Coronations are commonly held at the beginning of a monarch's reign, symbolizing accession to the throne and the continuation of the dynasty. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's coronation ceremony of 1967, however, was held twenty-six years into his rule and was designed to draw attention to the renewed glory of Iranian monarchy and the successes of the Pahlavi shahs. This coronation ceremony and related events offer important insights into the Pahlavi ideologues’ conceptualization of monarchy and the strategies they employed to inculcate their ideology in a domestic and global audience. The shah and the monarchy were presented as revolutionary and reformist, and simultaneously as the ultimate defenders of tradition; as religious by nature, but also as proponents of the separation of church and state. This paper seeks to understand, using a range of underutilized primary source material, how the regime delivered these apparently contradictory notions, and what it sought to gain from holding the event in the way that it did.

This article examines the work experiences of Palestinian Arab nurses to illuminate the operation of the colonial public health regime in Mandate Palestine. Analyzing nurses’ work in the clinics of town and village communities and their relationships with the colonial government's Department of Health, it argues that these nurses were social and political interlocutors in the system of public health, which depended upon their intimate relationships with local communities. By pulling these women out of the archives, this article complicates received wisdom among scholars about development, expertise, and the chronology of welfare. Telling the stories of these women also provides a ground-level view of the operation of daily governance in Mandate Palestine and the lived social, political, and economic realities of an often-overlooked cadre of Palestinian workers from that period.

The Arab Human Development Report 2005: Towards the Rise of Women in the Arab World (AHDR 2005), published in Arabic with English and French translations, was launched at the end of 2006. With a title carefully crafted to avoid Western development buzzwords like “empowerment” and to signal the inclusion of all women living in the region, it is the third in a series of detailed studies meant to unpack the themes of the original overview report that garnered both acclaim and criticism when it was published in 2002. The other two topical reports examine what were billed as “deficits” in knowledge and in freedom. This one tackles what the original report framed as the third major obstacle to the flourishing of the Arab world: the deficit in gender equality.

On 24 January 2015, Shaymaʾ al-Sabbagh, a thirty-two-year-old mother of one and a member of the Egyptian Socialist People's Alliance Party, was walking with flowers in hand alongside her colleagues in a preauthorized march to Tahrir Square to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the January Revolution. Suddenly the police opened fire at close range and within a few minutes Shaymaʾ dropped dead. Despite strong evidence implicating the police, who were present at the scene in overwhelming numbers, and despite the wide circulation on social media of a video clip showing a masked policeman aiming in Shaymaʾ's direction, the attorney general initially refused to arraign the police officer in question and instead decided to charge Shaymaʾ's colleagues. After a massive public outcry, the suspected police officer was finally arraigned (although his identity was never revealed); however, he was charged not with manslaughter or excessive use of force, but with the much lesser charge of “beating that results in death.” Most crucially, the official cause of Shaymaʾ's death was slimness. In a TV interview, Dr. Hisham ʿAbd al-Hamid, the spokesperson of the Egyptian Medical Forensics Authority (EMFA), said that the birdshot that hit Shaymaʾ “was not fatal given that it was fired more than eight meters away, but since she was too skinny, the birdshot was able to penetrate her body easily and ended up hitting the lung and the heart. This is a very rare case.”

The Arab world has experienced a large number of military presidencies since General Bakr Sidki's brief rule in Iraq in 1936. The phenomenon became of great significance beginning with Colonel Jamal ʿAbd al-Nasir's presidency in Egypt in the early 1950s, which established a model for similar regimes in Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and, at least initially, Libya under the self-promoted Colonel Muʿammar al-Qadhafi. The president who exchanged his uniform for a suit; an authoritarian style of political management in the name of a revolution against an old, foreign-dominated order; and the legitimacy obtained from laudable achievements in the international and economic sphere: these were all part of al-Nasir's influence and legacy.

Historians of the Ottoman legal system agree that the basic precepts of Islamic law (the sharia) were, as a matter of principle, to apply fully to the Muslim inhabitants of the empire on all matters civil, personal, and marital. Customary law (örf or adet) was, in personal and civil matters, always subordinate to it. Public law imposed by the Ottoman political authority (kanun and örf-i sultani) was promulgated on the authority of the state and reflected, first and foremost, the priorities and values of the imperial system. Penal law was one other particular area where the Ottoman peculiarity in the implementation of the sharia found expression. The powers of the religious judge, the kadı, were extended to include some supervisory duties, such as the policing of guilds and the regulation and control of markets. Urban security was also placed under his authority, with officers to help implement his decisions. In penal or commercial matters, the law that was effectively put into practice might have been an amalgam of sharia, imperial fiat, and custom, the particular outcome being the result of the interplay of political and social forces.

This study looks at the history of two madrasas in Jerusalem, al-Madrasa al-ʿUthmaniyya and al-Madrasa al-Fanariyya from the 15th to the 18th centuries, in order to examine an understudied Ottoman institution: the imperial provincial madrasa. The imperial madrasas were assigned to the state-appointed Hanafi muftis of different localities across the empire. This essay argues that these learning institutions helped to consolidate the connection between the Ottoman dynasty, its appointed jurisconsults, and its broader imperial learned hierarchy. Beyond revealing some of its important institutional aspects, examining the imperial provincial madrasa casts light on the doctrinal role the Ottoman dynasty assumed in regulating the content of Hanafi jurisprudence that members of the imperial learned hierarchy were to apply. This role and the connections between the dynasty and its appointed jurisconsults had important effects within the diverse legal landscape of the empire, where multiple Sunni (especially Hanafi) legal and scholarly traditions coexisted. In further analyzing the identity of the endowers of these imperial madrasas, the article opens up new avenues for exploring how the Ottoman dynasty was defined in different contexts.

In the wake of Israeli Black Panther activism in the mid-1970s, the Arab League invited Mizrahi (Afro-Asian) Jews, especially those in Israel, to return to their homeland. Some Israelis used the invitation as an opportunity to highlight the extent of anti-Mizrahi discrimination by departing for the Arab world. Albeit small in number in comparison to those who left Israel for other destinations, those who repatriated made a huge impact on perceptions of Israeli emigres. Their importance rested not in their numbers but in the significant threat posed to the Israeli establishment. Afro-Asian Jewish repatriation sent a message that the Zionist project, particularly as the opposing nationalist movement to Pan-Arabism, was a failure.

Two key variables appear to have influenced the varying responses of national armies to the “Arab Spring.” The first is the manner and degree of the institutionalization of the military into authoritarian systems, and even into the few democratic or partially democratic polities, in the Middle East. No 1960s-vintage military regimes remain in the region: the various direct and indirect consequences of the oil price revolutions of the 1970s—including massive urbanization and a huge expansion of state bureaucracies and of the diversity and complexity of national economies—have seen to that. In the process, however, boundaries have blurred between the military, on the one side, and political elites, the economy, and social actors on the other. The second variable—which is partly a function of the first—is that many armies have had both inclusionary and exclusionary impacts at the same time, serving to co-opt, control, or intimidate various social sectors according to whether the latter are perceived as friendly or hostile within “threat profiles” held by state leaders, security officials, and, occasionally, wide swathes of society. The tension between inclusion and exclusion has been replicated in the social-welfare role of military employment, through which governments have shielded core constituencies from the worst impacts of deepening economic liberalization and privatization while growing numbers of their compatriots have experienced widening income disparities, declining living standards, and a descent to or below the poverty line. These trends are brought together most powerfully in the ground forces. They are not only the largest component by far of most militaries and the most affected by pressures on living standards and pensions but also the only ones that can be deployed effectively in the streets as a last resort to confront protesters. Whether armies support peaceful transition, revert to repression, or fragment will be key to their ability to maintain or develop professional, corporate identities. This ability will also be highly contingent on their readiness to accept readjustment of their institutionalization into state systems and on the manner and pace in which this is pursued by other actors. The outcome is not assured.

During the reign of the Nasrid sultan Muhammad V in 14th-century Granada, the renowned literary figure Lisan al-Din ibn al-Khatib rose to the office of vizier and chief dignitary. A text on Graeco-Arabic philosophy and Sufism that he wrote under court patronage, Rawdat al-Taʿrif fi al-Hubb al-Sharif (The Garden of Knowledge of Noble Love), became the centerpiece of a famous court case against him that led to his downfall. Historians have had difficulty interpreting the case because of its political context. Was Ibn al-Khatib's demise really about his philosophical and mystical ideas given his entanglement in power rivalries at the court? Scholars have suggested that Ibn al-Khatib's text was used merely as a pretext to remove him from power. In contrast, I argue that the specific power rivalry between the chief qadi and Ibn al-Khatib only escalated into a court case because, at a time when Sufis were controversial, the qadi read Ibn al-Khatib's Sufi-inspired doctrines as a claim on his religious authority. Ibn al-Khatib's ideas, rather than a pretext for prosecution, were the necessary condition for the power rivalry to erupt into a court case. This reading of the case highlights the way intellectual debates shaped contingent political processes in the medieval Islamic world.

In Part I of this article I noted that the farming out of capital resources to an entrepreneur for a share of the profits, which has always played a very important role in the Middle Eastern economy, never won unqualified approval by the jurists of medieval Islam; for on the one hand farming out on shares was held to be closely allied to the sharika (an institution of broad scope corresponding to the partnership) yet on the other it did not meet all the criteria by which a sharika was accounted valid by the sharî'a. The requirement it did not meet, the jurists felt, was full contractual equality between the parties — in this case the owner of the resources and his working partner or entrepreneur. Owing to the pressure of necessity, farming out on shares was validated, but on the rather shaky grounds of custom and precedent.

In the summer of 1976 Kuwait, after more than thirteen years of legislative experience, suspended its constitution, abolished the legislature, and embarked on what it called an “evaluation” of its democratic experience. After the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the downfall of the shah, Kuwait set up a special advisory committee to study, evaluate, and recommend the political system most appropriate for Kuwait. In 1980 the committee recommended a return to representative institutions. In March 1981, a legislative assembly was elected and was entrusted with the responsibility of drafting a new constitution and ratifying the basic statutes of the country.

The dowry is the movement of women and goods in the same direction (Goody 1973: 18). Or, as Tambiah puts it, ‘Wherever dowry is paid, wealth is not transferred in one direction and women in the other, for both wealth and women travel in the same direction’ (1973: 62). This one-sided exchange is rather curious as one side in the transaction gets all the values while the other seems to give them all away. A person who gives a dowry as a father has once received a dowry as a groom. As a consequence of his once being a receiver he has an obligation to his daughter to be the giver of a dowry. Unlike other types of wife-giving and wife-receiving, in this system it is individuals and not lineages or families who give and receive women. As a consequence alliances between families are not formed.

Throughout one hundred years, Zionist ideology has dictated national settlement planning in Israel. In this highly dynamic society, political processes significantly affected the planning environment, and major planning goals were clearly derived from this reality, while being evaluated against social values. Negligence in the planning process was most critical in the formulation of conflicting long-range goals that impeded implementation. Goal conflict was especially harmful when economic planning was not as sound at a time when geopolitics, security, and defense goals were primarily pursued. Within the fundamental goals, incremental decisions—to construct new communities or extend existing ones—were also implemented. Antiplanning variables slowed down execution only to some extent, but their impact may increase in the future.

Analyzing the relationship between ideology and settlement implementation national planning concepts (through historical perspective), a subject that has received little attention in the past, contributed some analytical policy insights. Clearly, goal hierarchy or the domination of certain goals is sometimes required. However, in order to resolve conflicts, an effort should be made to decrease the differences in weights among goals. Thus, tension could be reduced to facilitate implementation. It is also possible to trade off one goal for another. Compromising among incompatible goals is a crucial matter to Israeli national settlement planning. There should be more balance in the allocation of resources economic objectives on one hand, and geopolitics, security, and defense goals the other. In addition, an attempt should be made to reduce the influence of antiplanning variables. Some of them, such as domestic or international political pressures, are more difficult to control; others are easier to influence. Specific attention should be devoted to achieving a higher professional level in planning, and more opportunity should be provided to experts to contribute input to decision-making processes.

The alliance between the leftist movement Perspectives Tunisiennes and university students delivered sustained opposition and repeated protests against Bourguiba's regime in the 1960s and 1970s. This article argues that these groups were driven by the “student question,” a counterproject for Tunisian national development that opposed the vision of liberal bourgeois modernity espoused by Bourguiba's reforms of elitism through education and depoliticization. Instead, the student question was fleshed out in the group's periodical, envisaging the emancipation of Tunisian subjects and their entitlement to citizenship and political participation, and how the struggle of students would sweep the whole country. Drawing on the movement's journal and memoirs of four former Tunisian leftists, I trace how Perspectives navigated the regime's repression in 1968 and 1972–75, and how two successive generations of leftists emerged with different ideological reference points. In so doing, this article takes seriously the political imagination of this group during the global 1960s and 1970s, while conceiving ways to reintegrate silenced memories and histories into the mainstream of Tunisian historiography after the 2011 revolution.

Heritage is a key site of politics in the Middle East. Recent episodes of the relentless destruction and construction of heritage in the region convey just how deeply intertwined it is with the making (and unmaking) of the postcolonial state. In Palestine/Israel, heritage has developed over a long history into an important site where both state power and resistance against it are produced, reshaped, and disseminated. A current proliferation of urban regeneration projects there is linked to the struggle against the ongoing occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands, as well as the incomplete, truncated emergence of a Palestinian state. Most of these heritage projects are carried out by semi- or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). In this essay, I argue for the value of thinking about heritage in terms of government and state-making, or more precisely in terms of a Foucauldian understanding of governmentality, to reveal the kind of work it performs in Palestine and beyond. States govern also by heritage, and both states and the local communities they attempt to control mobilize the language of heritage for a variety of different purposes in a variety of different settings. What is distinctive about Palestine is the central role NGOs play in the institutionalization of a heritage field. In their work, they collapse the divide between mobilizing heritage to defend vulnerable communities and resist the encroachment of the (Israeli) state, and using heritage to develop institutions and help build the (Palestinian) state.

By all accounts, the population of enslaved Africans in Egypt increased in the 19th century compared to earlier times. An estimated 5,000 African slaves were imported annually during the 1840s and 1850s, and as few as 1,000 in 1860. However, during the cotton boom (1861–64), some 25,000 to 30,000 slaves were brought to Egypt each year to satisfy the demand for labor generated by the rapid expansion of cotton cultivation.