Gatekeepers of the Arab Past
Gatekeepers of the Arab Past

Author: Yoav Di-Capua

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2009-09-09

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 052094481X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This groundbreaking study illuminates the Egyptian experience of modernity by critically analyzing the foremost medium through which it was articulated: history. The first comprehensive analysis of a Middle Eastern intellectual tradition, Gatekeepers of the Past examines a system of knowledge that replaced the intellectual and methodological conventions of Islamic historiography only at the very end of the nineteenth century. Covering more than one hundred years of mostly unexamined historucal literature in Arabic, Yoav Di-Capua explores Egyptian historical thought, examines the careers of numerous critical historians, and traces this tradition's uneasy relationship with colonial forms of knowledge as well as with the post-colonial state.

Gatekeepers of the Arab Past
Gatekeepers of the Arab Past

Author: Yoav Di-Capua

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2009-09-09

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 0520257332

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"An enormous contribution to the study of Egyptian history writing and historiography. Sure to become the basic manual for understanding the trajectory of modern Egyptian thinking."—Roger Owen, author of State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East

The Last Nahdawi
The Last Nahdawi

Author: Hussam R. Ahmed

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2021-06-15

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1503627969

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Taha Hussein (1889–1973) is one of Egypt's most iconic figures. A graduate of al-Azhar, Egypt's oldest university, a civil servant and public intellectual, and ultimately Egyptian Minister of Public Instruction, Hussein was central to key social and political developments in Egypt during the parliamentary period between 1922 and 1952. Influential in the introduction of a new secular university and a burgeoning press in Egypt—and prominent in public debates over nationalism and the roles of religion, women, and education in making a modern independent nation—Hussein remains a subject of continued admiration and controversy to this day. The Last Nahdawi offers the first biography of Hussein in which his intellectual outlook and public career are taken equally seriously. Examining Hussein's actions against the backdrop of his complex relationship with the Egyptian state, the religious establishment, and the French government, Hussam R. Ahmed reveals modern Egypt's cultural influence in the Arab and Islamic world within the various structural changes and political processes of the parliamentary period. Ahmed offers both a history of modern state formation, revealing how the Egyptian state came to hold such a strong grip over culture and education—and a compelling examination of the life of the country's most renowned intellectual.

Confronting Fascism in the Arabic Jewish Press
Confronting Fascism in the Arabic Jewish Press

Author: Lucia Admiraal

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-10-31

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0755652762

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

During the 1930s and 1940s, Jews in the Middle East took part in extensive debates on fascism in the public sphere. How did the rise of fascism impact the ways in which Jews in the region envisioned the past, present and future? Confronting Fascism in the Arabic Jewish Press examines Jewish discussions on the positions and identities of Jews in the Middle East within the context of multifocal debates on fascism. Focussing on the Arabic Jewish press in Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, it studies the ideas of its editors and main contributors and their intellectual networks. Putting those debates within the context of social, political and national reorientations following the end of the Ottoman Empire, the book uses an ideas-based and conceptual approach to also connect this history to global debates on fascism centred on the concepts of race, civilization and religion. In doing so, it situates Jewish discussions on fascism in the Middle East not only at the heart of Arab intellectual history, but also as part of a globalizing public sphere during the interwar, war and immediate post-war periods (1933-1948). The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

The Persistence of Orientalism
The Persistence of Orientalism

Author: Peter Gran

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2020-12-17

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0815655088

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Why is the 1798 Napoleonic invasion of Egypt routinely accepted as a watershed moment between premodern and modern in general histories on the Middle East? Although decades of scholarship, most-notably Edward Said’s Orientalism, have critiqued traditional binaries of developed and undeveloped in Arab studies, the narrative of 1798 symbolizing the coming of the modern west to the rescue of the static east endures. Peter Gran’s The Persistence of Orientalism is the first book to take stock of this dominant paradigm, interrogating its origins and the ways in which scholarship is produced to perpetuate it. Gran surveys the history of American studies of Modern Egypt, examining three central issues: the periodization of modern professional knowledge in the US in the 1890s, the contemporary identity of orientalism and its critique, and the close connection between Oriental Despotism and the dominant formulation of American identity found in American Studies and in American life. Reinvigorating the conversation on the historiography of modern Egypt, this volume will influence a new generation of scholars studying the Middle East and beyond.

Egypt and the Struggle for Power in Sudan
Egypt and the Struggle for Power in Sudan

Author: Rami Ginat

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-08-24

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 1108190928

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For decades, the doctrine of the 'Unity of the Nile Valley' united Egyptians of a variety of political and nationalist backgrounds. Many Egyptians regarded Sudan as an integral part of their homeland, and therefore battled to rid the entire Nile Valley of British imperialism and unite its inhabitants under the Egyptian crown. Here, Rami Ginat provides a vital and important revised account of the history of Egypt's colonialist struggle and their efforts to prove categorically that the Nile Valley constituted a single territorial unit. These were clustered around several dominant theoretical layers: history, geography, economy, culture and ethnography. This book, for both Middle Eastern and African historians, uses a mixture of Arabic and English sources to critically examine the central stages in the historical development of Egypt's doctrine, concentrating on the defining decade (1943–1953) that first witnessed both the pinnacle of the doctrine's struggle and the subsequent shattering of a consensual nationalist dream.

Competitive Archaeology in Jordan
Competitive Archaeology in Jordan

Author: Elena Corbett

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2015-01-15

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0292760809

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An examination of archaeology in Jordan and Palestine, Competitive Archaeology in Jordan explores how antiquities have been used to build narratives and national identities. Tracing Jordanian history, and the importance of Jerusalem within that history, Corbett analyzes how both foreign and indigenous powers have engaged in a competition over ownership of antiquities and the power to craft history and geography based on archaeological artifacts. She begins with the Ottoman and British Empires—under whose rule the institutions and borders of modern Jordan began to take shape—asking how they used antiquities in varying ways to advance their imperial projects. Corbett continues through the Mandate era and the era of independence of an expanded Hashemite Kingdom, examining how the Hashemites and other factions, both within and beyond Jordan, have tried to define national identity by drawing upon antiquities. Competitive Archaeology in Jordan traces a complex history through the lens of archaeology's power as a modern science to create and give value to spaces, artifacts, peoples, narratives, and academic disciplines. It thus considers the role of archaeology in realizing Jordan's modernity—drawing its map; delineating sacred and secular spaces; validating taxonomies of citizens; justifying legal frameworks and institutions of state; determining logos of the nation for display on stamps, currency, and in museums; and writing history. Framing Jordan's history in this way, Corbett illustrates the manipulation of archaeology by governments, institutions, and individuals to craft narratives, draw borders, and create national identities.

Middle Eastern Gothics
Middle Eastern Gothics

Author: Karen Grumberg

Publisher: University of Wales Press

Published: 2022-12-15

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1786839296

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The chapters in this study cover the four major Middle Eastern languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish) and are authored by experts in these literatures, who read and engage with these texts in their original languages. Their intimate knowledge of the linguistic and cultural contexts of the works they analyse provides readers access to nuances in the texts and, ultimately, to a more profound understanding of them. This is the first cohesive collection addressing the Gothic in the geographic/linguistic context of the Middle East region. There has been increased interest not only in global iterations of the Gothic but also in Middle Eastern writing, particularly when it intersects with the Gothic (i.e. Frankenstein in Baghdad). The Introduction of the volume offers a new theorisation of Gothic literature, proposing the "transnational region" as a frame for reading literary texts that cross national and linguistic boundaries.

Society, Law, and Culture in the Middle East
Society, Law, and Culture in the Middle East

Author: Dror Ze’evi

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2015-10-29

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 3110439751

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Society, Law, and Culture in the Middle East:“Modernities” in the Making is an edited volume that seeks to deepen and broaden our understanding of various forms of change in Middle Eastern and North African societies during the Ottoman period. It offers an in-depth analysis of reforms and gradual change in the longue durée, challenging the current discourse on the relationship between society, culture, and law. The focus of the discussion shifts from an external to an internal perspective, as agency transitions from “the West” to local actors in the region. Highlighting the ongoing interaction between internal processes and external stimuli, and using primary sources in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish, the authors and editors bring out the variety of modernities that shaped south-eastern Mediterranean history. The first part of the volume interrogates the urban elite household, the main social, political, and economic unit of networking in Ottoman societies. The second part addresses the complex relationship between law and culture, looking at how the legal system, conceptually and practically, undergirded the socio-cultural aspects of life in the Middle East. Society, Law, and Culture in the Middle East consists of eleven chapters, written by well-established and younger scholars working in the field of Middle East and Islamic Studies. The editors, Dror Ze'evi and Ehud R. Toledano, are both leading historians, who have published extensively on Middle Eastern societies in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman periods.