CyberResearch on the Ancient Near East and Neighboring Regions provides case studies on archaeology, objects, cuneiform texts, and online publishing, digital archiving, and preservation. Eleven chapters present a rich array of material, spanning the fifth through the first millennium BCE, from Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Iran. Customized cyber- and general glossaries support reader…
Over the past decade the Middle East has undergone huge geopolitical shifts, including widespread war and violence, the collapse of numerous regimes, a changing American role, a restored Russian presence, and the emergence of ISIS. In this book Graham Fuller addresses the character of these shifts and how they will shape the future of this tumultuous region as well as the role of major outside …
This books investigates the background and nature of the Ottoman Jihad proclamation, but also its effects in the wider Middle East. It looks at the German hopes and British fears of a worldwide rising of Muslims in the colonial empires. It also discusses the fierce academic debates caused by the Jihad proclamation, in which the 1915 manifesto of Leiden Islam scholar Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje …
Based on previously unexamined historical documents found in archives in Belgium, England, Israel, the Netherlands, and the United States, this book is the first in English to tell the story of the formation of one of the world’s main strongholds of diamond production and trade in Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s. The history of the diamond-cutting industry, characterized by a long-standi…
Archaeological discoveries in Jerusalem capture worldwide attention in various media outlets. The continuing quest to discover the city’s physical remains is not simply an attempt to define Israel’s past or determine its historical legacy. In the context of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is also an attempt to legitimate—or undercut—national claims to sovereignty. Bridging …
In the thirteenth century, the Armenians of Greater Armenia and of the Armenian Kingdom in Cilicia were invaded by Mongol nomads of the Inner Asian steppe. The ensuing Mongol-Armenian relations were varied. The Greater Armenians became subjects of the Mongol Empire, whereas the Cilician Armenians, by entering into vassalage, became allies and furthered the Mongol conquests. In order to enhance …
Bringing together a vivid array of analog and non-traditional sources, including colonial archives, newspaper reports, literature, oral histories, and interviews, Buried in the Red Dirt tells a story of life, death, reproduction and missing bodies and experiences during and since the British colonial period in Palestine. Using transnational feminist reading practices of existing and new archive…
The book proposes a profound rethink of the complex relationship between Europe—defined here as the European Union and its members—and the states of the Mediterranean Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Europe’s ‘southern neighbours’. These relations are examined through a borderlands prism that conceives of this interaction as one between an empire of sorts that seeks to export its …
Ancient Knowledge Networks is a book about how knowledge travels, in minds and bodies as well as in writings. It explores the forms knowledge takes and the meanings it accrues, and how these meanings are shaped by the peoples who use it. Addressing the relationships between political power, family ties, religious commitments and literate scholarship in the ancient Middle East of the first mill…
The Shi’i Ismaili Muslims of Central Asia have a complex political history. This open access book is the first English-language study of the Ismaili Muslims in this region, based on analysis of the Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet scholarship about them. It sheds new light on their history and heritage, and also shows how the Ismailis of Central Asia have been understood and presented in the a…
The international politics of the Middle East fills a major gap in the field of middle eastern political studies by combining international relations theory with concrete case studies. It will be of immense benefit to students of middle eastern politics, international relations and comparative politics. The book begins with an overview of the rules and features of the middle east regional syste…
In this comprehensive open access book, written for readers from any or no religious background, Leena El-Ali does something remarkable. Never before has anyone taken on every last claim relating to Islam and women and countered it not just with Qur’anic evidence to the contrary, but with easy-to-use tools available to all. How can a woman’s testimony be worth half of a man’s? How can men…
The events of the Arab Uprisings posed an existential challenge to sovereign power across the Middle East. Whilst popular movements resulted in the toppling of authoritarian rule in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, other regimes were able to withstand these pressures. This book questions why some regimes fell whilst others were able to survive. Drawing on the work of political theorists such as Agambe…
Olga Tufnell (1905–85) was a British archaeologist working in Egypt, Cyprus and Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s, a period often described as a golden age of archaeological discovery. For the first time, this book presents Olga’s account of her experiences in her own words. Based largely on letters home, the text is accompanied by dozens of photographs that shed light on personal experience…