Subaltern studies, the study of non-elite or underrepresented people, have revolutionized the writing of Middle Eastern history. Subversives and Mavericks in the Muslim Mediterranean represents the next step in this transformation. The book explores the lives of eleven nonconformists who became agents of political and social change, actively organizing new forms of resistance—against either colonial European regimes or the traditional societies in which they lived—that disrupted the status quo, in some cases, with dramatic results. These case studies highlight cross-border connections in the Mediterranean world, exploring how these channels were navigated. Chapters in the book examine the lives of subversives and mavericks, such as Tawhida ben Shaykh, the first Arab woman to receive a medical degree; Mokhtar al-Ayari, a radical Tunisian labor leader; Nazli Hanem, Kmar Bayya, and Khiriya bin Ayyad, three aristocractic women who resisted the patriarchal structures of their societies by organizing and participating in intellectual salons for men and women and advocating social reform; Qaid Najim al-Akhsassi, an ex-slave and military officer, who fought against French and Spanish colonial expansion; and Boubeker al-Ghandjawi, a nearly illiterate trader who succeeded, though his diverse connections, in establishing important relations between the Moroccan sultan and the representative of the British government. Although based on individual and local perspectives, Subversives and Mavericks in the Muslim Mediterranean reveals new and unrecognized trans-local connections across the Muslim world, illuminating our understanding of these societies beyond narrow elite circles.

European empires were commonly depicted in bright color-coded maps printed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that conveyed the expanse of European power across the globe. Despite this familiar image of a world divided up into neat imperial enclaves, the reality of empire-building often told a different story. Empire Unbound argues that European empires were never the bounded, stable entities that imperialists imagined. In examining Mediterranean empire-building in a comparative context, Gavin Murray-Miller demonstrates that the era of 'new imperialism' which arose in the late nineteenth century fostered connections and synergies between regional powers that influenced the trajectories of imperial states in fundamental ways. Breaking with conventional national approaches, Murray-Miller traces the development of France's North African empire, noting how empire-building relied upon transnational networks and cooperation with Muslims elites across borders just as much as military conquest. By looking at the inter-connected relationships linking the French, British, Italian, and Ottoman empires from the 1880s through the First World War, Empire Unbound proposes a novel spatial framework for imperial studies, showing how migrations, extraterritorial legal regimes, and cross-border interactions both abetted and frustrated imperial designs at the turn of the century.

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2021 Revolutionary Europe is an original examination of radical political movements during Europe's long 19th century. It employs both national and transnational contexts, incorporating new debates in Atlantic history, empire studies and cultural history to give a comprehensive narrative of the period from 1775 to 1922. Rather than assessing revolution as a purely theoretical, socially-driven force or a structural phenomenon, the book presents revolution as a process of community building and cultural identification born from instances of acute social and political crisis. Taking into account various moments of political upheaval during the 19th century, including the French, Russian and 1848 revolutions, it explores the ways in which political actors attempted to construct new definitions of sovereignty and social unity in a period characterized by vast social, economic and governmental change. In a wide-ranging text that covers Britain and much of continental Europe in detail, as well as reaching out to the Americas and Atlantic and Mediterranean Worlds, Gavin Murray-Miller provides an authoritative transnational study of revolution in the 19th-century age of high nationalism.

This volume presents twelve detailed studies dealing with cases drawn from the Middle East and North Africa in the period before independence (c.1850-1950).

This Edinburgh Companion seeks to develop a postcolonial framework for addressing the Middle East. The first collection of essays on this subject, it assembles some of the world's foremost postcolonialists to explore the critical, theoretical and disciplinary possibilities that inquiry into this region opens for postcolonial studies. Throughout its twenty-four chapters, its focus is on literary and cultural critique. It draws on texts and contexts from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries as case studies, and deploys the concept of 'post/colonial modernity' to reveal the enduring impact of colonial and imperial power on the shaping of the region. And it covers a wide and significant range of political, social, and cultural issues in the Middle East during that period - including the heritage of Orientalism in the region; the roots and contemporary branches of the Israel-Palestine conflict; colonial history, state formation and cultures of resistance in Egypt, Turkey, the Maghreb and the wider Arab world; the clash of tradition and modernity in regional and transnational expressions of Islam; the politics of gender and sexuality in the Arab world; the ongoing crises in Libya, Iraq, Iran and Syria; the Arab Spring; and the Middle Eastern refugee crisis in Europe.

This edited collection offers a timely and original perspective on the many upheavals and revolutions that broke out across the world during the earlytwentieth century. With previous research tending to confine revolutions within national borders, this book sets out to place them within a broader global sphere of thought and action. The authors explore the time phase between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Asturian Revolution of 1934, including cases from South Africa, Australia, China, the Middle East and Latin America. Providing insights from leading scholars in the field, this collection highlights the interconnectedness and transnationalism of upheavals and revolutions, offering a new approach which integrates political, social and cultural history. Chapter 8 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via Link.springer.com

In June 1887, a man known as General Husayn, a manumitted slave turned dignitary in the Ottoman province of Tunis, passed away in Florence after a life crossing empires. As a youth, Husayn was brought from Circassia to Turkey, where he was sold as a slave. In Tunis, he ascended to the rank of general before French conquest forced his exile to the northern shores of the Mediterranean. His death was followed by wrangling over his estate that spanned a surprising array of actors: Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II and his viziers; the Tunisian, French, and Italian governments; and representatives of Muslim and Jewish diasporic communities. A Slave Between Empires investigates Husayn’s transimperial life and the posthumous battle over his fortune to recover the transnational dimensions of North African history. M’hamed Oualdi places Husayn within the international context of the struggle between Ottoman and French forces for control of the Mediterranean amid social and intellectual ferment that crossed empires. Oualdi considers this part of the world not as a colonial borderland but as a central space where overlapping imperial ambitions transformed dynamic societies. He explores how the transition between Ottoman rule and European colonial domination was felt in the daily lives of North African Muslims, Christians, and Jews and how North Africans conceived of and acted upon this shift. Drawing on a wide range of Arabic, French, Italian, and English sources, A Slave Between Empires is a groundbreaking transimperial microhistory that demands a major analytical shift in the conceptualization of North African history.

A previously untold story of Jewish-Muslim relations in modern Morocco, showing how law facilitated Jews’ integration into the broader Moroccan society in which they lived Morocco went through immense upheaval in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through the experiences of a single Jewish family, Jessica Marglin charts how the law helped Jews to integrate into Muslim society—until colonial reforms abruptly curtailed their legal mobility. Drawing on a broad range of archival documents, Marglin expands our understanding of contemporary relations between Jews and Muslims and changes the way we think about Jewish history, the Middle East, and the nature of legal pluralism.

Eigene und Fremde Welten Herausgegeben von Jörg Baberowski, Stefan Rinke und Michael Wildt Mit dem Gedenken an den Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkriegs hat sich die Art der Erinnerung an dieses welthistorische Ereignis verändert. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes zielen darauf ab, Verknüpfungen zwischen individuellen Kriegserfahrungen, Geschichtsschreibung und Erinnerung herzustellen und so den Begriff eines statischen, klar definierten "Endes" des Ersten Weltkrieges zu hinterfragen, eines Konstrukts, das hauptsächlich auf europäischen Entwicklungen beruht.

A Bedouin asking a fellow tribesman about grazing conditions in other parts of the country says first simply, “Fih hayah?” or “Is there life?” A desert Arab’s knowledge of the sparse vegetation is tied directly to his life and livelihood. Bedouin Ethnobotany offers the first detailed study of plant uses among the Najdi Arabic–speaking tribal peoples of eastern Saudi Arabia. It also makes a major contribution to the larger project of ethnobotany by describing aspects of a nomadic peoples’ conceptual relationships with the plants of their homeland. The modern theoretical basis for studies of the folk classification and nomenclature of plants was developed from accounts of peoples who were small-scale agriculturists and, to a lesser extent, hunter-gatherers. This book fills a major gap by extending such study into the world of the nomadic pastoralist and exploring the extent to which these patterns are valid for another major subsistence type. James P. Mandaville, an Arabic speaker who lived in Saudi Arabia for many years, focuses first on the role of plants in Bedouin life, explaining their uses for livestock forage, firewood, medicinals, food, and dyestuffs, and examining other practical purposes. He then explicates the conceptual and linguistic aspects of his subject, applying the theory developed by Brent Berlin and others to a previously unstudied population. Mandaville also looks at the long history of Bedouin plant nomenclature, finding that very little has changed among the names and classifications in nearly eleven centuries. This volume includes a CD-ROM featuring more than 340 color images of the people, the terrain, and nearly all of the plants mentioned in the text as well as an audio file of a traditional Bedouin song and its translation and analysis. An essential volume for anyone interested in the interaction between human culture and plant life, Bedouin Ethnobotany will stand as a definitive source for years to come.