Eastern History Research Articles

Obituary: Professor Clifford Edmund Bosworth, FBA, 1929–2015

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 42, 1, 2017 © The Maghreb Review 2017 This publication is printed on FSC Mix paper from responsible sources OBITUARY PROFESSOR CLIFFORD EDMUND BOSWORTH, FBA, 1929-2015 Professor Edmund Bosworth, Emeritus Professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Manchester, gained the affectionate nickname ‘Bozzy’ in some academic circles. It really suited him, echoing both Dickens and Boswell, for Bosworth certainly shared Boswell’s enormous energy for writing and Dickens’ fascination with all levels of society. Indeed, Edmund Bosworth was not always just interested in the grand sweep of Islamic history and high culture at the courts of caliphs and sultans. His desire to discover new facets of medieval Middle Eastern history led him to examine little-known byways of Muslim society, such as his lively and fascinating translation of a work in Arabic by alTha ‘alabi (d.1038) called The Book of Curious and Entertaining Information, or his book with the intriguing title of The medieval Islamic underworld: the Banu Sasan in Arabic society and literature. Bosworth’s enthusiasm and excitement were also aroused by travellers’ tales. He often ‘relaxed’ by writing about intrepid British visitors to the Middle East who recorded their experiences in a lively manner to an eager audience back home. Thus Bosworth published articles and a book about William Lithgow from Lanark in Scotland who travelled to Syria, Palestine, Turkey and North Africa in three major journeys and in 1632 wrote a book, describing what he called ‘the rare adventures and painful peregrinations of long nineteen years travails from Scotland, to the most famous kingdoms in Europe, Asia and Africa.’ Bosworth had a long-term fascination with Lithgow and others like him, such as Mrs Isabella Bishop, the first woman to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society - who went to remote Luristan and Kurdistan in 1890 - and the more famous James Elroy Flecker (d. 1915). Indeed, it is significant that the very last of Bosworth’s books, published in 2012, is entitled Eastward Ho! Diplomats, Travellers and Interpreters of the Middle East and Beyond, 1600-1940. Clifford Edmund Bosworth was born in Sheffield on 29 December 1928. His father, who came from a local family, was a government clerk. Bosworth was educated at Sheffield City Grammar School, where he acquired a lasting love of hill walking, music and history. In 1947 he won an exhibition in history to St John’s College, Oxford. Before going there, he had to spend two years in the army (1947-49). When talking about this period, he said wryly that he had learned to type then, though it was only with two fingers; this would be a useful skill for his future career. His studies in Oxford (1949-1952) were a revelation to him, and he gained a first-class degree in modern history. Whilst there, he met an American student studying Arabic. Intrigued by this he started learning 82 PROFESSOR CLIFFORD EDMUND BOSWORTH, FBA, 1929-2015 the language, and, after moving to Edinburgh (1952) to take up a Civil Service post in the Department of Agriculture for Scotland, he was able to carry on studying Arabic with the help of the Professor of Arabic at the university, the Rev. Montgomery Watt. This experience resulted in his being awarded a scholarship at Edinburgh University in 1954 to do a degree in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, and for this too he was awarded a first-class degree. He was appointed Lecturer in Arabic at St Andrews University in 1956, and remained there until 1967. He wrote his doctoral thesis whilst in St Andrews and was awarded a Ph. D. at Edinburgh University in 1961. His next move was to the Chair of Arabic Studies at the University of Manchester in 1967, where he remained until his retirement in 1990. From that time until last year he continued to publish an immense amount of high-quality scholarly work with undiminished enthusiasm and passion for his subject. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1992. He much enjoyed being affiliated from 2004 as a Visiting Professor at Exeter University. Bosworth did much more than work on his own research and teaching. He laboured...

A Stage for the Revolution: Muharram and the Paradigm of Karbala in the context of Khomeini's Struggle with the Shah

29 Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. XL, No.2, WINTER 2017 A Stage for the Revolution: Muharram and the Paradigm of Karbala in the context of Khomeini’s Struggle with the Shah Javier Gil Guerrero* Introduction An important part of Iran’s Islamic revolution was the role that religious rituals and Persian folklore played in the social upheaval. Khomeini successfully conjured the spirits of the past in order to bring change to the present. This paper describes how Khomeini made use of (and reinterpreted) the slaughter at Karbala (680) in order to mobilize the population. Throughout this process Khomeini not only helped to revive old traditions, but he also reactivated old concepts like “martyrdom” while instilling new meaning to them.1 The objective of this paper is to put the Khomeini’s use of Muharram (the commemoration of Hussein’s death at Karbala) in perspective and examine the nuances that he added to the story and the rituals that had emanated from it. ThroughtheuseofMuharram,Khomeini“presentedtherevolutionarymovement against the regime as a morality play […] where heroes and villains could be easily identified.”2 The study locates Khomeini’s refashioning of Karbala within the context of the Iranian revolution and the Pahlavi state, including the struggle for the ideological orientation of Shia Islam, the attempts to monopolize the Karbala commemorations by the Iranian authorities and the repeated use of those ceremonies for political motivations. The contention of this study is that through his approach to the story of *Javier Gil Guerrero is a professor of Middle Eastern History at the Universidad Francisco de Vitoria. He has recently published a book on the Iranian revolution, The Carter Administration & the Fall of Iran’s Pahlavi Dynasty (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) as well as several papers on Iran and the Persian Gulf in the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies and the Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos. He regularly writes on Islam in the Spanish press. 1 Elisabeth Jane Yarbakhsha, “Green martyrdom and the Iranian state,” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Volume 28, Issue 1, 2014. 2 Jahangir Amuzegar, The Dynamics of the Iranian Revolution: The Pahlavi’s Triumph and Tragedy (New York: State University of New York Press, 1991), 31. 30 Hussein, Khomeini transformed the traditional image of the Imam from a passive and abused victim of injustice to a revolutionary martyr who fought to death against tyranny and oppression. Hussein became the prototype of a permanent revolutionary in a particular “Liberation Theology” of Islam.3 Khomeini’s innovative portrayal of Hussein reinterpreted one of the cultural pillars of Shia Islam in order to advance an “activist” approach to religion instead of the “quietist” one. The Karbala commemorations were thus dressed to fit a message of confrontation against the Shah in which the revolution was the only possible way for Shiites irrespective of its chances of success. The core of this paper is the description of Khomeini’s use of Muharram during his two clashes with the regime of the Shah in 1963 and 1978. The account is preceded by a brief overview of the historical events that inspired the mourning rituals of Muharram and their significance in Iranian culture and history. The aim is to contextualize the shifting interpretation of the ceremonies in the 1960s and 1970s through the particular beliefs and customs of Persian folklore and Shia Islam. Hussein, Karbala and Muharram The commemorations of Muharram revolve around the tragic end of Imam Hussein’s life in the year 680. Grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and son of the first Shia imam (and fourth Sunni Caliph), Ali. The slaughter of Hussein and the division concerning Prophet Muhammad’s rightful heirs constitutes the epicentre of the divisions between Shia and Sunni Muslims. The Shiites believe that the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law Ali had been designated leader of the Muslim community by the Prophet himself on his deathbed. It was a designation of divine inspiration, not a personal choice:Ali had been named heir to Muhammad’s leadership by God. The Sunnis, on the other hand, ignoredAli’s claim (accusing him of falsifying the story) and proceeded to accept the ruling of the elders of Medina...

Factor-V-Leiden Mutation in A Neonate Presenting With Arterial Ischemia

Factor V Leiden mutationis a rare cause of familial thrombophilia, more commonly seen in Caucasians. It is associated with thromboembolism in the neonatal population [1]. We report a case of a term female infant who developed an arterial ischaemicright thumb and the dorsum of the right hand several hours after birth and as part of the work up the babywas found to have Factor V Leiden Mutation (Heterozygous). Parents who are of Middle Eastern origin hadno family history of thrombophilia. The baby was born in good condition and the only significant perinatal history was gestational diabetes which is another known risk factor for neonatal thromboembolism. The neonate was successfully managed with subcutaneous low molecular weight heparin and hyperbaric topical oxygen. We think the presence of factor V Leiden associated with gestational diabetes predisposed to this rare presentation.

Integrated Tree-Ring-Radiocarbon High-Resolution Timeframe to Resolve Earlier Second Millennium BCE Mesopotamian Chronology.

500 years of ancient Near Eastern history from the earlier second millennium BCE, including such pivotal figures as Hammurabi of Babylon, Šamši-Adad I (who conquered Aššur) and Zimrilim of Mari, has long floated in calendar time subject to rival chronological schemes up to 150+ years apart. Texts preserved on clay tablets provide much information, including some astronomical references, but despite 100+ years of scholarly effort, chronological resolution has proved impossible. Documents linked with specific Assyrian officials and rulers have been found and associated with archaeological wood samples at Kültepe and Acemhöyük in Turkey, and offer the potential to resolve this long-running problem. Here we show that previous work using tree-ring dating to place these timbers in absolute time has fundamental problems with key dendrochronological crossdates due to small sample numbers in overlapping years and insufficient critical assessment. To address, we have integrated secure dendrochronological sequences directly with radiocarbon (14C) measurements to achieve tightly resolved absolute (calendar) chronological associations and identify the secure links of this tree-ring chronology with the archaeological-historical evidence. The revised tree-ring-sequenced 14C time-series for Kültepe and Acemhöyük is compatible only with the so-called Middle Chronology and not with the rival High, Low or New Chronologies. This finding provides a robust resolution to a century of uncertainty in Mesopotamian chronology and scholarship, and a secure basis for construction of a coherent timeframe and history across the Near East and East Mediterranean in the earlier second millennium BCE. Our re-dating also affects an unusual tree-ring growth anomaly in wood from Porsuk, Turkey, previously tentatively associated with the Minoan eruption of the Santorini volcano. This tree-ring growth anomaly is now directly dated ~1681–1673 BCE (68.2% highest posterior density range), ~20 years earlier than previous assessments, indicating that it likely has no association with the subsequent Santorini volcanic eruption.

The Secret Anglo-French War in the Middle East: Intelligence and Decolonization, 1940–1948

The Secret Anglo-French War in the Middle East: Intelligence and Decolonization, 1940–1948

THE LEGITIMACY OF SHAJAR AL-DURR REIGN AS REPRESENTED IN LIGHT OF A RARE DINAR

Shajar al-Durr who began her life as a slave and ended it as sultana was one of thevery few women in Islamic history to ascend to the throne. Shajar’s politicalimportance comes from the period in which she reigned, which includes manyimportant events in the Egyptian and Middle Eastern history. Despite the fact that sheofficially ruled Egypt for a very short period of approximately eighty days, that doesnot underestimate the majestic role she played in history. Also, her reign marked aturning point in Egyptian history, as the Egyptian sultanate shifted from the Ayyubidto the Mamluk. Concerning Shajar al-Durr’s coins, they are all extremely rare,designed in the best Ayyubid tradition and style. Due to the rarity of her coins, everysingle piece of these coins has its own value and significance, specially that her coinsreflect many of the important historical facts as it is going to be clarified through thisresearch.

Ancient near Eastern History from eurocentrism to an Open World

ISIMU

Who Heard What When: Learning from Radio Broadcasting Hours and Programs in Jerusalem

Incorporating descriptions and analyses of sound into Middle Eastern history offers a wealth of opportunity for enriching our understanding of the historical record. But sometimes we need to get back to the basics: the “five w's and one h” of sound studies, so to speak. In what follows I would like to run this simple exercise with radio in the Mandate-era Levant, in order to lay out the basic data and begin to reflect on how it might aid scholars in better understanding other aspects of life in this period. I will do this by first addressing some of these basic what, who, when, where, why, how questions, and then by examining one day's programming of the Palestine Broadcasting Service in 1937: the day immediately following the release of the Peel Commission Report. What can we learn from examining this day's programming?

Ooi Kee Beng. The Eurasian Core and Its Edges: Dialogues with Wang Gungwu on the History of the World. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2014, 254p.

The Eurasian Core and Its Edges: Dialogues with Wang Gungwu on the History of the WorldOOI KEE BENGSingapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2014, 254p.Scholars from, or based in, Europe, North America, or Australia have shaped most of the writing on world history over the past half century. Few Asians have taken up the challenge of examining the forces and developments, contacts and collisions, connecting and shaping the world's societies over the centuries. Although it has a somewhat limited focus (mostly Eurasia) and emphasizes the Big Picture rather than details, this innovative book illuminates the always interesting thoughts of a prominent Singapore-based Malaysian scholar, Wang Gungwu, and adds a new and largely Asian perspective through a dialogue with a younger Malaysian historian also working in Singapore, Ooi Kee Beng. In a series of interviews in 2013 the author, Ooi, skillfully posed thoughtful questions to Wang and compiled their extended conversations into this unconventional but intriguing book. The collaboration, which is loosely organized thematically rather than chronologically, should be of interest to specialists on world, European, Indian, Southeast Asian, and especially Central Asian and Chinese history. The result is like a rewarding and intellectually exciting graduate school seminar with a master historian bringing together his vast knowledge to ponder the broad structure of world history over several millennia.Few historians are more qualified to explore and identify some of the main themes of such a vast topic. Wang Gungwu is one of the most outstanding, prolific, and wide-ranging historians of our generation. His life and career have spanned the tumultuous transition from Western colonialism through World War II, decolonization, the Cold War, and the multipolar world of today. His background is exceptionally cosmopolitan. Born in 1930 in colonial Indonesia to an ethnic Chinese family and raised in British Malaya, Wang was educated at the University of Malaya in Singapore (BA, MA) and School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London (Ph.D.) before his highly successful academic and administrative career at the University of Malaya (History Department Head), Australian National University (Professor and Head of Far Eastern History and Director, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies), Hong Kong University (Vice Chancellor), and National University of Singapore (University Professor). His travels and sojourns have also taken him to many countries around the world. This reviewer first met Wang in the mid-1960s at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, where Wang had helped build a globalized History Department with a multinational faculty offering courses on both Southeast Asia and various world regions, a harbinger of the cosmopolitan approach he would demonstrate in some of his writings, including this book. Wang's numerous books and articles examine diverse topics but especially China's pre-modern and modern history and politics, Chinese migrations and the resulting diaspora (a concept he dislikes), Malaysian and Singapore history and society, political and economic relations among Asian societies, and Asia's role in world history.The book is structured around several key themes that Wang believes were major factors in the broader history of Eurasia, which he identifies (along with North Africa) as the canvas where most of world history was made. This view does not conflict with a lot of Western historical writing on the subject, which also (in the reviewer's mind, wrongly) devalues Africa and the Americas prior to the past few centuries, but Wang places stronger emphasis on Central Asia and China. Wang views Eurasia as a vast core of irrepressible power and several coastal edges (some historians might use the term fringes)-the agrarian-based west (Europe), south (India), and east (China)-connected by Central Asian horse-riding pastoral nomadic societies whose interaction, friendly or hostile, with inland-looking states to the west and east fostered the emergence of European and Chinese civilizations. …

Over the Borderline? Rethinking Territoriality at the Margins of Empire and Nation in the Modern Middle East (Part I)

AbstractThis is the first of two connected articles examining the evolution of historical scholarship on borderlands within the field of Middle East studies. In both articles, I pay particular attention to how historians have addressed the relationship between borderland identities and modern territorializing empires and nation–states. I argue throughout both that analyzing what I call the “lived experience of territoriality” in borderland regions ought to take precedence over approaches that presume the ultimate imposition of fixed nation–state boundaries by the mid‐20th century. The adoption of borderlands as an analytical category along these lines presents an exciting opportunity for future research in modern Middle Eastern history precisely for its malleability. Historians who take a conceptually nuanced approach to borderlands and relate their work to new scholarship on territoriality will be able to explore a range of ways to understand local as well as state experiences and practices of power and politics, sovereignty and authority, and identity and belonging. In Part I, I begin by providing a general overview of key terminology that is prevalent across interdisciplinary scholarship on borderlands, before laying out my own framework for conceptualizing the relationship between borderland identities and modern discourses and practices of territoriality. I end this first installment by tracing the emergence of scholarship on Middle East borderlands within Ottoman historiography, focusing on one key work that pointed in important new directions for historians seeking to examine social and political life in the margins of modern Middle Eastern empires and nation–states.

Over the Borderline? Rethinking Territoriality at the Margins of Empire and Nation in the Modern Middle East (Part II)

AbstractThis is the second of two connected articles examining the evolution of historical scholarship on borderlands within the field of Middle East studies. In both articles, I pay particular attention to how historians have addressed the relationship between borderland identities and modern territorializing empires and nation‐states. I argue throughout both parts that analyzing what I call the “lived experience of territoriality” in borderland regions ought to take precedence over approaches that presume the ultimate imposition of fixed nation‐state boundaries by the mid‐twentieth century. The adoption of borderlands as an analytical category along these lines presents an exciting opportunity for future research in modern Middle Eastern history precisely for its malleability. Historians who take a conceptually nuanced approach to borderlands and relate their work to new scholarship on territoriality will be able to explore a range of ways to understand local as well as state experiences and practices of power and politics; sovereignty and authority; and identity and belonging. In Part I, I focused primarily on laying out a framework for conceptualizing the relationship between borderland identities and the lived experience of modern territoriality. In Part II, I push this framework further by surveying two large themes that have defined the work of Middle East borderland historians over the last two decades – critical cartography and the visual representation of borderland identities and borderlands as sites of contestation and negotiation. In the final section, I sketch out some possibilities for future research, drawing largely on new scholarship from within Middle East studies.

Drought and societal collapse 3200 years ago in the Eastern Mediterranean: a review

One of the goals of climate scientists is to understand how climate shifts may have changed the course of history and influenced culture at millennial timescales. Repeatedly, environmental degradation has upset the balance between people, their habitat, and the socioeconomic frameworks in which they live. Among these imbalances, drought, firmly rooted in people's minds as a catalyst of harvest failures and famines, remains a permanent threat because it may trigger or amplify social crises, leading to massive exoduses, conflicts, and political turmoil. The spiral of decline in which the flourishing Eastern Mediterranean civilizations were plunged 3200 years ago, and the ensuing chaos, remains a persistent riddle in Near Eastern history. Scholars tend to believe that this socioeconomic collapse was violent and culturally disruptive. Most of the coastal cities between Pylos and Gaza were destroyed, burned, and often left unoccupied, thereafter, putting an end to the elaborate network of international trade that ensured prosperity in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean. The rural settlements that emerged have mainly persisted through adapted agropastoral activities and limited long‐distance trade. At the dusk of this event, regional cultures began to be poorly documented, leading historians to allude to a dark age that lasted for 300 years. Among the roots, tectonic instability and earthquakes, demographic imbalance between social groups, internal collapses, and technological innovations are commonly evoked. However, recent studies have mainly hypothesized about an impact of a centuries‐long drought behind the decline. Drought may have hastened the fall of the Old World by sparking famine, invasions, and conflicts, leading to the political, economic, and cultural chaos termed ‘Late Bronze Age collapse’. WIREs Clim Change 2015, 6:369–382. doi: 10.1002/wcc.345This article is categorized under: Climate, History, Society, Culture > Major Historical Eras Paleoclimates and Current Trends > Paleoclimate

Orphans and Destitute Children in the Late Ottoman Empire by Nazan Maksudyan (review)

Reviewed by: Orphans and Destitute Children in the Late Ottoman Empire by Nazan Maksudyan Heidi Morrison Orphans and Destitute Children in the Late Ottoman Empire. By Nazan Maksudyan. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2014. 232 pp. Cloth $39.95. Historian Nazan Maksudyan breaks new ground as one of the first scholars to insert children into the Ottoman Empire’s historical narrative. Through the lens of meticulously collected archival records on orphans and destitute children, [End Page 327] Maksudyan argues that children are invaluable historical actors in the late Ottoman Empire’s process of modernization, including projects of urbanization, citizen formation, and welfare policies. As the multinational and decentralized late Ottoman Empire sought to transform to a centralized modern nation state, concerned parties saw the regulation of abandoned, vagrant, begging, and refugee children as a way to refashion religious and political identities, as well as create a new workforce. The state, foreign missionaries, and religious and civil leaders competed to save unfortunate children, who went from being once invisible, non-political members of society to prospective future subjects. Maksudyan’s book begins by making a generalized case for why it is important to write a “history from below,” then traces marginalized children’s activity from the innermost recesses of society to the international stage. Chapter one examines new state techniques for the governance of foundlings, which were propagated to advance the image of modernity. In reality, children in the institutions were ill-cared for, and non-Muslim communities felt alienated by the state’s intrusion into the care of its youngest members. Chapter two provides an intimate look at domestic servant girls’ resistance to abuse by fostering patriarchs. Government concern for these girls did not focus on abuse, but instead on using the girls as a means of policing sexuality and furthering its reach into the population. The third chapter argues that the expansive number of vocational orphanages at the heart of cities was linked to the process of disciplining urban centers and furthering industrial progress. The final chapter looks at the role that abandoned children played in international politics. Foreign missionaries rivaled the Ottoman state and local communal leaders in their thinly veiled proselytizing relief efforts for war-orphaned children. Overall, Maksudyan’s book shows that orphaned and destitute children were at the center of creating the new, modern social order of the late Ottoman Empire. Maksudyan’s book does not provide novel arguments about Ottoman history, nor does it purport to do so. Several historians have documented that the late Ottoman state, and other interested parties, sought to manipulate and control subjects in the modernization process. The contribution of Maksudyan’s book comes from the light it shines on destitute and neglected children as integral to the process of Ottoman modernization. (Historian Benjamin Fortna has already shown that mainstream schoolchildren were part of this process.) Maksudyan’s book successful rescues the most marginalized of children from the past and triumphantly reminds historians to pay attention to the human terms of modernization. From cries at the doorsteps of police stations to little dead bodies without registered names, discarded children are makers of history. It is up to future researches to take the torch Maksudyan has helped light [End Page 328] and move forward in discerning what new insights children can provide about Middle Eastern history. Beth Baron’s The Orphan Scandal: Christian Missionaries and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood (2013) provides perhaps one of the first examples of how this can be done, albeit in the context of modern Egypt. Maksudyan’s book can be of interest to historians seeking to unearth the subaltern in the Ottoman past, and also to historians of other world regions seeking to compare care-taking systems for abandoned and orphaned children. Adoption is not legally possible in Islamic law, and hence unknown in Ottoman society. Heidi Morrison University of Wisconsin, La Crosse Copyright © 2015 Johns Hopkins University Press

Byzantine Matters. By Averil Cameron (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2014) 184 pp. $22.95

In this thoughtful book, which transcends a typical survey of the state of a field, Cameron diagnoses a series of interdisciplinary academic discourses in which Byzantium should matter more than it usually does. The questions with which she frames her work—Was Byzantium an Empire? Was it an “Orthodox Society”?—invite Byzantinists to participate more fully in interdisciplinary conversations with scholars of comparative literature, art historians, and historians of religion. But Cameron also urges colleagues working in these related fields to pay more attention to Byzantium and Byzantinists. Standard narratives about Western culture and the formation of Europe have often neglected Byzantium, and current trends toward late antiquity, comparative empires, and pan-Mediterranean or Near Eastern history—and even world history—tend to blur the boarders of Byzantine studies. Where and how does Byzantium fit? Occasionally within her trenchant analysis of how Byzantinists both succeed and fail to engage their colleagues and the public, Cameron affords herself a plaintive tone to lament the insecurity of the discipline, especially in Anglophone universities: “It does not easily fit existing departmental structures, or feature among their priorities” (4). Positions have been cut and programs closed. What is the cost?Cameron does not always answer her questions; instead, she illustrates their complexities and presents the case for nuance. She calls for greater theorization in a discipline that often lags behind developments in related fields. Even so, she acknowledges the emergence of a new generation of scholars well equipped not only with the necessary philological skills but also conversant in cultural criticism, and she applauds the inclusion of Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Arabic materials and engagement with the Western Middle Ages and the rise and formation of Islam.Cameron reads widely in the field, intervening in balanced and constructive ways that guide further inquiry. She is particularly interested in debates about ethnicity and religion; she is fair but not necessarily gentle to those with whom she disagrees. She worries about the effects of nationalisms, especially Greek and Slavic, on Byzantine studies, even as she acknowledges Southeastern Europe as a region where Byzantine matters most acutely. She questions recent work, especially that of Kaldellis, in locating a Byzantine Hellenism relatively detached from Orthodox identity.1 She expresses skepticism at the suggestion of Brubaker and Haldon that the Iconoclastic Controversy may have had little to do with the history of doctrine.2 Some scholars struggle to imagine a Byzantine secularity, whereas others unreasonably assume that official Orthodoxy pervaded society and that norms of doctrine and ritual practice might be sufficient explanations for many aspects of Byzantine life. Worse, some have asserted that only those who are Orthodox can understand Orthodoxy. The academic study of Byzantine religion from a secular perspective remains underdeveloped, although Cameron might have missed its emerging vibrancy.Blockbuster exhibitions of Byzantine art hold the public’s interest, providing an encounter that often exoticizes or sprititualizes Byzantium. Of pieces on display at a Royal Academy show in 2008/9, Cameron writes, “Many visitors found them hard to understand, but nearly all found them breathtaking” (71). The appeal of its art is both an opportunity and a trap for Byzantium. Cameron expresses caution about recent work, such as Pentcheva’s, that reflects on expectations of radiance, dazzle, and a mystified transcendent.3 Not everyone will agree with the judgments in this brief but stimulating book, but it provides perfect reading for societies, programs, and departments seeking to join the conversation about Byzantine matters.

Separatism in the Northern Caucasus

Editors’ note: We publish here posthumously one of the last unpublished articles by the great historian of the Caucasus, Moshe Gammer (1950-2013). Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University, Gammer specialized in the history of Muslim resistance to Russian rule in the Northern Caucasus, to which subject his best-known works, Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan and The Lone Wolf and the Bear: Three Centuries of Chechen Defiance of Russian Rule, were dedicated. The current article was originally written in 2010 for submission to Europe-Asia Studies, but could not be completed for health reasons. The text has been left unabridged, and the author’s original preferences in terminology and toponymic spellings have been retained. The editors thank Ruth Frankl-Gammer and Dr Chen Bram for their kind assistance in publishing this article.

Bíblia, mídia e fundamentalismo: obstáculos para o estudo acadêmico da história antiga de Israel

This article aims to analyze how the biblical text, the media and the fundamentalism constitute themselves as obstacles to a critical investigation of the history of Israel. We also intend to denounce the conservatism that prevailed in the studies about ancient Israel so that for a long time what has been observed is the existence of a biblical history of Israel and not exactly an academic history which, to some extent, has distanced the ancient Israel from professional discussions in the sphere of ancient eastern history. Nevertheless we aim to present new horizons of research besides demonstrating how the exegetical and archaeological research impacted the relevant historiography for ancient Israeli society.

Re-Orientation

From 1938 to 1947, a Chinese Muslim scholar named Muhammad Tawāḍuʿ Pang (known in China as Pang Shiqian) lived and studied at al-Azhar, Cairo’s famed center of Islamic learning. During his time in Egypt, he produced his Arabic-language magnum opus, China and Islam, published by the Muslim Brotherhood in May 1945. In addition to introducing Arabic-speaking audiences to Chinese Islam, the book exhibited four important features. First, it sought to place Chinese Muslim history firmly within Islamic history generally. Second, it responded to the geopolitical crisis brought upon the Chinese Muslims by the Ottoman Empire’s collapse and by China’s war with Japan. Third, it equated the modern condition of Muslims in both Egypt and China and absorbed otherwise competing intellectual genealogies from al-Azhar and the Muslim Brotherhood. Fourth, it synthesized these genealogies by calling for a return to the principles of the “golden age” of Islam and a revitalization of pre-modern intra-Asian relations as the surest path to modern “progress.” While this body of thought and sentiment had little in common with modern nationalism, elements of it were nevertheless soon co-opted by the nascent Third World movement.Building on diverse fields including Chinese, Islamic, Middle Eastern, and global history, this essay seeks to decouple Chinese Muslim history from narratives of marginalization and to decouple histories of China and the Middle East from the fraught encounter between “West” and “non-West.” Through its reading of Tawāḍuʿ Pang’s China and Islam, it also attempts to recall a now unfamiliar world in which the nation-state did not yet enjoy the dominance it achieved once decolonization was fully underway.

Theatre and War: Theatrical Responses Since 1991 by Jeanne Colleran (review)

Reviewed by: Theatre and War: Theatrical Responses Since 1991 by Jeanne Colleran Jenna L. Kubly Theatre and War: Theatrical Responses Since 1991. By Jeanne Colleran. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012; pp. 252. In her own words, Jeanne Colleran’s Theatre and War aims “to investigate how the media, beginning with the Persian Gulf War, has altered political analysis and how this altercation has in turn affected socially critical art” (6)—specifically, dramas written for and produced in “mainstream” British and American theatrical venues (6–7). Although earlier scholarship deals with theatrical representations of other wars, Colleran’s book is among the first to deal exclusively with theatrical works written since 1991 that portray war and its aftermath. Although she both begins and concludes on a hopeful note of “art’s restorative powers” (11), the book’s most significant contribution is a skillful engagement with Baudrillard and a wide range of other theorists who critique the role of the media in the performance of war, followed by an inquiry into the theatrical works that sought to expose the media’s simulations, obfuscations, and biases. Colleran opens by setting forth her overarching approach with a consideration of how the rapid growth in media influenced the perception and presentation of war—the “new semiotic environment” (7). She traces the rise of the media and its power to construct news to the coverage of the First Gulf War in 1991, which marks a “historical juncture” (31), as the images broadcast directly into home televisions “provoke[d] public response and policy response” (14). This shift was evident in the ways in which media, politics, and even military strategy “converged [to] reshape the public sphere” (31). This coverage, Colleran and others argue, changed the way in which the public responded to the war, as the quantity of information did not necessarily equal veracity, leaving the spectator with the difficult task of interpretation. The theatrical works analyzed in the chapters that follow each respond to this evolving task of interpretation, as each work attempts to tell the “truth” about the war, often in conversation with, if not opposition to, mass media’s initial portrayal of the event. Among the forty works discussed are those by well-known playwrights like Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill, and Harold Pinter alongside less familiar plays, such as Richard Norton-Taylor’s Justifying War and Judith Thompson’s Palace of the End. The book is organized thematically, each chapter considering an aspect of war and its presentation in the media plays that deal with the First Gulf War; dramatic responses to 9/11; sympathetic and historically based dramatic representations of “the enemy”; more abstract and allegorical modes; “war documents” and the reemergence of documentary drama; and plays tied to specific sites—namely Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Afghanistan. Several themes run through Colleran’s analysis: the unresolved legacy of Vietnam; emergent US neoimperialist policies and their ties to a militarized, capitalistic culture; and the possibility of dissent and activism. Just as some plays point to the American past and its influence on political rhetoric, others take an even broader view of history, attempting to counteract the average American’s incomplete understanding of Middle Eastern history and the tendency to view Muslim people stereotypically—both deficiencies, the result of how the media chooses to frame their stories. In cataloging and analyzing the various theatrical responses to 9/11, Colleran argues that many of the earliest dramas tackled fundamental questions like “Why” and “Who,” and in seeking these answers, quickly moved beyond the heroes of 9/11 to instead “interrupt hypernationalist discourse” (104) and investigate how globalization, US dominance, and incorrect assumptions contributed to ongoing instability. Other works take a different angle, seeking to put a face on the “enemy” and their motivations, whether rational or beyond comprehension. Despite staging the terrorist, who might be “another man’s freedom fighter” (115), other plays also depict the constant state of anxiety about terrorists/terrorism in which post-9/11 citizens exist. The images of past acts are part of the constant fear that terrorists create, in that another, more horrific act is both “unprecedented” and yet “already imagined” (120). Finally, a theme that binds these...

THE PROMISE AND PITFALLS OF MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC SOCIAL HISTORY

When I was in graduate school, in the 1980s, one frequently heard complaints about the comparatively unsophisticated nature of the historiography of the medieval Middle East. There was considerable envy of historians in fields like early modern European history, who pushed broader disciplinary limits and whose works were read not just for content but also for historiographical and theoretical inspiration. There were some in our own corner of the profession blazing new methodological trails—Clifford Geertz, for example, who, though not a historian, had much to say to historians, and whose books were read eagerly by historians, and not just in Middle Eastern history; or Fedwa Malti-Douglas, as much at home in feminist literary theory as in medieval Arabic literature. But many graduate students in Middle Eastern history felt a bit underrepresented on the cutting edge of historical thought and practice.

The Coup

In his most recent work, The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of ModernU. S.-Iranian Relations, Ervand Abrahamian (Distinguished Professor of Iranianand Middle Eastern History, Baruch College of the City University, NewYork) recounts a definitive moment of modern Iranian history that overshadowsIranian-American relations to this day. Drawing on a remarkable varietyof sources – accessible Iranian official documents, the Foreign Office andState Department files, memoirs and biographies, newspaper articles publishedduring the crisis, recent Persian-language books published in Iran, aCIA report leaked in 2000 known as “the Wilber document,” and two contemporaryoral history projects (the Iranian Oral History Project at HarvardUniversity and the Iranian Left history project in Berlin) – the author providesa detailed and thorough account of the 1953 coup.Challenging the dominant consensus among academicians and politicalanalysts that the coup transpired because of the Cold War rivalries betweenthe West and the Soviet Union, he locates it within the paradigms of the clashbetween an old imperialism and a burgeoning nationalism. He then traces itsorigins to Iran’s struggle to nationalize its oil industry and the Anglo-Americanalliance against this effort.The book is divided into four chapters. The first chapter, “Oil Nationalization,”narrates the history of Iran’s oil industry and various encounters betweenthe Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) and the Iranians. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), an English company founded in 1908 followingthe discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman in southern Iran, wasrenamed AIOC in 1935. AIOC gradually turned into a vital British asset andprovided its treasury with more than £24 million a year in taxes and £92 millionin foreign exchange in the first decades of the twentieth century ...