The decade of the 1930s in Egypt has been subject to varying interpretations in recent scholarship. The publication of books on classical Islamic themes and figures by men who previously had advocated the adoption of Western scientific techniques and cultural values as essential to Egypt's modernization has been seen as indicative of an intellectual crisis which contributed to a more general conservative reaction from 1935 onwards. While analyses have varied as to the motivation and scope of this crisis, a dominant influence upon scholarly literature has been Nadav Safran's important study, Egypt in Search of Political Community, and his conclusion that ‘the intellectuals surrendered their previous bearing — rationalism and a Western cultural orientation — without being able to produce any viable Muslim-inspired alternative’. Given the importance of Safran's work and its relationship to the research presented here, we will discuss the period in question and, in particular, Taha Husayn and Muhammad Husayn Haykal, with specific references to Safran's general approach as well as to his treatment of the 1930s.

Social scientists often consider feasts to be reflections of social structure. They assume that people living in community, sharing a common culture and participating in the same political framework, will also celebrate the same feasts. This may be superficially true. But a closer look at such feasts shows that the manner of their celebration varies a great deal between sectors of the community. Different positions in the social structure are reflected in the details of ritual, in the composition of the participants, in the nature of gifts, and in other aspects of the feasts. These distinctions are very evident in the circumcision feasts of the Negev Bedouin.

Direct consequences of pacification of the Yarahmadzai Baluch by the Iranian army in the campaigns of 1928–35 were the prohibition and cessation of raiding, imposition of Iranian military and civilian officials over the tribe, and limited access to previously unavailable labor and goods markets and to national government resources. Whatever the economic and psycho-cultural dislocations resulting from pacification, there was great structural continuity within the Yarahmadzai. There was no interference by the Iranian government, whose policy was external control through indirect rule, and who paid the Sardar (tribal chief) a substantial yearly stipend.

In 1924 the doors of the medreses of Turkey were ordered closed by the Grand National Assembly. The century-old movement to modernize and secularize Turkish education reached a crucial watershed with the abandonment of the traditional Islamic system of mektebs and medreses. The bifurcation which had characterized Ottoman education since the early nineteenth century and which had been reflected in the empire's educated élite could not be tolerated in the new, secular republic envisaged by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

Only the introductory portion of the History written by the Armenian Mxit'ar of Ani has come down to us. However, an extensive passage on the Ghaznavids and Seljuks from the lost part of the work is quoted in the Universal History composed c. 1268 by Vardan Vardapet3. The content and the sources used for the compilation of this much-neglected narrative is the subject of this study.

Western scholarship is today at work ‘rediscovering’ the Egyptian archives. After a decade of relative absence, scholars have in the past few years converged on Cairo in ever growing numbers to mine the archival treasures hidden away in mosques, palaces, and old public buildings. Between 1968 and 1970 American scholars researched eight archive projects, Europeans several more; and in 1971–2 The American Research Center in Egypt administered 29 projects (a near threefold increase from the immediately preceding years), of which 18 proposed to use archival material1.