Middle East Studies

The Semitic Languages presents a comprehensive survey of the individual languages and language clusters within this language family, from their origins in antiquity to their present-day forms. This second edition has been fully revised, with new chapters and a wealth of additional material.

The Turkic Languages are spoken today in a vast geographical are stretching from the Balkans to the Arctic Ocean, and from southern Iran to the Great Wall of China. There are currently over 20 literary languages in the group, the most important among them being Turkish. This book brings together detailed discussions of the historical development and specialised linguistic features of the languages in the Turkic family.

The Iranian languages form the major eastern branch of the Indo-European group of languages, itself part of the larger Indo-Iranian family. Estimated to have between 150 and 200 million native speakers, the Iranian languages constitute one of the world's major language families. This comprehensive volume offers a detailed overview of the principle languages which make up this group: Old Iranian, Middle Iranian and New Iranian.

One of the main cultural consequences of the contacts between Islam and the West has been the borrowing of hundreds of words, mostly of Arabic but also of other important languages of the Islamic world, such as Persian, Turkish, Berber, etc. by Western languages, especially those spoken in the Iberian Peninsula.

Arabic and its Alternatives discusses the complicated relationships between language, religion and communal identities in the Middle East in the period following the First World War. This volume focuses on non-Arabic and non-Muslim communities, and traces their linguistic and literary practices during the first half of the 20th century.

Love has been an important trope in the literature of the region we now call the Middle East, from ancient times to modern. This book analyses love poetry in various ancient and contemporary languages of the Middle East, including Akkadian, ancient Egyptian, Classical and Modern Standard Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Turkish and Kurdish, including literary materials that have been discovered and highlighted for the first time.

This anthology assembles, in English translation, more than forty prose texts of modern Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Hebrew fiction, from the 19th century reform period until the early 2000s. Each of them can be regarded as having attained canonical status due to their stylistic features or political and social situations they mirror.

The contributors to this book, first published in 1991, trace the development of modern literary sensibility, in Turkish, Arabic, Persian and modern Hebrew, between 1850 and 1970. The product of different nations, races and traditions, there are constant themes in the literatures of this period - the colonial heritage, nationalism, justice, poverty and wealth, migration from country to city, confrontation between self and other, and between East and West.

This unique literary collection offers a window on the contemporary Levant, a region comprising most of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, parts of southern Turkey and northwestern Iraq, and the Sinai Peninsula. Originally written in Arabic, French, Aramaic and Hebrew, and reflecting an extraordinary diversity of cultures, faiths, traditions and languages, the selections in this book also convey a wide range of ideas and perspectives.

This volume deals with two of the most under-researched areas of study in the Modern Iranian field: the Persian oral and popular literature of Iran, Tajikistan and Persian-speaking Afghanistan on the one hand; and the written and oral literatures of the Kurds, Pashtuns, Baloch and Ossetians on the other.

The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry incorporates political, cultural and theoretical paradigms that help place poetic projects in their socio-political contexts as well as illuminate connections across the continuum of the Arabic tradition. This volume grounds itself in the present moment and, from it, examines the transformations of the 15-century Arabic poetic tradition through readings, re-readings, translations, reformulations and co-optations.

This volume presents the literary careers of 33 Turkish novelists who have published significant work since the coup of 27 May 1960. These novelists embraced the challenges that came with the transformation of the country since that first military intervention, and have addressed Turkey’s many evolving social and political issues through their works.

This book is a history of religious life in the Ancient Near East from the beginnings of agriculture to Alexander the Great's invasion in the 300s BCE. Daniel C. Snell traces key developments in the history, daily life and religious beliefs of the people of Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel and Iran. His research investigates how religious ideas from this historical and cultural milieu still influence the way modern cultures and religions view the world.

A bold new religious history of the late antique and medieval Middle East that places ordinary Christians at the center of the story. Jack Tannous argues that key to understanding dramatic religious transformations are ordinary religious believers. Largely agrarian and illiterate, these Christians outnumbered Muslims well into the era of the Crusades, and yet they have typically been invisible in our understanding of the Middle East's history.

Jonathan Berkey's book surveys the religious history of the peoples of the Near East from roughly 600 to 1800 CE. The opening chapter examines the religious scene in the Near East in late antiquity. Subsequent chapters investigate Islam's first century and the beginnings of its own traditions, the 'classical' period from the accession of the Abbasids to the rise of the Buyid amirs, and thereafter the emergence of new forms of Islam in the middle period.

In this book, Heather J. Sharkey examines the history that Muslims, Christians and Jews once shared against the shifting backdrop of state policies. Focusing on the Ottoman Middle East before World War I, Sharkey offers a vivid and lively analysis of everyday social contacts, dress, music, food, bathing, and more.

The Future of Religious Minorities in the Middle East addresses the domestic and international politics that have created conditions for contemporary religious cleansing in the Middle East. The contributors come from diverse political, cultural and religious backgrounds; each one drawing on a deep wellspring of scholarship, experience, sobriety and passion.

This Handbook uses a comprehensive study of political institutions, social movements and external pressures to offer nuanced study of politics in the Middle East. Foremost scholars on the Middle East examine key themes such as political change, regional rivalry and authoritarianism, making this collection very timely and relevant as an authoritative source.

This handbook provides comprehensive coverage of the history and role of the state in the MENA region. It explores the main debates, theoretical approaches and accumulated empirical research by prominent scholars in the field.

This comprehensive handbook analyses the political parties and party systems across the Middle East and North Africa. Providing an in-depth, empirically grounded and novel study of political parties, the volume focuses on a region where they have been traditionally and often erroneously dismissed.

This handbook discusses the new political and social realities in Turkey from a range of perspectives, emphasizing both changes as well as continuities. Contextualizing recent developments, the chapters, written by experts in their fields, combine analytical depth with a broad overview.

Until recently, Turkey was often perceived as a model country that showed the feasibility of democratic governance in a Muslim-majority society. However, the rise of religious-nationalist populism and sociopolitical polarization has resulted in an authoritarian turn that has stifled political liberalization. This Handbook includes in-depth analyses in conversation with the broader scholarly literature on authoritarianism and democratization, political economy etc.

The sociology of the Middle East has been an expanding field of inquiry since the aftermath of World War II when Middle East became central in key debates on modernization theory and their critical responses. This foundational volume engages in a critical examination of the field and links it with the legacy of colonialism and global powers.

This handbook provides an overview of the key historical, social, economic, political, religious and cultural issues which have shaped the conditions and status of women in the region. The book is divided into eleven thematic sections, providing a comprehensive guide to understanding the current and historical contexts of women in the Middle East, each giving ground-breaking insights into various aspects of women's movements.

Constructions of masculinity are constantly evolving and being resisted in the Middle East and North Africa. There is no "before" that was a stable gendered environment. This edited collection examines constructions of both hegemonic and marginalized masculinities in the MENA region, through literary criticism, film studies, discourse analysis etc.

At a time when the survival of minority populations, and the utility of the label minority has been challenged, this handbook answers the following set of research questions: What are the unique challenges of minority populations in the Middle East? How do minority populations integrate into their host societies? Finally, given the sweeping changes that have taken place in the region over the past decade, what is the future of these minority populations?

What we understand by the 'Middle East' has changed over time and across space. While scholars agree that the geographical 'core' of the Middle East is the Arabian Peninsula, the boundaries are less clear. Across this handbook's 52 chapters, the leading sociologists writing on the Middle East piece together our knowledge on the region from their path-defining contributions.

This handbook captures the salient features of Middle Eastern economies and critically examines the public policy responses required to address the challenges and opportunities across the region. Combining discussion of theory and empirical evidence, the book maps out the evolution of Middle East economics as a field within area studies and applied development economics.

Challenging conventional wisdom on the origins and contemporary dynamics of capitalism in the MENA region, these cutting-edge essays demonstrate how critical political economy can illuminate both historical and contemporary dynamics of the region and contribute to wider political economy debates from the vantage point of the Middle East.

This is the most comprehensive analysis of developments in the political economy of the region over the past several decades, examining the interaction of economic development processes, state systems and policies, and social actors in the Middle East. The 4th edition has been thoroughly revised, with two new introductory chapters that provide an updated framework with which to understand the recent changes in demography, education, labor markets etc.

Oil Money is an expansive yet judicious investigation of the wide-ranging and contradictory effects of petrodollars on Middle East-US relations and the geopolitics of globalization.

This book examines, for the first time, the separate national economies of the Arab states, Israel and Turkey, from 1918 to 1998. It describes the main trends within each economy based on available statistical data, and answers larger questions concerning the long-term growth of the countries, first in the colonial period, then in the periods characterized by planning and development, followed by the first steps toward liberalization and structural adjustment.

In this landmark dictionary, Roy Armes details the scope and diversity of filmmaking across the Arab Middle East. Listing more than 550 feature films by more than 250 filmmakers, and short and documentary films by another 900 filmmakers, this volume covers the film production in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and the Gulf States.

This book sets out to examine the long history of Arab nonfiction filmmaking in the Middle East and North Africa across a range of national trajectories and documentary styles, from the early 20th century to the present. Bringing together a distinguished group of film scholars, practitioners and critics, the book traces historical development of documentary filmmaking with an eye to the varied socio-political, ethnic, linguistic and cultural contexts in which the films emerged.

In this book, Laura Marks examines one of the world's most impressive and affecting, bodies of independent and experimental cinema from the last 25 years: film and video works from the Arabic-speaking world. The phrase hanan al-cinema expresses the way films sympathize with the world and the way audiences feel affection for them.

Building on a growing body of literature, this Handbook provides an up-to-date and authoritative survey of Arab cinema. With contributions from academics and filmmakers from across the Arab world, Europe and North America, it examines the whole, rather than focusing on one country or theme. The Handbook also sheds light on the heterogeneity of filmmaking not only within the Arab countries, but also globally, within diasporic communities.

The first critical and analytical dictionary of Turkish Cinema addresses the lacuna in scholarly work on the topic, and provides immense detail on a wide range of aspects of Turkish cinema including prominent filmmakers, films, actors, screenwriters, cinematographers, editors, producers, significant themes, genres, movements, theories, production modes, film journals, film schools and professional organizations.

With trans-regional contributions from established and emerging scholars, this ground-breaking volume offers conceptual essays and in-depth chapters that present rich analyses grounded in historical and geopolitical contexts, as well as key theory and empirical research.

The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Media and Communication in the Middle East and North Africa stands as an authoritative and up-to-date resource on the critical debates, research methods and ongoing reflections on how gender and communication intersect with the economic, social, political and cultural fabrics of the MENA countries.

This book offers a ten-year perspective on ongoing and evolving practices of digital activism across the Middle East and North Africa, drawing on interviews and ethnographic evidence collected between 2012 and 2022. It considers how media activists navigate the transition from the emergent to the mainstream in a climate of contentious politics, following the civil mobilisations of the pro-revolutionary youths in Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon.

What makes hundreds of listeners cheer ecstatically at the same instant during a live concert by Egyptian diva Umm Kulthum? What is the unspoken language behind a taqsim that performers and listeners implicitly know? This book answers these and many other questions from the perspective of two "insiders" documenting a performance culture.

Rock in a Hard Place is a different voice, one that is at odds with the Middle East of violence, extremism, war and ISIS; a voice recognizable to anyone who has ever turned up a speaker or an amp to drown out the din of the everyday. This is the untold story of the young men and women and the music they make in the backrooms of shabby houses in al-Zarqa and Nazareth. Of illegal shows in Tehran and Riyadh. Of songs that ousted a dictator in Cairo.

The book explores three musical cultures that claim connection to the music of medieval Iberia -the Islamic kingdom of al-Andalus- known for its complex mix of Arab, North African, Christian and Jewish influences. Jonathan Holt Shannon shows that the idea of a shared Andalusian heritage animates performers and aficionados in modern-day Syria, Morocco and Spain, but with varying and sometimes contradictory meanings in different social and political contexts.

Expert writers present the major traditions of North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, together with personal accounts of performers, composers, teachers and ceremonies. A special feature of this volume is the inclusion of dozens of brief snap-shot essays that offer "life stories" of typical music makers and their art.

It is 1950s Cairo and 16-year-old Amina is engaged to a much older man. Despite all the excitement of the wedding preparations, Amina is not looking forward to her nuptials. And it is not because of the age gap or because of the fact that she does not love, or even really know, her fiancé. No, it is because she is involved with another man.

Nader, an idealistic public prosecutor at the outset of his career, leaves Cairo to start a new posting in rural upper Egypt. On his first night, a mysterious woman named Hoda shows up at his lodgings. She is on the run from an abusive husband and, harboring a dark secret, seeks a new start in this small village. Nothing is to be easy for Hoda or Nader, and the dramatic circumstances of their first meeting signal the disquiet to come.

Each story in Mohamed Makhzangi's unique collection Animals in Our Days features a different animal species and its fraught relationship with humans. Makhzangi's stories are part of a long tradition of writings on animals in Arabic literature. In this collection, animals offer a mute testament to the brutality and callousness of humanity, particularly when modernity sunders humans from the natural environment.

This book will introduce the English-speaking reader to the rich tradition of contemporary Nubian literature from Egypt, written in Arabic. On the other hand, the book also forces the Egyptian-Arab reader to question some of the most cherished assumptions and ingrained ideas about the nature of culture, history and identity.

Shams al-Din Mohammad Hafez is in love. He is in love with a girl, with a city and with Persian poetry. Despite his enmity with the new and dangerous city leader, the jealousy of his fellow court poets, and the competition for his beloved, Iran's favorite poet remains unbothered. When his wit and charm are not enough to keep him safe in Shiraz, his friends conspire to keep him out of trouble.

26-six-year-old college graduate, artist and employee of the Ministry of Art and Culture, Hasti Nourian aspires to be a 'new woman': independent-minded, strong-willed and in control of her own destiny. A destiny that includes Morad, an idealistic young architect and artist with whom Hasti is deeply in love. When her mother persuades Hasti to join her at the spa, she introduces her to Salim, an eligible young man from a wealthy family and an ideal suitor for Hasti.

The Bewildered Cameleer is a novel by Iran’s first and best-known female novelist and short-story writer, Simin Daneshvar (1921-2012). Published in Tehran in 2001, it is the second book of what was intended to be a trilogy, following Island of Bewilderment. It takes place in Tehran during the last few years of the Pahlavi regime and the first years of the Islamic Republic (approximately 1976 to 1981).

In the slums of Tehran, 7-year-old Sara witnesses the horrific murder of her sister Setayesh, an event that leaves her in shock and unable to speak. As the neighbourhood frantically searches for the missing girl, Sara is locked inside herself, unable to tell her parents or police all she knows. Over time, she develops a strange allergic reaction, in which hair covers her face every time a man approaches her. One day in school, when an imam gets too close, she faints.

Samir Naqqash's stirring novel Tenants and Cobwebs nostalgically commemorates the lost culture of an ancient Iraqi Jewish minority living amidst a majority Muslim population in 1940s Baghdad. The plot unfolds during a time of great turmoil: the rise of Iraqi nationalism and anti-Jewish sentiment fueled by Nazi propaganda; the Farûd, a bloody pogrom carried out against Jewish residents of Baghdad in 1941; and the founding of Israel in 1948.

Set at the end of Saddam Hussein's brutal reign, the novel follows Narjis, a young Iraqi woman, on her quest to discover what has become of the man she loves. Yusef, suspected by the regime of being a dissident, has disappeared. On her journey, Narjis meets Umm Hani, an older woman who is searching for her long-lost son. Together they form a bond, and Narjis comes to understand the depth of loss and grief of those around her.

The talented classical cellist Nabil always imagined a world where music and art govern everyday life. After being attacked in his hometown in Iraq and not being able to play music, Nabil decides to emigrate to Europe, where he thinks he can fit into society better. He muses about music, the Utopian City as envisioned by philosopher al-Farabi and if there is any place that will meet his ideals.

From one of the most important voices in contemporary Hebrew literature, the gripping story of a reunion between two family members that brings back a long-forgotten past and reveals secrets that will change their lives forever. Micha, an Israeli expat in Los Angeles working as a ghostwriter, receives an unexpected invitation. Adella, married to his beloved uncle, has bought him a ticket to Israel and booked a hotel, so that he can return home and meet with her.

Lilach has it all: a beautiful home, a stable marriage and a teenage son, Adam, with whom she has always felt a particular closeness. But after a brutal attack on a local synagogue shakes their sense of safety, Adam enrolls in a self-defense class taught by a former Israeli Special Forces officer where he finds a sense of confidence and belonging. Then, tragedy strikes again and, as more details surface and racial tensions in the community are ignited, Lilach begins to question everything she thought she knew about her son.

Just before the outbreak of the July 2006 war in Lebanon, a middle-aged woman named Nahla has gone missing. Distraught, besieged and without any leads, Nahla's dearest friends Suad, Azizeh, Hoda, Nadine and the narrator Alawiya, band together to console one another. They reminisce about the better days of their youth, lifetimes of romantic turmoil, the trouble with love and their inescapable confrontation with death.

Birds of Nabaa follows the physical and spiritual journeys of its narrator from his beginnings in a remote Mauritanian village, whose flocks lead the community according to their own inscrutable instincts, to life in Madrid, the Gulf states and Guinea, where his work as an embassy accountant takes him. Along the route the reader encounters the holy-fool sheikh, Rajab the teacher and Hussein the poet, who all in their own way stand against the tribal values.

Mohamed Choukri's autobiographical novel tells the story of a bleak and violent childhood in Morocco. Driven by famine from their home in the Rif, Mohamed's family walks to Tangiers in search of a better life. But his father is unable to find work and grows violent, so Mohamed learns how to charm and steal. During a short spell in a filthy Moroccan jail, a fellow inmate kindles his life-altering love of poetry.

A fictional prison account narrated by Mouline and Leila, who have been imprisoned for their political activities during the so-called Lead Years of the 1970s and 1980s in Morocco, a period that was characterized by heavy state repression. Moving between past and present, between experiences lived inside the prison cell and outside it, Mouline and Leila describe their strategies for survival and resistance.

Ghassan Kanafani's writings are among the most influential in modern Palestinian literature. In his novels, short stories, and plays, he explores complex political questions encased in beautiful narratives and lyrical prose. All That's Left to You presents the vivid story of 24 hours in the real and remembered lives of a brother and sister living in Gaza and separated from their family.

What if all the Palestinians in Israel simply disappeared one day? What would happen next? How would Israelis react? These unsettling questions are posed in Azem's powerfully imaginative novel. Set in contemporary Tel Aviv, 48 hours after Israelis discover all their Palestinian neighbors have vanished, the story unfolds through alternating narrators: Alaa, a young Palestinian man, and Ariel, his Jewish journalist neighbor, struggling to understand the traumatic event.

Nidal, after many decades of restless exile, returns to her family home in Nablus, where she had lived with her grandmother before the 1948 Nakba that scattered her family across the globe. She was a young girl when the popular resistance began and, through the bloodshed and bitter struggle, Nidal fell in love with freedom fighter Rabie. Many years later, Nidal and Rabie meet, and he encourages her to read her uncle Amin's memoirs.

The concluding novel in a trilogy that has become a landmark of Palestinian fiction. An Old Carriage with Curtains is the third and final book in a masterful trilogy of novels encompassing the history of the people of the Palestinian village of Zakariyya. The novels trace the wandering trajectories and inner lives of characters connected to this village across decades, as well as the vicissitudes of historical change and displacement in the land.

Born a girl to parents who expected a boy, Jihad grows up treated like the eldest son, wearing boy's clothing and sharing the financial burden of head of the household with her father. Now middle-aged, each night Jihad tells her college-bound daughter a story from her life. She revisits the past of their Palestinian family, tenderly describing their life in exile in Kuwait and her own experiences of love and loss as she grows up.

Set in the Syrian neighborhood of al-Qaweyq, Sour Grapes is a collection of 59 wry, satirical short stories loosely connected by a cast of rotating characters living at society's margins. Tamer captures their everyday lives, weaving the attendant cruelties and ironies of living under an oppressive regime with the residents' irreverence and small acts of defiance.

On a December morning in 1907, two close friends, Hanna and Zakariya, return to their village near Aleppo after a night of drunken carousing in the city, only to discover that there has been a massive flood. Their neighbors, families, children, nearly all of them are dead. Their homes, shops, and places of worship are leveled. Their lives will never be the same.

Furat, a Syrian in his early 20s, visits Sibki Park in Damascus, one of the city’s most popular cruising areas. There he learns about the hammams, secret meeting places for gay men located throughout the old city. Inside these public baths, the air is thick with the scent of bay laurel soap, and naked men hide in the steam. Furat faces disapproval from all levels of society, and yet he manages to find the love he’s been seeking just before his world collapses.

Ali, a 19-year-old soldier in the Syrian army, lies on the ground beneath a tree. He sees a body being lowered into a hole - is this his funeral? There was that sudden explosion, wasn't there? While trying to understand the extent of the damage, Ali works his way closer to the tree. We uncover the hardships of his traditional Syrian Alawite village, but also the richness and beauty of its cultural and religious heritage.

During Tunisia's Arab Spring and its tilt toward Islamism, we meet three men: Saleem, Aziz and Omran. As they forge an unlikely friendship over drinks at a coastal bar in Bizerte and during walks on the beach, they grapple with the political extremism that dominates Tunisia's social and political life at the time. Repelled by Islamist rhetoric and the brand of masculinity it represents, the three friends recall their lives and question their relationship to their nation.

Short stories about people on the margins, from story peddlers to beggars, by one of Turkey's most innovative fiction writers. Atay's stories are vivid with life's absurdities, while his characters, oddballs and losers, are utterly individual. A brilliant examiner of the inner life, Atay is no less aware of the flawed social world in which his people struggle to make their way, and he is exceptionally attuned to the strange power storytelling itself can exert over fate.

In the city of Mardin, near Turkey's border with Syria, the orphaned Avdo finds purpose when an old mason takes him on as an apprentice. From Master Josef, he learns the importance of their art, which looks after the dead and bears witness to their lives. Avdo then travels the country and meets a woman he loves wholeheartedly, only to lose her through a tragic crime. Resigned to a lonely existence, he retreats from the world into his cemetery workshop.