Great cities, no less than small books, have their fates. Some are capable of self renewal from seemingly unsalvageable shards of their older phases, like Alexandria; some continue to add new rings to their girth, preserving alike the evidences of alternating greatness and mediocrity, like Cairo; some disappear entirely into memory and literature, like the Round City of al-Mansûr, which today has as little to do with its living descendant, Baghdâd, as do the City of Brass or Qur'ânic Iram. Despite an absolute dearth of archaeological spade-work on the site, and a correspondingly absolute dependence on written sources, the scholarly literature dealing wholly or in part with al-Mansûr's Baghdâd is by now fairly extensive. For the most part, this literature has restricted itself to discussion of technical and architectural problems, or to those of historical and social geography. This paper proposes to look into the symbology of the city's immediately striking plan, the cross within the circle, as another instance of the imago mundi, a fitting pattern for this capital of the world-bestriding 'Abbâsid Empire. In the course of investigation, some treatment, however summary, of a number of folkloric/literary motives was found requisite, all, it is to be hoped, tending toward the definition of a clear and plausible design.

In 1946, the entertainer and activist Paul Robeson pondered America's intentions in Iran. In what was to become one of the first major crises of the Cold War, Iran was fighting a Soviet aggressor that did not want to leave. Robeson posed the question, “Is our State Department concerned with protecting the rights of Iran and the welfare of the Iranian people, or is it concerned with protecting Anglo-American oil in that country and the Middle East in general?” This was a loaded question. The US was pressuring the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops after its occupation of the country during World War II. Robeson wondered why America cared so much about Soviet forces in Iranian territory, when it made no mention of Anglo-American troops “in countries far removed from the United States or Great Britain.” An editorial writer for a Black journal in St. Louis posed a different variant of the question: Why did the American secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, concern himself with elections in Iran, Arabia or Azerbaijan and yet not “interfere in his home state, South Carolina, which has not had a free election since Reconstruction?”

In 1918 British and French troops occupied the Arabic-speaking regions of the Ottoman Empire and by 1920 had expelled the Arab nationalist regime in Damascus and divided the area between themselves as they had agreed to do in the Sykes–Picot treaty signed two years earlier. Out of their share, the French created in 1920 the two Mandates of Syria and Lebanon with their own locally recruited military organization, first called the Syrian Legion and later the Troupes Spéciales, which were combined for both countries.

If the Revolution of Persia has been so astonishing, when taken only in a general View, and according to the very imperfect Ideas we can form of it from the Gazettes and other publick News Papers, we may affirm, it will appear still more amazing, when we come to give a particular Account of the remote Causes and Events that prepar'd the Way to it for above twenty Years…

Historians have long recognized post-war Palestine as a society in a state of destabilization. Increasing tension between the population and the Palestine Mandatory government was reflected in political opposition and violence. This was accompanied by the growing role of the United States in the intensive debate on the future of relations between Arabs and Jews, as reflected in the decision in late 1945 to convene the Anglo-American Committee. The transition from a war economy to a period of reconstruction produced immense economic and social problems that added to increasing British debts, which was partly reflected in difficulties in absorbing former servicemen in to Palestine's economy and increasing unemployment of both Arabs and Jews. Destabilization was also made evident by increasing industrial unrest, focusing significantly on the state sector of the economy—the government bureaucracy, the railways, and the military camps. This post-war militancy was part of the economic and social impact of the war, the associated cycle of wartime labor strikes, and the increasing cooperation between Arab and Jewish workers in labor protest against the government.

The medieval Arabic cartography of Africa outlined a paradoxical continent of facts, myth, and mystery. Ever since the great geographers such as al-Idrisi, al-ʿUmari, al-Masʿudi, and Ibn Battuta traveled to and wrote about Africa, the map of Black Africa became a combination of mystical and empirical knowledge, the result of, in the words of Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias, “the interplay of the ideological and the cognitive.” These kinds of maps were very illustrative of certain classificatory categories in which Africans in general were known, and where cultural boundaries were drawn between more specific areas, such as Egypt and neighboring African kingdoms. Merchants and traders also contributed to the mapping of the frontier to Egypt's uppermost south, the vast territory known as bilāad al-sūdān.

The debate over the origins of early Arab nationalism in geographical Syria before World War I revolves around a twofold thesis presented two decades ago. Its first and most influential part advances a social explanation, maintaining that it was a traditional intra-Arab elite conflict: “those members of the Arab elite who had a vested interest in the Ottoman state were Ottomanists. Those who were without such a stake were Arabists.”

History is enamored of revolutions. This essay takes as its subject a revolution—the Young Turk Revolution of 1908—which overthrew one of the most enduring autocracies of early modern times. It concerns itself, however, with revolution of a specific kind, cartoon revolution: where images could take precedence over words; where the past, present, and future were created and imagined; where the celebration of new freedoms brought citizens into contact with menaces in the streets.

In the decade before the military coup of July 23, 1952, an increasingly militant workers' movement was an important component of the social and political upheaval that undermined the monarchy and ended the era of British colonialism in Egypt. The ebbs and flows of the labor movement coincided with successive upsurges of the nationalist movement. Working class participation in the nationalist struggle infused the movement for full independence and evacuation of British military forces with a radical social consciousness, and since workers’ strikes and demonstrations were often directed against foreign enterprises, the labor movement was commonly considered to be a component of the nationalist movement. The working class was a social battering ram destabilizing the old regime, and many nationalists encouraged and legitimized labor militancy.

The study of proverbs has a long history. Collectors have come from many walks of life and their motives have been various, but foremost among them was the idea that the proverbs of a people would provide valuable clues about their character and culture and open paths of communication. While this notion is in part correct, the cultural portrait painted by proverbs may be fragmented, contradictory, or otherwise at variance with reality. Proverb collections, both old and new, can still constitute a fertile field for study, but must be regarded not as accurate renderings but rather as tantalizing shadows of the culture which spawned them.

In his collection of essays, Peasant Society and Culture, Robert Redfield stresses that peasants are men of the countryside who are tied to the land and rooted in villages and who, at the same time, must take account of the city — whether that recognition involves its political power, its marketplace, its beliefs, its style of life, or the people it produces. Redfleld calls attention to two aspects of the interaction between town and countryside. On the one hand he focuses on the linkers, whether men (e.g., dons, senoritos, mandarins, mukhtars) or institutions (temples, schools, castes, mosques, or dramatic companies) of peasants and townsmen; on the other hand he focuses on the cultural materials (beliefs, ceremonies, art forms) they exchange. In both cases Redfield is interested in the process of exchange in its “social organizational” context. That is, he is interested in the day-to-day situations in which beliefs from the “great tradition of the reflective few” are heartily rejected or wholly accepted, or more usually tolerated, accommodated, and perhaps reinterpreted by a “little tradition of the largely unreflective many” (Redfield 1958, p. 70). And he is interested in the opposite process by which the beliefs of the many are accepted or rejected, or more usually tolerated, accommodated, and/or reinterpreted by the reflective few

For urban politics in Syria, the interwar years were pivotal. The country was in a transitional phase, uncomfortably suspended between four centuries of Ottoman rule and national independence. Although the Empire had collapsed and new forms of social and political organization were available, there remained a distinctive Ottoman cast to Syria's urban elites. Meanwhile, France had occupied the country, but was ruling clumsily and with a growing measure of uncertainty. The Mandate system itself dictated that the French could not remain in Syria indefinitely and Arab nationalism, however inconsistent and inarticulate, had become the reigning political idea of the age. The cry of independence rang across much of Syria, and nowhere more loudly and clearly than in her cities, the traditional centers of political life.

During the late Ottoman period, a large influx of migrants and the expansion of cultivation created opportunities for new settlements in the countryside of Anatolia, Greater Syria, and Iraq. However, settlement often brought misery to newcomers in the form of malaria, especially when it occurred in the lowlands of the Mediterranean. This article traces the contours of the encounter with malaria that arose out of settlement, offering an overview of how Ottoman state and society confronted the conundrum of the swamp and examining the impact of this confrontation on local political economies. It demonstrates that swamps and malaria were a significant concern for late Ottoman state and society, and that policies adopted to address malaria sometimes facilitated the creation of large estates in the countryside of the Mediterranean littoral.

The tribe was the main solidarity group in Transjordan on the eve of the establishment of the modern state in 1921. As in many tribal societies in the Middle East, the creation of the state system in the aftermath of World War I brought about dramatic changes in the lives of tribespeople, and nomads in particular. The emergence of colonial governments with centralizing ambitions; the creation of international borders; rapid economic changes; and the spread of national ideologies were among the factors that threatened the survival of old tribal order and indeed put enormous pressures on tribespeople everywhere. Nevertheless, in the case of Transjordan, twenty-five years after the process of state-formation and modernization had been launched, tribal identities had not disappeared. Rather, tribes remained important social and cultural categories, having adapted to new realities and transformed in the face of them. Moreover, in the course of this process, the tribal population of Transjordan became the backbone of the Hashemite regime and among the most enthusiastic supporters of the kingdom. Even today, tribal identities, though significantly modified since the days of the Mandate, continue to play a major role in Jordanian politics. Scholars of modern Jordan have acknowledged the special relations between the tribes and the Hashemite monarchy. They have also emphasized the centrality of tribes and tribal political culture in contemporary Jordan. The historical roots of these phenomena, however, deserve further exploration.

The social and cultural composition of Turkey's provincial society is still poorly understood, not only in the West, but in Turkey itself. Because of this situation, contemporary accounts of Turkish society have a tendency to underestimate the variety of provincial life and to discount the importance of this variety for the nation as a whole. Some events in recent decades, it is true, have certainly eroded the diversity of provincial society. The population exchanges after World War I virtually removed the entire Christian population from Asia Minor. As well, the development of a national polity and the accompanying acceleration of westernization established a new national culture and society which has affected even the most remote areas of the country. Despite this trend toward a greater uniformity, local traditions and local loyalties still retain a vitality that is seldom fully appreciated.

On the night of May 26, 1762, several residents of the Syrian city of Aleppo entered a house in their neighborhood uninvited. The owners were not in, but several unveiled women sitting in male company were there to greet them. If the scene proved less compromising than the intruders expected, it did confirm their suspicion that the house was a meeting place for illicit relations. The following day they turned in the owners, a man and his mother, to the court and secured the qadi's consent to have them expelled from the neighborhood.

An account already exists between us and the Arab world: the account of the compensation that accrues to the Arabs who left the territory of Israel and abandoned their property … The act that has now been perpetrated by the Kingdom of Iraq … forces us to link the two accounts … We will take into account the value of the Jewish property that has been frozen in Iraq when calculating the compensation that we have undertaken to pay the Arabs who abandoned property in Israel.

For years, religious violence and terrorism in Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt have splashed across the headlines and surged across the screen, announcing yet another round of senseless death and destruction. While Arabists and Islamicists attempt to pick their way carefully through the ideological and intellectual minefields to make sense of what is happening, the wider public generally disregards their insights and instead sticks to what it knows best: deeply ingrained prejudices and biases. Egyptian, Arab, Muslim—all are painted in a very unfavorable light. Even in Egypt, many bystanders show the same sorry prejudices. In the end, people simply blame the brutality on inexplicable backward religious ideas and then move on.

The existing literature on the denial of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 tends to concentrate on either the Turkish state's political practices or civil society's increasing openness to alternative readings of the event. I argue that both approaches reduce denialism to the political practices and defense mechanisms of Turkey by prioritizing the state as the sole agent of genocide denial. Although the state is indeed a dominant actor of denialism, to juxtapose state and society is to overlook the power that rests in the discourse itself and its pervasiveness across different—at times even competing—social and political settings.