The decade of the 1930s in Egypt has been subject to varying interpretations in recent scholarship. The publication of books on classical Islamic themes and figures by men who previously had advocated the adoption of Western scientific techniques and cultural values as essential to Egypt's modernization has been seen as indicative of an intellectual crisis which contributed to a more general conservative reaction from 1935 onwards. While analyses have varied as to the motivation and scope of this crisis, a dominant influence upon scholarly literature has been Nadav Safran's important study, Egypt in Search of Political Community, and his conclusion that ‘the intellectuals surrendered their previous bearing — rationalism and a Western cultural orientation — without being able to produce any viable Muslim-inspired alternative’. Given the importance of Safran's work and its relationship to the research presented here, we will discuss the period in question and, in particular, Taha Husayn and Muhammad Husayn Haykal, with specific references to Safran's general approach as well as to his treatment of the 1930s.

The Middle East, as a geographical term, is generally used today to cover the area stretching from Morocco through Afghanistan, and is roughly equivalent to the area of the first wave of Muslim conquests plus Anatolia. It is a predominantly Muslim area with widespread semi-arid and desert conditions where agriculture is heavily dependent on irrigation and pastoral nomadism has been prevalent. With the twentieth-century rise of exclusive linguistic nationalisms, which have taken over many of the emotional overtones formerly concentrated on religious loyalties, it becomes increasingly doubtful that the Middle East is now much more than a geographical expression – covering an area whose inhabitants respond to very different loyalties and values. In Turkey since the days of Atatürk, the ruling and educated élites have gone out of their way to express their identification with Europe and the West and to turn their backs on their traditional Islamic heritage. A glorification of the ‘modern’ and populist elements in the ancient Turkish and Ottoman past has gone along with a downgrading of Arab and Persian cultural influences–indeed the latter are often seen as having corrupted the pure Turkish essence, which only re-emerged with Atatürk’s swepping cultural reforms. Similarly the Iranians are increasingly emulating the technocratic and rationalizing values of the capitalist West, and in the cultural sphere identify with the glorious civilization of pre-Islamic Iran. This identification goes along with a downgrading of Islam and particularly of the Arabs, which has characterized both radical nationalists like the late nineteenth-century Mîrzâ Âqâ Khân Kirmânî and the twentieth-century Ahmad Kasravâ1 and more conservative official nationalists such as the Pahlavi Shahs and their followers. The recent celebrations of the 2500th anniversary of the Persian monarchy, for example, were notable for their virtual exclusion of the Muslim ulama, though religious leaders of other religious were invited, and their lack of specifically Islamic references. In both Iran and Turkey, traditional Islam has become largely a class phenomenon, with the traditional religion followed by a majority of the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie, but rejected or radically modified by the more educated classes. With the continued spread of Western-style secular education it may be expected that the numbers of people identifying with nationalism and with the West (or with the Communist rather than the Islamic East) will grow.

On 26 April 1920, three days after the opening of the Grand National Assembly in Angora (Ankara), Mustafa Kemal addressed his first officially confirmed message to the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) of Russia. Shortly thereafter, Bekir Sami Bey (Kundah), Turkish foreign minister, departed for negotiations in Mosocow.A draft treaty was initialed in August and delivered to Angora in September, and in March 1921 the governments of the Turkish Grand National Assembly and of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic established formal bonds by concluding the Treaty of Moscow. During the few intervening months the small Caucasian Armenian republic, which had been created in May of 1918 and which had become the fulcrum of Armenian aspirations for an independent state encompassing both the Russian Armenian provinces and the contiguous Turkish Armenian provinces of eastern Anatolia, was crushed by the invasion of General Kazim Karabekir's XV Army Corps. The offensive, begun after attainment of a vague Soviet-Turkish understanding, not only overturned the Allied-imposed Treaty of Sévres, which had awarded to the Armenian republic much of the four eastern vilayets of Van, Bitlis, Diyarbakir, and Erzurum, but also restored to Turkish dominion the sanjaks of Kars and Ardahan, since 1878 parts of Russian or Eastern Armenia. What was more, Nationalist Turkey annexed the Surmalu district, embracing Mount Ararat, the historic symbol of the Armenian people.

The writings of Jurjî Zaidân constitute an important contribution to the secular intellectual awakening of the Arabs in the nineteenth century. The trend toward non-traditional thought had been initiated by the confrontation with the overpowering Western civilization, which threatened the established socio-political order and questioned the validity of the traditional identity and cultural values. To an increasing degree intellectual discussion in the Arab World — as in many other parts of the world — concentrated upon the concept of nationalism. It is in this context that we shall have to discuss the thought of Jurjî Zaidân. Nationalism appeared to be the most efficient means to establish an identity that could resist the Western impact:

The Middle East was overwhelmed by Europe; self-affirmation in nationalistic terms was part of its defense. Backwardness could be overcome by assimilation, but assimilation would obliterate identity. Nationalism would provide the incentive to progress and at the same time a barrier to self-obliteration.

The new states of Africa encounter particularly difficult problems of reconciling pressures for rapid socio-economic change with the orderly transfer of power to new leadership. A number of recent commentaries on the discontinuities and crisis of developing countries have challenged the notion, in large part derived from Western political experience, that some sort of incremental reconciliation between the social effects of development and the political restructuring of society will steadily occur. The models used in comparative politics admit conflict, but they do not go very far in telling us how these forces interact in the policy machinery of a developing country. Moreover, while the primacy of politics continues, it is doubtful if new social and economic forces in the society are welcomed, and sometimes even recognized, by the existing élite.

One of the primary reasons for Lebanon's political viability over nearly three decades of independence in a volatile political environment has been the relative success of well-organized, intensely nationalistic Lebanese groups in mobilizing effective support for the system. The most significant such organization is the Lebanese Katâ'ib Party (LKP), which has exceeded others in its membership support, structural stability, ideological commitment, and coercive powers to influence government policy.

Social scientists often consider feasts to be reflections of social structure. They assume that people living in community, sharing a common culture and participating in the same political framework, will also celebrate the same feasts. This may be superficially true. But a closer look at such feasts shows that the manner of their celebration varies a great deal between sectors of the community. Different positions in the social structure are reflected in the details of ritual, in the composition of the participants, in the nature of gifts, and in other aspects of the feasts. These distinctions are very evident in the circumcision feasts of the Negev Bedouin.

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

The question of change in religion in Middle Eastern communities has been recently studied by several researchers. A review of these studies reveals three main approaches to the problem. The first approach, used principally by orientalists, treats the problem in terms of either history or theology. Among the most significant of these studies are those of H. A. R. Gibb (1938) and Bernard Lewis (1964), who hold that contact between the secular world of the West and the Muslim sacred way of life has brought elements of secularism into the Islamic religion.

During the past several decades, deliberate attempts to move from a ‘traditional’ to a ‘modern’ form of society have been made in the Republic of Turkey, resulting in rapid change economically, socially, and even politicallyI. The effort to change from a predominantly agrarian economy, and the concomitant increases in urbanization and industrialization, have had a profound effect on several sections of the country and have, to a large extent, created a whole new structure of spatial organization and patterns. Nevertheless, most of Turkey has been only slightly affected by the modernization process, and remains unaltered by the progress of economic and social development. Although economic growth and capital expenditures for development have steadily increased, they have not been uniformly distributed throughout the Republic, resulting in distinct regional disparities and a socio-economic system with many dualisms in its structure2.

Although every study of Arab society agrees on the central importance of the family to the organization of society, there has been relatively little discussion of the honor of the family, ‘ird. In the descriptions that exist, this honor is characterized as preoccupation with sexual purity and chastity, or as a cause of suspicion and jealousy between men and women. The distinctive characteristics of honor have never been spelled out; it is usually referred to briefly and then discarded in favor of such topics as the authority structure, the preference for marriage with the father's brother's daughter, and the seclusion of women.

Direct consequences of pacification of the Yarahmadzai Baluch by the Iranian army in the campaigns of 1928–35 were the prohibition and cessation of raiding, imposition of Iranian military and civilian officials over the tribe, and limited access to previously unavailable labor and goods markets and to national government resources. Whatever the economic and psycho-cultural dislocations resulting from pacification, there was great structural continuity within the Yarahmadzai. There was no interference by the Iranian government, whose policy was external control through indirect rule, and who paid the Sardar (tribal chief) a substantial yearly stipend.

Throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries major changes in the relations between great states once again highlighted the importance of a land whose history marks all ages — Egypt. Students of Western naval explorations are familiar with the significant place of Egypt in the imperial plans of the Portuguese during their expansion into the Indian Ocean after 1488. But while the Portuguese attempt to control the Red Sea and Persian Gulf trading routes brought Egyptian history solidly within the periphery of European scholarly interest, the almost simultaneous conquest of the Mamluk empire by the Ottomans (1517) makes no such impact on the historiography of the Western world. Yet the seizure of Syria, Egypt, and Arabia not only catapulted the Ottomans into a position of leadership within the vast Muslim community, but it also gave the Istanbul regime resources sufficient to project its power north to the gates of Vienna and west to the Strait of Gibraltar. Could this ‘distant’ conquest have played a more active role in the history of Europe than hitherto imagined? Clearly the answer to this question involves a comparison between the imperial histories of Europe and the Middle East during the age of the Renaissance. Once the first steps are taken to break the artificial historical divisions preventing such a comparison, there is little doubt that Selim the Grim's victory over the Mamluk empire was a major event in both European and Middle Eastern history.

In 1924 the doors of the medreses of Turkey were ordered closed by the Grand National Assembly. The century-old movement to modernize and secularize Turkish education reached a crucial watershed with the abandonment of the traditional Islamic system of mektebs and medreses. The bifurcation which had characterized Ottoman education since the early nineteenth century and which had been reflected in the empire's educated élite could not be tolerated in the new, secular republic envisaged by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

Abû al-Qâsim al-Shâbbî is one of the most attractive literary figures of twentieth- century North Africa, and probably the only Maghribi author of the modern period so far to attain the stature of greatness in the Arab world. His talent was first appreciated in Cairo in the thirties by the editors of Apollo magazine, and today literary men in all Arabic-speaking lands admire his verse.At the 1966 festival held in his memory in Tunis, critics and litterateurs from Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria and Iraq read papers and recited poems expressing their appreciation of this treasured child of the Tunisian desert.

The sources for the Bahrî period are particularly rich for four significant problems of Mamluk history: (I) relations between the Mamluks and Mongols, especially as revealed by Mamluks who defected to the ÎlKhâns and Mongols who deserted to the Mamluks;1 (2) the role of Arab tribesmen, in particular the Âl-Fadl of Syria, in the Mamluk polity; (3) the role of the kuttâb in the Mamluk bureaucracy, particularly as exemplified by the infamous al-Nashû (d. A.H. 740/A.D. 1340) in the latter part of the reign of al-Malik al-Nâsir (693–741/1293–1341); (4) the role of the ‘Ulamâ’ in the dynamics of Mamluk politics, as illustrated by the career of Ibn Taymiyya, by all odds the most famous and in many ways the most important single figure in all of Mamluk history, both Bahrî and Circassian.