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This volume explores how rulers in medieval Iberia and the Maghrib presented their rule and what strategies they adopted to persuade their subjects of their legitimacy. It focuses on the Naṣrids of Granada and the Marīnids of Morocco who both ruled from the mid-thirteenth to the later fifteenth century. One of the book's main arguments is that the legitimating strategies of these monarchs developed out of a common political culture that straddled the straits of Gibraltar. This culture was mediated by constant transfers of people, ideas and commodities across the straits and a political historiography in which deliberate parallels and comparisons were drawn between Iberia and North Africa. The book challenges a tendency to see the Iberian and North African cultural and political spheres as inherently different and, implicitly, as precursors to later European and African identities. While several chapters in the volume do flag up contrasts in practice, they also highlight the structural similarities in the Naṣrid and Marīnid approach to legitimation in this period. The volume is divided into several sections, each of which approaches the theme of legitimation from a separate angle. The first section contains an introduction to the theme as well as analyses of the material and intellectual background to discourses of legitimation. The next section focuses on rhetorical bids for legitimacy such as the deployment of prestigious genealogies, the use of religiopolitical titles, and other forms of propaganda. That is followed by a detailed look at ceremonial and the calculated patronage of religious festivals by rulers. A final section grapples with the problem of legitimation outside the environs of the city, among illiterate and frequently armed populations.

This volume asks fundamental questions about the political impact of cultural institutions by exploring the power struggles for control over such institutions in Syria and Lebanon under French Mandate rule. Countering assertions of French imperial cultural ascendancy and self-confidence, the book demonstrates the diverse capacities of Arab and other local communities, to forge competing cultural identities that would, in later years, form the basis for rising political self-enfranchisement. Drawing on a wide array of written sources and oral testimonies, the book illuminates how political and religious leaders fought to harness the force of culture through projects as diverse as schools, cinema, scouting, and tourism. These leaders were to be found not only in the French colonial administration or the burgeoning Syrian and Lebanese parliaments, but also in student societies, missionary congregations, and philanthropic organizations. The book pays particular attention to the last decade of French rule before Syrian and Lebanese independence as a critical time of transition and debate. The rich individual histories of institutions such as the American University of Beirut, the secular French Mission laïque, or the Jesuit missionaries come together in a broader narrative that speaks to the ongoing Syrian and Lebanese journeys toward national identity.

The papers collected in this volume investigate the relationship between Southeast Asia and the Ottoman Empire. Southeast Asia has long been connected by trade, religion and political links to the wider world across the Indian Ocean, and especially to the Middle East through the faith of Islam. However, little attention has been paid to the ties between Muslim Southeast Asia—encompassing the modern nations of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and the southern parts of Thailand and the Philippines—and the greatest Middle Eastern power, the Ottoman Empire. The first direct political contact took place in the sixteenth century, when Ottoman records confirm that gunners and gunsmiths were sent to Aceh in Sumatra to help fight against the Portuguese domination of the pepper trade. In the intervening centuries, the main conduit for contact was the annual hajj pilgrimage, and many Malay pilgrims from Southeast Asia spent long periods of study in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, which were under Ottoman control from 1517 until the early twentieth century. During the period of European colonial expansion in the nineteenth century, once again Malay states turned to Istanbul for help. The chapters in this volume represent the first attempt to bring together research on all aspects of the relationship between the Ottoman world and Southeast Asia—political, economic, religious and intellectual—much of it based on documents newly discovered in archives in Istanbul. Individual chapters also trace the influence of Republican Turkey on Southeast Asian politics and culture.

This is the first major comparative study of the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire, one of the crucial forces that shaped the modern world. The chapters combine archaeological and historical approaches to the further understanding of how this major empire approached the challenge of controlling frontiers as diverse and far-flung as Central and Eastern Europe, Anatolia, Iraq, Arabia and the Sudan. Ranging across the 15th to early 20th centuries, chapters cover frontier fortifications, administration, society and economy and shed light on the Ottomans' interaction with their neighbours, both Muslim and Christian, through warfare, trade and diplomacy. As well as summing up the current state of knowledge, they also point the way to fresh avenues of research. The book gives a particular prominence to the nascent discipline of Ottoman archaeology.

This book seeks to re-evaluate the life and legacy of Gertrude Lowthian Bell (1868–1926), the renowned scholar, explorer, writer, archaeologist and British civil servant. In 12 chapters, written by a number of international scholars, Iraqi and British, it examines her role in shaping British policy in the Middle East in the first part of the 20th century, her views of the cultures and peoples of the region and her unusual status as a woman occupying a senior position in the British imperial administration. It focuses particularly on her involvement in Iraq and the part she played in the establishment of the Iraqi monarchy and the Iraqi state. In addition, it examines her interests in Iraq’s ancient past (she was instrumental in drawing up Iraq’s first Antiquities Law in 1922 and in the foundation of the Iraq Museum in 1923), and reflects on the various aspects of her legacy for modern Iraq.

This volume brings together studies in the rabbinic literature of late antiquity by specialists in the history of the Jews in that period in order to reveal the value of rabbinic material as historical evidence and to show the problems and issues which arise in its exploitation. An introductory section discusses the current state of knowledge about Palestine in this period and debates the difficulties involved in editing and dating rabbinic texts. Specific core texts and text categories are then introduced to the reader in a series of ten discrete studies. The volume concludes with six thematic analyses which illustrate the use and limitations of rabbinic evidence for cultural, religious, political, economic and social history.