I joined the Review of Middle East Studies’ editorial team in a disquieting time—one in which the world we study and inhabit is engulfed by political upheavals with traumatic human, material, and environmental consequences. Although every age has its crises, it is hard not to feel that we are in a moment of critical import for the future of domestic and global relations, as nation-states once again seek to assert and extend power through increasingly xenophobic means. How grateful, then, I have been that Richard Martin's brilliant stewardship and Ashleigh Breske's managerial acumen guided RoMES into a position primed to address our role as an academic community dedicated both to the MENA region and to the global dimensions of scholarship. Rich and Ashleigh planned and steered this Issue of RoMES through the editorial process, and generously offered their time and insight while waiting for me to assume the duties of Editor and transition the office to Claremont McKenna College. We are indebted to Rich for re-mapping the vision of RoMES while presumably retired, tirelessly working through a backlog of submissions, commuting to Virginia Tech after convincing the institution to house and support the Review, and for generally embodying a spirit of dedicated service to the field we can only hope to approximate. His willingness to walk me through the intricacies of the Review process while also navigating a cross-country move further illustrates a generosity of spirit that I hope will continue to suffuse RoMES in the future. Rich and Ashleigh together also streamlined the production process, and along with the team at Cambridge University Press, I look forward to building on their efforts and maintaining RoMES as a vibrant and consistent voice in an increasingly volatile climate.

I wanted to talk to you today about regional and midlife crises. It is not my midlife crisis—I'll save that for another time though I'm happy to hear about yours—but rather MESA's at fifty that I would like to discuss.

Tangible “heritage” (artifacts, buildings, and sites) has always played key roles in identity and nation-building in the Middle East. As countries in the Middle East face unprecedented disorder and violence we lack more nuanced answers to what preservation was, is, and what it can be in the future. This roundtable—initiated as a session at the Middle East Studies Association's annual meeting in 2016—offers a much-needed perspective and critical voice in a debate that has become increasingly monolithic. In other words, current notions of what “cultural heritage” is and how it should be preserved are limited and often dismiss the limitations, complexities and ironies of iconoclasm. Objects seen as valuable by some but “idolatrous” to others, for example, have sometimes been destroyed precisely because they were considered worthy of preservation by opposing parties. Further, preservation and destruction were rarely exclusive binaries, but rather connected and identified in crucial ways. They are, in other words, two sides of the same coin: Archaeological excavation has destroyed buildings and deposits in strata above selected layers or artifacts, often removing sites that are meaningful in other ways, such as Islamic shrines.

It is perhaps not surprising that discussions on the topic of destruction gain the most traction in the work of heritage in public and academic discourses alike, since this is an instrumental part of the epistemology that constructs heritage as a subject of study—what is heritage if not a subject “at risk”? Concordantly, discussions of heritage destruction are a dominant theme in contemporary conversations and concerns for the fate and management of cultural heritage in the Middle East overall (i.e. Exell and Rico 2013), a tendency that is associated with the persistence and visibility of conflict in the region during a time when heritage concerns are significantly shaped by various global “observers.” What is problematic, however, is first the way that the inherently negative mantle of destruction dominates every conversation about the heritage of the Middle East, and how easily academic debates have incorporated institutional and public discourses about destruction, empowering a monolithic debate that would benefit from a more critical—and ethical—analysis. Secondly, what is also alarming is the degree to which destruction is often associated with specific perpetrators in this region, notably, a caricaturized Islam whose main feature is a dislike for preservation that articulates through scandalous acts of iconoclasm across the broad Middle East region (witnessed through highly circulated vignettes of destruction in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Mali, and other countries and regions). Yet, the representation of an Islam that is at odds with global heritage constructs has been extensively challenged academically, considering the varied and changing attitudes to non-Muslim forms of representation through time (Elias 2012), individual variations (Flood 2002), and their relationship to changes in political regimes (Elias 2007; Flood 2002), in such a way that a consistent or universal attitude to this type of representation cannot be supported. But, as I argue in this essay, the specter of the iconoclast unfortunately remains firmly established in popular discourse—and surprisingly, in some disciplinary discourses. But what happens outside of the realm of destruction in the heritage of the Middle East? Further, how can heritage studies support the integration of Islam in the heritage debates for the region in a way that circumvents the current misrepresentation?

West African Islamic cultural heritage is recurrently overlooked or marginalized in scholarly, museological, and popular imaginaries, despite contemporary burgeoning Western attentiveness to Islam. Historically, Orientalists and/or Islamicists exclude West Africa, and anthropologists study West African Islam due to its alleged lack of written Arabic and Ajami texts (Loimeier 2013; Saul 2006), despite textual and material evidence to the contrary. Existing literature on the material expressions of West African Islam, largely edited volumes and museum catalogues, direct attention to Islamic West Africa, rather than Islam in West Africa, in other words, predominantly West African Muslim societies, and not those for whom Muslims comprise a minority (Adahl 1995; Insoll 2003; Roberts and Nooter Roberts 2003; for exceptions cf. Bravmann 1974, 1983, 2000). Analytically, the “Islamization of Africa” and “Africanization of Islam,” standard nomenclature customarily employed to describe the simultaneous processes at play in West African Islam (Loimier 2013), note the reciprocal relationship between Islam and pre-existing West African religious traditions shaped by local contexts, circumstances, subjectivities, and exigencies (Fisher 1973; Trimingham 1980). Accordingly, West African Islam's material manifestations labeled “inauthentic,” “syncretic,” “vernacular,” and “popular” are considered, inter alia, antithetical to “classical” Islam. Notwithstanding, so-called classical Islam represents the embodiment of a locally synthesized form that, over time and with repetition, has come to be conceptualized as “classical.” Yet, Islam has incorporated and translated an assortment of pre-existing ideals to adjust in ways viewed as neither regression, apostasy, plurality nor heterodoxy. And, West Africa proves no exception. Indubitably, West African Islamic cultural heritage is the heritage of the “‘Othered’ religion par excellence” (Preston-Blier 1993:148).

In her recent study of the heritage project that is contemporary New Orleans, anthropologist Shanon Dawdy has suggested that “[s]ociety presents itself simultaneously as a ruin and as a kind of playland” (2016, 147). This notion that the ruin is both a product of, and a basis for, heritage practice serves as a useful intervention into long-standing treatments of ruins as exotic, romantic, and awaiting the discovery, glorification, and preservation of those that might give them meaning. In the present essay, I further challenge heritage approaches to ruins through an examination of the ways in which they have been associated, in various Muslim cultural contexts, with a set of distinctly sentient, yet non-human actors, the jinn. This pairing between place and spirits has shaped long-standing affective responses and practical engagements between local (human) inhabitants and their archaeologically rich landscapes across the Middle East and North Africa. This essay examines how those engagements often push against contemporary discourses highlighting the sublime aspects of ruins and the quasi-sacred nature of heritage. To that end, the following guiding questions structure my contribution: Can contemporary heritage discourses accommodate practices in which humans share control and ownership of the material past with spectral others? How might we reframe the mandate to preserve such ruins in light of alternative perspectives that mark these sites as sinister, and/or meaningful, precisely because of their ruination? Can universalizing heritage discourses accommodate practices that derive value from the material past without also subscribing to explicit preservationist goals? Such questions offer an opportunity to consider the inclusion of the Unseen, and perhaps others, whose perspectives have gone unrecognized, within professional heritage management and its hermeneutics of the past.

Very few cities are defined as much by their antiquities as Jerusalem: religiously, culturally, politically, and economically. Erasing the Old City, or at least part of it, as suggested variously by Theodor Herzl and David Ben-Gurion, would have been an act difficult to reverse. The ruins of the past are now recognized and protected as the city's most distinct physical and visual attribute, in which past and present landscapes mingle to project the deceitful image of harmony. That said, this paper is not concerned with the usual questions of how certain monuments or artifacts inform us about past accomplishments or lost cultures. It in fact distances itself from the material and visual dimensions of Jerusalem's antiquities and addresses instead the human aspects exclusively, questioning the interaction between those who explore Jerusalem's antiquities and those who dwell amongst the surviving remnants. This polarized encounter between archaeologists and residents has defined most of Silwan's 150 years of excavation, reaching new heights of tension with the escalating geopolitical conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. As a case study, explorations in the City of David (figure 1), demonstrate how professional interests increasingly compromise and indeed violate the needs and rights of those who are most closely tied to, and indeed dependent on, the locus of exploration (Galor 2017, 126–131). Silwanis, both the small minority of Jewish settlers and the predominantly Palestinian population, have been persuaded and largely misguided as to the area's biblical heritage. In contrast, the 1300-years of nearly continuous Islamic presence, is perceived by neither as a legacy, which can be archaeologically explored and publicly validated.

Visiting ruins, I enjoy the texture of the weathered stones. The wide space, colored in spring by wildflowers. Open space and vistas, the heady smell of grasses drying in the hot sun. Birds sing as they have since Plato's cicadas. Once, alone near the ruins, I heard a strange rhythmic clicking in the grass: two tortoises making love. The ruins that I visit remind me of antiquity not because I picture Socrates walking through the Stoa, but because I picture him walking along the still undeveloped riverbank, smelling these grasses, listening to these birds. The simplicity that I long for, however, is not millennia away, but only centuries. It is almost at arms’ length, but just out of view. What I find there is nature in a frame of culture. Like most tourists, I cannot transform the stones into the imaginary film of antiquity that the European brain of the nineteenth century, steeped in a classical education, projected onto them. Yet their vision was no more authentic than mine: in order to project the past onto stones, they had to erase the present.

In March 2017, the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy opened an exhibition called Missione Egitto 1903–1920, exploring the history of the archaeological excavations from which much of the museum's impressive (and impressively displayed) collection derives. Known as the Missione Archeologica Italiana, the excavations were overseen by the museum's then-director, Ernesto Schiaparelli—an esteemed Egyptologist and prominent Catholic philanthropist. “Mission” was one of several terms archaeologists used to identify their work in the colonial Middle East, including Egypt: the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale in Cairo originated in 1880 as the “Mission archéologique,” to take just one example (Reid 2002, 175).

What does it mean to be “safe,” and what does it mean to be “endangered”? Who defines these terms, why, and what does this act of definition allow them to do? In December 2016, a conference entitled Safeguarding Endangered Cultural Heritage took place in Abu Dhabi, organized jointly by the governments of the United Arab Emirates and France, and held under the patronage of UNESCO. The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Shaykh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, was in attendance, as was French President François Hollande and the Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova; many other dignitaries joined them. The diplomatic spectacle was a sight to behold. The assembled, distinctly elite, group seemed to have given itself sole authority to speak for and about cultural heritage around the world.

The Arab popular uprisings of 2011 caught nearly every scholar, journalist, and foreign policy think tanker by surprise. The literature about them is already prodigious. Despite their failure to democratize the region (with the partial exception of Tunisia) or promote more equitable economic policies, the political and economic crises that impelled the uprisings and the processes of change they initiated are still underway and are unlikely to be resolved for some time. Consequently, most historians would argue that we cannot now have enough perspective or primary documentary evidence to support a nuanced analysis of the multiple intersections of structure and agency that informed the uprisings, the behind-the-scenes forces (including U.S., French, and Saudi interventions to contain or roll back the revolutionary impulses) that influenced short and medium-term outcomes, and the long-term meanings and consequences of the events for the participants and their societies. I am emphatically not suggesting that scholars should not write about these events; I have done so myself (Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, Stanford University Press, 2016). However, a certain modesty, self-critical spirit, and openness to revision is appropriate.

Since Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri, under his nom de guere Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared the establishment of a worldwide caliphate on 29 June 2014 from the Nur al-Din Zenki Mosque in Mosul, Iraq, dozens of books have been written seeking to explain the rapid rise and breathtaking brutality of the Islamic State group. There is a certain “all hands on deck” feel to the flood of commentary on ISIS—journalists, academics, policy wonks, military figures, analysts, and politicians all have had their say. The visibility of the group, augmented by the rhetorical use to which they have been put by unrelated political debates, have perhaps made this inevitable. The four books reviewed here are part of this trend, and their collective strength is in their breadth and factual detail. There is information aplenty, and all the books included in this review do an admirable job, each in its own way, of detailing the history of the organization. The Islamic State group's deft use of online propaganda, its place in the post-9/11 jihadi landscape, its territorial gains and losses, and its prodigious ability, until recently, to draw large numbers of recruits into Syria or online support roles, have all received detailed treatment.

The Syrian Civil War, now in its sixth year, has displaced an estimated 11 million people (with numbers constantly escalating), nearly half the country's population. Of these, the United Nations estimates 4.8 million Syrians have fled their homeland. News reports have tended to focus on the struggles of those crossing the Mediterranean and seeking asylum in Europe, but most refugees have sought safety in the neighboring countries of Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, where they have dispersed and “settled” in towns and cities. A comparative few have settled in host government and/or UNHCR sponsored camps. Jordan's Za‘atari Camp, just seven miles from the border, is the largest Syrian refugee camp. Its population peaked at more than 120,000 residents and currently has between 75,000 – 80,000 residents most of whom are from the Dara'a area. The camp is numerically equivalent to Jordan's fourth largest city.