The first periodical in Egypt to focus on women as both subject and audience, Al-Fatat (The Young Woman, 1892), heralded the founding by women of many periodicals for women in Egypt. The women's press emerged in a time of intense public debate concerning putative intersections of systemic gender relations and gender ideology with anti-imperialist nationalism: what would constitute “national” strength sufficient to assert, or force, an independent existence based on claims to autonomous nation-state status?1Women writing in the women's press, as well as in the mainstream—or “malestream”—press, shaped the debate over how gender did and should inflect social organization and institutional change.2 Equally, male intellectuals and politicians participated in a rhetoric of persuasion, edification, and ambition. When women and men wrote treatises on what was called the “woman question” (qadi¯yat al-mar[ham]a), articles in the women's press challenged,debated, and refined the points of these treatises. Writers approached that fraught“question” from another direction, too, establishing a thriving industry of conductliterature that fed on translations of European works as well as original works by Egyptian andother Arab writers. Books on how to behave as a proper father, a good mother, a fine son ordaughter, or a responsible schoolgoer went through numerous printings for a reading publicprepared by various rhetorics of nationalism, theology, and reform to bring this debate intoeveryday life by following the guides for behavior that such literature—including essays inthe women's press—supplied.3

“Money was the life blood of Najaf.” Thus observed the Shi[ayn]i author,[ayn]Ali Khaqani.1The story of the Oudh Bequest, which channeled more than 6million rupees from the Shi[ayn]i kingdom of Awadh2in India to the two Shi[ayn]ishrine cities of Najaf and Karbala[ham] in Iraq during the second half of the 19th century is a fineexample of Khaqani's assessment. These [ayn]Ataba¯t-i[ayn]a¯liya¯t (“sublime thresholds”) were the most importantcenters of learning in Shi[ayn]ism during the 19th century. For this reason, a study of the bequestprovides important insights into the internal workings of a leading community of ulama during aperiod of change, as well as into the role of European players in the life of such communities.

Fadwa Tuqan, Assia Djebar, and Latifa al-Zayyat are three Arab women who are well knownfor their literary and artistic creativity, as well as for their political activism. Each has written atleast one autobiographical work charting her struggles in the personal, political, and literaryarenas, and each has chosen to express these struggles in terms of finding a voice that resistssilence but also acknowledges that silence is a form of resistance.1 In writing theirautobiographical works, these women are interested in creating not simply a femaleautobiographical tradition but, rather, a tradition that specifically does credit to their need toauthorize their voices without posing as authorities from above, to write narratives that aresimultaneously antiauthoritarian and authoritative, and to do so by speaking for and on behalf ofothers without appropriating them or subsuming them into their own agendas. Theirautobiographical works are thus marked, and ultimately enriched, by tension, hesitation, andanxiety, particularly regarding their own power and authority as authors. This hesitation enablesthem to express collective sorrows and dreams in this seemingly most individualistic ofgenres.2

The sensational nature of the Iranian press in the 1940s has been largely understood inpolitical terms. In September 1941, occupying Allied armies forced Reza Shah Pahlavi(1879–1944, r. 1925–41) into exile, ending his tyrannical “twentyyears” and unleashing a variety of political forces which vied with each other for publicsupport in the press.3 The presence of Allied censors notwithstanding, so theargument goes, the Iranian press was momentarily free from effective governmentcensorship—though not from the recurring cycle of censorship that has dominated scholarlyinterest in the Iranian press.4 But a closer look at the often violent and sexualpolitical discourse in the Iranian press raises questions less about Iran's political historythan about its cultural and economic history. Why was the content of the press so graphic in the1940s? What economic and cultural trends sustained such content once it had been provoked bypolitical events? How much did the overt sexuality of political discourse confirm or modifynotions of gender in Iranian culture?

The 19 August 1953 toppling of Muhammad Musaddiq's government in Iran was animportant historical event from various perspectives, many of which are being discussed byMiddle East observers to this date. First, it was the first covert post-World War II operation bythe U.S. government, in cooperation with Britain, to topple the constitutional government of asovereign nation. Operation AJAX, as the coup d'état came to be called by theCIA, was implemented at the height of the Cold War, and as such was accompanied by manyfamiliar justifications. The most important of these were the improbability of any resolution to theoil-nationalization crisis between Iran and Britain as long as Musaddiq remained in power and thecommunist threat posed by the Tudeh Party of Iran and its Soviet sponsor.1 Thelong-term consequence of this intervention can partially explain the 1979 revolution in Iran andthe ongoing crisis in Iran–U.S. relations.

This study undertakes an examination of Lebanese women's fiction over the past fortyyears or so. For many women, the urban environment is an escape from the restrictive traditionalcommunity that is closely aligned with a rural mentality. Many of these writers tend to see the cityin stark contrast to the country, which, in their eyes represents restraining cultural values. If insome cases the city and the country are represented as real, tangible places, the majority ofwomen tend to view them as “states of mind and feeling”1 or asrepresentations. Some female writers see the city and the village in ontological oppositionbetween repression and freedom, backwardness and progress, and past and present—or, asRaymond Williams refers to it, “of consciousness with ignorance; of vitality with routine;of the present and actual with the past or the lost.”2 Nevertheless, it is clearthat in many cases the city incorporates and embraces both the traditional and modern patterns,because “an old order, a ‘traditional' society, keeps appearing, reappearing,at bewilderingly various dates.”3 Far from viewing themselves as alienatedand degraded beings in the corrupt and hellish city4 or the modern wasteland,women see the nurturing city as a symbol of well-being, independence, and freedom fromshackles. Indeed, they become so immersed in city life that, for some of them, there is“little reality in any other mode of life.”5 The city gives them theopportunity to escape the narrow confines of home, family, and stifling traditions that haverelegated them to a corner and associated them with a nostalgic past. Accordingly, for many ofthem, the city has become, as Williams puts it, “the physical embodiment of a decisivemodern consciousness,”6 a place consistently in flux andmotion7 where women attempt to keep the ever-haunting past at bay and reveal athrust for change and for experience and knowledge that they try to replenish in the city.

Reports emanating from Yemen as early as the 1920s indicated that local Jews were subjectedto a unique statute, known in Jewish sources as the “Orphans' Decree.” Thislaw obligated the Yemeni (Zaydi) state to take custody of dhimmi children who hadbeen orphaned, usually of both parents, and to raise them as Muslims. The statute, anchored in18th-century Zaydi legal interpretations and put into practice at the end of that century, has noparallel in other countries.1 S. D. Goitein suggests that the legal basis for thisreligious interpretation rested on the hadith: “Every person is born to the natural religion[Islam], and only his parents make a Jew or a Christian out of him”(Muhammad al-Bukhari 82, 3).2

Kuwait, a small city-state on the Persian–Arabian Gulf, has undergone massivepolitical, economic, and social development throughout the 20th century. In spite of this, Kuwaitirulers continue to cherish what is perhaps an impossible dream: that Kuwait can be simultaneouslya “developed” country and a “traditional” tribally organized socialformation run by an autocratic ruler. This dream is echoed in equally ambivalent pronouncementsand policies regarding women, not only by representatives of the state but also by Kuwaiticitizens. Should Kuwaiti women stand side by side with men in public life as half of a modernsociety, or should they be secluded, subjected by, and submissive to the men in their lives as local“tradition” demands? In this essay I argue that these two ambivalences are linked.Democratization of Kuwaiti political life has proceeded in fits and starts that parallel the unevenprogress of democratization of gender relations in Kuwait. Perhaps in consequence, the politics ofboth kinds of democratization have become more closely linked.

The era culminating in World War I saw a transition from multinational empires tonation-states. Large empires such as the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman searched for ways tocope with the decline of their political control, while peoples in these empires shifted their politicalloyalties to nation-states. The Ottoman Empire offers a favorable canvas for studying newnationalisms that resulted in many successful and unsuccessful attempts to form nation-states. Asan example of successful attempts, Arab nationalism has received the attention that it deserves inthe field of Middle Eastern studies.1 Students have engaged in many complexdebates on different aspects of Arab nationalism, enjoying a wealth of hard data. Studies onKurdish nationalism, however, are still in their infancy. Only a very few scholars have addressedthe issue in a scholarly manner.2 We still have an inadequate understanding of thenature of early Kurdish nationalism and its consequences for the Middle East in general andTurkish studies in particular. Partly because of the subject's political sensitivity, manyscholars shy away from it. However, a consideration of Kurdish nationalism as an example ofunsuccessful attempts to form a nation-state can contribute greatly to the study of nationalism inthe Middle East.

October and November 1960 were two of the coldest months of the Cold War. Continuingtensions over Berlin and the nuclear balance were exacerbated by crises in Laos, Congo,and—for the first time—France's rebellious départementsin Algeria. During Nikita Khrushchev's table-pounding visit to the United Nations, heembraced Belkacem Krim, the foreign minister of the Gouvernement Provisoire de laRépublique Algérienne (GPRA). After mugging for the cameras at the Sovietestate in Glen Cove, New York, Khrushchev confirmed that this constituted de facto recognitionof the provisional government and pledged all possible aid. Meanwhile, in Beijing, PresidentFerhat Abbas delivered the GPRA's first formal request for Chinese“volunteers.” U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower asked his National SecurityCouncil “whether such intervention would not mean war.” The council agreed thatif communist regulars infiltrated Algeria, the United States would be bound by the North AtlanticTreaty to come to the aid of French President Charles de Gaulle and his beleaguered government.After six years of insurgency, Algeria appeared to be on the brink of becoming a Cold Warbattleground.1

This study aims to examine the way in which European writers of the 16th, 17th, and 18thcenturies represented Ottoman government. The Ottoman Empire had a special place in Europeanexperience and thought. The Ottomans were geographically close to Western Europe, yet theywere quite apart in culture and religion, a combination that triggered interest in Turkish affairs.1 Particularly important were political affairs. The Ottoman government inspired a variety of opinions among European travelers and thinkers. During the 18th century, the Ottomans lost their image as formidable and eventually ceased to provoke curiosity in theEuropean public. They were no longer dreaded as the “public calamity”; nor werethey greatly respected as the “most modern government” on earth. Rather, theywere regarded as a dull and backward sort of people. From the 16th century to the 19th century,the European observers employed two similar, yet different, concepts to characterize thegovernment of the Ottoman Empire. The concept of tyranny was widely used during the 16th and17th centuries, whereas the concept of despotism was used to depict the regime of the Ottomansin the 18th century. The transition from the term “tyranny” to that of“despotism” in the 18th century indicates a radical change in the European imagesof the Ottoman Empire. Although both of these terms designate corrupt and perverse regimes inWestern political thought, a distinction was made between tyranny and despotism, and it matteredcrucially which term was applied to the Ottoman state. European observers of the empire gavespecial meanings to these key concepts over time. “Tyranny” allowed for bothpositive and negative features, whereas “despotism” had no redeeming features.Early modern Europeans emphasized both admirable and frightening aspects of Ottomangreatness. On the other hand, the concept of despotism was redefined as inherently Oriental in the18th century and employed to depict the corruption and backwardness of the Ottomangovernment. This transformation was profoundly reflected in the beliefs of Europeans about theEast. That is, 18th century thought on Ottoman politics contains a Eurocentric analysis of Orientaldespotism that is absent from the discussions of Ottoman tyranny in earlier centuries.

From 1924 to 1928, authorities of the British Mandate in Transjordan expended considerableenergy trying to prove that the extensive lands on the Transjordanian side of the Ghawr (JordanRiver Valley) known as Ghawr Abi עUbayda were not waqf but mīrī lands, as several parties had claimed over the years.1 British authorities established both an investigative commission and a special court to rule on the question as part of their wider attempt to regulate land matters in the new Emirate of Transjordan. These legal remedies succeeded not because the British resorted to unilateral colonial fiat but because of their strict accordance with Ottoman law, to the detriment of local custom regarding land usage. By enforcing these laws through the decisions of the commission and the court, the British hoped to forestall the disposal of land for what they considered partisan political purposes, thus averting political unrest and a loss of revenue.

The literature on Jordan is awash in studies of the history, politics, and possible futures of theHashemite family. In a polity so closely identified with its ruling dynasty, one would be surprisedif this fixation did not prevail. More curious to the anthropologist is the extent to which thescholarly attention lavished on the Hashemites has centered on the rather obvious fact that theyrule, but has given less concern to the fact that they rule as a family—that they express theirdominance in a patriarchal rhetoric brimming with kinship metaphors, and that they preside over abody politic in which households and their influential heads are of far greater significance thanelectoral constituencies, public opinion, or (least of all) individual citizens and their rights. WhenKing Hussein described his realm as “the big Jordanian family” (al-usraal-urduniyya al-kubra¯), he invoked an image of community (and authorized a style ofpolitical exchange) that made immediate sense to his subjects. In his final years of rule, Husseinartfully consolidated his role as national father figure. His heir, King Abdullah II, who was 37years old when he inherited the throne in 1999, affects the “older brother” personaappropriate to his age. In announcing Hussein's death, Abdullah II relied heavily on thevocabulary of political kinship his father had standardized: “Hussein was a father, abrother, to each of you, the same as he was my father. . . . Today you are my brothers and sisters,and with you I find sympathy and condolences under God”1

The Price Revolution of the 16th century has been the subject of one of the most enduringdebates in European historiography and, more recently, in the historiography of the worldeconomy. That European prices, expressed in grams of silver, increased by more than 100percent—and in some countries, by more than 200 percent—from the beginning ofthe 16th century to the middle of the 17th century has been well established and broadly accepted.In countries that experienced currency debasements, overall inflation was proportionately higher,reaching, in some cases, 600 percent or more for the entire period.

Going back to the early beginnings of democracy in Jordan in the [1950s], theJordanian people, particularly the youth and the activist forces, were very enthusiastic aboutpolitical parties, despite the fact that the level of political awareness then was not as advanced asit is now. Conditions on the domestic, Pan-Arab, and international levels were encouraging.Pan-Arabism was on the rise. There were goals for the Arabs to achieve, and there was aconsensus that it was feasible to achieve those goals. Political parties at that time had a vastpopular base. They were large and effective due to the large-scale popular participation in theseparties. The situation at present is the opposite. When political parties were born again, theylooked as if they were parties in the stage of formation.

A columnist in a Turkish newspaper recently asked, “Will nothing really be the sameagain?”3 referring to the impact of the massive earthquake of 17 August1999 on the Turkish psyche. The writer Murathan Mungan used a similar metaphor earlier in whatseems today like a prophetic statement: “I think Turkey has really come to lean against thewall. There is nowhere to go; either the wall will crumble or it will be dismantled. If it crumbles,we will be crushed below, if it is dismantled maybe we will move to another space—or atleast try to.”4

This article attempts to make a contribution to the intellectual history of the early TurkishRepublic through an examination of Kadro, a monthly journal of political, economic,and social ideas, which was published in Turkey between 1932 and 1934.1 TheKadro movement took its name from the journal Kadro; the journal aspired to fulfilltwo self-appointed tasks: to develop an ideological framework in which to interpret the Turkishrevolution that had created the republican regime led by President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk,2 and to suggest economic policies that, in accordance with this ideological framework, the regime should pursue in the future. Although Kadro clearly identified itself with the republican regime, and although its publication was sanctioned and encouraged by leaders of the Kemalist regime (the same political leadership that eventually forced Kadro to cease publication), it was not a simple emanation of the government or of the ruling Republican People's Party (RPP). Most of the journal's regular writers had“leftist” backgrounds that had, on occasion, brought them into collision with therepublican authorities. Kadro's political loyalty to the regime was never inquestion, but within these limits, it exhibited a striking degree of intellectual independence.

One of the most important lessons development agencies claim to have learned over the pastdecades is that the absence of local participation at various stages of project planning andimplementation leads to what at best can be termed “inferiorresults.”1 The conclusion that community participation is necessary (if notsufficient) for project success has developed concomitantly with the belief in the halls of powerthat the state is not the ideal executor of a variety of tasks previously deemed its proper realm.Both of these changes in development thinking converged in practical terms beginning in the1980s in the emergence of a greater stress on the role of non-governmental organizations(NGOs). Not only were NGOs and other civil-society actors (including the private sector) seen asuntainted by the rent-seeking behavior attributed to state bureaucracies; they were also seen asproducts of more local or community-based and -interested organizing, a critical vehicle for localparticipation that so many development projects had lacked. Some of this literature also regardedsuch institutions as the forerunners of and central to democratic transitions.2

This paper explores the utility of 19th- and 20th-century taxation and court records as toolsfor mapping the changing social topography of rural Morocco. Little serious work has been donewith such records to date, and it is hoped that this paper will encourage more researchers to usethis material.1 As a subset of the Moroccan official record, legal and tax recordsobviously have an epistemological character differing from that of private correspondence andeven other administrative records. Yet in the post-modern era, it is obvious that this cannot besimply reduced to the official record providing us with truth while private correspondence is amixture of fiction and possible truth. All sources need to be scrutinized both in the traditionalways of the historian and, more generally, as reflecting social forces conceived broadly.

Political Islam has gained heightened visibility in recent decades in Turkey. Large numbers offemale students have begun to demonstrate their commitment by wearing the banned Islamicheaddress on university campuses, and influential pro-Islamist TV channels have proliferated. Thispaper focuses on the Welfare (Refah) Party as the foremost institutional representativeof political Islam in Turkey.