much of Classical Persian poetry as a major source of those problems. He discussed his views in a series of articles, in public lectures, and in two books dealing exclusively with the subject.1 In addition, he touched on the subject, in passages short and long, in many others of his hundreds of articles and dozens of monographs and books, published between 1934 and 1946, when he was assassinated.2

Three basic forms of rebellion existed in Iran during the Safavid period. These were qazāq revolts, rebellions by urban notables, and peasant revolts against the Safavid state or local notables. All three types sprouted spontaneously in the fallow fields of Astarābād. While they existed in other regions of Iran as well, Astarābād was the only region where all three grew up independent of one another. By examining the separate courses of these rebellions a better dissection can be made of the three forms, how they affected one another, and how they grew up. Since Astarābād was also a border region near Central Asia, some of the many grievances that affected life in other parts of Iran came more clearly to the forefront, and a better picture can be obtained of the reactions evinced by various local populations to the burdensome loads of the Safavid state and the qizilbāsh tribal state systems.

Students of Islamic history more or less agree that the Fātimid regime conducted what may be loosely termed a liberal economic policy, and that the rulers of tenth- to twelfth-century Egypt intervened in the Egyptian economy to a minimal degree. Goitein, maintaining that the Fātimid period “was one of relative tolerance and liberalism, if compared with the preceding and, in particular, the following periods,” also stresses the x201C;comparatively little interference by the [Fātimid] governments in the trade of their subjects.” Ashtor tells us that “a striking feature of the Fātimid regime was freedom of enterprise,” and that “ all sectors of economic life were free — crafts, industry and trade.” Staffa asserts that “the [Fātimid] government made no attempt to impose strict control over the economy.” It may be suspected that the notion of Fātimid “liberalism,” as opposed, say, to Ayyūbid or Mamluk “conservatism,” had helped some decades ago to mole the thesis (now generally discarded) that the origins of guilds and professional organizations in the Islamic Near East are to be sought in the Fātmid state.

It is ironic and perhaps telling that the one national independence movement largely ignored by historians of the Arab Middle East is the Syrian nationalist movement. The irony, of course, is that the birthplace of Arab nationalism was Syria; it was to Damascus that Arab nationalists in Palestine, Iraq and elsewhere looked for inspiration, guidance, and moral support in the interwar period; and out of the Syrian movement sprang the radical nationalism of the Ba'thists. Intellectual histories of the precursors, birth, and content of Arab nationalism abound, and, insofar as these histories deal with the birthplace of Arab nationalism, they must discuss Damascus and Syria just prior to and during World War I. But once the intellectual birth of Arab nationalism has been discussed, interest in the history of Syria wanes to be revived only after World War II, with the emergence of Ba'thism and the military in politics. What follows is by no means a comprehensive analysis of the nature and organization of the Syrian national independence movement; rather, it is a preliminary investigation of some salient characteristics of the politics of Syrian-Arab nationalism in the early years of the French Mandate.

In order to gain a proper historical perspective on opium production in Turkey, it is necessary to look into its worldwide impact during the first half of the nineteenth century. During this time, opium production and trade in both India and Turkey grew rapidly and international trade in opium acquired great significance in shaping England's commercial and political relations with the Levant and the Far East for over a century.

Throughout its history, Islam was influenced by the nature and extent of its contacts with other religions. It began as a relatively simple set of beliefs and practices fully circumscribed by Quranic injunctions and the example (sunna) of the Prophet Muhammad. But because it was cast into an adversary position with Byzantine Christianity, many of its institutions were developed from early times on in response to the intellectual confrontation thus generated. Consequently, by the tenth century Islam had evolved a highly refined theological foundation.

Islamic military slavery has been the subject of a number of studies in recent years. The central theme of these scholarly works has been the dominant role played by Turks, imported as slaves and trained as cavalry, for whom the term “Mamluk” is used to denote both racial background and occupation. A second aspect, which has not been as systematically studied, is that most Muslim armies were composed of cavalry and infantry units organized into units based on racial identities. The theory was that their racial affinities were the cohesive element within a unit; that the natural rivalries between these groups would bring strength to a ruler's position as they tried to outdo one another on the field of battle; and that these racial jealousies would create a balance which would prevent any one military/racial group from dominating the government.

Indian Muslims have always been keenly aware of the differences between their own communal group and the Hindus on the one hand, and between themselves and the Christian foreigners on the other. This awareness of a separate Muslim identity was much stronger at the level of the elite, however, than at the level of the masses. At times, these feelings erupted into calls for jihad against the British, for example, the Wahabi and Fraizia movements. They also manifested themselves in the creation of religious schools, like Deoband, to preserve the Muslim way of life. Finally they emerged as the reformist Aligarh Movement to promote modern education, reinterpret the teachings of Islam, and secure the rights of Muslims as a minority community. In the early twentieth century, various attempts were made to forge a united front with the Hindus for an India independent of Great Britain. These attempts met with repeated failure.