On a bright day in January 1987, my host in the Awlad ʿAli bedouin community in Egypt in which I had been doing research invited me to accompany him on a con dolence call. He knew how enthusiastic I was about visiting people who stillcamped in traditional tents in the desert, and this set of families, he assured me, lived in a beautiful area. The group's patriarch had died twenty days ago, but my host had been too busy to go so only his younger brothers had paid their respects. He had just heard, though, that the bereaved family was upset he had not come himself. So we drove off in his car, with his two cowives in the back seat, stop ping at the market town nearby to buy a fat sheep to take with us. As they loaded the beast into his car, my host complained about how expensive sheep had be come. The sound of its bleating in the trunk reminded me of trips to weddings, when sheep are also obligatory gifts.

On 8 April 1980, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr was executed. His execution arousedno criticism from the West against the Iraqi regime, however, because Sadr had openly supported the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime in Iran and because the West was distracted by the turbulence in Iran that followed the revolution. Governments both in the West and in the region were concerned that the Iranian revolution would be “exported,” and they set about eliminating that threat. When Ayatollah Khomeini called upon Muslims in Iraq to follow the example of the Iranian people and rise up against the corrupt secular Baʿthist socialist regime, they interpreted it as the first step in the spread of Islamic radicalism that would eventually lead to the destablization of the whole region.

“Does the Arabic novel exist?” With this provocative question, Hilary Kilpatrick begins an article entitled “The Arabic Novel—A Single Tradition?,” in which she makes clear that her question has been inspired both by the established regional approach most critical studies use in dealing with the Arabic novel, and by the absence of a continuous tradition of the novel as a genre in the Arab world. But, while underscoring variety in form, style, and subject, Kilpatrick, keen to provide an answer to her question, concludes in unequivocal terms that the Arabic novel as a single tradition does certainly exist: “It is written in one language, and [has] a shared cultural heritage and recent historical experience common to the whole area [which] providef[s] novelists in different countries with similar material. In this respect the Arabic novel is distinct in its subject matter from the African or German novel, for instance.” Although the conclusion is valid, it is based on his- torical and cultural generalizations rather than on a thorough study of novels from the Arab world. Nor does the platitudinous remark with which the quotation con- cludes help Kilpatrick make her case in a particularly convincing manner. The distinct nature of the Arabic novel, as this study will demonstrate, is best exemplified in what might be called the Arabic Bildungsroman. Its definitive, culturally determined themes and structure, distinctive basic tension, and established literary conventions to my mind suggest the presence in the Arab world of at least this kind of novel.

Any exploration of the wider implications of the 1988 electoral campaign for the Israeli Knesset invites two questions: first, were the surprising conduct and results aberrations? Or were they the effects of underlying forces slowly changing the patterns of Israeli politics? If the latter, then, second, to what extent are such forces controllable by party leaders and at what cost? My contention is that what happened in 1988 did, in fact, herald changes that were not ephemeral but indi cated the beginnings of a shift in the entire Israeli party system.

Islamic revivalism is often believed to be solely committed to the Islamization of society, viewing politics as merely an instrument in the struggle to realize its aim. The record of Islamic revivalist movements—as exemplified by one of the oldest and most influential of them, the Jamaʿat-i Islami, or Islamic party of Pakistan—however, brings this presumption into question. The nature of the linkage between Islamic revivalism as a particular interpretive reading of Islam and politics is more complicated than is generally believed. Political interests, albeit still within an Islamic framework, play a more important and central role in the unfolding of revivalism—even overriding the commitment to Islamization—than is often ac knowledged. Participation in the political process eschews a blind commitment to Islamization and encourages adherence to organizational interests, and as is evi dent in the case of Pakistan, to the democratic process, characteristics that are not usually associated with Islamic movements. The dynamics and pace of this pro cess are controlled by the struggles for power within an Islamic movement as well as vis-à-vis the state. It is through grappling with these struggles that the commit ment to Islamization is weighed against the need to adhere to organizational and political interests; this is the process that governs the development of Islamic re vivalism. Beyond this general assertion, the manner in which the struggle for power unfolds, the variables that influence it, and the nature of its impact on the development of revivalism need to be explored further.

This article examines the role gender plays in the pilgrimage rites in Mecca at the turn of this century. I argue, as a student of local cultures rather than a scholar of universalistic Islamic beliefs, that portions of the hajj at that time had a special significance for Arab Muslims in and near the Hijaz. Arab pilgrims served, ad dressed, and even dressed the Kaʿba like a bride. By ascribing feminine charac teristics to the Kaʿba, they temporarily transformed human gender roles and constructed an alternative model of gender that could be utilized when negotiating and renegotiating gender roles in everyday life.

The political mobilization of Palestinians in the occupied territories in the 1980s was closely tied to the rise of a new elite and the marginalization of the traditional notable leadership. Such mobilization was necessary in order to overcome, at least in part, the class, kin, and regional cleavages that had long fragmented Palestinian society and that had been used by occupying powers to undermine collective national action. The mobilization of Palestinian society by a new elite was made possible by structural changes that had led to the peripheralization of the traditional elite. The three most important structural changes were the dramaticrise of wage labor after 1967, which transfigured a basically peasant society, extensive land confiscations, and the widespread availability of university education after 1972. Each of these developments helped to break traditional patron–client relations that had been the social base of the old elite and paved the way for the rise of a more extensive, better educated, more rural, and nonlanded elite which had gained cohesion in thePalestinian universities. In addition, these developments, and in particular the diminution of the Palestinian peasantry, meant that large segments of the population had, in effect, been cleaved from their social moorings and were, thus, more open for recruitment into new forms of social relations and organizations. It is to refer to these structural changes in Palestinian society that I use the term “social mobilization.”