One of the daunting aspects of studying the Middle East is the confluence of several, often unrelated, languages, each with its own alphabet. Having gained some control over these, the student then comes up against a jumble of calendars. While many of these complications are lessened when focusing on a particular region or period of time, the cosmopolitan nature of the Ottoman Empire evolved a dense fabric of interwoven languages (Persian, Turkish, and Arabic) and of calendars, which were not only in use alongside each other, but were blended to create new subspecies! Handbooks and concordances have existed for a long time to enable the scholar to translate solar, lunar, agricultural, and urban time reckonings into modern calendars. We are most familiar with the standard Gregorian/Hijra guides, as Europeans were once deeply involved in concordances of Old Style (Julian) and New Style (Gregorian) conversion tables.

The Ottoman fiscal calendar is one of the more peculiar challenges which must be attended to, in order to control adequately the immense store of documents from the last centuries of the Turkish Empire. This calendar was employed particularly in the State’s fiscal and trade sectors; hereafter it is identified by the code SM, for sene-i-maliye, the fiscal year. It is a solar calendar, first put into use in AD 1676, and adopted by more areas of trade and administration until it becanle the official standard calendar of the empire in AD 1839. The supremacy of SM usage then lasted until AD 1917, when it was first modified to accord with Gregorian NS reckoning over Julian OS. Finally, SM usage was discontinued entirely in December of AD 1925, and replaced by the “Western” Gregorian calendar.

Several MESA Members met in October to organize a two-week summer institute for high school teachers on the general subject of teaching about Islam and the Arab world. Having determined the overall topics to be addressed, we decided to leave one session open to deal with whatever might be “The Crisis of the Day.” Someone asked, “But what if there isn’t a crisis?” Such a possibility seemed quite unthinkable to most of us. “I’m sure there will be something,” said one person. And another, for good measure, added, “And if there isn’t, we can make one up.”

This rather cynical view of the importance of conflict in the overall reality of the Middle East may remind some of us of the distorted joke about the scorpion and the frog crossing the river, often repeated by speakers with the clincher, “This is the Middle East.” In reality, however, it may reflect a deeper concern that many of us have. What is this Middle East to the study of which we have devoted our lives? Have we somehow created an entity for our own needs and purposes that may not correspond to reality?

Soviet Scholarship on Islamic studies exists in almost hermetic isolation from its Western counterpart for both linguistic and methodological reasons. Soviet scholarship is concerned with a different set of questions that emerge from Soviet Marxism, rarely tackling the conceptual questions formulated in the West. Nevertheless, Soviet scholarship is very strong on descriptive detail which could, if properly utilized, enrich Western debate. Unfortunately, few Western Islamicists (except those involved in Central Asian history) know Russian, and therefore a wealth of factual information unearthed by Soviet scholars remains virtually unknown in the West and plays no part in the scholarly discourse here.

Many works on Transjordan during the Mandate period are based almost exclusively upon British, American and Israeli archival material, as well as reports published by the Mandatory government, such as those sent annually to the League of Nations from 1921 to 1938. These records are important; however, they should not be used in isolation from indigenous Jordanian records. Such records do exist, are accessible, and are absolutely essential for a thorough study of the country. We herewith offer details of two relatively unknown and under-utilized bodies of Jordanian documents from the Mandate period, the records of the central office of the Jordanian Department of Lands and Survey and those of the Amman Chamber of Commerce, as examples of the types of indigenous sources which are available in Jordan today.

Up to 1945 university education in Australia had little sense of engagement with any cultural traditions outside those of Western Europe. It was only in the aftermath of World War II that Australians began to realize that while their nation had powerful allies in Britain and America, nations with whom it had ties of kin and culture, it had on its doorstep in neighboring Southeast Asia and not so distant Northeast Asia, neighbors who might become both friends and close partners in regional associations.

These were also the years during which the Australian government decided as a matter of policy to develop postgraduate studies in Australia so that Australians should no longer as a matter of course go to Britain for higher degrees. Both these factors came together in the establishment in 1946 of the Australian National University, an institution with an exclusive mission for post-graduate training. Significantly, among its foundation schools was the Research School of Pacific Studies, which included departments of Pacific History and Far Eastern History.

The SSRC’S Joint Near and Middle East Committee has organized a series of workshops on the state in its Middle Eastern context. The format consists of discussions of papers written by members of the committee, as well as of articles and chapters of books presented as background material by a small number of invited guests. A report on the first workshop, held at Buyukada, Istanbul, in September 1989 appeared in the MESA Bulletin 24 (1990), pages 179 to 183. A third workshop was held at St. Antony’s College, Oxford in December 1990.

Although the first contact between Korea and the Middle East dates back to the ninth or twelfth century, academic interests in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies began in 1965 with the establishment of the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul.

The birth of the Third Republic of Korea in 1961 signaled a new diplomatic move into the non-aligned world, particularly the Arab Middle East as it gained in importance in the international political and economic community. At the same time, the Korean economy began to expand and her trade found markets in the Middle East. These developments are some of the important factors which gave birth to the Department of Arabic Language and Literature.