This study shows how the present situation came about as the state extended and strengthened its hold on the countryside, the economy of the country developed, landlords and peasants took up hitherto uncultivated land and nomads settled down to become farmers.

In this 2000 book, an international team of contributors offer a multidisciplinary approach to the evolution of nomadic society in the Middle East.

This book examines the historiography of the Middle East and the consequent silences or omissions. It provides a collection of important histories from the modern era, particularly relating to the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, to give a fuller account of the society, culture and politics of the period.

How did Great Britain and France, the largest imperial powers of the early twentieth century, cope with mounting anticolonial nationalism in the Arab world? What linked domestic opponents and foreign challengers in the Middle East and North Africa—Syria, Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Egypt—as inhabitants attempted to overthrow the European colonial order? What strategies did the British and French adopt in the face of these threats? Empires of Intelligence, the first study of colonial intelligence services to use recently declassified reports, argues that colonial control in the British and French empires depended on an elaborate security apparatus. Martin Thomas shows for the first time the crucial role of intelligence gathering in maintaining imperial control in the years before decolonization.

Offering a fuller understanding of the complexities and particular patterns of state formation in regions where tribes have exercised a significant influence, this volume focuses on the continuing existence of tribal structures and systems in contemporary times, within contemporary nation-states. The contributors offer hypotheses as to why these groups have managed to survive and what impact they have had on modern states ... --backcover.

As a 'Medieval Warm Period' prevailed in Western Europe during the tenth and eleventh centuries, the eastern Mediterranean region, from the Nile to the Oxus, was suffering from a series of climatic disasters which led to the decline of some of the most important civilizations and cultural centres of the time. This provocative study argues that many well-documented but apparently disparate events - such as recurrent drought and famine in Egypt, mass migrations in the steppes of central Asia, and the decline in population in urban centres such as Baghdad and Constantinople - are connected and should be understood within the broad context of climate change. Drawing on a wealth of textual and archaeological evidence, Ronnie Ellenblum explores the impact of climatic and ecological change across the eastern Mediterranean in this period, to offer a new perspective on why this was a turning point in the history of the Islamic world.

Discusses how pastoralists are coping and changing as the societies they inhabit change at an unprecedented pace.

During the last two decades, the number of anthropological studies on the Middle East has increased exponentially. This partially annotated bibliography offers a comprehensive survey of studies written in English, French and German, and covers the period from 1965 to 1987.

A state-of-the-art presentation on a people/nation of Transjordan known to readers of the Bible as a neighbor, and often an enemy, of first millennium B.C. Israel. Topics covered in the book's ten chapters include a review of archaeological research in Ammon (R.W. Younker); the emergence of the Ammonites (R.W. Younker); Ammonite territory and sites (B. MacDonald); Ammonite "monumental" and domestic architecture (M. Najjar and P.M.M. Daviau respectively), as well as burial customs and practices (K. Yassine); the ceramic traditions of Central Transjordan (G. London); Ammonite texts and language (W. E. Aufrecht); the religion of the Ammonites (W.E. Aufrecht); and the Ammonites in the late Iron Age and the Persian period (L.G. Herr). Figures and Tables accompany each chapter. In addition, the publication includes an "Excursus" on the salient features of Iron Age tribal kingdoms (O. LaBianca). Each chapter of Ancient Ammon includes extensive reference material. The publication is fully indexed.

Founded in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire, the Imperial School for Tribes (Asiret Mektebi) was an initiative by Sultan Abdulhamid II to bring the sons of prominent Arab tribal leaders to Istanbul for a world-class education and transform them into loyal Ottoman future military and governmental leaders. Utilizing a plethora of new documents recently made available in the Ottoman archives as well as Ottoman newspaper collections in Istanbul and Beirut, this is the first book to shed light on the School for Tribes. It provides a detailed analysis of the origins and families of the over 500 graduates of the school, as well as the recruitment and placement processes developed by the administration. The further careers and allegiances of the graduates are examined, allowing us to better understand relations between Turks and Arabs both during the last years of the Empire as well as in the following decades. The book shows that many graduates who became prominent leaders in their newly formed countries, including Abdulmuhsin al-Sadoun (Prime Minister of Iraq), Omar Mansour and Orhan Kologlu (Prime Ministers of Cyrenaica-Libya), and Ramadan al-Shallash (Lebanon) availed of their Ottoman training and preserved their imperial loyalties even as rifts that occurred between the Republic of Turkey and the Arab states widened.