Over the last fifteen years the Syrian Ba'th Party has succeeded-in a country previously known for weak governments and military coups-not only in entrenching a strong relatively stable system of single party rule, but also in launching its own variety of socialist and modernizing revolution. The explanation of this transformation in the nature of Syrian political life is one of the interesting problems of contemporary Syrian and Middle Eastern politics. What accounts for it? This essay will explore one approach to a partial explanation: a study of party recruitment and socialization practices.

Conflict and conflagration are not unique to the Middle East. Rare is the region where, at some point in history, disparate peoples have not clashed and killed. Attempts to assert primacy, when unsuccessful, have often led to periods of retrenching. When successful, postures of victory are precarious, subject to the transient recuperation of the vanquished.

In the Ottoman system the population of the Empire was organized upon a confessional basis, not upon a territorial or linguistic one. It was composed of religious communities each of which had its own internal organization and was controlled by a religious hierarchy. Socially and culturally each community (millet) formed a separate entity, each kept apart from the other. There was no attempt to create uniformity. Consequently, no intercommunal solidarity or social integation evolved in Ottoman society.

Since the quadrupling of oil prices in 1973–74, OPEC and oil prices have made front-page news and captured the public imagination. It is no secret that oil prices are administered prices, where an economic agent is a price maker; other participants in the market have to adjust their behavior to this price. It is not a new phenomenon. From its early history, the oil industry in the United States — by far the world's first oil province — was dominated by the Standard Oil Trust. On the international scene, the role of the Seven Sisters hardly needs mention. They continued to control oil export prices until the 1960s.

On the occasion of the fifteenth century of the hijra, many scholarly publications will deal with various aspects of Islamic history, among which is the contribution of the Arabo-Muslim culture to Western civilisation. Philosophical and scientific contributions have already been discussed many times. The legacy of Islam in the field of international law has, however, not yet been studied at length.

Although a great deal has been said and written about the religious groups in Lebanon, little reliable factual information exists about them. No doubt this is due to the nature of the Lebanese political system: Since obtaining independence Lebanon has preferred not to conduct a population census, owing to the fear that the results might strain the political formula by which it is governed. The last census of the Lebanese population, conducted in 1932 under the French Mandate, showed a total population of 793,246 with a Christian majority in the ratio of 6 to 5. This has been the basis of the political formula for assigning political and administrative offices for nearly four decades (Salem, 1973, p. 20). The recent events in Lebanon have made it clear that non-observance or denial of religious similarities and differences by no means guarantees political stability. On the contrary, it is the author's belief that the recognition of differences as well as similarities among the religious groups is an essential ingredient to future political stability. The purpose of this paper, then, is to provide a descriptive comparison of the major Lebanese religious groups along various demographic, social, and economic dimensions.

Predictions of all sorts preceded the June War of 1967, some by the governments themselves, others by newspapermen and academics, many containing a substantial burden of error, others possessing an impressive degree of accuracy and insight. Analysts making these judgments read daily news accounts, noted official government statements, assessed rumors and intelligence leaks, observed levels of military activity, and then tried to estimate whether, when, and with what consequences war might occur.

This paper describes the political life of Jews in Tunisia and Morocco in the early 1970s. The findings reported are part of a comparative study of Jews in Tunisia and Morocco and Arabs in Israel.

Some strides have been taken to improve the status of women in Islam, but the weight of conservatism is still very strong. How strong it is may be gauged from the following illustration. In the introduction to his book published in 1926 describing the rise of trade unionism, Shaikh Tāhir al-Haddād, a pioneer of the trade union movement in Tunisia, interprets history in a fashion that comes very close to Marxism, although he rejects Marxist atheism and materialism. No opposition came to this work from the pen of an 'alim. But three years later, when he published Our Woman in the Sharî'a and in Society, arguing that the social status of woman in Muslim society was actually inferior to what Islamic teaching granted them and pleading for improvement in the social and legal positions of women, he was severely attacked by the conservatives, lost his job, and died a few years later, a forlorn man.

In modern Arabic scholarship, it would be difficult to find a hypothesis more implausible than that advanced by Tāhā Husayn in his fī‘l-’adab al-jāhilī. Yet it may be wondered whether any other book, written by a contemporary Arab, has had a comparable influence in changing the fundamental attitude of the Arab intelligentsia towards their classical literature and history. The unsoundness of the book's central assertion—that the bulk of pre-Islamic poetry was fabricated by Muslims, and portrays Islamic, rather than pre-Islamic, conditions and conceits—has been exposed by several critics, both native, in varying degrees of wrathful condemnation, and orientalist, with different approaches to conclusiveness. Of the latter, one at least, the late A. J. Arberry, had some pretty strong words to say, not of the Arab propagator of the fallacy, but of D. S. Margoliouth, who, in the same year 1926, had, as it happened, published identical views, supported by largely similar arguments. Said Arberry, introducing his stern refutation, “The sophistry — I hesitate to say dishonesty — of Professor Margoliouth's arguments is only too apparent, quite unworthy of a man who was undoubtedly one of the greatest erudites of his generation.” He went on to castigate Margoliouth's disregard of certain Qur'anic meanings and intentions of which “he must have been very well aware,” his “shocking misapplication of scholarship,” his “immodesty”, and the rest. Quite restrained criticism when compared to the diatribe which the Arab debaters poured on the heads of their fellow citizen and his presumed infidel mentor, but rather unusual in the serene Arcady of orientalism.

The events of the Turco-Italian War (1911–1912) presented several complex problems for Germany's diplomatic and economic policies in the Near East. First, the War served as a test of strength for the Triple Alliance, because the Wilhelmstrasse (German foreign ministry) had guaranteed to maintain Italian interests in Tripolitania, but the hostilities threatened to spread into Macedonia where the Wilhelmstrasse had guaranteed Austrian interests. If the status quo of the Balkans was disturbed by the War, then an Austro-Russian diplomatic struggle might ensue, thus requiring German support for Austria-Hungary. The Germans were forced to support Italian interests in Tripolitania, while simultaneously preserving Austrian interests in the Balkans. Under these circumstances, could Germany preserve the solidarity of the Triple Alliance against internal dissension?

The purpose of this essay is to explore the role of the traditional leader as one source of legitimization of modernization in a preindustrial society. Although of significance in its own right, the role of the traditional leader becomes the more potent when linked with that of the marginal person. This expanded conceptual framework is applied to the analysis of the Iranian situation in which the mutual reinforcement of traditional leadership and marginality appears to explain a certain type of directed social change.

French economic development under the July Monarchy led the class that most benefited by it, the bourgeoisie, to demand increased political power. It was in the interest of the new regime of 1852, whose establishment was made possible by the support of the bourgeoisie, to favor the investment of capital acquired by its supporters, and to find new outlets abroad for the goods produced at an ever growing rate by France's new factories.

Le grand commentaire du Coran de l'Imam Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī pose un problème. Dans la notice que Ibn Abī Usybi'a (m. en 1270 A.D.) consacre à un personnage qui mourut Grand Qādī de Damas en 637/1239–40 et qui se nommait Shams al-Dīn Ahmad b. al-Khalīl b. Sa'āda al-Khuwayyī al-Shāfi'i, on lit que, parmi les oeuvres de ce dernier, figure un complement du “Commentaire du fils du Prédicateur de Rayy”. Il s'agit ici du grand commentaire de Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī dont le père était bien connu sous ce titre, ses dons de prédicateur (khatīb) l'ayant rendu célèbre en son temps.

Mehmed Emin âli Paşa (1815–1871), one of the leading Ottoman statesmen of the Tanzimat period, was the purported author of a political testament that was published in 1910, though said to have been written just before his death. When finally published, it was in French rather than in Turkish. The “Testament politique,” with the signature “Aali” at the end, appeared in two sections in successive issues of the Revue de Paris. In the same year it also appeared as a separate brochure.1 Its authenticity has, ever since, been a question. Discussions of the point have reached no satisfactory conclusion.2 Now that the papers in the Basbakanlīk Arsivi in Istanbul are available to research, there is opportunity for a new judgment. Several documents in the Yīldīz collection there pertain to Âli Pasa's political testament.

Laymen, Zionist leaders, and both Jewish and gentile analysts have maintained that in the 1930S the British government's policies toward Palestine were strongly affected by Britain's general orientation toward appeasement. Both contemporaneously and ex post facto, critics have made three assumptions about these policies. First, the decision-making elite which launched Britain's policy of appeasement was also responsible for Middle Eastern policies in general and policies toward Palestine in particular. Second, British actions in Palestine were an integral part of the general trend in British foreign and defense policies. Third, out of selfish interests Britain sacrificed the weaker democratic Jewish community in Palestine (the Yishuv) to its more aggressive protagonist (the Palestinian Arab community) which was supported by the leaders of neighboring Arab countries.

Ever since it had been recognized that the decay of the Ottoman Empire could not be arrested by traditional methods, foreigners and non-Muslims had played a significant part in the Empire's modernization. The Compte de Bonneval and Baron de Tott were only the most famous of a group of foreign advisers who were employed by the Ottoman government to help reform the military establishment during the eighteenth century. During the Tanzimat era, 1839–1876, when the Porte became irrevocably committed to modernization, foreigners and non-Muslims were employed in a multitude of capacities. They ranged from the Prussian Von Moltke who was to advise on the vital problem of reorganizing the army, to Giuseppe Donnizetti, brother of the composer, who was charged with the somewhat less important task of organizing a Western-style military band.

“Religion is poetry plus, not science minus” is a bon mot that I find not only charming but perceptive. Taking a cue from that way of putting things, let me develop a suggestion that an accurate historical awareness will add to, not subtract from, our understanding of in this case scripture. At one time, the historical or historicist interpretation of religious matters was seen as subtracting; as leaving something out. It was called “reductionist”; and was contrasted with theological, or with phenomenological or other, assessments. I will contend, rather, that a true historical view enhances, rather than reduces, our apprehension of humanity's spiritual life. I hope to show how this is so.

The Democratic Republic of the Sudan was among the first of nonsovereign territories in Africa to obtain its independence from European political control. Formerly under the joint sovereignty of Britain and Egypt it became independent on January 1, 1956. Since its declaration of independence, Sudan has experienced three major self-proclaimed revolutions, and the format of government has twice changed between parliamentary democracy and military regimes. As of this writing, the current government under General Jaʻafar el-Numayri has been in power longer than any of its predecessors. General Numayri's success in ending the sixteen-year-old civil war between north and south has bolstered his position as head of state. Consequently, this success and at least three other factors have induced the world to pay considerable attention to Sudan.