Chapter 8 evaluates the argument that ruling monarchs are more effective than other types of autocrats at avoiding blame through delegation. It does so by drawing on cross-national data from around the world in addition to more specific comparisons of monarchies and republics in the Middle East. First, the chapter establishes that ruling monarchs tend to share power more credibly than presidential autocrats both in the Middle East and beyond, and it shows that this difference is recognized by people living in these regimes. Next, the chapter draws on an original survey experiment administered in Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, and Tunisia, in addition to data on constitutions, to demonstrate that monarchs benefit from reduced expectations that they will govern and be held responsible for policy outcomes. These expectations imply that delegation by ruling monarchs will be more in line with how the public expects responsibility to function in the political system. The chapter concludes by tracing patterns of opposition during the Arab Spring and analyzing cross-national protest data to show that monarchs are less likely than other dictators to be targeted by mass opposition when the public is dissatisfied, suggesting their advantages in avoiding blame contribute to their resiliency.

Chapter 6 returns to William Thackeray’s Mediterranean travel writing to show how his humor fails to challenge the dominant heritage discourse in Jerusalem. Although Thackeray derides other Mediterranean sites for inauthenticity, he cannot profane Jerusalem, which means he cannot return it to human (and imperial) use, either by word play or physical contact. Anthony Trollope takes up this problem in his novel The Bertrams, in which he reconceives some places, like Alexandria, for modern use. These sites are wiped of their significance to British heritage discourse as ancient lands and rendered available for modernization. Jerusalem, though, proves too sacred, and thus too integral to British cultural heritage, to be colonized in the same way. Some holy sites thus endure as historical relics while others are rewritten as a “middle” East.

The Conclusion raises the question of how the study of the literature and visual cultural of non-Greek-speaking, non-Constantinopolitan communities in the East Roman empire should relate to Byzantine studies. It further asks how the literature and visual culture of these communities should be seen as relating to Byzantine studies after these communities came under Muslim political control. A cultural, “Big Tent,” understanding of Byzantium is advocated for, one which de-privileges the state and which recognizes the importance of Christianity and its literary and visual manifestations for defining Byzantium as an object of study. This exapanded view of Byzantium includes in Byzantine studies the broader eastern Mediterranean world, Greek-speaking and non-, Chalcedonian and non-, Christian and non-.

Chapter 28 considers Persian influences on Goethe and the reception of his work in modern Iran, the first Persian translations of Goethe having appeared in the 1920s. The chapter emphasises the importance of Middle Eastern sources – especially the Persian poet Hafez – for Goethe’s writing. It then divides the Persian reception of Goethe into three phases. In the first, his status as a world great was the focus; in the second, his writings were portrayed as a reflection of either Persian poetry or Islam, while the recent third phase takes Goethe on his own terms.

Bernstein loved to conduct works (e.g., by Liszt, Mahler, Ravel) inspired by dance rhythms and folk songs of various lands and peoples. His own compositions, similarly, often invoke distant places and their musics. Fancy Free and West Side Story include such Latin American dance-types as danzón, mambo, and cha-cha-chá. The soprano in Trouble in Tahiti sings about a film full of stereotypical Pacific-island ‘natives’. Other references to various Elsewheres occur in Songfest (a rhythmically adventurous Latin American sound for ‘A Julia Burgos’; Middle Eastern stylistic allusions in ‘Zizi’s Lament’), On the Town (the Congacabana nightclub scene; the humorously klezmer-ish, rather than Arab-sounding, call of Rajah Bimmy), Wonderful Town (‘Conga!’), and two works inspired by visits to Palestine/Israel: ‘Silhouette (Galilee)’, based on a well-known Arab song (including some Arabic words); and Four Sabras, no. 2, for piano (‘Idele, the Chasidele’), which abounds in typically East European Jewish musical traits.

This chapter explores philanthropic partnership best practices in the post-COVID-19 world and provides insights and practical tools to identify and effectively advocate for partnerships. Historically, the philanthropic sector in the Global South has been largely siloed, with only a few foundations working together and even fewer engaged in multi-sectoral collaborations. In the case of public-private partnerships, one often hears sentiments like ‘governments are bureaucratic and they will slow us down’ or ‘businesses don’t really care about social impact projects’. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed that such silos created many of the systemic issues philanthropic foundations now face. The COVID-19 crisis will have a profound impact on philanthropy through forging more active collaboration and ensuring more equitable responses. As multiple sector experts have pointed out, the scale and the urgency of the pandemic have prompted philanthropists to engage in more active collaboration, not only with businesses and government but also with each other. This chapter shares the key elements of a successful partnership from coordinated planning to clear identification of the problem that needs to be solved. It shares ideas around the collaborative definition of success, how to measure social-impact performance, and how to align interests, values, and goals. The chapter argues that there is a critical need for clear roles and responsibilities such that each stakeholder’s strengths can be leveraged, and it emphasises the importance of transparency and continuous communication.

The current countries in the Middle East and North Africa were all formed, or transformed, in the nineteenth and early twentieth century by processes of partitioning and territorialization propelled by European colonial expansion and local responses to those interventions. As the region’s political topography was remapped before and after the First World War, collective identities were activated, reimagined, and mobilized within and across these newly delineated units. From Northern Africa to the Iranian plateau, an array of nationalisms emerged over the course of this transformation, pairing notions of peoplehood and political sovereignty in new frameworks of identity. For the Middle East and North Africa, the related questions “what is a nation?” and “when is the nation?” are best answered by focusing on a third question: how has the nation (and nationalism) worked in the region over the past two centuries?

This chapter focuses on heavy metal music and culture in the Middle East. It provides a summary of previous research on metal in the region and touches upon common clichés of metal as a source of counterculture, revolution and change. It then addresses the complicated relationship between metal studies and Orientalism. It is the author’s contention that research on metal in the Middle East has been directly influenced by Orientalist discourse. The author further argues that the impact of this discourse has led to the politicisation and exoticisation of a particular figure – the ‘Muslim metalhead’. This chapter seeks to contribute to the current discussion on ‘Oriental metal’ as an attempt to exotify the very existence (and art) of metalheads from a region that has been geopolitically framed as the ‘Middle East’.

Clifford Geertz was undoubtedly the leading anthropologist of his generation, a broad-scale thinker whose influence extended far beyond his own discipline. His study of Islam in Indonesia, however, might appear not to have been reprised in his Moroccan work whereas, in fact, one could argue that it was. For in his study of the souk, the Moroccan bazaar, Geertz not only presented one of the most detailed and theoretically sophisticated studies of this form of economic structure but also showed how everyday Islamic assumptions and orientations suffuse that domain. In this sense, Geertz did do a study of Moroccan Islam, indeed one that demonstrates its connection to multiple domains of everyday life. In that sense, too, it is the encounters in this most important realm where religion lives and where it must be understood.

Edward Said was known not only for his literary studies, his strong support for Palestinian identity, and his influential political commentary but for his criticism of Orientalist scholarship and its impact on the image of Muslims maintain by many Westerners. But for all his criticism of those scholars, it may be argued, however, that Said missed much about their work that should have been addressed. In this chapter, we consider the Orientalist romanticization of the Arabic language, their dismissal of actual Islamic law court decisions, and their emphasis on Arab stasis rather than their social fluidity and creativeness. If we paint a fuller picture of the Orientalists’ scholarship, we can understand both the strengths and weakness not only of their approach to the cultures of the region but where Said himself was able or unable to fulfill his own professed goals.