Chapter 3 examines the connections with the front through the support to local soldiers and the arrival of war victims, highlighting the dialectics of the war’s absence and presence in a city at the rear. The city functioned as a dynamic space, not in any way sealed off from the realities of war. Local solidarity played a major role in wartime mobilization, as evidenced by the gifts sent to absent soldiers. The commemoration of war dead without bodies and the requisition of church bells marked the changes in mourning rituals. The cityscape underwent visible transformations due to the arrival of both wounded soldiers and refugees from the East fleeing the Russian advance. Both groups brought home the destruction and suffering created by the war Austria–Hungary was fighting. Initial support from the authorities and the population soon gave way to fears of epidemics and growing hostility in the case of the refugees.

This chapter presents a new, annotated translation of the prose Anaplous Bosporou (Upstream Voyage on the Bosporos) by one Dionysios of Byzantion, written around the middle of the 2nd century AD. As the chapter introduction shows, this striking prose work is ‘perhaps the most detailed description of a landscape to have survived from the ancient world’, and expresses Dionysios’ admiration for his homeland. It also preserves a host of invaluable topographical details along both shores of the Thracian Bosporos and in the Golden Horn (especially the locations of sacred places), as well as information about fisheries. A new, detailed map shows many of the localities mentioned, with an inset showing the area immediately around Byzantion in more detail.

Chapter 4 investigates why, despite a grand ideology which in theory had the potential to resonate in Lebanon’s entire Sunni Islamist constituency, Tawhid’s membership remained overwhelmingly confined to Tripoli. This, it is argued, partially stemmed from the highly fluid and heterogeneous nature of its militant Islamist ideology, which, beyond reflecting the commitment of some members, resulted from the fact that it fulfilled functions. These included outbidding rivals, strengthening internal cohesion and activating bonds of ideological solidarity with like-minded foreign actors to solicit their support. The fluid nature of Tawhid’s ideology, which drew on disparate Sunni but also Shia Islamist references, contributed to restricting its appeal among Lebanon’s more orthodox Sunni Islamists. Yet this chapter notes another factor which limited the appeal of Tawhid outside of Tripoli: the sense that its Islamist discourse was deeply embedded in local identities and narratives. And, while it partially traces this to a movement strategy to recruit locally, it suggests that it also resulted from its own internalized rootedness, which led non-Tripolitan Lebanese Islamists to conclude that Tawhid was more of a Tripolitan than an Islamist movement.

This chapter introduces the topic, theoretical approach, and sources used to write the present history of Jeddah. The local perception of Jeddah as ‘different’ in a Saudi Arabian context serves as the point of departure for this undertaking. Building on the local view of a city hospitable to Muslim pilgrims, a number of practices are discerned which allow the characterisation of Jeddah as a cosmopolitan city with a distinct set of convivial practices. These will be explored throughout the book using a broad range of Arabic, Ottoman, and foreign sources, produced both by governments and individuals. These also include travelogues and local histories as well as material dealing with local traditions.

The period of nationalism – 1955–1965 – provides a fitting denouement to bring home the persistence – and relevance – of local urban identity. Having already studied the Wabagamoyo’s behavior in the face of three rounds of imperialism, how did they perceive nationalism and the push for self-rule? This was not a question that was articulated much in Bagamoyo until 1955, the year after Julius K. Nyerere assumed leadership over the Tanganyika African Association and transformed it into the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), a national political party. TANU activists had difficulty whipping up support in Bagamoyo because “many inhabitants did not believe that this country was theirs but that of the English.” The statement reflects the longstanding local orientation of a community which was incorporated into a “state-nation” system of administration that was imposed upon them by foreigners. In other words, Tanganyika was a colonial creation into which Bagamoyo became incorporated. The town may have been made up of peoples who came from diverse parts of the former German colony, but there did not exist a strong sense of nationalism among the Bagamoyo populace.