While to the casual observer Iraq appears to have been ruled by the same political elite since 1968, closer examination reveals that its leadership underwent important changes between 1968 and the mid-1980s. This article intends to show that even though the changes were very gradual, sometimes almost imperceptible, the accumulated effect over 18 years was considerable.

The history of Oman is largely a story of competition, and often conflict, between two very different entities. This duality was even symbolized by the name of the country, “Sultanate of Muscat and Oman,” until 1970. The sultanate was formed from the fusion of the Batina coastal plain and its port cities, symbolically Muscat, and the interior of the country, Oman. During most periods in the recent history of the country, only the coast has been ruled by the sultan. Even before the institution of the sultanate emerged in the 18th century, however, the coast had usually been under separate, often foreign, rule. In the interior, the ideal head of government from very early times was that of an imam, even though the office often remained vacant. At many times during Omani history, of course, one part of the country or the other imposed its control and Oman was temporarily united, but the differences between the two sections of Omani society eventually split the country into two separate states again. Even within the last decade, one of the major problems in Oman's efforts to develop has been “the traditional antithesis between the sultan residing on the coast and the inwardly oriented tribes.”

Questions of land tenure and land ownership are central to the socioeconomic history of the Ottoman Middle East. Most people lived in the countryside, where they grew foodstuffs that fed themselves as well as the town populations. Moreover, the rural economy was the main source of economic surplus appropriated by the urban ruling classes.

In his long poem entitled “Quddās bi-lā qasd” (Unintended Worship Ritual), the well-known Syrian–Lebanese poet Adonis (Dr. 'Ali Ahmad Sa'īd) celebrates a love relationship with a young woman he came to know while he was a professor at the Syrian University in Damascus. He mentions two dates and two cities at the end of the poem, suggesting perhaps that he began writing the poem in Damascus in January of 1976 and that he finished it in Beirut in August of 1978. He had moved to Damascus from Beirut during the early years of the Lebanese Civil War and accepted a teaching position at the Syrian University, but he later returned to Beirut, where his home had been since he had left his native Syria to become a Lebanese citizen in 1956. The same young woman also inspired him to write a much shorter undated poem entitled “Awwal al-ijtiya” (The Beginning of Sweeping Annihilation) in which his passionate love is expressed in terms of a deep desire to be natural, to give vent to the powers within the self, and to remove what he considers to be the constraints of hypocritical, repressive sociocultural conventions in Arab society.