The protracted Turko-Armenian conflict, marked by intermittent massacres, was violently resolved during World War I. By governmental decree the bulk of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire was uprooted from its ancestral territories and was committed to a process of deportation that became a process of destruction. The provinces in the interior of Turkey with heavy concentrations of Armenians were thus completely denuded of their indigenous population.

Volumes have been produced regarding the instruments and dimensions of this destruction. The carnage was attested to by multitudes of Armenian survivors; by German, Swiss, and American missionaries; and by European and American consuls in the provinces and their ambassadors in Istanbul, the Ottoman capital. The testimony of Austrian and German officers of all ranks who fought in and directed that war alongside the Turks as political and military allies is even more striking.

Turkey's foreign policy and relations in the early Republican era, before and during World War II, has been subject to systematic and scholarly research, leading to numerous publications since the 1970s. Although no less significant than Britain, Germany, or the Soviet Union in shaping Turkish inter-war foreign policy and priorities, Italy does not seem to have received a similar degree of attention in this growing literature. Italy is usually treated in the works on Turkish foreign relations only as a threat that Turkey's foreign and strategic policy aimed to counter after 1934.

The Jordanian Day-Waged Labor Movement (DWLM) played a central role in the Jordanian Popular Movement (al-Hirak al-Shaʿbi al-Urduni), commonly referred to as Hirak, from 2011 to the end of 2012. The large number of women who were active and took on leading roles in the DWLM contrasts with the absence of women's rights organizations in the Hirak. I argue that the DWLM was able to attract so many women because it developed a discourse and flexible structure that understood women to be embedded within communities and prioritized their economic needs. By studying this discourse and structure, it is possible to learn important lessons about gender-inclusive political and institutional reform.

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.

The growing strength of self-help literature in Egypt represents a new cultural expression of accommodation with capitalism, and markedly expands the mix of modern ideas and ethical practices rendered legitimate through association with tradition. The ideas and practices found in self-help, however, are anything but traditional. In its style and content, self-help expresses the values of individualism and neoliberal understandings of subjectivity. Informed by modern insights into the self and its formation, the genre blurs the boundary between psychology and religion, valorizing the process of self-exploration and self-fulfillment. The inherent message of self-help is not simply the glorification of the individual but, more pointedly, the sacralization of the self and subjective life choices—an interpretive trend that, in Egypt, simultaneously functionalizes Islam and fosters new understandings of what it means to be Muslim.

The period of the so-called Patriarchal Caliphs continues to be rich with questions which can be investigated only with material which often seems less than adequate. Among the more intriguing questions are those connected with the rôle of Kûfa and the emergence there of the political alignments with which representatives both of the early Umayyad caliphs and of the anti-caliph Ibn al-Zubary had later to deal, viz. the Khawârij, the Shi'a and the tribal ashrâf. The remarks in this article are intended to present a broad picture of conclusions reached in a more detailed study of the formation of these political alignments – conclusions which are based on evidence contained in the earliest Islamic historical sources available to us, notably those of al-Balâdhurî, al-Tabarî, Ibn Sa'd, Ibn A'tham al-Kûfî, Khalîfa b. Khayyât and Nasr b. Muzâhim al-Minqarî.

The great revolution was a technological revolution by which the West made its fortune, got the better of all the other living civilizations, and forcibly united them into a single society of literally worldwide range. The revolutionary Western invention was the substitution of the Ocean for the Steppe as the principal medium of world-communication. This use of the Ocean, first by sailing ships and then by steamships, enabled the West to unify the whole inhabited and habitable world.

In this part,* the concept of honor among Black Sea Turks is compared with the concept of honor among clans (hamûla) of Levantine Arabs. The system of meaning among the Arabs is similar to that among the Black Sea Turks, but the cultural structuring of this system of meaning is different. First, the differences in cultural structuring are explained in detail. Then, the two contrasting structurings are shown to provide an understanding of a number of contrasts between the two societies with regard to ‘marriage’ and ‘affinal and maternal relationships.’

Some of the classical commentaries on the sura Yusuf tell us that one day the Prophet Muhammad was reciting Qurʾanic verses for his companions. Bored and weary, they said, “‘O Prophet of Allah! What if you told us a story, what if God Almighty would send a sura that did not contain commandments and prohibitions, and that sura would be a story that soothed our hearts?' God, Mighty and Exalted, said, ‘I will narrate to you the best story.’”

A great deal has been written on Israeli religious institutions, activities, and problems, but the treatment of the subject leaves much to be desired. Many studies focus primarily on a specific topic within the subject – the relationship between the polity and religion as reflected in institutional arrangements. But this problem is not coterminous with the subject as a whole. While the problem of relations between synagogue and state can be discussed as a formal constitutional problem, it cannot be understood sociologically, because it merely represents the tip of an iceberg, so to speak. The iceberg itself, still to be uncovered, consists of religious phenomena – the variegated activities of various groups whereby they relate to religious symbols. People engage in these activities in many ways, causing the emergence of various features of society, and the relationship between synagogue and state is only one of them. Another limitation of present writing on religion in Israel lies in the bias whereby the Israeli situation is often evaluated according to a model of separation of church and state of the American or French type. Many writers demonstrate impatience and lack of sympathy when discussing the religious establishment and the current role of religion in the Israeli state.

Historians of Muslim societies have observed that, in principle, the strict application of the Islamic rules of inheritance would result in the progressive fragmentation of capital. Although technically correct, the observation fails to take into account the fact that the Islamic inheritance rules are but part of a larger and flexible Islamic inheritance system that also includes bequests, gifts inter vivos, family endowments, dowries, fictitious sales, and other modes for the devolution of property. This larger system has served Muslims, rich and poor, for over 1,400 years, although it operates differently in different places. The most important component of the Islamic inheritance system arguably has been the family endowment, known among the Malikis as ḥabs (popularly, habous) and elsewhere as waqf ahlī. This institution came into existence in the first Islamic century, in part because the Islamic inheritance rules proved too constraining, and soon became an integral component of the Islamic legal system. It allows a proprietor to transform immovable property such as a house or field into a perpetual endowment for one or more beneficiaries and subsequent generations of descendants; the property thereafter may not be bought, sold, or inherited. The founder designates the initial beneficiaries and defines the strategy according to which usufructory rights pass from one generation to the next. Thus, the founder may control the devolution ofendowment revenues for many generations after his or her death.

In the final decades of Ottoman rule, several waves of refugees from the Russian Empire's North Caucasus region immigrated to Transjordan, where they founded Amman and other agricultural villages. This article examines the economy of Amman in its formative years as a Circassian refugee settlement. By exploring connections between North Caucasian refugees, Syrian and Palestinian merchants, and Transjordanian urban and nomadic communities, this study posits refugees as drivers of economic expansion in the late Ottoman period. I argue that the settlement of North Caucasian refugees and their active participation in the real estate market in and around Amman contributed to the entrenchment of the post-1858 property regime in Ottoman Transjordan. Through a study of an upper-class Circassian household and its legal battles, this article also illustrates the rise of refugee elites who benefited from the commodification of land and the construction of state-sponsored infrastructure in the late Ottoman Levant.

Since the 1970s, the Salafi movement in Jordan has grown substantially. Today, Salafis are ubiquitous in every major city in the kingdom, and Salafi bookshops, lessons, and activities are common. The purpose of the movement is to institute religious behavior and practices that capture the purity of Islam, as understood by the salaf (early Companions of the Prophet). Salafis believe that because the salaf learned about Islam directly from the Prophet or those who knew him, they commanded a pure understanding of the religion. All decisions in life must therefore be based upon evidence from the Qur⊃an and sunna, as recorded in authentic sayings (had―iths) by the salaf. In instances where particular actions or behaviors were not sanctioned by the original sources of Islam, they are rejected as “not Muslim.” Those who strictly adhere to this religious understanding are considered Salafis.1

Writing in 1962 Stephen Neill listed twelve of what he regarded as “positive achievements of New Testament studies” over the past century.1 As an affirmation of progress in a notoriously difficult field of investigation, they make satisfying and even cheerful reading for the historian. Who was Jesus of Nazareth? What was his message? Why was he put to death? Why did his few followers become, in effect, the nucleus of the powerful and widespread community called Christianity? These were the enormously difficult questions that had begun to be posed in a critical-historical way in the mid-19th century, and some of the answers Bishop Neill discerned, though by no means final, represented ground gained and truths won. Neill's widely read book was revised in 1988, and though his optimism was here and there tempered by what had been said and thought in the twenty-five years since the first edition,2 there was still good reason to think that historians were by and large on the right track in pursuing what Albert Schweitzer described in 1906 as “the quest of the historical Jesus.”3

Periods of cultural florescence seem to coincide with times of political decline far too regularly in the history of medieval Iran and Central Asia for the link between them to be merely incidental. One of the most outstanding examples is the period of the rule of the Turko-Mongol Timurid dynasty in the 9th/15th century, which has been dubbed a “Timurid renaissance” by Western scholars. Another is the period of the political domination of the Buyid dynasty of Dailamite origin in the 4th–5th/10th–11th centuries, which Adam Mez popularized as the “renaissance of Islam.” Still another is the period of the Muzaffarid, Jalayirid, Sarbadarid, and Kartid kingdoms which arose in the 8th/14th century after the fall of the Mongol Ilkhanid empire. Although the appropriateness of the term “renaissance” as applied to the Timurid case in particular has raised reservations among scholars, it does underscore the point that his period was characterized by an extraordinary surge of activity in all areas of cultural and intellectual endeavor, something already noted by its contemporaries.

This paper introduces methods to estimate wealth levels and disparities amongMuslim inhabitants of 18th-century Ottoman Kastamonu. Our sources in thispursuit are estate inventories of the deceased (sing. tereke) as recorded in Kastamonu court records (sicils), mainly in the first half of the 18thcentury (1712-60). By analyzing information provided by these sources through avariety of quantitative techniques, we measure levels of inequality amongMuslims of Kastamonu and describe the relationship between economic privilegeand social, political, religious, and occupational status as well as genderidentity. Our work outlines the contours of economic stratification in18th-century Kastamonu and reveals the relative positions of various socialgroups within this hierarchy.

Through ethnographic and archival research conducted in Istanbul and Izmir, this article examines the dynamics and regulation of charitable giving in contemporary Turkey. The article is based on interviews I conducted with the volunteers, employees, and aid recipients of three civil society organizations that rely on charitable giving to fund their projects, which center on helping the poor and providing aid during and after wars and other disasters. I document how religious ideals of anonymous charitable giving for the sake of giving, without expectation of return, are closely intertwined with anxiety over finding a worthy charitable association and recipient. In doing so, I focus on vakıf as both a concept and a practice that gives meaning to charitable giving in Turkey. The increasing desire to document, define, and categorize the deserving poor as a way to justify the intent to give and to receive goes against the anonymity and immediacy of giving, thus riddling intent with ethical contradictions. I argue that attention needs to be paid to the intent, practice, and various forms of giving, and not just to the effects and outcomes of charity.

Like many other parts of the world, in the last two hundred years or so the Middle East has gone through a process of de-industrialization followed by reindustrialization.* The decline in handicrafts continued until well after the First World War. But by then another development was under way: the growth of a modern factory industry that started around the 1890s, gathered increasing momentum in the 1920s and 1930s, and since the Second World War has proceeded at a very rapid pace.

This article examines the impact of the Ottoman Empire's battle against legal imperialism on the status of Central Asians in its domains, specifically after the promulgation of a nationality law in 1869 that classified them as foreigners. It traces how the threat of Muslim colonial subjects attaining European consular protections led to the emergence of a “Central Asian protection question”: whether Afghans, Bukharans, and Chinese Muslims had legitimate claims to European legal nationality and, by extension, capitulatory privileges. Through a number of case studies, the article shows how the Ottoman Foreign Ministry fused international legal norms and pan-Islamic claims to arrive at the position that Central Asians from informally colonized lands were not “real” subjects of European empires, and that they were under the exclusive protection of the caliphate. This strategy, I argue, undermined the creation of an Ottoman citizenship boundary and opened up a complex field of inter- and intraimperial contestation about who was a foreigner. In contrast to positive associations with legal pluralism in this period, Central Asian migrants and pilgrims who were protected by the caliph but not recognized as Ottomans or European subjects found that they could not benefit from practices such as forum shopping and affiliation switching. And while the notion of foreignness remained subject to multiple and conflicting interpretations across the empire, I argue that nationality as a legal category was incontrovertibly becoming a defining feature of these foreign Muslims' rights and status in the sultan's domains.

The sources for the Bahrî period are particularly rich for four significant problems of Mamluk history: (I) relations between the Mamluks and Mongols, especially as revealed by Mamluks who defected to the ÎlKhâns and Mongols who deserted to the Mamluks;1 (2) the role of Arab tribesmen, in particular the Âl-Fadl of Syria, in the Mamluk polity; (3) the role of the kuttâb in the Mamluk bureaucracy, particularly as exemplified by the infamous al-Nashû (d. A.H. 740/A.D. 1340) in the latter part of the reign of al-Malik al-Nâsir (693–741/1293–1341); (4) the role of the ‘Ulamâ’ in the dynamics of Mamluk politics, as illustrated by the career of Ibn Taymiyya, by all odds the most famous and in many ways the most important single figure in all of Mamluk history, both Bahrî and Circassian.