Introduction

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amira K. Bennison
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Legitimation ◽  
Two Sides

This chapter provides an introduction to the theme of political legitimacy in the medieval Islamic Maghrib and al-Andalus. It reviews previous historiographical approaches to the subject and considers the Arabic sources for the period, arguing for the importance of considering the two sides of the straits of Gibraltar as a single cultural zone. It then looks at political legitimacy in the Islamic Middle East and North Africa in general before tracing the evolution of particular themes in the Maghrib and al-Andalus up to the period covered by the volume. It ends with a brief review of the other chapters in the volume and their multi-disciplinary contribution to understandings of political legitimation in the region.

scholarly journals State Fragility, Social Contracts and the Role of Social Protection: Perspectives from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 447
Author(s):  
Markus Loewe ◽  
Tina Zintl
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Information Campaign ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
State Fragility ◽  
Social Contracts ◽  
Government Provision ◽  
Two Sides

Social contracts and state fragility represent two sides of one coin. The former concept highlights that governments need to deliver three “Ps”—protection, provision, and political participation—to be acceptable for societies, whereas the latter argues that states can fail due to lack of authority (inhibiting protection), capacity (inhibiting provision), or legitimacy. Defunct social contracts often lead to popular unrest. Using empirical evidence from the Middle East and North Africa, we demonstrate how different notions of state fragility lead to different kinds of grievances and how they can be remedied by measures of social protection. Social protection is always a key element of government provision and hence a cornerstone of all social contracts. It can most easily counteract grievances that were triggered by decreasing provision (e.g., after subsidy reforms in Iran and Morocco) but also partially substitute for deficient protection (e.g., by the Palestinian National Authority, in pre-2011 Yemen) or participation (information campaign accompanying Moroccan subsidy cut; participatory set-ups for cash-for-work programmes in Jordan). It can even help maintain a minimum of state–society relations in states defunct in all three Ps (e.g., Yemen). Hence, social protection can be a powerful instrument to reduce state fragility and mend social contracts. Yet, to be effective, it needs to address grievances in an inclusive, rule-based, and non-discriminatory way. In addition, to gain legitimacy, governments should assume responsibility over social protection instead of outsourcing it to foreign donors.

scholarly journals Comparative Analysis of MODIS, MISR and AERONET Climatology over the Middle East and North Africa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashraf Farahat
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Biomass Burning ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Geographic Location ◽  
The Other ◽  
Positive Trend ◽  
Data Sampling ◽  
High Dust

Abstract. Comparative analysis of MISR MODIS, and AERONET AOD products performed over seven AERONET stations located in the Middle East and North Africa for the period of 2000–2015. Sites are categorized into dust, biomass burning and mixed. MISR and MODIS AODs agree during high dust seasons but MODIS tends to underestimate AODs during low dust seasons. Over dust dominating sites, MODIS/Terra AOD indicate a negative trend over the time series, while MODIS/Aqua, MISR, and AERONET depict a positive trend. A deviation between MODIS/Aqua and MODIS/Terra was observed regardless of the geographic location and data sampling. The performance of MODIS is similar over all region with ~ 68 % of AODs within the Δτ = ±0.05 ± 0.15τAERO confidence range. MISR AOD retrievals fall within 72 % of the same confidence range for all sites examined here. Both MISR and MODIS capture aerosol climatology; however few cases were observed where one of the two sensors better captures the climatology over a certain location or AOD range than the other sensor.

The Performance of Listening in Postcolonial Francophone Culture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Solheim
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Gender Studies ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Assia Djebar ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
Efficient Transmission

The Performance of Listening in Postcolonial Francophone Culture argues That globalized media has allowed for efficient transmission of transnational culture, and in turn, our everyday experiences are informed by sounds ranging from voices, to music, to advertising, to bombs, and beyond. In considering cultural works from French-speaking North Africa and the Middle East all published or released in France from 1962-2011, Solheim’s study of listening across cultural genres will be of interest to any scholar or lay person interested in contemporary postcolonial France. This book is also a primer to contemporary Francophone culture from North Africa and the Middle East. Some of the French-speaking world’s most renowned and adored artists are the subject of this study, including preeminent Algerian feminist novelist, filmmaker and historian Assia Djebar (1936-2015), the first writer of the Maghreb to become part of the Académie Française; celebrated Iranian graphic novelist and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis, Chicken with Plums); the lauded Lebanese-Québecois playwright and dramaturge Wajdi Mouawad (Littorial, Incendies), and Lebanese comic artist and avant jazz trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj, whose improvisation with Israeli fighter jets during the 2006 Israeli War, “Starry Night,” catapulted him to global recognition. An interdisciplinary study of contemporary Francophone cultures, this book will be of interest to scholars and students in literary studies, performance studies, gender studies, anthropology, history, and ethnomusicology.

Energy securitization and desecuritization in the New Middle East

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 507-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odysseas Christou ◽  
Constantinos Adamides
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The One ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Alternative Discourses ◽  
Referent Object

This article uses the theoretical framework of securitization in order to analyse the concurrent developments of, on the one hand, the Arab Spring and the resulting ascendance of a New Middle East and North Africa and, on the other, the discovery of natural gas resources by a number of states in the region. Furthermore, we use these developments as tests of the theory, in the process highlighting a number of criticisms that have been levelled against securitization and that are exemplified by these recent empirical events. We examine the outcomes of the Arab Spring as a process of contestation and as an avenue for the promotion of alternative discourses through the emergence of new political actors, institutions and state relations in the region. At the same time, we identify the underexploration of energy securitization in the literature and the need for a cross-sectoral approach for the referent object of energy in the widened security agenda. Ultimately, the article presents the argument that each of the two sets of developments affects the other, thereby transforming the environment within which securitization and desecuritization may result.

scholarly journals Triply Detached

1970 ◽  
pp. 2-3
Author(s):  
Eugene Sensenig-Dabbous
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Linguistic Minorities ◽  
Guest Workers

This issue of Al-Raida deals with the “Other” from a triply detached perspective. Writing about ethnic and linguistic minorities, immigrants and “guest workers” in the Middle East and North Africa challenges the researcher and author to see the Arab world as more than merely the object of Western expropriation and Orientalist misinterpretation. The peoples of our region have well demonstrated their ability to be both the victim and the victimizer, oft times simultaneously.

Reporting the Diaspora

2021 ◽  
pp. 621-641
Author(s):  
Yaron Tsur
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
The One

This chapter presents a historical typology of Jewish periodicals, beginning with Moses Mendelsohn and his pupils in eighteenth century Germany. Two main trajectories, distinguished by the extent of the periodicals’ openness to the surrounding society, characterized the development of the Jewish press—that of Western Jewish communities, on the one hand, and that of Eastern Europe and the Middle East and North Africa, on the other. Dividing modern and contemporary Jewish history into two periods of demographic turmoil (1880–-1945 and 1947–-2000), the chapter surveys the evolution of the Jewish press in various parts of the diaspora, paying particular attention to the role of demographic transformations in these developments.

scholarly journals Migration Routes of the Aptian to Turonian Ostracod Assemblages from North Africa and the Middle East

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashraf M. T. Elewa ◽  
Omar Mohamed
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Quantitative Study ◽  
Late Cretaceous ◽  
North Africa ◽  
The Other ◽  
Migration Routes ◽  
Oxygen Conditions ◽  
Early Late ◽  
East West ◽  
Ostracod Species

Quantitative paleobiogeography is a powerful tool for detecting the migration routes of microfossils. This is factual and applicable when we select appropriate analyses for proper problems in the following manner. The quantitative study of 43 selected ostracod species (total of 136 species) from 11 countries of North Africa and the Middle East led to the detection of two migration routes in the late Early to early Late Cretaceous times. The first route of migration was from east to west during the intervals of Aptian-Albian to Cenomanian. While in the Turonian time, reduced oxygen conditions prevailed and minimized the east-west migration. The second route was from north to south for the duration of Aptian-Albian to Cenomanian. On the other hand, four ostracod biofacies, each with its distinctive environmental conditions, have been identified in the studied countries ranging in age from Aptian to Turonian.

An Isthmus of Modern Thought: Islam and Psychoanalysis in North Africa and the Middle East

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Benjamin Claude Brower
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Sea Water ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Mohammed Dib ◽  
The One ◽  
Good And Evil

On three occasions the Qur'an mentions what it calls barzakh, an enigmatic word that denotes a partition such as that found between fresh and sea water, good and evil, faith and knowledge, even this world and the next. Nimble thinkers have made good use of the in-betweenness of barzakh. Its divisions make possible distinctions and provide form. And yet, just as it divides, the barzakh also connects. In fact, the word is often rendered in English as “isthmus,” which shows up its usefulness for thinking about difference in a way that does not presuppose stark oppositions, on the one hand, nor conflation and indistinction, on the other. The twelfth-century philosopher Ibn ‘Arabi used barzakh to describe that which separates/unites the created and the Creator, making it a key concept within his theory of the unity of existence. Building upon these insights, modern readers have found this concept useful to negotiate contemporary questions of self and other, questions that became particularly important in the colonial and postcolonial eras. For example, the late Algerian novelist Mohammed Dib used barzakh to signify his personal struggles to think across North (Europe) and South (North Africa), French and Arabic. Likewise, the Moroccan scholar Taieb Belghazi has mobilized barzakh to rethink the Mediterranean Sea as a heterogenous space that joins and “disjoins” lands, languages, and people. Barzakh also names an important new publishing house in Algiers and its concept frames the editors’ work producing titles in which questions of (post)colonialism and of cultural liminality figure prominently.

II. The Barbary Corsairs in the Seventeenth Century

1944 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. N. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Atlantic Coast ◽  
The Other ◽  
European System ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Libyan Desert ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
Islamic Society

The seventeenth century was one of the twelve during which, in spite of what geographers might regard as probable and proper, the two sides of the Mediterranean were in the hands of two separate and inimical civilizations, different in religion, morals, law, economy and knowledge. That sea was nevertheless a busy highway. The Levant trade, the most important of all for the French and the Italians, was also important for the English and the Dutch; but North Africa, from the Atlantic coast of Morocco to the Libyan desert, Barbary par excellence, was outside the European system of international law and conduct. Even when they were nominally at peace the Christians and the Moslems never trusted one another or succeeded for long in abiding by the rules on which they agreed. Both sides tried to enforce such rules by collective and vicarious punishments, by reprisals and by other devices to which men resort when there is no law between them. Each side, often in spite of express treaty stipulations, made slaves of prisoners from the other: the Islamic society was based on slavery, and the Latin states also manned their war-galleys partly with their own criminals but largely with Moslems captured at sea. To the seafaring men of Europe captivity in Barbary was a danger worse than shipwreck.

Notes on Mamlūk horse-archers

1969 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. D. Latham
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Similar Kind ◽  
Joint Treatment

Throughout the ages from antiquity until modern times the extraordinary prowess of the horse-archers of Asia has excited wonder and admiration in those who have had the opportunity of observing them in action or of hearing of their feats. From the comments of observers and historians, therefore, a reasonably instructive account of their capabilities might be assembled. There can be no doubt, on the other hand, that a picture based solely on data of this kind would have its limitations in that it would capture the impression of what the eye perceived rather than reproduce the details of technique which alone can enable us to distinguish between fact and fiction or probable and improbable in the accounts of our witnesses. By a happy chance the evidence of a Mamlūk writer goes far to fill the lacuna. The source of the testimony is a technical treatise bearing on the training of archers. Entitled Kitāb ghunyat al-ṭullāb fī ma'rifat al-ramy bi 'l-nushshāb, the work was written circa 769/1368 by a certain Ṭaybugha '-Baklamishi '1-Yūnānī, about whom we know almost nothing beyond what can be gleaned from his treatise. Unlike many Arabic technical manuals of a similar kind dating from the later Middle Ages, the Ghunya will bear examination by the expert, for Ṭaybughā has an essentially practical mind and a complete grasp of his subject-matter. To judge from the number of extant MSS—17 are traceable in published works of reference—the work would appear to have been long esteemed throughout the Middle East as an authoritative source of instruction, and it may be surmised that Ṭaybughā's own words provide a clue to one of the reasons for its popularity: ‘Since archery and riding are enjoined by authentic command of the Prophet and since I knew of no work by any predecessor on the subject of shooting from horseback I felt I should accord the two accomplishments joint treatment in a single work, seeking thereby to comply with the command of God and His Messenger and to render a service to those of my brethren who campaign and fight in the jihād’.

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