Over the last fifteen years the Syrian Ba'th Party has succeeded-in a country previously known for weak governments and military coups-not only in entrenching a strong relatively stable system of single party rule, but also in launching its own variety of socialist and modernizing revolution. The explanation of this transformation in the nature of Syrian political life is one of the interesting problems of contemporary Syrian and Middle Eastern politics. What accounts for it? This essay will explore one approach to a partial explanation: a study of party recruitment and socialization practices.

Although a great deal has been said and written about the religious groups in Lebanon, little reliable factual information exists about them. No doubt this is due to the nature of the Lebanese political system: Since obtaining independence Lebanon has preferred not to conduct a population census, owing to the fear that the results might strain the political formula by which it is governed. The last census of the Lebanese population, conducted in 1932 under the French Mandate, showed a total population of 793,246 with a Christian majority in the ratio of 6 to 5. This has been the basis of the political formula for assigning political and administrative offices for nearly four decades (Salem, 1973, p. 20). The recent events in Lebanon have made it clear that non-observance or denial of religious similarities and differences by no means guarantees political stability. On the contrary, it is the author's belief that the recognition of differences as well as similarities among the religious groups is an essential ingredient to future political stability. The purpose of this paper, then, is to provide a descriptive comparison of the major Lebanese religious groups along various demographic, social, and economic dimensions.

In modern Arabic scholarship, it would be difficult to find a hypothesis more implausible than that advanced by Tāhā Husayn in his fī‘l-’adab al-jāhilī. Yet it may be wondered whether any other book, written by a contemporary Arab, has had a comparable influence in changing the fundamental attitude of the Arab intelligentsia towards their classical literature and history. The unsoundness of the book's central assertion—that the bulk of pre-Islamic poetry was fabricated by Muslims, and portrays Islamic, rather than pre-Islamic, conditions and conceits—has been exposed by several critics, both native, in varying degrees of wrathful condemnation, and orientalist, with different approaches to conclusiveness. Of the latter, one at least, the late A. J. Arberry, had some pretty strong words to say, not of the Arab propagator of the fallacy, but of D. S. Margoliouth, who, in the same year 1926, had, as it happened, published identical views, supported by largely similar arguments. Said Arberry, introducing his stern refutation, “The sophistry — I hesitate to say dishonesty — of Professor Margoliouth's arguments is only too apparent, quite unworthy of a man who was undoubtedly one of the greatest erudites of his generation.” He went on to castigate Margoliouth's disregard of certain Qur'anic meanings and intentions of which “he must have been very well aware,” his “shocking misapplication of scholarship,” his “immodesty”, and the rest. Quite restrained criticism when compared to the diatribe which the Arab debaters poured on the heads of their fellow citizen and his presumed infidel mentor, but rather unusual in the serene Arcady of orientalism.

Mehmed Emin âli Paşa (1815–1871), one of the leading Ottoman statesmen of the Tanzimat period, was the purported author of a political testament that was published in 1910, though said to have been written just before his death. When finally published, it was in French rather than in Turkish. The “Testament politique,” with the signature “Aali” at the end, appeared in two sections in successive issues of the Revue de Paris. In the same year it also appeared as a separate brochure.1 Its authenticity has, ever since, been a question. Discussions of the point have reached no satisfactory conclusion.2 Now that the papers in the Basbakanlīk Arsivi in Istanbul are available to research, there is opportunity for a new judgment. Several documents in the Yīldīz collection there pertain to Âli Pasa's political testament.

Ever since it had been recognized that the decay of the Ottoman Empire could not be arrested by traditional methods, foreigners and non-Muslims had played a significant part in the Empire's modernization. The Compte de Bonneval and Baron de Tott were only the most famous of a group of foreign advisers who were employed by the Ottoman government to help reform the military establishment during the eighteenth century. During the Tanzimat era, 1839–1876, when the Porte became irrevocably committed to modernization, foreigners and non-Muslims were employed in a multitude of capacities. They ranged from the Prussian Von Moltke who was to advise on the vital problem of reorganizing the army, to Giuseppe Donnizetti, brother of the composer, who was charged with the somewhat less important task of organizing a Western-style military band.

In the fall of 1969 the Libyan monarchy was overthrown by a group of young military officers headed by Mouamir Quadafi. In the months prior to the revolution the tribal-based Monarchy had found it difficult to cope with the stress of rapid social and economic change, and had found itself immobilized by the conflict between Libya's traditional tribal and religious elite and a small but influential modernizing elite composed of students, technocrats and younger military officers. This new elite, a byproduct of Libya's oil wealth, had become particularly distressed by the arbitrariness and inefficiency of the Monarchy, the severe maldistribution of the oil revenues, and the existence of what they felt to be a poorly planned and managed development program which had largely failed to penetrate Libya's predominatly rural areas.