Crafting the Ancient Near Eastern Canon

2020 ◽  
pp. 319-321
Author(s):  
Zena Kamash
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Creative Writing ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Personal Reflection ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Art Practices

This chapter offers a personal reflection on two projects that seek to find alternative ways to respond to Middle Eastern heritage: “Remembering the Romans in the Middle East and North Africa” and “Rematerialising Mosul Museum.” Both projects aim to provide ways for people to rejuvenate friendships with heritage objects through a range of craft and art practices (felting, drawing, photograph, and creative writing). This chapter reflects on the author’s own crafted responses and uses these to explore how crafting can help people think more deeply about how they relate to the canon as individuals and how they might use crafting to make their own personal canon. In particular, this chapter thinks through why practices of this kind are important to the author as a person who is a British Iraqi, as well as an archaeologist.

Rethinking the Middle East and North Africa in the Cold War

2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-319
Author(s):  
Paul Thomas Chamberlin
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Third World ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Transnational Connections ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Cold War History

The new Cold War history has begun to reshape the ways that international historians approach the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) during the post-1945 era. Rather than treating the region as exceptional, a number of scholars have sought to focus on the historical continuities and transnational connections between the Middle East and other areas of the Third World. This approach is based on the notion that the MENA region was enmeshed in the transnational webs of communication and exchange that characterized the post-1945 global system. Indeed, the region sat not only at the crossroads between Africa and the Eurasian landmass but also at the convergence of key global historical movements of the second half of the 20th century. Without denying cultural, social, and political elements that are indeed unique to the region, this scholarship has drawn attention to the continuities, connections, and parallels between the Middle Eastern experience and the wider world.

scholarly journals Environmental Performance and Economic Growth in Middle East and North Africa Countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (24) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hichem Dkhili
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Environmental Performance ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Smooth Transition ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Mena Countries ◽  
The Impact

Background. Studies on environmental performance/quality and economic growth show inconclusive results. Objective. The aim of the present study is to assess the non-linear relationship between environmental performance and economic growth in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region from 2002–2018. Methods. A sample of fourteen (14) MENA countries was used in the present analysis. However, due to important differences between countries in this region, the whole sample was divided into two sub-samples; nine Middle Eastern countries (MEAS) and five North African countries (NAF). We performed the panel smooth transition regression model as an econometric approach. Discussion. Empirical results indicate a threshold effect in the environmental performance and economic growth relationship. The threshold value differs from one group of countries to another. More specifically, we found that the impact of environmental performance and economic growth is positive and significant only if a certain threshold level has been attained. Until then, the effect remains negative. Conclusions. The findings of the present study are of great importance for policymakers since they determine the optimal level of environmental performance required to act positively on the level of economic growth. MENA countries should seek to improve their environmental performance index in order to grow output. Competing Interests. The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Colonial Policies, Middle Eastern War, and City Spaces

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maud S. Mandel
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
French Government ◽  
Jewish Refugees ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Minority Policies ◽  
The City ◽  
Politically Active

Beginning in 1948 when war in the Middle East caused minor unrest in the city of Marseille, this chapter traces the way in which disagreements over Israel became a way to debate inequities in French minority policies at home and in North Africa. In Marseille, the gathering point for Jewish clandestine migration to Palestine, Algerian Muslims' anger toward what they perceived as French complicity in migration schemes was compounded by frustrations that French officials seemed to be favoring Jewish refugees over newly minted French Algerian Muslim citizens. Conflicts around war in the Middle East thus became an opportunity for politically active Muslims and Jews to negotiate their relationship with the French state, as the former established new parameters for political participation in the aftermath of the Holocaust by pushing the French government to support Israel, and the latter tested the limitations on a citizenship that never made good on its promises.

She Came from Kasaba

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 582-585
Author(s):  
Leslie Hakim-Dowek
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Modal Approach ◽  
History Of

As in Marianne Hirsch’s (2008) notion of ‘devoir de memoire’, this poem-piece, from a new series, uses the role of creation and imagination to strive to ‘re-activate and re-embody’ distant family/historical transcultural spaces and memories within the perspective of a dispersed history of a Middle-Eastern minority, the Sephardi/Jewish community. There is little awareness that Sephardi/Jewish communities were an integral part of the Middle East and North Africa for many centuries before they were driven out of their homes in the second half of the twentieth century. Using a multi-modal approach combining photography and poetry, this photo-poem series has for focus my female lineage. This piece evokes in particular the memory of my grandmother, encapsulating many points in history where persecution and displacement occurred across many social, political and linguistic borders.

Importing Modernity: European Military Missions to Qajar Iran

2008 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Cronin
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
State Building ◽  
New Order ◽  
The West ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Military Organization ◽  
Indirect Control

In the first decades of the nineteenth century, when the Middle East and North Africa first began to attract the sustained attention of European imperialism and colonialism, Arab, Ottoman Turkish, and Iranian polities began a protracted experiment with army modernization. These decades saw a mania in the Middle East for the import of European methods of military organization and techniques of warfare. Everywhere, in the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, Egypt, and Iran, nizam-i jadid (new order) regiments sprang up, sometimes on the ruins of older military formations, sometimes alongside them, unleashing a process of military-led modernization that was to characterize state-building projects throughout the region until well into the twentieth century. The ruling dynasties in these regions embarked on army reform in a desperate effort to strengthen their defensive capacity, and to resist growing European hegemony and direct or indirect control by imitating European methods of military organization and warfare. Almost every indigenous ruler who succeeded in evading or warding off direct European control, from the sultans of pre-Protectorate Morocco in the west to the shahs of the Qajar dynasty in Iran in the east, invited European officers, sometimes as individuals, sometimes as formal missions, to assist with building a modern army. With the help of these officers, Middle Eastern rulers thus sought to appropriate the secrets of European power.

scholarly journals Dietary trends in the Middle East and North Africa: an ecological study (1961 to 2007)

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (10) ◽  
pp. 1835-1844 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahdieh Golzarand ◽  
Parvin Mirmiran ◽  
Mahsa Jessri ◽  
Karamollah Toolabi ◽  
Mehdi Mojarrad ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Dietary Patterns ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Alcoholic Beverages ◽  
North African ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Food Items ◽  
Study Results ◽  
North African Countries

AbstractObjectiveMiddle Eastern and North African countries are undergoing nutrition transition, a transition which is associated with an increased burden of non-communicable diseases. This necessitates the evaluation of dietary patterns in these regions. The present study aimed to assess changes in dietary patterns in Middle Eastern and North African countries between 1961 and 2007.DesignAvailability of energy and fifteen main food items during 1961–2007 was examined using FAO food balance sheets from the FAOSTAT database.SettingFifteen countries including nine in the Middle East and six in North Africa were selected and the average availability of total energy and different food items in these regions were compared.ResultsOver the 47 years studied, energy and food availability (apart from animal fats and alcoholic beverages) has increased in the Middle East and North Africa. In both regions the proportion of energy derived from meat and vegetable oils has increased significantly while that from cereals decreased significantly. In addition, the proportion of energy from milk and dairy products and vegetables has shown an ascending trend in North Africa while the proportion of energy from fruits has shown a descending trend in the Middle East.ConclusionsThe study results reveal an unfavourable trend towards a Westernized diet in the Middle East and, to a certain extent, in North Africa. Tailored nutritional education encouraging healthy eating for prevention of the burden of chronic diseases in these countries seems essential.

Political variables may delay Middle Eastern elections

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Political Variables

Polls in the Middle East and North Africa rarely transfer power, but are still important tools of political contestation

scholarly journals Cross-species hybridization and the origin of North African date palms

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (5) ◽  
pp. 1651-1658 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan M. Flowers ◽  
Khaled M. Hazzouri ◽  
Muriel Gros-Balthazard ◽  
Ziyi Mo ◽  
Konstantina Koutroumpa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Date Palm ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Introgressive Hybridization ◽  
Nucleotide Polymorphisms ◽  
North African ◽  
Mixed Ancestry ◽  
History Of

Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is a major fruit crop of arid regions that were domesticated ∼7,000 y ago in the Near or Middle East. This species is cultivated widely in the Middle East and North Africa, and previous population genetic studies have shown genetic differentiation between these regions. We investigated the evolutionary history of P. dactylifera and its wild relatives by resequencing the genomes of date palm varieties and five of its closest relatives. Our results indicate that the North African population has mixed ancestry with components from Middle Eastern P. dactylifera and Phoenix theophrasti, a wild relative endemic to the Eastern Mediterranean. Introgressive hybridization is supported by tests of admixture, reduced subdivision between North African date palm and P. theophrasti, sharing of haplotypes in introgressed regions, and a population model that incorporates gene flow between these populations. Analysis of ancestry proportions indicates that as much as 18% of the genome of North African varieties can be traced to P. theophrasti and a large percentage of loci in this population are segregating for single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that are fixed in P. theophrasti and absent from date palm in the Middle East. We present a survey of Phoenix remains in the archaeobotanical record which supports a late arrival of date palm to North Africa. Our results suggest that hybridization with P. theophrasti was of central importance in the diversification history of the cultivated date palm.

Middle Eastern views of the Gulf conflict and its aftermath

1993 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Joffe
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Government Support ◽  
The Political ◽  
Arab States

There can be little doubt that the conflict between the UN-authorized and US-led Multinational Coalition and Iraq at the start of 1991, as a result of the Iraqi Ba'athist regime's decision in August 1990 to invade and annex Kuwait, has produced profound changes in the political and diplomatic environment of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in Mashriqi and Maghribi political attitudes. The new atmosphere of confidence amongst the governments and peoples of the Arab states of the Gulf is clear evidence of these changes, as is the dejection felt in capitals such as Amman, Sanaa and Tunis where government support for the Coalition was less than wholehearted.

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