Telling the story of the Egyptian uprising through the lens of education, Hania Sobhy explores the everyday realities of citizens in the years before and after the so-called 'Arab Spring'. With vivid narratives from students and staff from Egyptian schools, Sobhy offers novel insights on the years that led to and followed the unrest of 2011. Drawing a holistic portrait of education in Egypt, sh…
The Land Between Two Seas: Art on the Move in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea 1300-1700 focuses on the strong riverine ties that connect the seas of the Mediterranean system (from the Western Mediterranean through the Sea of Marmara, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov) and their hinterland. Addressing the mediating role of the Balkans between East and West all the way to Poland and Lithuania…
Explores the colonial, social and political history of the creation of citizenship in mandate Palestine In the two decades after the First World War, nationality and citizenship in Palestine became less like abstract concepts for the Arab population and more like meaningful statuses integrated into political, social and civil life and as markers of civic identity in a changing society. This boo…
This edited volume is an open access title and assembles both the historical consciousness and transformation of the MENA region in various disciplinary and topical facets. At the same time, it aims to go beyond the MENA region, contributing to critical debates on area studies while pointing out transregional and cultural references in a broad and comparative manner.
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…
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 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…
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 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 …