Book Reviews: ʿAṣfūriyyeh: A History of Madness, Modernity, and War in the Middle East

2022 ◽  
pp. 0957154X2110621
Author(s):  
Robert DF Nathan
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
History Of

scholarly journals Book Reviews

1985 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-129
Author(s):  
Sulayman S. Nyang
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Salient Points ◽  
History Of ◽  
Short Span ◽  
Arabic Christian ◽  
Desperate Attempt

Bernard LEWIS, The Muslim Discovery of Europe (New York/London:W.W. Norton & Co., 1982), 350 pp., Index & Illustrations. Price $19.95.The Muslims have had a long history of relations with WesternEuropean peoples. Some part of it was tumultous and violent and theother was peaceful and harmonious. It was the Muslims who held thetorch of civilization when the lights went out in Europe and elsewhere inthe world. And indeed it was the Muslims who passed on to Europe in theMiddle Ages the coveted intellectual jewels of the ancient world.However, such transactions and ties between the Western Europeanpeoples and the Muslim world have led to two major historicaldevelopments. The first was the renaissance in Europe, whichinterestingly enough led to the distancing of Europe from the MuslimWorld. The second was the subsequent development of learning and thesciences in Europe and the rise of European power to challenge,threaten, and finally defeat Muslim power in the world.It is indeed against this background that one can examine this book bythe well-known but controversial British orientalist, Professor BernardLewis. His book is certainly an important contribution to the limitedliterature on early and medieval Muslim transactions with theEuropean world. But in order to do justice to the work and its author, letus analyze its contents and see how and to what extent the authorcaptures the salient points about the Muslim discovery of the West.The book is divided into twelve chapters with a preface and a note onthe source of illustrations. In the first chapter, entitled "Contact andImpact", Professor Lewis traces the rise of Islam in the Middle East andthe geopolitical revisions that accompanied the Muslim ascendancy. Hepoints out that at the time the Muslim armies made their sweep over theMediterranean region Christianity served as the dominant worldview ofthe area's inhabitants. But within a very short span of time the Muslimswere able not only to conquer Christian lands but also to Arabicize andIslamize the hitherto non-Arabic, Christian peoples.Professor Lewis goes on to identify important milestones in Islamichistory. Among these milestones four are of great importance. First ofall, he talks about the Western perception of the Islamic threat. This wasevident in the desperate attempt to check the tide of lslamism inByzantium and later in the southern part of Western Europe.particularly in the Iberian Peninsula. He brings out an important point ...

Book Reviews

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-110
Author(s):  
Metin Atmaca ◽  
Joost Jongerden ◽  
Sabri Ateş ◽  
Francis O’Connor ◽  
Marouf Cabi
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
New Haven ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Santa Barbara ◽  
History Of ◽  
Kurdish Question ◽  
Armed Actors

Sebastian Maisel, ed., The Kurds: an Encyclopedia of Life, Culture, and Society, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2018, 376 pp., (978-1-4408-4256-6).Murat Yeşiltaş and Tuncay Kardaş, eds., Non-State Armed Actors in the Middle East: Geopolitics, Ideology, Strategy. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 278 pp., (ISBN: 978-3-319-55287-3). Barbara Henning, Narratives of the History of the Ottoman-Kurdish Bedirhani Family in Imperial and Post-Imperial Contexts: Continuities and Changes. Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2018, 756 pp., (ISBN: 9783863095512).Gareth Stansfield and Mohammed Shareef, eds, The Kurdish Question Revisited. London: C Hurst & Co., 2017, 712 pp., (ISBN-10: 0190687185; ISBN-13: 978-0190687182).Abbas Amanat, Iran: A Modern History, New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2017, pp. 1000, (ISBN-10: 0300112548, ISBN-13: 978-0300112542).

Book Reviews

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 225-246
Author(s):  
Kariane Westrheim ◽  
Michael Gunter ◽  
Yener Koc ◽  
Yavuz Aykan ◽  
Diane E. King ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Kurdish Conflict

Adem Uzun, “Living Freedom”: The Evolution of the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey and the Efforts to Resolve it. Berghof Transitions Series No. 11. Berlin: Berghof Foundation, 2014. 48 pp., (ISBN: 978-3-941514-16-4).Ebru Sönmez, Idris-i Bidlisi: Ottoman Kurdistan and Islamic Legitimacy, Libra Kitap, Istanbul, 2012, 190 pp., (ISBN: 978-605-4326-56-3). Sabri Ateş, The Ottoman–Iranian Borderlands: Making a Boundary, 1843-1914, New York; Cambridge University Press, 2013. 366., (ISBN: 978-1107033658).  Choman Hardi, Gendered Experiences of Genocide: Anfal Survivors in Kurdistan-Iraq. Farnham, Surrey and Burlington Vermont: Ashgate, 2011, xii + 217 pp., (ISBN: 978-0-7546-7715-4).Harriet Allsopp, The Kurds of Syria: Political Parties and Identity in the Middle East, London and New York, I.B. Tauris, 2014, 299 pp., (ISBN: 978-1780765631).Khanna Omarkhali (ed.), Religious Minorities in Kurdistan: Beyond the Mainstream [Studies in Oriental Religions, Volume 68], Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014, xxxviii + 423 pp., (ISBN: 978-3-447-10125-7).Anna Grabole-Çeliker, Kurdish Life in Contemporary Turkey: Migration, Gender and Ethnic Identity, London: I.B. Taurus, 2013, 299 pp., (ISBN: 978-1780760926).  

Press Propaganda and Subaltern Agents of Pan-Islamic Networks in the Muslim Mediterranean World prior to World War I

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odile Moreau
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
North Africa ◽  
World War ◽  
Subaltern Studies ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
The Press ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of

This chapter explores movement and circulation across the Mediterranean and seeks to contribute to a history of proto-nationalism in the Maghrib and the Middle East at a particular moment prior to World War I. The discussion is particularly concerned with the interface of two Mediterranean spaces: the Middle East (Egypt, Ottoman Empire) and North Africa (Morocco), where the latter is viewed as a case study where resistance movements sought external allies as a way of compensating for their internal weakness. Applying methods developed by Subaltern Studies, and linking macro-historical approaches, namely of a translocal movement in the Muslim Mediterranean, it explores how the Egypt-based society, al-Ittihad al-Maghribi, through its agent, Aref Taher, used the press as an instrument for political propaganda, promoting its Pan-Islamic programme and its goal of uniting North Africa.

Book reviews

2018 ◽  
pp. 150-152
Author(s):  
L. M. Besov
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
State Institution ◽  
National Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Fundamental Science ◽  
Technical Potential ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientific Technical ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

Presidents of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine for 100 years of its existence: Scientific and organizational cont ribution to the progress of fundamental science / VN Gamalia, Yu. K. Duplenko, V. I. Onoprienko, S. P. Ruda, V. S. Savchuk; for ed. V.I. Onoprienko; National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; State Institution "G. M. Dobrov Institute Research of Scientific-Technical Potential and History of Science". - Kyiv: SE "Inf.-analytical Agency ", 2018. - 215 p.

The Making of the Medieval Middle East

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Tannous
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Conversion To Islam ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
The Middle Ages

In the second half of the first millennium CE, the Christian Middle East fractured irreparably into competing churches and Arabs conquered the region, setting in motion a process that would lead to its eventual conversion to Islam. This book argues that key to understanding these dramatic religious transformations are ordinary religious believers, often called “the simple” in late antique and medieval sources. Largely agrarian and illiterate, these Christians outnumbered Muslims well into the era of the Crusades, and yet they have typically been invisible in our understanding of the Middle East's history. What did it mean for Christian communities to break apart over theological disagreements that most people could not understand? How does our view of the rise of Islam change if we take seriously the fact that Muslims remained a demographic minority for much of the Middle Ages? In addressing these and other questions, the book provides a sweeping reinterpretation of the religious history of the medieval Middle East. The book draws on a wealth of Greek, Syriac, and Arabic sources to recast these conquered lands as largely Christian ones whose growing Muslim populations are properly understood as converting away from and in competition with the non-Muslim communities around them.

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