This volume elucidates the dramatic changes taking place in Middle Eastern cities during the first half of the 20th century. During this period radical changes took place with the introduction of new public spheres and places and with these a new society emerged. The focus of the contributions is on the development of these changes and how they were experienced and interpreted by the inhabitants of the cities and towns.

The great cities of the Middle East and North Africa have long attracted the attention and interest of historians. With the discovery and wider use over the last few decades of Islamic court records and Ottoman administrative documents, our knowledge of Middle Eastern cities between the seventeenth and early twentieth centuries has vastly expanded. Drawing upon a treasure trove of documents and using a variety of methodologies, the contributors succeed in providing a significant overview of the ways in which Middle Eastern cities can be studied, as well as an excellent introduction to current literature in the field.

The Middle East, defined here as extending from Morocco to Iran and Turkey to Sudan, lies at the crossroads of three continents – Africa, Asia and Europe. With the largest reserves of petroleum in the world its importance is well beyond its physical size and population. Rapid urban growth has radically transformed Middle Eastern society in recent decades, but the associated problems are incompletely understood. This volume, first published in 1980, highlights some of the major issues of Middle Eastern urbanisation and provides a comprehensive statement about the current position of research. Urban origins and the nature of urban growth are discussed to provide a background to considerations of migration, employment, housing and retailing. The contributors suggest that planning strategies have hitherto proved inadequate with small towns being largely overlooked, historic quarters rapidly disappearing and water in short supply. Future research into all these problem areas is considered essential, but the research must be coordinated and utilised. Concentrating on practical problems, achievements and challenges for research, the contributions in this book, specially commissioned from active researchers in the field, will prove a valuable guide to recent ideas and developments in the Middle East.

This collection of ten essays focuses on the way major schools and individuals have narrated histories of the Middle East. The distinguished contributors explore the historiography of economic and intellectual history, nationalism, fundamentalism, colonialism, the media, slavery, and gender. In doing so, they engage with some of the most controversial issues of the twentieth century. Middle Eastern studies today cover a rich and varied terrain, yet the study of the profession itself has been relatively neglected. There is, however, an ever-present need to examine what the research has chosen to include and exclude and to become more consciously aware of shifts in research approaches and methods. This collection illuminates the evolving state of the art and suggests new directions for further research.

How did colonial influences change the urban form of the Arab capitals? The author here poses - and answers - many questions on globalisation and the Middle East.

In The Middle East and the Making of the Modern World, Cyrus Schayegh takes up a fundamental problem historians face: how to make sense of the spatial layeredness of the past. He argues that the modern world’s ultimate socio-spatial feature was not the oft-studied processes of globalization or state formation or urbanization. Rather, it was fast-paced, mutually transformative intertwinements of cities, regions, states, and global circuits, a bundle of processes he calls transpatialization. To make this case, Schayegh’s study pivots around Greater Syria (Bilad al-Sham in Arabic), which is roughly coextensive with present-day Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine. From this region, Schayegh looks beyond, to imperial and global connections, diaspora communities, and neighboring Egypt, Iraq, and Turkey. And he peers deeply into Bilad al-Sham: at cities and their ties, and at global economic forces, the Ottoman and European empire-states, and the post-Ottoman nation-states at work within the region. He shows how diverse socio-spatial intertwinements unfolded in tandem during a transformative stretch of time, the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, and concludes with a postscript covering the 1940s to 2010s.

In 2008 for the first time the majority of the planet's inhabitants lived in cities and towns. Becoming globally urban has been one of mankind's greatest collective achievements over time, and raises many questions. How did global city systems evolve and interact in the past? How have historic urban patterns impacted on those of the contemporary world? And what were the key drivers in the roller-coaster of urban change over the millennia - market forces such as trade and industry, rulers and governments, competition and collaboration between cities, or the urban environment and demographic forces? This pioneering comparative work by leading scholars drawn from a range of disciplines offers the first detailed comparative study of urban development from ancient times to the present day. The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History explores not only the main trends in the growth of cities and towns across the world - in Asia and the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and the Americas - and the different types of cities from great metropolitan centres to suburbs, colonial cities, and market towns, but also many of the essential themes in the making and remaking of the urban world: the role of power, economic development, migration, social inequality, environmental challenge and the urban response, religion and representation, cinema, and urban creativity. Split into three parts covering Ancient cities, the medieval and early-modern period, and the modern and contemporary era, it begins with an introduction by the editor identifying the importance and challenges of research on cities in world history, as well as the crucial outlines of urban development since the earliest cities in ancient Mesopotamia to the present.

The great cities of the Middle East and North Africa have long attracted the attention and interest of historians. With the discovery and wider use over the last few decades of Islamic court records and Ottoman administrative documents, our knowledge of Middle Eastern cities between the seventeenth and early twentieth centuries has vastly expanded. Drawing upon a treasure trove of documents and using a variety of methodologies, the contributors succeed in providing a significant overview of the ways in which Middle Eastern cities can be studied, as well as an excellent introduction to current literature in the field.

How are issues related to identity representation negotiated in Middle Eastern and North African museums? Can museums provide a suitable canvas for minorities to express their voice? Can narratives change and stereotypes be broken and, if so, what kind of identities are being deployed? Against the backdrop of the revolutionary upheavals that have shaken the region in recent years, the contributors to this volume interrogate a range of case studies from across the region - examining how museums engage inclusion, diversity and the politics of minority identities. They bring to the fore the region's diversity and sketches a 'museology of disaster' in which minoritised political subjects regain visibility.