The History of Saudi Arabia

The History of Saudi Arabia

Author: A M Vasilev

Publisher: Saqi

Published: 2014-05-22

Total Pages: 442

ISBN-13: 0863567797

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How has Saudi Arabia managed to maintain its Arab and Islamic values while at the same time adopting Western technology and a market economy? How have its hereditary leaders, who govern with a mixture of political pragmatism and religious zeal, managed to maintain their power? This comprehensive history of Saudi Arabia from 1745 to the present provides insight into its culture and politics, its powerful oil industry, its relations with its neighbours, and the ongoing influence of the Wahhabi movement. Based on a wealth of Arab, American, British, Western and Eastern European sources, this book will stand as the definitive account of the largest state on the Arabian peninsula.


The Penetration of Arabia

The Penetration of Arabia

Author: David George Hogarth

Publisher:

Published: 1904

Total Pages: 488

ISBN-13:

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Record of the development of western knowledge concerning the Arabian peninsula.


Music and Traditions of the Arabian Peninsula

Music and Traditions of the Arabian Peninsula

Author: Lisa Urkevich

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-12-17

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 1135628165

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Music and Traditions of the Arabian Peninsula provides a pioneering overview of folk and traditional urban music, along with dance and rituals, of Saudi Arabia and the Upper Gulf States of Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. The nineteen chapters introduce variegated regions and subcultures and their rich and dynamic musical arts, many of which heretofore have been unknown beyond local communities. The book contains insightful descriptions of genres, instruments, poetry, and performance practices of the desert heartland (Najd), the Arabian/Persian Gulf shores, the great western cities including Makkah and Medinah, the southwestern mountains, and the hot Red Sea coast. Musical customs of distinctive groups such as Bedouin, seafarers, and regional women are explored. The book is packaged with downloadable resources and almost 200 images including a full color photo essay, numerous music transcriptions, a glossary with over 400 specialized terms, and original Arabic script alongside key words to assist with further research. This book provides a much-needed introduction and organizational structure for the diverse and complex musical arts of the region.


Vegetation of the Arabian Peninsula

Vegetation of the Arabian Peninsula

Author: S.A. Ghazanfar

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 1998-08-31

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780792350156

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Vegetation of the Arabian Peninsula is the first comprehensive book on all aspects of the vegetation, phytogeography and conservation of the vast and varied region of the Arabian Peninsula. Written and edited by experts on the botany and environment of the Peninsula, this book synthesises the information available on all aspects of the flora and vegetation (including lower plants), from the mountains, sand seas, coasts, water bodies and desert plains to the plants of economic importance. The book contains chapters on the vegetation, ecology and phytogeography of the mountains, wadis, sand deserts, gravel plains, coasts and sabkhas. Chapters on climate and geology provide the background information for understanding the dynamics of the vegetation. A chapter on the diversity of plants gives details of the region's species richness and endemism, current threats to plant diversity and the measures taken in the form of protected areas and legislation in each country of the Peninsula. This book will be an invaluable reference for students, scholars and professionals interested in Southwest Asian botany.


Archive Wars

Archive Wars

Author: Rosie Bsheer

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2020-09-22

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 1503612589

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A study of the Saudi Arabian monarchy’s efforts to construct and disseminate a historical narrative to legitimize its rule. The production of history is premised on the selective erasure of certain pasts and the artifacts that stand witness to them. From the elision of archival documents to the demolition of sacred and secular spaces, each act of destruction is also an act of state building. Following the 1991 Gulf War, political elites in Saudi Arabia pursued these dual projects of historical commemoration and state formation with greater fervor to enforce their postwar vision for state, nation, and economy. Seeing Islamist movements as the leading threat to state power, they sought to de-center religion from educational, cultural, and spatial policies. With this book, Rosie Bsheer explores the increasing secularization of the postwar Saudi state and how it manifested in assembling a national archive and reordering urban space in Riyadh and Mecca. The elites’ project was rife with ironies: in Riyadh, they employed world-renowned experts to fashion an imagined history, while at the same time in Mecca they were overseeing the obliteration of a thousand-year-old topography and its replacement with commercial megaprojects. Archive Wars shows how the Saudi state’s response to the challenges of the Gulf War served to historicize a national space, territorialize a national history, and ultimately refract both through new modes of capital accumulation. Praise for Archive Wars “An instant classic. With incredible insight, creativity, and courage, Rosie Bsheer peels away the political and institutional barriers that have so long mystified others seeking to understand Saudi Arabia. Bsheer tells us remarkable new things about the exercise and meaning of power in today’s Saudi Arabia.” —Toby Jones, Rutgers University, author of Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia “There are now two distinct eras in the writing of Saudi Arabian history: before Rosie Bsheer’s Archive Wars and after.” —Robert Vitalis, University of Pennsylvania, author of Oilcraft “Archive Wars explores with conceptual brilliance and historical aplomb the various forms of historical erasure central not just to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia but to all modern states. In a finely-grained analysis, Rosie Bsheer rethinks the significance of archives, historicism, capital accumulation, and the remaking of the built environment. A must-read for all historians concerned with the materiality of modern state formation.” —Omnia El Shakry, University of California, Davis, author of The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt