As the new editor of the International Journal of Middle East Studies, my goal is to maintain the excellent reputation and standards of the Journal set by its departing editor. To achieve that task constitutes a tall order for just about anyone in the field, as Peter von Sivers has done such an admirable job over the past five years of promoting the Journal's international reputation. Under his editorship, the quality, number, and scope of submitted manuscripts and reviews, as well as the Journal's readership, have increased. Scholars from the Middle East have taken a more active part than ever before, as evaluators, reviewers, and authors.

The events of Aleppo have caused amongst all classes of all nationalities a sensation such as I have never witnessed here before. The population of Aleppo is the wealthiest, best conducted community in Syria. That such a body of people in a time of profound peace, living under the protection of an organized government of two pashas and a garrison of regular troops of all arms should find themselves, without the slightest provocation on their part, or a moment's warning, the victims of atrocities which are rarely practiced on a town taken by storm, is a consideration which has, I regret to say, produced a feeling most unfavorable to the responsible government.

Contemporary feminists have stressed the importance of women's networks in empowering women. In the Western context, professional networks, support groups, and the availability of role models are seen to provide a collective basis for the development of confidence and self-esteem as well as a potential base for political action. Feminist attention to the Middle East has uncovered patterns of interaction suggesting that there, too, women have found in feminine networks both the basis for power and the personal attributes that undergird social competence. Aswad, for example, describes the kabul, an upper-class formal visitation network in Turkey with distinct political overtones. Women exchange information that might be dismissed as gossip were it not for the fact that participants are from powerful land-owning families, and the discussions have impact well beyond the immediate setting.1

In his essays on “Self-Expression” and “The Human Ideal” in the medieval Islamic world, the late Gustave E. von Grunebaum argued that both expressions and portrayals of individuality were a comparative rarity in the literature of pre-modern Islamic civilization.1 Von Grunebaum concluded from reviewing both autobiographical and biographical works written by Muslims that the social customs, religious values, and literary conventions of premodern Islamic society combined to discourage evocations or depictions of idiosyncratic personalities in favor of representations of impersonal stereotypes.

The historical formation, contemporary scope, and future dynamics of national identity remain important concerns in Egyptian scholarship. While many aspects of national identity and the forces that shape it in each generation have been analyzed, a more complete understanding of the results of these often antagonistic influences suffers from the lack of descriptive information.

The kibbutzim of Israel show the world that communal living can be successful, and many observers have asked the questions: Can this success be repeated elsewhere? What are its lessons for other societies? In sociology, the validity and importance of comparative study and the intrinsic interest of the kibbutz way of life cannot be denied.