It is perhaps premature to spell out priorities of research in the history of Libya, since bibliographies of what has already been written have not been systematically read, nor even adequately compiled and indexed. The following observations and analyses are, of necessity, based on a cursory reading in a list—compiled by the author on the history of the Arab world and Ottoman Empire (sixteenth through nineteenth centuries)—of some 500 studies done since the 1950s by Arab scholars and historians. The fifties are taken as the period which signalled the achievement of political independence by the Arab States. I realize that individual scholars will be able to make exceptions here or ther to the observations, generalizations, and criticisms which are made in this study. The very exceptions, however, point to the dearth of modern critical scholarship on the history of Libya from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. However, the exceptions which one could point out as models for research to be done, do not in and of themselves amount to trends in research. To date, available histories of Libya are, in the main, focused on political if not outright dynastic history. The focus is usually placed on the peculiarities and the anomalies of political history rather than the primary similarities which make for comparative history. In the remainder of this paper we offer a novitiate's priorities for research under five headings.

Samad Behrangi (1939–1968), Jalāl Āl-e Ahmad (1923–1969), and ⊂Ali Shari⊂ati (1933–1977) were perhaps the three most influential lay Iranian intellectuals among dissatisfied, anti-regime Iranians during the 1960s and the 1970s. Each hailed from a different province of Iran: Behrangi from Azerbaijan, Āl-e Ahmad from Tehran, and Shari⊂ati from Khorasan. Each developed loyal followings during his lifetime. Each became a “martyr” to his devotees and developed a wider popularity after death than he had enjoyed in his lifetime. And each formulated an extensive societal critique fortifying, inspiring, and galvanizing adherents for the final assault on the shah's regime.

Traditionally renowned for their dislike of settling outside their own country, the Egyptians started to become active emigrants in the early sixties. In noting this fact we do not, of course, mean to imply that Egyptian emigration has never taken place. There are reports that quite a few peasants emigrated from Egypt to the Levant to escape from Muhammad 'Ali's tyranny in the nineteenth century, while more recently, several thousand Egyptians emigrated around the period of the First World War to Iraq, Turkey, Greece, and France.

One of the most dramatic developments in the social structures of third-world societies in the post-World War II era has been the expanding role of the state. While the extent and precise form of the state's involvement in economic, political, and social activities has varied from place to place, the trend toward a more important role for the state has been pervasive and the basic pattern in which this role has expanded seems to have been repeated in nation after nation. As a result, a growing number of scholars have begun to speak of a generalized form of political/economic organization in the third world—state capitalism. They seem to agree on a number of characteristics of state capitalism at the descriptive/ empirical level.

The study of women in the history of the Middle East has been subject, until recent times, to a benign neglect born of the general of scholarship in the field and common misconceptions, shared by historians of other regions as well, about the study of women. First and foremost, the general backwardness of Middle East historiography, widely attested to in periodic surveys of the state of the art, consigned women, along wiht many other groups and classes in society, to a minor, if not totally insignificant, place in history. Concentration on visible political institutions, diplomatic events, and intellectual currents of the high, as opposed to popular, culture effectively wrote all but upper-class males out of the historical process. That Middle East history remained, to a large extent, confined to this rather narrow sphere long after historians of Europe and the Far East had embarked on studies of social and economic history is related to the origins and the orientation of the field itself.

A single photograph taken during the Constitutional Revolution portrays the nature of that historical event better than most of the accounts purporting to explain the Revolution in terms of the ideological impact of the West. It is a picture of some fourteen-thousand artisans and shopkeepers (pīshivarān), dressed in their traditional attire, taking sanctuary (bast) in the garden of the British Legation in Tehran and demanding mashrūīyat (constitutional rule). At first sight the picture is perplexing; it stands at odds with the present studies of the Revolution: How could a “modern,” or a “national bourgeois” revolution have been brought about by a social class who appeared—and indeed were—traditional in every sense of the word?

Pending a peaceful solution to the current war of liberation in Afghanistan, any consideration of alternative economic systems, as raised in some circles, must be based on the given structural conditions of the Afghan economy. Contrary to expectations by some, the basic structure of the economy in terms of size distribution of sectoral output is unlikely to change significantly despite any changes in the share of resources between the private and public sectors.

The Afgham economy is based on agriculture and it will continue to derive the major portion of its national income (output) from this sector in the foreseeable future. The potential for economic development, based on domestic resources, is also largely founded in agriculute.

The recent crisis in Turkey has been described primarily as a political crisis caused by an unworkable political system under attack from organized terrorism from both the right and the left. While this may be valid as an immediate cause, there are some structural and ideological contradictions in the Turkish economic system which must also be highlighted. These contradictions have evolved gradually over the last half century in the course of Turkey's efforts to achieve industrial and economic growth. They have been exacerbated in particular by a process of lopsided industrialization after 1960 which, as in most other developing countries, has resulted in increased poverty and unemployment while achieving overall growth rates of 6 percent or better.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Iran was shaken by a series of serious upheavals caused by the Bābī movement. Although of short duration, these upheavals engulfed the entire country and had far-reaching effects in that they formed the first of a chain of events that led on the one hand, to the constitional movement in Iran, and on the other, to the establishment of the now world-wide Bahā'ī Faith.

In 1898, with Great Britain and Russia vying for political and economic dominance of Iran, Grand Vizier Mīrzā Alī Khān Amīn ud-Dawlah set in motion a cycle of events that, during the early part of the twentieth century, led to the downfall of the Qājārs, a dynasty he had spent his entire professional career serving. What initiated this cycle was the negotiation for a loan from Great Britain, sought partially for governmental expenses but mostly to finance a trip by the Shah to Europe. To obtain this loan, Amīn ud-Dawlah mortgaged the revenues of Iran's two most important customs houses in the south (Bushehr and Kermanshah), and also allowed those two departments to come under the control and administration of the British-owned Imperial Bank of Persia. In return for these astonishing concessions, the Bank advanced £50,000 to Grand Vizier Amin ud-Dawlah for emergency expenditures. The remainder, a mere £200,000, was to be paid upon completion of negotiations with the British Government. British bankers and diplomats in Tehran, aware of the sensitivity of the Grand Vizier's extraordinary decision, urged London to complete the negotiations as soon as possible. In the view of British representatives in Tehran this was imperative if temporary control of the customs houses was to become “a permanent institution.” However, negotiations dragged on long enough to give Russia and the Grand Vizier's rivals a chance to successfully frustrate the negotiations. Failure to obtain this British loan forced Grand Vizier Amīn ud-Dawlah to resign.

While the literature on ideology is long-standing and considerable, it is also very controversial. On the one hand, the term ideology remains in such poor repute that many authors apologize for using it or substitute other words or expressions. On the other, many scholars employ the term without definition as though its meaning was well understood.

With the growth of the volume of foreign trade in nineteenth-century Iran, as well as the direct participation of European merchants, the use of bills of exchange, promissary notes, and drafts increased. In fact, toward the end of the nineteenth century, trade in Iran would have been greatly hampered without trade bills, due to the fact that all the flow of capital was to Tehran.

In spite of the fact that it has been a favorite subject of scholars for more than seventy years, the religious history of Morocco, especially concerning the period before the French protectorate, remains at best incompletely studied and at worst completely misunderstood. This does not mean, however, that theories and indeed dogmatic assumptions have not been advanced, most notably in the study of what has been termed “popular religion,” that exotic blend of “orthodox” scholasticism and “heterodox” praxis that has made “Moroccan Islam” so interesting.

A prominent feature of the literature on Islamic law is the absence of reference to concrete cases. The preference given to oral testimony over written evidence by the ulema may have been one of the reasons for this neglect. But a more crucial factor can be traced back to the conceptual apparatus of the researchers who made use of the blurred notion of “traditional” society. As obedience to norms in such societies was supposedly automatic, the researchers could legitimately focus on ideals instead of the complexities of concrete behavior.

This paper is an attempt to show how the economy and society of rural Iraq was affected by a combination of changing world economic circumstances and structural innovations in the pattern of land tenure. Iraq's gradual incorporation into the world market in the latter part of the nineteenth century was assisted by the application of the legislative and military reforms of the Tanzimat, which served generally to extend the powers of the Ottoman state over its provinces. Although the effects of the application of the new system were less direct than the Ittomans desited, it did set in motion a gradual process of detribalisation, which tended to reduce the powers of tribal shaikhs and promote the emergence of private prooerty in land.

An increased awareness of the activities of Orientalists has occurred in recent years due to the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism. However, as most students and scholars who study the East know, Said's work is only one of the more recent discussions of this subject. Others who have critiqued Orientalists and Orientalism include A. L. Tibawi and Abdallah Laroui, and, at an earlier time, Jamāl al-Dīn “al-Afghānī” and Muḥammad Abduh. Western Orientalists have even been engaged in evaluating the work of other Orientalists, and even critiquing the critics; for example, J.-J. Waardenburg, D. P. Little, and the participants in the recent Giorgio Levi Della Vida Biennal Conference.

In this paper we discussed socioeconomic inequality among ethnic communities in Iran. There were significant clues to the widening gap between Persian and non-Persian communities. That is, contrary to the existing theories, modernization and industrialization have not been accompanied with improvement in the distribution of the resources among ethnic communities; rather they have increased inequality. Thus, we looked into the particular nature of Iranian modernization for causes of interethnic inequality. Political centralization, domination of Persian language and culture, and centralization of early industrialization contributed much to the development of the interethnic inequality at early stage of the Iranian modernization. In the new area, the 1960s–1970s, the existing gap was further widened by centralized and urban-biased economic growth. This was possible only because of the government's unique access to the increasing oil revenues which were generated with very little help from the domestic means of production.

By resolution of the ruling Command Council on 19 March 1977, a new judicial organization known as the niyāba (formal name: al-niyāba al-'āmma) was introduced in the Yemen Arab Republic. Derived ultimately from a French model, the new institution has been provided with wide statutory powers, many of which are new to Yemen. Essentially, the niyāba is an agency of investigation and prosecution, with jurisdiction in criminal cases and other areas of “public” rights, It has responsibilities also in family law, especially in cases involving the dissolution of marriage and the protection of minors. In addition, the niyāba has authority over the “officials of judicial enforcement,” and it is charged with the oversight of jails. Although the niyāba's institutional ancestry is traceable to the French ministère public (or parquet), the transfer of the European institution to Yemeni soil was not direct, since Yemeni legislators modelled their niyāba on an Egyptian legal organ of the same name. The Egyptian niyāba was instituted in 1876 as a copy of the ministère public, but evolved considerably since its introduction there (Hill, 1979). The arrival of the niyāba in Yemen thus was mediated by an interval of one hundred years of development outside of France.

Economic growth in underdeveloped countries, including Jordan, is associated with substantial social change. According to the theory of social deviance, underdeveloped societies are characterized by a traditional distribution of labor where customs and values greatly influence the manners of economic performance. These customs and values shape attitudes of people toward work in general, and the issue of participation of women in the labor force in particular.