The intention of this article is to show that, when applying his tribal policies, Saddam Hussein altered the Baʿth Party's most central tenets of faith, how and why he did this, and what it meant for Iraqi society and for the ruling party. Saddam Hussein's tribal policy started soon after the party came to power in July 1968, but it went through a quantum leap in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. First, rather than eliminating the tribal shaykh as a sociopolitical power, as dictated by party doctrine, he endeavored to manipulate the shaykhs and, through a process of socialization (or “Baʿthization”), turn them into docile tools in the service of the regime. Second, and a far sharper departure from party tradition, he turned the tribal shaykhs into legitimate partners for power-sharing; he tribalized the regime's Praetorian Guard; and he worked to reawaken long-suppressed and often forgotten tribal affinities in that part of Iraqi society which is no longer tribal and to graft onto it tribal values, or what he considered to be such values. Furthermore, he even took some steps to tribalize the party itself, and tribal customs, real or imagined, permeated the state's legal system. Kinship was legitimized as a principle guiding the selection of party leaders, and leaders' tribal roots were played up; tribal honor became a legitimate guiding principle behind foreign-policy decisions; and at least once, the president even called the Baʿth Party itself “a tribe.”

ʿUthman Katkhuda, Ibrahim Katkhuda, ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Katkhuda, ʿAli Bey al-Kabir, Muhammad Bey Abu Dhahab, Ibrahim Bey, and Murad Bey will be familiar to students and scholars of Ottoman Egypt as the names of men who were in the forefront of the Mamluk resurgence and the leaders of the bayt, the Qazdughli, that became the dominant household from the mid-18th century to the French invasion of 1798. Less familiar—indeed, almost unknown—are the names of women such as Shawikar Qadin, the favorite concubine of ʿUthman Katkhuda and the wife and widow of three powerful Qazdughli amirs, including Ibrahim Katkhuda, the architect of Qazdughli dominance; Amnatullah al-Bayda, widow of ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Katkhuda; and Nafisa al-Bayda, the beautiful, intelligent, and literate widow of ʿAli Bey al-Kabir and wife of Murad Bey, who was also admired by the French during their occupation of the country.

Of the many talented men who entered government service in Egypt in the 19th century, none equaled in sheer energy and productivity ʿAli Mubarak Pasha (1823/4–1893). Engineer, officer, administrator, educator, and author, he was the outstanding Egyptian of his generation and the first native Muslim to head a government department in modern times. Yet his most enduring legacy are his writings, in particular his famous Khitat. A twenty-volume topographical encyclopedia published in the 1880s, the Khitat of ʿAli Mubarak is a landmark of Arabic prose and probably constitutes the greatest existing historical record of Egyptian society.

One of the main arguments used to prop up the thesis that, as of the 16th century, there was a steady decline in virtually all spheres of the Ottoman Empire's administration and society has been that Muslim societies in the Ottoman Middle Eastproved incapable, or even unwilling, to open up and accept the process of Western modernization. In recent years, however, newly discovered local sources together with a change in methodological approach have led to a growing body of critical studies that challenge the decline theory on a number of points. The 19th century, for example, is increasingly viewed as still very much an Ottoman century, in which the Porte, instead of seeing its power in the provinces diminish under the growing impact of the West, succeeded in strengthening its hold through the centralization policies of the Tanzimat. Another significant example is that of local elites who, instead of opposing Istanbul's reformist policies across the board, are often found to identify and cooperate with the central government.

Between December 1947 and the first four months of 1948, the fabric of a centuries-old Palestinian Arab society unraveled with astounding rapidity, producing 750,000 refugees. The collapse occurred within the context of widespread socioeconomic disruption and dislocation among peasants and migrant and urban workers. The eroding socioeconomic foundation severely weakened this lower stratum's defense against Zionist settlement, colonial state policies, and military pressures. Beginning in late Ottoman times and throughout the British Mandate period (1918–48), the agrarian social economy had been slowly undermined by the urban landowning class and oppressive tax and land-tenure systems. Peasant dispossession, begun in the 19th century and aggravated by Zionist land-buying in the 20th, created a significant landless rural population that was increasingly dependent on wage labor in scattered rural locations and in the cities. During the British Mandate, as Palestine was rapidly incorporated into the world market, communal harmony and social integration were further strained by urban–rural and peasant–landowner tensions, disjointed urban–working–class development, unemployment, and overcrowding. As a result, by the late 1940s Palestinian Arab society was on the brink of disintegration.