The very use of the term “Bakhtiyārī” with its implicit notion of sociopolitical unity has obscured the nature of the organization and relationships of these pastoral nomadic tribes.1 At the same time that observers of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Iran described the Bakhtiyārī as a unit, they could not explain the prevailing disunity that characterized tribal relationships. Major obstacles for analysis of this problem have been the office of the īlkhānī, paramount chief of all the Bakhtiyārī, and the domination of tribal history by the family of those eligible for this position, which has imposed a certain unity upon recent Bakhtiyārī history. The view that an īlkhānī had long ruled the Bakhtiyārī and that the tribes constituted a confederation has been accepted since the late nineteenth century. Yet the first īlkhānī, Husain Qulī Khan, was not appointed until 1867, and possibly only during his. tenure in office (d. 1882), and again during the Persian Revolution, have the Bakhtiyārī functioned as a true confederation. The significance of prevailing disunity under a temporary political and administrative unity goes beyond the history of the Bakhtiyārī and has important implications for an understanding of Iranian society and history itself.

In the early months of 1920 a group of leading Egyptians founded Bank Misr. Destined to be the major financial arm of an emerging Egyptian bourgeoisie and the hub of a far-flung industrial and commercial empire, Bank Misr was established amidst the revolutionary turmoil of Egypt in 1919 and 1920. It reflected the nationalist and antiforeign sentiments of these troubled years. Its architect, Tal'at Harb, epitomized many of these characteristics. An ardent Muslim and a defender of Arab-Islamic civilization against its Western and Eastern detractors, he was a dedicated nationalist and a critic of rapacious and exploitative European capitalism. Bank Misr was founded as a supremely Egyptian institution and an expression of nationalist aspirations. Its founders hoped that the Bank might facilitate the emergence of an independent Egyptian bourgeoisie. They also wanted to use its resources to establish new commercial, industrial, and financial companies separate from European capital and working exclusively for the economic well-being of Egypt. But many questions immediately emerged. Could an institution founded in the furor of the revolution and headed by an inexperienced staff even survive, let alone spearhead, far-reaching industrial and commercial changes in the Egyptian economy? What would be its relations with foreigners and especially foreign capital? What role would foreign experts play in the life of the Bank? The purpose of this essay is to investigate how the Bank dealt with these problems by looking at the evolving relationship of the Bank with foreign capital. Put simply it can be said that as the Bank evolved and matured, it began to modify many of its original nationalist, populist, and antiforeign sentiments. It was forced to form alliances with the same groups it had so vigorously denounced at its birt. A close observation of the relationship between Bank Misr and foreign capital should cast light on the effort to create an autonomous Egyptian bourgeoisie. It will show the problems inherent in this vision and the compromises that had to be made as difficulties arose. It will also demonstrate the power of European capitalism in Egypt and its capacity to come to terms with even the most vigorous nationalist organizations.

The Arab oil-based economies in the Middle East are experiencing a period of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity owing to the recent dramatic increases in their oil revenues. The countries, however, have started to encounter considerable difficulty in implementing their overly ambitious development plans. Their economies are exhibiting obvious signs of tension and stress with acute bottlenecks developing in many areas and sectors. These bottlenecks relate basically to their generally narrow resource base, inadequate infrastructure, profound labor shortages especially in skilled and highly trained manpower, and inefficient administrative machinery. The cumulative impact of these factors diminishes the capacity of these countries to absorb their tremendous oil revenues productively.

The system of administered trade has been quoted in the literature as an effective mechanism to insure trade between economically unequal countries while protecting the less-developed states from any real contact with more developed areas (see Polanyi et al. 1957, esp. Arnold: 1957,154–187).

Using the example of the traditional state of Morocco, this paper seeks to demonstrate that administered trade was not an effective safeguard against commerce with technologically advanced countries, and in fact, that the system itself contained features which, rather than protecting traditional countries, actually contributed to their conquest by more technologically advanced ones.

Much has been written recently about the severe domestic problems which Turkey has been experiencing since 1970. Instability in the form of worker strikes, student demonstrations, parliamentary stalemate over reform measures, and above all, urban guerrilla terrorism prompted the armed forces to intervene in March 1971 and impose a nonpartisan coalition government in order to put an end to what they deemed “anarchy, fratricide and social and economic unrest.” The following month, at the instigation of the armed forces, a state of emergency was declared and martial law was instituted in eleven of Turkey's sixty-seven provinces. Thousands of suspected “anarchists” were arrested and stood trial, with the result that an uneasy calm returned to the surface of Turkish affairs. Many civilian politicians in the Turkish Grand National Assembly (GNA) were restive under martial law, how ever, decrying their loss of independent action and demanding a loosening of the tight military control.

For the Muslims, ancient Egypt was a land of mystery and magic. The monuments of Pharaonic Egypt attested a once-flourishing civilization, and the sheer scale of so many of these remains seemed to point either to a despotic monarchy which could command the services of multitudes of slaves to build the pyramids or to carve the rock temples of Upper Egypt (this being the rationalistic explanation put forward by, e.g., Ibn Khaldūn), or else to the existence of a priestly tradition of esoteric wisdom and the ability to command supernatural powers (which Ibn Khaldūn fully admitted elsewhere in his Prolegomena). This last view had behind it the sanction of the Qur'ān, above all, in regard to the story of Moses’ throwing down his staff before Pharaoh and its metamorphosis into a serpent, and his subsequent contest in magic with the Egyptian sorcerers (Qur'ān, 7, 101–23/103–26); these events naturally lent themselves to much fascinating embellishment by the qussās or popular storytellers.

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Assyrians—Syriac-speaking Middle Easterners belonging throughout the medieval period to either of the two branches of Eastern Christianity (Jacobite and Nestorian)—remained a little-known community scattered throughout Ottoman and Persian territory. The Assyrian community examined here was concentrated in Iranian Azerbaijan, mainly around the town of Urumiyah (Rizaiyah). Together with tribal Assyrians, who remained in their ancestral mountain villages on either side of the Perso-Ottoman border, Urumiyan Assyrians formed the nucleus of the Nestorian community until World War I. They were united by the same language, modern Eastern Syriac (henceforth referred to as Assyrian), and owed ecclesiastical allegiance to the Church of the East under the hereditary Patriarch, the Mar Shamūn.