Kuwait has long been one of the most demographically self-conscious countries in the world. Since 1965, Kuwaitis have been a minority in their own country, outnumbered by migrants who had come there to find work and flee adversities elsewhere in the region. Between 1957 and 1985, Kuwait conducted a census at least once every five years. Even before its independence in 1961, Kuwait had constructed, and has since reworked, a complex set of policies and regulations for the control and management of migration, albeit with varying and often limited degrees of success.

Historically, the development of modern banking has been an important component of economic change, but it has not always been so clear whether it has been a factor in the genesis of growth or a response to and a consequence of it. In the case of the Ottoman Empire, corporate banks—wholly or partly financed with Western capital—had established themselves in strength in Istanbul after the Crimean War, especially in the decade 1863–72 when no less than eight opened there. All, however, concentrated to varying degrees on meeting the financial needs of the government at a time when the Porte was borrowing almost continuously, both short-term and long-term, a fact that explains the eclipse of several of them around the time of the bankruptcy of 1875.

The seventh Abbasid caliph ʿAbd Allah al-Maʾmun (r. 813–833) was noted for the breadth of his intellectual horizons, and historians often associate him with the Golden Age of Islam. This image of glory is tarnished, however, by two particular actions that the caliph took: his declaration (in 827) of a doctrine asserting that the Qurʾan was created and his ordering of a miḥna an inquisition, that was designed to ensure acquiescence in this doctrine. The miḥna, an unprecedented event in the history of Islam, was begun by al-Maʾmun just four months before his sudden death in 833 and continued by his two immediate successors, al-Muʾtasim and al-Wathiq. It lasted some sixteen years until it was finally abolished by the tenth Abbasid caliph, al-Mutawakkil.

The writings of the Egyptian novelist Najib Mahfuz (b. 1911) in the 1960s illustrate the new literary trends that were then emerging in Arabic fiction. Among his works, the volume of short stories, Dunyā Allāh (God's World, 1963), was the first and perhaps the most important collection within the corpus of his creative works. These short stories are striking for the themes they pursue and the poetic universe they depict, and they reveal in particular his and the Egyptian reaction to progress. In this essay only one of these short stories, “Zaʿbalāwī,” will be discussed. My aim is to show Mahfuz's adept manipulation of mythic themes together with specific Egyptian cultural and Islamic elements in his exploration of the dilemma modernity poses for Egyptian society. “Zaʿbalāwī” was published at the beginning of a new period in his creative development when Mahfuz had begun to pursue his concerns using new and innovative literary techniques.

In his Interpreting the French Revolution, François Furet defines political sociability as the “specific mode of organizing the relations between citizens (or subjects) and power, as well as among citizens (or subjects) themselves in relation to power.” According to Furet, shifts from one form of political sociability to another can and do take place, particularly during periods of comprehensive economic, political, and social change. One such period preceded the events of 1789 when, as an unintended consequence of state building and economic development under the ancien régime, a democratic/horizontal political sociability increasingly replaced the hierarchic/ vertical political sociability that had previously ordered French society.

In cities like Paris and London in the 19th century, the leading bankers not only supported the developing industrialization but also established practices that determined the nature of their charitable and philanthropic activity and their patronage of the arts. They supported scientific and archaeological research as well. The recurrence of these practices over the century is increasingly recognized and would justify investigation to uncover the underlying rules that governed the activities of bankers outside the financial sphere. In other words, it would justify research in terms of the anthropology of bankers. One aspect that has, so far, received insufficient attention is the impact these bankers had on cities—both in their role as builders and protectors of schools and hospitals and in the imprint they made on the urban landscape. In housing, for example, the Stern, Heine, and Weill families established foundations in Paris for the construction of HBM (habitat bon marché, low-cost housing), and architects adopted by the great banking families, such as William Bouwens, chosen by the banker Henri Germain to build the Parisian headquarters of Crédit Lyonnais, designed the great undertakings of the Parisian Belle Époque.

China is now becoming recognized as a nation with a significant Muslim population. With nearly 18 million Muslims (the recent 1990 census reported 17.9 million, with many Muslims still unaccounted for or refusing to register as members of the primarily Muslim nationalities), China ranks among the most populous Muslim nations. And, although its Muslim population is miniscule when compared with its total population (Muslims account for less than 2% of China's 1.1 billion), or insignificant when one looks at the vast Muslim populations in other Asian nations, such as Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, nevertheless, this article argues that the Muslims of China play an important role disproportionate to their numbers in influencing China's domestic and international politics.