Middle Eastern History Research Papers (original) (raw)

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- Ottoman History, Middle Eastern History, Egyptian History, Turkish Japanese Relations
- by Karen Pinto
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- Aesthetics, Architecture, Middle East Studies, Middle East History
- by Baki Tezcan
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- Ottoman History, Middle East Studies, Middle East & North Africa, Middle East History
- by Zekeriya Kurşun
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- Ottoman History, Middle East Studies, The Persian Gulf, Middle Eastern History
- by James M. Dorsey
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- Sociology of Sport, Labor Economics, Football (soccer), Middle East Studies
- by Kevin Blankinship
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- Middle East Studies, Middle East & North Africa, Literature, Political Science

The Islamic Dawa Party was the first modern Islamist group to be formed in Iraq. It went through a long struggle with the Iraqi government that resulted in its banning by the Baathists, open warfare with Saddam Hussein’s regime, which forced it to go underground, and led many of its members to go into exile. Below is an interview with Dr. Rodger Shanahan, a former officer in the Australian army and senior adviser in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs. He is currently a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy who specializes in the Middle East. Dr. Shanahan goes through the history of the Dawa Party, and how that has shaped the worldview of Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

- by Joel Wing
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- Middle East Studies, Middle East & North Africa, Middle East History, Iraqi History
- by Ahmad Khan
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- Medieval History, Medieval Studies, Middle Eastern History, Islamic Studies

Il aura suffi de l’annonce par le gouvernement d’une taxe sur l’application de messagerie WhatsApp pour qu’éclate un mouvement de contestation populaire inédit dans l’histoire du Liban contemporain. En ce 17 octobre 2019, trente années après l’accord de Taëf, censé mettre un terme à la Guerre du Liban et permettre au pays exsangue de renaître de ses cendres, une limite est franchie. Des citoyens en colère se rassemblent sur une des artères principales de Beyrouth, le pont du Ring Fouad Chehab, jadis ligne de démarcation entre l’Est et l’Ouest de la capitale. Très vite, les grandes places de la ville répercutent l’onde de choc dans un élan spontané assimilé à un sursaut, à une prise de conscience fulgurante.
Il va sans dire que ce ras-le-bol cache un mal plus profond. Celui-ci prend racine dans les graves dysfonctionnements qui sévissent depuis la fin des hostilités armées en 1990 et l’installation de la tutelle syrienne. La fin de cette dernière, suite à l’assassinat de l’ancien Premier ministre Rafic Hariri en 2005, laisse la place à une crise de pouvoir et à une paralysie politique nées des rivalités inter et intra-communautaires sur fond de corruption généralisée et institutionnalisée (y compris au sein du pouvoir judiciaire), de clientélisme et d’impunité qui ont marqué les années 1992-2005. L’afflux massif des réfugiés syriens fuyant la guerre qui se généralise en Syrie à partir de 2012, exerce une très forte pression sur les ressources du pays, d’autant plus que les réfugié…

- by Dima de Clerck
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- History, Sociology, Political Sociology, Middle East Studies

Book Review: J. Hodge, S. Cowdell, C. Fleming, C. Osborn (eds), Does Religion cause Violence? Multidisciplinary perspectives on Violence and Religion in the Modern World, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017, on Ethical Perspectives, 26/2... more

- by Demichelis Marco
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- Religion, Violence, History of Religion, Middle Eastern History

NOTE: EMBARGOED BY PUBLISHER. The latest edition of this renowned textbook explores the states and regimes of the Middle East and North Africa. Presenting heavily revised, fully updated chapters contributed by the world’s leading experts, it analyzes the historical trajectory, political institutions, economic development, and foreign policies of the region’s nearly two dozen countries. The volume can be used in conjunction with its sister volume, The Societies of the Middle East and North Africa, for a comprehensive overview of the region. The chapters are organized and structured identically, giving insightful windows into the nuances of each country’s domestic politics and foreign relations. Data tables and extensive annotated bibliographies orient readers towards further research. In sum, the book provides the most comprehensive and detailed overview of the region’s varied politics available for prospective readers, travelers, journalists, scholars, and policymakers who need usable knowledge about the MENA region.

- by Sean Yom
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- Middle East Studies, Middle East & North Africa, Middle East History, Israel/Palestine

NOTE: EMBARGOED BY PUBLISHER. This new regional anthology explores the societies and populations of the Middle East and North Africa. Presenting original chapters written by the world’s leading Middle East scholars, it analyzes the social fabric of the region’s varied countries to uncover the organizing structures, human vulnerabilities, and dynamic forces that shape everyday lives. It provides the historical and cultural context necessary for understanding the peoples inhabiting Arab world, Israel, Turkey, and Iran since the early twentieth century. Linking past to present to future, it also ascertains the ongoing developmental trajectories of these societies, including their overall stability and prosperity. The chapters are clearly structured, and contain insightful case studies, illustrative photographs, and visualized data. They also end with discussion questions and annotated bibliographies to help spark further research. It is an invaluable companion for students of Middle Eastern politics, as well as sociology, history, economics and anthropology.

- by Sean Yom
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- Middle East Studies, Middle East & North Africa, Middle East History, Iranian Studies
- by Nile Green
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- Japanese Studies, Globalization, World History, Missionary History

Diyala can be said to be a microcosm of Iraq. It is the home to all three major ethnosectarian groups in the country. It has lush farmlands and mountain ranges. It also remains a battlefield between the security forces, militias and the insurgency today. In 2005 Richard Buchanan worked there as a defense contractor interrogating prisoners where he saw first hand the early stages of the civil war. Here is an interview with Buchanan about how the Iraqi insurgency was organized, what the militias did in response, and how the Americans were caught in the middle.

- by Joel Wing
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- Middle East Studies, Middle East & North Africa, Middle East History, Iraqi History

Reviewed by Mawil lzzi-Dien, published in "Journal of Islamic Studies", 6 no. 2 Jul. 1995, pp. 259-260.

Mark Kukis worked as a journalist for Time magazine in Iraq from 2006-2009. That covered the peak of the civil war. During those years it was hard to get around the country, and even harder to talk to any Iraqis out of fear that they might be killed for being seen with an America. In January 2009, when the sectarian conflict had faded, Kukis got the idea to put together an oral history of Iraq, inspired by The Good War by Studs Terkel. Unlike the vast majority of books on the subject, this would not be a story told by the Americans, but rather one by the Iraqis themselves, something that has largely been missing from most of the reporting on the country. Using the Iraqi staff at Time, he was able to interview dozens and dozens of Iraqis from all parts of Iraq except for Kurdistan, because it largely escaped the civil war. These were put together in his 2011 book Voices From Iraq, A People’s History,2003-2009. Below is an interview with Kukis about his motivation, and some of the amazing stories he heard. This adds an important chapter to the Iraq War, because it includes the Iraqi perspective of the struggles that they went through during the U.S. invasion, the insurgency, and the subsequent civil conflict.

- by Joel Wing
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- Middle East Studies, Middle East & North Africa, Middle East History, Iraqi History
- by Lucy McNeece
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- Islamic Law, Food Safety, Middle East Studies, Middle East History

Writing the history of modernity entails a certain conceptual contradiction. The idea of the 'modern', after all, expresses a sense of 'now', the contemporary moment, the world as it currently exists. By its very nature, modernity implies a drawing away from the past. It is future oriented, looking ahead to new possibilities. To speak of modernity in a past tense still seems a little jarring. Even if proclamations of 'postmodernity' at the end of the last century encouraged us to relegate modernity to a historical epoch, there is a sense that modernity is still very much with us. In popular parlance, such phrases as 'the modern world' or 'in this modern age' are powerful shorthands, conveying the rhetorical power of modernity to wipe away all that is deemed to stand in its path. The 'modern Middle East' is another of those shorthands, one often present in the titles of university courses, or of academic surveys of the region. Yet what exactly does it mean? Precisely how did this region become modern and what has modernity implied for the societies of the Middle East? As the following historiographical sketch illustrates, these questions of modernity have long over - shadowed the field of Middle Eastern history.

- by Stephen Pascoe
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- Historiography, Middle Eastern History
- by Deirdre Barrett
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- Military History, Political Sociology, Social Movements, Psychology

In this blog post, published on the British Library's Asian and African Studies blog on 12 November 2019. In it, I look at the reasons for which a large corpus of manuscript material did not develop, as it did for the Ottoman Turkish,... more

- by Michael Erdman
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- Dialectology, Kurdish Studies, Manuscript Studies, Middle Eastern History

This study examines a little-known case of Enlightenment knowledge transmission centred on the rock-cut monument of Darius I at Bīsotūn in western Iran. It discusses a report on the monument published by the cartographer and historian Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville, which originated with the Decalced Carmelite monk Emmanuel de Saint-Albert (born Jean-Claude Ballyet); who transmitted it to Isaac Bellet, a doctor involved in secret negotiations in Constantinople; who in turn sent it to Louis, Duke d'Orléans, in Paris; who passed it on to d'Anville. The collison of scholarly interest, political service and scientific personality offers a fascinating case study of the Enlightenment 'republic of letters' in action.

- by D.T. Potts
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- History, Near Eastern Archaeology, Ottoman History, Iranian Archaeology
- by Paul Brykczynski
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- Religion, Nationalism, Middle Eastern History, National Identity

The Muslim world is not commonly associated with science fiction. Religion and repression have often been blamed for a perceived lack of creativity, imagination and future-oriented thought. However, even the most authoritarian Muslim-majority countries have produced highly imaginative accounts on one of the frontiers of knowledge: astrobiology, or the study of life in the universe. Islam, Science Fiction and Extraterrestrial Life: The Culture of Astrobiology in the Muslim World by Jörg Matthias Determann (I.B. Tauris, 2020) argues that the Islamic tradition has been generally supportive of conceptions of extra-terrestrial life, and in this engaging account, Jörg Matthias Determann provides a survey of Arabic, Bengali, Malay, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu texts and films, to show how scientists and artists in and from Muslim-majority countries have been at the forefront of the exciting search. Determann takes us to little-known dimensions of Muslim culture and religion, such as wildly popular adaptations of Star Wars and mysterious movements centerd on UFOs. Repression is shown to have helped science fiction more than hurt it, with censorship encouraging authors to disguise criticism of contemporary politics by setting plots in future times and on distant planets. The book will be insightful for anyone looking to explore the science, culture and politics of the Muslim world and asks what the discovery of extra-terrestrial life would mean for one of the greatest faiths.

- by Jörg Matthias Determann
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- Middle East Studies, Astrobiology, Culture, Middle Eastern History

A recording can be found at: https://youtu.be/dWzVyIdBcmg. Presented at the 92nd Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America (University of Toronto, 2017).
The sudden construction of larger and stronger fortifications in the Near East from around the start of the thirteenth century has long attracted the interest of scholars. This medieval 'Fortification Revolution' was traditionally thought to be a product of the cross-cultural exchange of information brought about by the crusades, while more recently some have postulated that this shift was caused by the sudden development of much larger varieties of mechanical artillery. Ample consideration is rarely given to the individuals responsible for commissioning these defences and the socio-political, rather than technological, context in which they were built. While the great strongholds constructed by the Crusaders reflect an assortment of tactical and economic considerations that emerged in the wake of Saladin's conquests of 1187-91, the influence of the power struggle that broke out within the Ayyubid family following Saladin's death is readily apparent in the designs of the citadels rebuilt by the principal contenders. Rather than a response to any particular military threat, the ostentatious scale of the defences built by Saladin's brother, al-Adil, and his nephew, Saladin's son, al-Zahir Ghazi, appear to have been inspired in large part by a desire convey a sense of their power and legitimacy as the rightful head of the Ayyubid dynasty. By examining the development of the architectural elements preferred by these men, especially their use of unprecedentedly large towers, and how their fortification designs differed from those of their predecessors, this study will reveal the extent to which both men utilised obviously grand and consistent architectural forms. These were statements of authority at a time when the right to rule Saladin's empire was contested.

- by Michael S Fulton
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- Medieval History, Crusades, Middle Eastern History, Medieval Archaeology
- by Feras Krimsti
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- Ottoman History, Middle East Studies, Eastern Christianity, Middle Eastern History
- by toufoul abou-hodeib
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- Cultural History, Ottoman History, Middle East Studies, Middle East History

This course presents a broad survey of historical forces at work over the past 6,000 years, examining the manners in which human societies have organized themselves along categories of race, ethnicity, class, and gender to meet the challenges of the increasing human population and its demands on natural resources: thus, it examines continuity and change in societies over time, in different places, and among various peoples.

- by Nikolaus L Overtoom
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- Ancient Egyptian Religion, History, Ancient History, European History
- by Burzine Waghmar
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- Middle East Studies, Middle Eastern History, British Orientalism, Bernard Lewis

Publikacja powstała na podstawie badań Autorki przeprowadzonych wśród społeczności asyryjsko-aramejskiej w Szwecji. Asyryjczycy/Aramejczycy trafili do Skandynawii w późnych latach 60. XX wieku, uciekając z Turcji, Syrii, Iraku i Libanu przed wojnami oraz brakiem perspektyw. Obecnie stanowią prężną, liczącą ponad sto dwadzieścia tysięcy osób diasporę, która na różne sposoby przyczynia się do rozwoju swojej przybranej ojczyzny. Szwedzki model, aczkolwiek niedoskonały, w ich przypadku się sprawdził. Autorka opisuje politykę migracyjną i integracyjną Szwecji, etapy i formy instytucjonalizacji w tym kraju, historię wspólnoty asyryjsko-aramejskiej na Bliskim Wschodzie, dynamikę wewnętrzną tej grupy i jej relacje z otoczeniem oraz powiązania transnarodowe. W monografii został poruszony niezwykle aktualny temat, jakim jest akulturacja osób z Bliskiego Wschodu w Europie. Podjęto go jednak z nowej na gruncie polskim perspektywy – ukazując, jak z integracją radzą sobie bliskowschodni chrześcijanie.

- by Bilal Orfali
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- Islamic Law, Food Safety, Middle East Studies, Middle East History

In Nature Knows No Color-Line, originally published in 1952, historian Joel Augustus Rogers examined the origins of racial hierarchy and the color problem. Rogers was a humanist who believed that there were no scientifically evident racial divisions—all humans belong to one “race.” He believed that color prejudice generally evolved from issues of domination and power between two physiologically different groups. According to Rogers, color prejudice was then used a rationale for domination, subjugation and warfare. Societies developed myths and prejudices in order to pursue their own interests at the expense of other groups. This book argues that many instances of the contributions of black people had been left out of the history books, and gives many examples.

- by Rousseaux Shamar
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- European History, African Studies, European Studies, Middle East Studies
- by Brian Ulrich
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- Medieval History, Middle East Studies, Middle East History, Middle Eastern History

The crisis in the Gulf that pits Qatar against a UAE-Saudi-led alliance is Qatar’s least problem when it comes to the 2022 World Cup.