The Curious Case of the Islamic Journeymen: Questions and Texts toward a Comparative Study of Guilds

The article examines the negative impact of global trends that have engulfed the world on the countries of the Middle East and Central Asia and the issue of ensuring security from threats. Currently, the impact on the Middle East and Central Asia of the problems of the economic crisis, inflation, unemployment, investment outflow, tension between Russia and Ukraine, the growth of conflict points in the regions, conflict between actors, etc. is being analyzed. Passive threats, known today in the Middle East and Central Asia and which in the future may overshadow its range, will also become the core of the article and will be subjected to serious analysis. Recently, an even greater aggravation of the situation between Israel and Palestine has been considered, as well as the intensification and strengthening of the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, which the world is watching, and the aggravation of relations between the parties. The influence of external actors on regional trends in the Middle East and Central Asia is also analyzed.

The source contributions to the dust over the Tibetan Plateau: A modelling analysis

Theory: Literature on ethnic protest in the Middle East and Central Asia does not provide empirical measures necessary for rigorous hypothesis testing, nor does it incorporate a comprehensive theoretical foundation needed to identify the conditions for ethnic protest. There is also no consensus on the causes of ethnic protest in the Middle East and Central Asia. Hypotheses: To improve our ability to explain ethnic protest in the Middle East and Central Asia and to identify the necessary conditions for ethnic dissent, we test five hypotheses embodied in grievance and political mobilization. The literature on ethnic protest in the Middle East and Central Asia references both models but does not systematically test their relevance. Methodology: We use Logistic Regression to test the explanatory potential of the five hypotheses of the Grievance and Mobilization models. We use Ted Gurr's Minorities at Risk data set, which presents data on 40 ethnic groups in the Middle East and Central Asia. The dependent variable is protest for 1990-95. Findings: Our research does not lend much empirical support for the grievance model, which dominates the Middle Eastern and Central Asian area study literature. Cultural identity and religious freedom variables of grievance model do not provide sufficient condition for the outbreak of ethnic protest. The mobilization model has better explanatory power. It lends significant support to the three hypotheses associated with the mobilization model and suggests that ethnic protest is more likely to occur under conditions of organizational cohesiveness, low levels of autocracy, and international support.

The article considers the problem of regional security which is on the agenda of the international community. Russia and Turkey as two politically and economically interconnected countries have a rich history of relations. The Middle East and Central Asia where their national interests overlap are priority directions at the present stage. However, disagreements in conflict resolution do not allow reaching a compromise and entering a new level of interaction. At the beginning of the 21st century Russia and Turkey showed an interest in strengthening regional security and achieving peace and stability. Although the incident in November of 2015 slowed down the development of cooperation and caused the refusal to maintain friendly contacts Moscow and Ankara realized the need to overcome differences and follow the provisions of concluded treaties and agreements. The beginning of a special military operation in Ukraine on the 24th of February of 2022 showed their complex and ambiguous interaction in the Middle East and Central Asia. The aim of the article is to identify the approaches of Russia and Turkey in strengthening regional security.

This study aims at offering a closer view of pointed domes as the most significant and important cultural features of Eastern domes in the Middle East and Central Asia. In contrast to previous general historical studies, this study addresses the better comprehension of a formal architectural language of the pointed domes including their morphologies and typologies based on epistemological premise of pointed domes' structuralism. It starts with defining the proper terminology of the pointed dome type, then, by analytic consideration of selected examples, the study proposes their origin, evolution, formal morphological constitutions, geometrical designs, and finally definitions of three typologies and subtypes of the pointed domes based on their shells' compositions and geometrical profiles, from the twelfth through sixteenth centuries. Despite varieties of forms and configurations of Islamic domes, the research puts forward some recurring features and shared characteristics that are incorporated into a specific style, that is pointed domes. Furthermore, this study on the significance of pointed domes brings to light undiscovered facts about the essences of traditional dome constructions in the Middle East and Central Asia which may be employed in providing historical documentation for any conservation interventions.

This paper offers empirical evidence that greater financial inclusion of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can promote higher economic growth and employment, especially in the Middle East and Central Asia regions. First, we show that countries with higher SME financial inclusion exhibit more effective monetary policy transmission and tax collection. Second, we find substantial employment and labor productivity growth gains at the firm level from access to credit, gains that are higher for SMEs. We also obtain evidence of a substantial positive impact on SME employment and labor productivity growth from improved credit bureau coverage and insolvency regimes. Finally, cross-country aggregate evidence confirms the employment and growth gains from SME financial inclusion, which appear larger in the Middle East and Central Asia than in other regions.

This paper offers empirical evidence that greater financial inclusion of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can promote higher economic growth and employment, especially in the Middle East and Central Asia regions. First, we show that countries with higher SME financial inclusion exhibit more effective monetary policy transmission and tax collection. Second, we find substantial employment and labor productivity growth gains at the firm level from access to credit, gains that are higher for SMEs. We also obtain evidence of a substantial positive impact on SME employment and labor productivity growth from improved credit bureau coverage and insolvency regimes. Finally, cross-country aggregate evidence confirms the employment and growth gains from SME financial inclusion, which appear larger in the Middle East and Central Asia than in other regions.

Countries of the Middle East and Central Asia depend heavily on natural resources for their exports, income, and employment. This study is a preliminary investigation that explores the effect of natural resources on domestic investment in a sample of 12 highly resource-dependent countries in the Middle East and Central Asia from 2000 to 2019. The recently advanced cross-sectional dependent auto-regressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) model and panel quantile regression are employed. The results validate the accelerator theory that an increase of the non-oil GDP growth rate has a robust positive impact on domestic investment, while natural resources crowd-out domestic investment. The long-run estimate of ICT reveals a significant positive impact, while corruption shows a significant negative effect. These findings urge sample resource-dependent countries to focus on developing ICT-based enterprises and control prevailing corruption levels. Moreover, adopting liberal trade policies can also enhance domestic investment opportunities.

Historically, the interaction between the religion and trade has not only promoted the expansion of Islam along the Land and Maritime Silk Road, but also developed a close relationship between China and the Islamic world. Now Islam is one of the most influential and widely distributed religions in the world. Being in the core sections of Land and Maritime Silk Road, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia are the areas where Islam is a dominant religion. Therefore, for China, good relations with Islamic countries are very critical for the successful implementation of the ‘Belt and Road’ Initiative. China’s over 23 million Muslims (especially the Hui People) know two cultures (Chinese and Islamic), have two identities (Chinese and Muslims), and are the natural bridge between China and Islamic countries. Chinese Muslims are playing an important role in the development of Islamic finance and production of Muslim licit (halal) food products which are two potential cooperation areas between China and Islamic countries. For China and Islamic countries, it is necessary to expand cultural exchanges to eliminate some misunderstandings of each other.

Penile fracture is a well-recognized, relatively uncommon medical condition and its etiology differs according to geographic area. In this review article, we evaluated literature reported in the past decade, aiming to verify whether there has been any change in the etiology of this condition. A literature review was done for studies published in the past 10 years and focusing on the etiology of penile fracture. Inclusion criteria comprised articles in English language, of sample size more than 10 patients and originating from the Middle East and Central Asia. Data relating to the studied population, etiology of penile fracture, clinical presentation, investigations, management, and outcome was analyzed. One thousand six hundred and twenty-nine patients from 21 original articles were included in the study. The mean age ± standard deviation of the patients was 33.3 ± 3.23 years. Etiologies of penile fracture were vigorous sexual intercourse, manual bending of erect penis, vigorous masturbation, rolling over in bed and blunt trauma in 41%, 29%, 10%, 14% and 6% patients, respectively. Treatment choices were surgery and conservative, in 1580 (95%), 83 (5%) patients, respectively. A higher incidence of complications was found in conservatively treated patients. As a conclusion, in the last 10 years, vigorous sexual intercourse was the commonest etiology of penile fracture in the Middle East and Central Asia regions. Surgery remains the preferred treatment option for patients diagnosed with penile fracture.

Analysis of policies for managing public sector wage bills in the Middle East and Central Asia region. While some work has been done recently at the Fund on issues related to government employment and compensation, to our knowledge, this is the first study to systematically examine, with a focus on the Middle East and Central Asia region, the recent trends and drivers of public wage bills in the region and to identify key policy implications.

The study of nationalism has been reinvigorated by the debates on the subject carried out in the 1980s and 1990s. 1 Most authors on the subject can be divided into two camps; those who look at the material and objective conditions for the rise of nation-states as a social formation, and those who concentrate on how a national consciousness emerges. (In recent years, this division has ranged classical Marxists and modernization theorists on one side against postmodernists and subaltern theorists on the other). In considering this body of work, one can thus make a distinction similar to the one that E. P. Thompson famously elaborated (drawing on Marx) in labor history, differentiating between a class in itself and a class for itself, between a social class such as factory workers constituted by the objective facts of its material existence and a social grouping that is self-conscious about itself as a class so that it launches unions and labor parties. The former does not automatically or always result in the latter. We will discuss these theories in relationship to the Middle East and Central Asia and to the little theoretical work done on Middle Eastern nationalisms. Many authors speak as though “nationalism” is a unitary set of practices and beliefs that has a natural history, being born at a particular time and maturing into a long-term, fairly static phenomenon. Partha Chatterjee has shown, however, that the character of nationalism changes according to whether it is a metropolitan phenomenon or a colonial one. Implicit in his work, further, is that nationalism—or, at least, the making and conceiving of nationalism—continues in the post-colonial period, throwing up new forces and perspectives that challenge previous formulations of it. 2 Most writers on the subject worry about how the culture of nationalism tends to create a positive image of the nation as homogeneous while defining itself against a hated and despised Other or set of Others, within and without. 3 The debate over the peculiarities of the colonial legacy and its long-term impact on the colonized has constituted the central theme of post-colonial scholarship. Those involved in the two mainly disparate debates—on nationalism and on post-colonialism—need to address each other's concerns. To date, most discussions of the post-colonial condition have centered on South Asia, and it is our aim to open up this debate by considering the very different cases of the Middle East and Central Asia, the one having been subjected to capitalist colonialism, and the latter to czarist domination, followed by the Soviet experiment, with all the ambiguities it introduced in relations between metropole and periphery.

The Middle East and Central Asia’s economic growth potential is slowing faster than in other emerging and developing regions, dampening hopes for reducing persistent unemployment and improving the region’s generally low living standards. Why? And is it possible to alter this course? This paper addresses these questions by estimating potential growth, examining its supply-side drivers, and assessing which of them could be most effective in raising potential growth. The analysis reveals that the region’s potential growth is expected to slow by ¾ of a percentage point more than the EMDC average over the next five years. The reasons behind this slowdown differ across the region. Lower productivity growth drives the slowdown in the Caucasus and Central Asia and is also weighing on growth across the Middle East (MENAP); while a lower labor contribution to potential growth is the main driver in MENAP. Moving forward, given some natural constraints on labor, total factor productivity growth is key to unlocking the region’s higher growth potential. For oil importers, raising physical capital accumulation through greater investment will also play an important role.

The Middle East and Central Asia’s economic growth potential is slowing faster than in other emerging and developing regions, dampening hopes for reducing persistent unemployment and improving the region’s generally low living standards. Why? And is it possible to alter this course? This paper addresses these questions by estimating potential growth, examining its supply-side drivers, and assessing which of them could be most effective in raising potential growth. The analysis reveals that the region’s potential growth is expected to slow by ¾ of a percentage point more than the EMDC average over the next five years. The reasons behind this slowdown differ across the region. Lower productivity growth drives the slowdown in the Caucasus and Central Asia and is also weighing on growth across the Middle East (MENAP); while a lower labor contribution to potential growth is the main driver in MENAP. Moving forward, given some natural constraints on labor, total factor productivity growth is key to unlocking the region’s higher growth potential. For oil importers, raising physical capital accumulation through greater investment will also play an important role.

<p>Over the past several decades, new sources of dust aerosol have appeared in the Middle East and Central Asia due to the desiccation of lakes in the region. It is known that recently dry lakebeds can be efficient dust sources, due to the availability of readily erodible alluvial sediments. Such lake source regions include: Lake Urmia in western Iran; the Sistan Basin in the border area between Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan; and most notably, the Aral Sea on the border between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. A particularly large area (over 50,000 km<sup>2</sup>) of the former lakebed of the Aral Sea has become exposed to aeolian wind erosion, leaving Central Asia susceptible to dust storms originating from the young ‘Aral Kum’ (Aral Desert).</p><p>In this work we update the dust transport model COSMO-MUSCAT in order to simulate dust emissions from these relatively new dust sources. Making use of the Global Surface Water dataset (produced by the Copernicus Programme) in order to define the surface water coverage, we make estimates of dust emissions under three scenarios: 1) the ‘Past’, representative of water coverage in the 1980s; 2) the ‘Present’, representative of water coverage in the 2010s; and 3) the ‘Dry’ scenario, a worst-case future scenario in which currently drying lake regions are assumed to dry out completely under the pressure of climate change and water overuse. These scenarios are applied to the ‘Dustbelt’ modelling domain, covering North Africa, the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula, and Central Asia as far east as western China.</p>