Ego-documents let us hear the voices of those who have been little heard in historiography. Such documents, especially when narrative in nature, provide insight into historical events and periods by illustrating how individuals—in correspondence with their own (in)actions, (in)decisions, and (mis)convictions as well as emotions, fears, aspirations, and frustrations—experienced and perceived these historical phenomena from a contemporary personal viewpoint. Since the revival of narrative historiography in the 1980s, partly in response to the Annales school, such documents have been increasingly recognized and employed as important historical sources. Nonetheless, the terminology for designating the generic nature and encompassing the diversity of such sources, as well as the methodology for historicizing them, remain under debate.

This article is based on a case file examining the allegedly corrupt behavior of the district governor (kaymakam) of Ereğli, located in the Black Sea coal district of the Ottoman Empire, before the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. It paints a vivid picture of the cronyism, greed, and demands for justice that abound in the testimonies and petitions of a diverse array of local actors that were included in the case file. These documents provide the opportunity to shed light on, among other things, the growing nexus between state power and capital in the late Ottoman Empire within a little-studied peripheral context. As the article shows, prospects of control over the region's burgeoning coal economy led to abuses among officials at various levels of the local and imperial bureaucracy, the impacts of which were felt (to varying degrees) by a wide cross-section of Ereğli society. The behavior of the district governor and his allies, along with the final decision made in the case, reveals much about power, wealth, and justice in the final years of the Abdülhamit regime.

Afghanistan's 20th century has long been seen through an analytical dichotomy. One concentration of historical scholarship has sought to explain the fraught progress of Afghan nation-building in the 1910s and 1920s. A second has sought to explain the unraveling of the Afghan nation after 1979. Weighted toward the decades at either end of the century, this dichotomized field has been problematic in both chronological (and thereby processual) and methodological terms. On the level of chronology, the missing long mid-section (indeed, half) of the century between the framing coups of 1929 and 1979 has made it difficult to convincingly join together the two bodies of scholarship. Not only has the missing middle further cemented the division of scholarly labor but it also has made it more difficult to connect the history of the last quarter of the century to that of the first quarter (except as a story of parallels), rendering them discrete narratives of development, one ending and the other beginning with a coup. The problems are deeper than this, though, extending from questions of chronology and process to matters of method. For if in its focus on nationalism and nation-building the first-quarter scholarship is framed within the neat boundaries of national spaces and actors, then in its focus on the unraveling of the nation and its peoples through the consequences of Soviet intervention, the last-quarter scholarship elevates nonnational actors as the key agents of historical process.

The division of Sudan into two countries on 9 July 2011 following the self-determination referendum of 9 January represents a rare development in Africa. Few examples exist of new state formations in the continent after the end of the colonial period. Answering the call of the IJMES editor to reflect on what this event will mean for our understanding of Sudan might take us in several directions. Let me use this opportunity to comment on two themes that have concerned me lately: the role of the state and the possibility that multiple national identities will evolve in North and South Sudan.

Although Dubai's economic development constitutes an important case, it has received hardly any academic coverage. This article explores the path taken by Dubai in its development, especially since 1990. Based on extensive fieldwork, I identify nine parameters that, through interaction, have contributed to the country's economic progress over the last two decades. I argue that the apparent developmental success of Dubai may be understood as the outcome of conscious policies conducted by a “late–late” developing state in order to “catch up” with the “developed world.” Even in a government-controlled and neopatrimonial economic environment, Dubai has created circumstances where the virtues of neoliberalism seem to coexist with state dirigism. Yet the country faces a challenge of sustainability. Certain of the Dubai's risks and vulnerabilities are unlikely to disappear in the short to medium term: the dependence on foreign workers, the asset bubbles in real estate, regional security problems, and issues related to political leadership.

This study undertakes an examination of Lebanese women's fiction over the past forty years or so. For many women, the urban environment is an escape from the restrictive traditional community that is closely aligned with a rural mentality. Many of these writers tend to see the city in stark contrast to the country, which, in their eyes represents restraining cultural values. If in some cases the city and the country are represented as real, tangible places, the majority of women tend to view them as “states of mind and feeling”1 or as representations. Some female writers see the city and the village in ontological opposition between repression and freedom, backwardness and progress, and past and present—or, as Raymond Williams refers to it, “of consciousness with ignorance; of vitality with routine; of the present and actual with the past or the lost.”2 Nevertheless, it is clear that in many cases the city incorporates and embraces both the traditional and modern patterns, because “an old order, a ‘traditional' society, keeps appearing, reappearing, at bewilderingly various dates.”3 Far from viewing themselves as alienated and degraded beings in the corrupt and hellish city4 or the modern wasteland, women see the nurturing city as a symbol of well-being, independence, and freedom from shackles. Indeed, they become so immersed in city life that, for some of them, there is “little reality in any other mode of life.”5 The city gives them the opportunity to escape the narrow confines of home, family, and stifling traditions that have relegated them to a corner and associated them with a nostalgic past. Accordingly, for many of them, the city has become, as Williams puts it, “the physical embodiment of a decisive modern consciousness,”6 a place consistently in flux and motion7 where women attempt to keep the ever-haunting past at bay and reveal a thrust for change and for experience and knowledge that they try to replenish in the city.

This essay analyzes three problems with the landmark Arab Human Development Report 2005 on women as a means of reflecting on some consequences of the transnational currency of a particular “dialect” of women's rights. Given the current geopolitical context, it first asks how the report's attribution of “unique” shortcomings in the Arab world to cultural and religious factors might make it vulnerable to appropriation for dangerous arguments about “the clash of civilizations.” Second, it asks how the urban, middle-class, cosmopolitan perspective on women's lives, aspirations, and everyday conditions colors the report's analyses of education, employment, and the role of family, eliding critical aspects of political economy and ignoring alternative values. Finally, it considers how the report's reliance on the dominant secular, liberal political paradigms that this “dialect” of women's empowerment indexes—modernization, human development, and (neo)liberalism—both narrows its recommendations and limits its potential appeal, given the Islamic revival and economic problems in the Arab world.

Arab nationalism has received the attention of a fairly large number of scholars since its inception at the turn of the 20th century. It did not receive its first full treatment, however, until 1938, when George Antonius published The Arab Awakening. This book set the tone for much that was to follow—as statements of confirmation, elaboration, or refutation.

Under President al-Sisi, Egypt has revealed itself to be less tolerant of dissent and more successful at cloaking itself in nationalist sentiment than under either the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces or Husni Mubarak. The massacre at Rabʿa al-ʿAdawiyya, the arrests, detention, and torture of youth and prominent activists, the proliferation of criminal and treason charges against journalists, nongovernmental organizations, and Muslim Brotherhood figures, the banning of various organizations, and the passage of restrictive laws on basic civil rights—these practices make clear that the regime has no commitment to democratization understood either as substantive participation or the safeguarding of basic civil liberties.

The very nature of colonialism—the extension of authority by one nation over another people—precludes any valid consideration of the system within a mere examination of its political and economic exploitative elements. The primary of these motives, however, has often overshadowed other traditional emphases of the colonizer himself in seeking advancement of his corrosive system. Reference to the mission civilisatrice, the cultural and moral mission of the colonizer, preoccupied and prejudiced continued justification for the colonial institution. Yet, the fallacy of the major objectives of the system revealed the untenable character of its moral, humanitarian, and cultural aspects.

In the early 1590s an obscure chieftain of the Druze district of the Shûf, in the mountain hinterland of Sidon, was appointed multazim (tax farmer) of the whole Druze mountain (the Shûf along with the Gharb, Jurd and Matn, in the hinterland of Beirut) by the Ottoman beylerbeyi (provincial governor) of Damascus. The name of this chieftain was Fakhr al-Dîn ibn Qurqumâs (Turkish Korkmaz), and he belonged to the family of the Ma'ns, who had been hereditary chieftains of the Shûf at least since the fifteenth century1. In time, Fakhr al-Dîn made use of favourable circumstances to extend his dominion over the whole of Mount Lebanon, and also over other parts of the Syrian countryside. In 1633, however, the Ottomans turned against him and crushed him, and a mysterious figure called ‘Alî ‘Alam al-Dîn was appointed to replace him in the paramount chieftainship of the Druze mountain. For over three decades this man, and his sons after him, maintained themselves in power as paramount chieftains of the Druzes, while the Ma‘ns were reduced to their original size as traditional chieftains of the Shûf. Finally, in 1667, Emir Ahmad Ma‘n, a grandnephew of Fakhr al-Dîn’s, was appointed multazim of the Druze districts of the Shûf, Gharb, Jurd and Matn, and of the Maronite district of the Kisrawân, and the Ma‘nid hegemony over the southern Lebanon was thus re-established. When Ahmad Ma‘n died without male progeny in 1697 he was succeeded in his iltizâm, and hence in the hegemony of the southern Lebanon, by the Shihâbs–Sunnite chieftains of Wâdî al-Taym, on the western slopes of Mount Hermon, who were descended from the Druze Ma‘ns in the female line (see Table I). In 1710-11 the ‘Alam al-Dîns, in eclipse since 1667, re-emerged on the political scene to challenge the Shihâb succession; their revolt, however, failed and they were massacred to extermination. The Shihâbs subsequently became the unchallenged masters of the southern Lebanon, and remained so until their downfall in 1841.2

Throughout the history of Iran, a country where religion has been a predominant element in the life of its inhabitants, spiritual restlessness and social malaise expressed themselves in various revolts which were religious in character. From pre–Islamic Iran to nineteenth–century Babism a series of radical sects, considered as heretical and consequently ruthlessly suppressed by the ruling authorities, came into being.

Many Middle Eastern governments are seeking to liberalize their trade policies. There is a desire to abandon policies based on import substitution through protectionism, and instead concentrate on export promotion. Advisors from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) urge governments to be less interventionist, and to create an environment where the provate sector can have freer rein. It is hoped that private entrepreneurs can revitalize the economies, and play a major role in emport promotion. Egypt, for example, has had an open door policy since 1974 following the years of government intervention and control under Nasser. Syria has also liberalized its import regime, and would like to encourage private sector exports, and Ba'thist socialist ideology has been less emphasized in recent years.

There is hardly a source on early Islam that does not mention slaves in one way or another. They were ubiquitous companions of events, occasions, and incidences. But they played marginal roles in historical accounts. The numerous fragments of information, anecdotes, and offhand references concerning slaves during the rise of Islam call to be collected and analyzed to piece together a picture of various aspects of slavery during this period. References to slaves are especially prevalent in legal texts, as slaves provided useful cases to Muslim jurists to think through legal questions. The discussion of examples of slaves, walāʾ (clientele relationships), and manumission in hadith, exegesis, and jurisprudence has not only provided significant insight into the legal status of slaves, but has also helped scholars to develop a methodology for verifying and evaluating the source material itself. In this essay, I examine pieces of information available in historical and biographical works on early Islam to address the question of the provenance and procurement of slaves in Mecca, Medina, and the Hijaz during the time of the Prophet Muhammad. Reconstructing this story involves dealing with narratives transmitted in various short, spurious, and often unrelated accounts. The source material for early Islam is, as is often pointed out, problematic and at times contradictory. It is laced with topoi and leitmotifs, and frequently proves tendentious, reflecting the opinions and biases of those who wrote them more than what actually happened. Nevertheless, reading beyond the topoi, leitmotifs, and tendentiousness, we find that “in the Traditions there is an undeniable core of ‘fact’” with which we can work and assume to be valid until shown to be false.

These books demonstrate in various ways the momentous progress achieved in the study of Sufism over the past three decades while pointing to lacunae and problems that remain. Until the 1970s, Western scholarship on Sufism was shaped by a set of paradigms that originated among orientalists, travelers, colonial officials, and modernist Muslims in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Scholars privileged the mystical insights and poetry of great Sufi masters and championed personal and unmediated religious forms. Sufism's devotional and corporate aspects were unappreciated, as were the Sufi practitioners, especially ragged dervishes and worshippers at saints' tombs. It was common to separate such practitioners and practices from “genuine” mysticism through a schema of elite versus popular religion. A related paradigm of decline cast later Sufi practice as a corruption of the classical mystical tradition and a culprit in a wider decline of Muslim civilization, while yet another focused on the Sufi brotherhoods as networks of anticolonial Muslim activism and hence purveyors of “fanaticism.”

This article examines the historical roots of juridical moral regulation in modern Egypt, assessing the relationship between modern law and shariʿa through the lens of the influence of the Islamic practice of ḥisba on courts and legislators. The article engages critically with scholarship on Islamic law and postcolonial theory regarding the impact of Western colonialism on law in Muslim societies and problematizes the understanding that shariʿa was secularized in the Egyptian legal culture through the translation of Western legal concepts. Instead, a different narrative is offered, one that recognizes the agency of local actors in the process of secularization and considers the influence of shariʿa in the legal development of contemporary Egypt.

A third wave of autocratization is manifest today.1 Universities are no exception to the institutions that are affected by democratic backsliding in a given country: according to the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, academic freedom has declined by 13 percent in autocratizing countries in the 2010–20 period, whereas almost no change has been recorded in other countries.2