Born illegitimately into Roman royalty in AD 48, Ushriya is left for dead. Raised to age four by merchant bakers in the wanton town of Pompeii, she is kidnapped by slave traders and returned to Rome where she becomes the slave of a wealthy Roman soldier and his wife. Hearing of a teacher espousing a new morality, Ushriya begins following him before escaping the Great Fire. She finds herself back in Pompeii, desperate and disoriented at the notorious brothel, the Lupanare, where survival forces her into prostitution. When an unexpected revelation connects Ushriya to the unpredictable Emperor Nero, she must accept her identity to fulfill her royal destiny.

The Power of Representation traces the emergence of modern Egyptian national identity from the mid-1870s through the 1910s. During this period, a new class of Egyptian urban intellectuals—teachers, lawyers, engineers, clerks, accountants, and journalists—came into prominence. Adapting modern ideas of individual moral autonomy and universal citizenship, this group reconfigured religiously informed notions of the self and created a national sense of "Egyptian-ness" drawn from ideas about Egypt's large peasant population. The book breaks new ground by calling into question the notion, common in historiography of the modern Middle East and the Muslim world in general, that in the nineteenth century "secular" aptitudes and areas of competency were somehow separate from "religious" ones. Instead, by tying the burgeoning Islamic modernist movement to the process of identity formation and its attendant political questions Michael Gasper shows how religion became integral to modern Egyptian political, social, and cultural life.

Modern English and Hebrew names with an analysis of their meanings and origins.

This book is a comprehensive examination of the historical process of social formation that gave rise to the communal consciousness of the Arab nation and determined its sense of identity. It aims to provide a historical context for the assessment of prevailing concepts and suggests hypotheses for the development of modern Arab consciousness. The book firstly traces Arab origins and the formation of Arab societies after the emergence of Islam, assessing the perspectives and factors that shaped the rise of the Arab nation in both practical and intellectual terms. It then examines the beginning of the Arab awakening and the course of its development in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth, focusing on the emergence of a nationalist perspective in the development of intellectual positions on patriotism and Arabism.

This set re-issues 4 volumes originally published between 1985 and 1991. They Examine the historical process of social formation that gave rise to the communal consciousness of the Arab nation and determined its sense of identityPresent detailed analysis of resources in the Arab world, including population, employment, oil and water suppliesDiscuss dimensions of Afro-Arab co-operation and the future of Afro-Arab RelationsAnalyse the relations between state and society in the Arab World.

Drawing on Hanafi fatawa and legal commentaries from Ottoman Syria between the 17th and early 19th centuries, this book examines the legal status of tenants and sharecroppers on arable lands, most of which were state or waqf properties. Challenging existing scholarship which argues that the status of cultivators gradually eroded after the 16th century, this study explores how jurists balanced the rights and obligations of tenants and landlords, thereby ensuring the adaptability of the Ottoman land system. The work addresses the differences between sharecropping and tenancy arrangements, the limitations that governed state and waqf officials, and the interplay between shariʿa and qanun in shaping land laws. The book also illustrates the doctrinal development of the law and sheds light on notions of 'ownership’, ideas of private vs. public good, and prevailing conceptions of social and economic justice.

Visions of Justice offers an exploration of legal consciousness among the Muslim communities of Central Asia from the end of the eighteenth century through the fall of the Russian Empire. Paolo Sartori surveys how colonialism affected the way in which Muslims formulated their convictions about entitlements and became exposed to different notions of morality. Situating his work within a range of debates about colonialism and law, legal pluralism, and subaltern subjectivity, Sartori puts the study of Central Asia on a broad, conceptually sophisticated, comparative footing. Drawing from a wealth of Arabic, Persian, Turkic and Russian sources, this book provides a thoughtful critique of method and considers some of the contrasting ways in which material from Central Asian archives may most usefully be read. Publication in Open Access was made possible by a grant from the Volkswagen Foundation.