Discovering the mechanisms that invested particular forms with meaning and created Islamic systems of signification is of major concern in the study of Islamic architecture. Although we know that these mechanisms exist, and that they produce meanings as complex as those of other cultural traditions, we do not yet know how they operate or even how they were manipulated at specific moments in response to particular aesthetic or practical needs. These mechanisms were most critical at the earliest stage of the Islamic architectural tradition, when forms were often taken over from a variety of contexts but transformed in ways that altered their cultural associations and re-created them as patently Islamic. This creative process is exemplified by that most Islamic—and problematic—architectural feature, the mihrab.

With the generalization of production for exchange in modern times and the corresponding expansion of monetary and commercial transactions, the issue of contractual freedom has become a major concern for Muslim jurists and legislators, instigating a reconsideration of the classical doctrines of Islamic law on the subject. Due partly to its religious character and partly to the historical circumstances presiding over its formation in the first three centuries of the Hijra, Islamic law does not permit freedom of contract. Broadly speaking, three kinds of considerations intervene to restrict freedom of contract in classical fiqh: (a) those arising from the prohibition of usury (ribā); (b) those delimiting the licit object of legal obligation (maḥall alʿaqd); and (c) those concerning the stipulations attached to the contract (shurūṭ). In the present article, I investigate the third category of restrictions and touch on usury and the licit object of obligation insofar as the latter affect shurūṭ (sing., sharṭ), namely the conditions attached to a contract.

Over the years, a number of important studies have been written on aspects of premodern travel in the Islamic world. Most of the literature examining the travel circuits of Ottoman/Arab bureaucrats, scholars, and merchants inevitably gives rise to the question of communal self-awareness and identity. How did pre-modern travelers envisage themselves and the “other”? What allowed some of them to create “imagined communities” of like-minded sojourners, incorporating space, ideology, and shared origin into a notion of exclusive commonality? How did travel contribute to the emergence of theories of “national” exceptionalism from among the fluid traditions of de-centralized imperial control? Why was it that the most favored classes in the empire's provinces were usually the first to register their unease with the status quo and to experiment with different levels of self-perception and identity? Benedict Anderson's thesis on pre-modern travel is instructive on all of these issues. His point of departure is that the frequent journeys of provincial functionaries, bureaucrats, and scholars, whether to perform the obligations of religious pilgrimage or to oversee the administrative needs of empire, paradoxically provided indigenous elites aspiring for representation and recognition in the mother country (or empire) with the catalyst for the development of a wider sense of identification with their home regions. Finding their desires for increased mobility thwarted by the central power, provincial elites in 18th-century Spanish America eventually chose the way of armed resistance to regain control of what was now perceived to be a “common” destiny.

On Wednesday evening, 17 October 1850, at the height of ʿId al-adha, the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice, riots broke out in Aleppo in northern Syria, starting with Muslim riots in the Christian quarters of Judayda and Saliba. For two days, Muslim rioters looted homes and churches in these and other Christian quarters in the city, killing and wounding a number of the inhabitants. Only on Friday did the riots cease, but the insurgents then presented a list of demands to the authorities as a pre-condition for the restoration of order to the city. Their principal demands were that the authorities‧ intention to impose military conscription on Muslims be revoked, that the ringing of church bells and the carrying of crosses in public religious processions be banned; and that the owning of Muslim slaves by Christians be prohibited. The Ottoman governor, Mustafa Zarif Pasha, at first consented to the demands of the rioters, and even took certain steps to restore calm to the ruffled atmosphere, such as declaring that the firda head tax, one of the inflammatory factors that had contributed to the riots, would be transformed into a property tax.

Three decades later, the circumstances that led to the Arab–Israeli war of June 1967 bare again the subject of scholarly attention as the end of the Cold War and the release of official documents in the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, and Israel have allowed surviving participants to compare notes and made possible the detailed reconstruction of decision-making in those states. Much of this historiography has focused on the critical two months immediately preceding the start of hostilities, giving rise to broad agreement that Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser “stumbled into the crisis rather than provoking it deliberately,” through miscalculation and ill-advised brinkmanship. However, there is still no consensus regarding the relationship between Nasser's decisions in spring 1967 and his policy toward Israel in the preceding three years, partly because the dearth of official documents from the Egyptian side has made it difficult to substantiate his real intentions and “historicize” his crisis behavior. Most recent studies tend to skim over the earlier period, if they cover it at all, or now accept the view that Egyptian strategy before 1967 was essentially defensive, based on deterrence and containment, and that Nasser ultimately shifted course due to perceptions of threat that steadily heightened in the course of the previous three years due to the revival of the Arab “cold war,” fear of Israeli nuclear power, and deteriorating relations with the United States, all set against a background of the debilitating military entanglement in Yemen and economic malaise at home