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The Cambridge Middle East Library aims to bring together outstanding scholarly work on the political, social and economic history, politics, sociology and economics of the Middle East and North Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While primarily focusing on monographs by younger scholars based on original research, the series will also incorporate broader surveys and in-depth treatments by more established scholars.

  • Editorial Boards: Roger Owen, Edmund Burke, Michael C. Hudson, Walid Kazziha, Rashid Khalidi, Serif Mardin, Basim Musallam, Avi Shlaim, Malcolm Yapp

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15 results in Cambridge Middle East Library

Womanpower
  • The Arab Debate on Women at Work
  • Nadia Hijab
  • Published online:
    01 June 2011
    Print publication:
    25 March 1988
  • Womanpower unveils the lively but little-reported debate on women's position in the modern Arab world. It paints a picture drawn from individual stories as well as from national development programmes and attempts to explain why the process of social change in the region has been slow and uneven by linking it to political and economic developments. By illustrating particular themes - personal status laws, development policies, political rights - with examples from specific countries, Nadia Hijab builds up an informative overview of the Arab world today. The title sums up the two-pronged approach: the process of integrating women into the modern work-force and of empowering them to enjoy equal rights and opportunities. The book argues that those seeking equal rights for Arab women cannot isolate this aim from the search to liberate Arab potential and resources and for democratic political systems. The Arab world is a region in search of an identity. The book discusses the differing views of liberals and conservatives, most of whom are concerned that Arab identity be developed in an indigenous context rather than by slavish imitation.

Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali
  • Afaf Lutfi Al-Sayyid Marsot
  • Published online:
    04 April 2011
    Print publication:
    12 January 1984
  • This account of Egyptian society in the reign of Muhammad Ali traces the beginnings of the nation state in Egypt. It considers Muhammad Ali as part of a social group whose economic interests led them in the direction of trade with Europe as a means of raising money for further investments. They attempted to increase agricultural exports and to use the profits to create industry; then, following the logic of imperialists, their next step was to seek to conquer the surrounding areas to find markets for their industries and sources of raw materials. These policies brought them into conflict with their suzerain, the Ottoman sultan, and with England, since England needed markets in the Middle East. England sought to destroy the new regime in Egypt as a means of exerting influence on the region. In carrying out these economic changes, the country underwent a series of internal developments that were to revolutionize the structure and shape of Egyptian society. The rules of landownership were altered and large estates were formed, Egyptian fallahin were drafted into the army, and the administration was Egyptianized, establishing the groundwork for a nation state.

Oil and Politics in the Gulf
  • Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar
  • Jill Crystal
  • Published online:
    04 April 2011
    Print publication:
    28 June 1990
  • This book asks why in recent years the social and economic upheavals in Kuwait and Qatar have been accompanied by a remarkable political continuity. Professor Crystal investigates this apparent anomaly by examining the impact of oil on the formation and destruction of political coalitions and state institutions. Partly based on a year's fieldwork in the Gulf and making full use of Arabic and Gulf sources, Oil and Politics in the Gulf goes far beyond previously published accounts of the region in its analysis of the effects of oil on domestic politics.

Merchants of Essaouira
  • Urban Society and Imperialism in Southwestern Morocco, 1844–1886
  • Daniel J. Schroeter
  • Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    21 April 1988
  • Essaouira was founded n 1764 by Sultan Sidi Muhammad b. Abdullah as his port for developing trade with Europe. Through a group of Jewish middlemen, it served as a link between Europe, Morocco and su-Saharan Africa. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries its fame rivalled Tripoli, Tunis and Algiers. Based on extensive untapped archive in Morocco, papers of Jewish merchant houses and consular records of Britain, France and the United States, this book gives an account of the city in its heyday. Essaouira was an opening to foreign penetration, but it was also important to the Moroccan government, because potentially dissident regions became tied to its commercial and political activities. The control of the sultans was undermined as foreign powers imposed liberal trade and intervened in Moroccan affairs. This study of a specific city and region throws light on the problems of traditional societies in the age of European economic imperialism.

Revolution and Foreign Policy
  • The Case of South Yemen, 1967–1987
  • Fred Halliday
  • Published online:
    06 July 2010
    Print publication:
    26 January 1990
  • This book is a study of the foreign policy of South Yemen, the most radical of Arab states, from the time of its independence from Britain in 1967 until 1987. It covers relations with the west, including the USA, and with the USSR and China, and also highlights South Yemen's conflicts with its neighbours, North Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Oman. The author provides a detailed analysis of the foreign relations of one of the USSR's closest allies in the Third World and shows how conflicts within the country relate to changes in foreign policy. South Yemen has traditionally not been an easy country to study, both because it is so secretive and because the revolutionary regime still arouses such strong passions. Professor Halliday was able to visit the country and to make an outstandingly thorough study of the foreign policy of an Arab state.

Jordan, the United States and the Middle East Peace Process, 1974–1991
  • Madiha Rashid al Madfai
  • Published online:
    25 February 2010
    Print publication:
    25 March 1993
  • On 31 July 1988 King Hussain of Jordan renounced all administrative and legal ties with the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the River Jordan, initiating a turning point in the Middle East peace process. In this study, Madiha Madfai explores Jordan's role in the USA's peacemaking efforts during the Carter, Reagan and Bush administrations. She examines the events culminating in the action of 1988 and convincingly demonstrates a history of anger, anguish and frustration with the Middle East peace process that lay behind the Jordanian decision. Dr Madfai also assesses the effects the American-Jordanian relationship had on stability in the Middle East.

The Palestinian Liberation Organisation
  • People, Power and Politics
  • Helena Cobban
  • Published online:
    26 January 2010
    Print publication:
    26 January 1984
  • This is a comprehensive political analysis of the PLO. A correspondent in Beirut from 1976 to 1981, Helena Cobban has been able to study developments at close quarters and use documentary sources and first-hand recollections which have never been included in previous Western analyses of the movement. The book maintains that one key to understanding the development of the PLO is an examination of the development of its predominant member-group, Al-Fateh. The first part focuses on the history of Fateh, showing how its interests and the PLO's became intertwined. The latter part discusses the interrelations between the Fateh leadership and various factors which affect and are affected by its performance, such as the internal Palestinian opposition, the Arab milieu, and the resistance movement inside the Israeli-occupied areas. The final chapter draws together all the strands to arrive at the precise sources of the Fateh leadership's relative stability, as well as to assess its effectiveness in key areas of its operations.

The Renewal of Islamic Law
  • Muhammad Baqer as-Sadr, Najaf and the Shi'i International
  • Chibli Mallat
  • Published online:
    08 January 2010
    Print publication:
    25 March 1993
  • This is the first comprehensive study of the life and works of Muhammad Baqer as-Sadr - an Iraqi scholar who made an important contribution to the renewal of Islamic law and politics in the contemporary Middle East. Executed in 1980, Sadr was the most articulate thinker and a major political actor in the revival of Shi'i learning, which placed Najaf in Southern Iraq at its centre. Dr Chibli Mallat examines the intellectual development of Sadr and his companions who included Ruhullah al-Khumaini and assesses Sadr's innovative approaches to the study of law, economics and banking. The author convincingly demonstrates how Sadr's ideas and activities were influential in the rise of political Islam across the Middle East and played an important part in the Iranian revolution of 1979.

Jordan in the 1967 War
  • Samir A. Mutawi
  • Published online:
    10 December 2009
    Print publication:
    04 June 1987
  • Jordan was the most deeply affected of all the Arab nations by Israel's victory in the 1967 war, in which huge tracts of Arab land, including the West Bank, Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights, came under Israel's control. Yet this is the first study to consider the war from the Jordanian perspective. It analyses the reasons for Jordan's unreserved and, to many, unexpected participation and provides a detailed description of the dramatic three days of war, including an analysis of the effects of Egyptian control of the Jordanian-Israeli border. Samir Mutawi's use of interviews with surviving Jordanian participants - politicians, military commanders, intelligence personnel and, most importantly, King Hussein - as well as Jordanian army records and books and memoirs in Arabic provides a new perspective on the war and on Jordan's position in the immediate post-war period.

Water and Power
  • The Politics of a Scarce Resource in the Jordan River Basin
  • Miriam R. Lowi
  • Published online:
    08 December 2009
    Print publication:
    21 October 1993
  • Why do states in arid regions fail to co-operate in sharing water resources when co-operation would appear to be in their mutual interest? Through in-depth analysis of the history and current status of the dispute over the Jordan River basin, Miriam Lowi explores the answers to these critical questions.

Medicine and Power in Tunisia, 1780–1900
  • Nancy Elizabeth Gallagher
  • Published online:
    23 November 2009
    Print publication:
    24 November 1983
  • Severe epidemics of plague, cholera, and typhus swept across Tunisia between the years 1780 and 1900. The society was galvanized into action: medical practitioners, religious authorities, and political leaders all tried to deal with the deadly crises. Muslims had, over many centuries, evolved ideas concerning the origin, prevention, and treatment of epidemic diseases that differed somewhat from those of their European counterparts. With European economic and political expansion that accelerated after the Napoleonic Wars, Muslims found themselves confronted not only by a new source of political power but by a new set of medical ideas. This study traces the medical confrontation through the society's response to epidemic disease.

Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt
  • Donald Malcolm Reid
  • Published online:
    30 October 2009
    Print publication:
    19 July 1990
  • Cairo University has been crucially important in shaping the national life of modern Egypt. It has educated much of the political, professional and cultural elite: doctors and lawyers, novelists and philosophers, bankers and prime ministers have all studied there. Founded in 1908 and for many years competing only with the religious mosque-university of al-Azhar, the European-inspired Cairo University quickly became the prime indigenous model for other state universities in the Arab world. Professor Reid has drawn on university archives hitherto untapped by Western scholars and a wide range of other Arabic and Western sources. He explains the university's part in the national quest for independence from Britain, in the perennial tension between secular and religious world views, and in the push for a more egalitarian society. Nasser and Sadat, Kings Fuad and Faruq, reformers Muhammad Abduh and Taha Husayn, nationalist hero Saad Zaghlul and Nobel Prize winner Najib Mahfuz all feature prominently in this fascinating history of modern Egypt's leading educational institution.

Women in Nineteenth-Century Egypt
  • Judith E. Tucker
  • Published online:
    28 October 2009
    Print publication:
    05 December 1985
  • The nineteenth century in Egypt was a period of rapid social and economic change, brought about by the country's developing ties with the European economy. Focusing on lower-class women, this study traces changes in the work role and family life of peasant women in the countryside and craftswomen and traders in Cairo, and explores the world of the slave woman. The effects of capitalist transformation on women are studied in detail, using material from the Islamic court records. The effects of the Egyptian process of state formation and colonial rule are discussed: the growth of the state apparatus, its social services and repressive means, brought new kinds of intervention into women's lives. The book provides a unique account of the very active economic, social and political roles of nineteenth-century women, from the peasant and street pedlar to the slave of the harem.

Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism
  • The Politics of Damascus 1860–1920
  • Philip S. Khoury
  • Published online:
    14 October 2009
    Print publication:
    01 December 1983
  • No idea has captured the imagination or expressed the hopes of Arabs in the twentieth century as has Arab nationalism, and perhaps no subject has received so much attention from historians of the Middle East. But, while many historians have explored its intellectual sources, few have considered the social and political environment in which Arab nationalism evolved as an ideological movement. This study attempts to correct the imbalance and, in the process, provides a fascinating interpretation of the rise of the ideology of nationalism within the Arab world. The book focuses on the social and political life of the great notable families of Ottoman Damascus, who, before World War I, played a crucial part in translating the idea into political action. Dr Khoury explains how such long-term factors as the Ottoman reformation, European economic expansion and agrarian commercialization in Syria encouraged rival and socially differentiated networks of influential families to merge into a cohesive upper class. Under the umbrella of a reinvigorated Ottoman central authority, this class of landowners and bureaucrats produced a new urban leadership, which dominated local politics after 1860.

Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan
  • 2nd edition
  • Olivier Roy
  • Published online:
    04 April 2011
    Print publication:
    22 November 1990
  • In this new edition, Olivier Roy expands his penetrating study of the history, ideology and structures of the Afghan resistance movement to mid-1989. He examines the evolution of the military and political situation inside Afghanistan during the last years of the Soviet presence and discusses relations between the Afghan resistance and the Islamic fundamentalist movement. The situation created by the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan is also explored, and in a new conclusion Professor Roy assesses to what extent the war has altered the traditional fabric of Afghan society.