This collective volume examines the evolving political dynamics of the Eastern Mediterranean. Recently, both the opportunities, such as the energy resources, and the challenges, such as the enormous migration flows, have caught the international attention since they have redefined the balance of powers in the area. This volume assembles the analyses of acknowledged scholars and academics from the Eastmed countries, who assess the most fundamental developments of the region in a comprehensive manner, underscoring the significance of the Eastern Mediterranean for the world politics. The book focuses on readers and parties primarily at European level/ EU affiliated, interested in national, regional, EU or international aspects of the Eastern Mediterranean area, such as politics, security, migration governance and energy developments on regional and EU level.

This volume provides an introduction to the Eastern Mediterranean region and introduces the concept of the Eastern Mediterranean as a new regional subsystem. Due to recent events in contemporary international politics, the Eastern Mediterranean can be seen as a laboratory where the balance of power among Great Powers and regional states are being tested. Written by leading academics in their respective fields, this book addresses key developments in the area and argues that the Eastern Mediterranean should be viewed as a distinct region. Particular emphasis is given to the initiatives undertaken by Israel, Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey; the role played by the United States and Russia; and the issues of energy, migration, and Islamic terrorism. Bringing together relevant information and theoretical debates, this book will be of interest to graduate students and academics studying international relations and politics in the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as policymakers and journalists who want to have a clearer understanding of developments in the region.

A fascinating history of nineteenth century Eastern Mediterranean port cities, re-examining European influence over the changing lives of their urban populations.

This book provides an in-depth assessment of the modern geopolitics of hydrocarbon resources in the territorial waters of the Eastern Mediterranean, highlighting the current conflicts and disputes in the maritime territories of Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Turkey. Further, these geopolitical aspects are analyzed within the broader context of the tensions between and competing interests of big powers such as the USA, Russia, and the European Union. To what extent can major powers influence regional actors and guide them toward rational outcomes? To what extent can economic self-interest contain nationalistic impulses? What are the most practical and sustainable ways of promoting win-win scenarios? This book focuses on such questions and presents a number of clear policy guidelines to help the conflict-laden Eastern Mediterranean region gain a more peaceful and sustainable footing for the greater benefit of the peoples living there.

The eastern Mediterranean was the centre of trade for many centuries, sitting at the junction of what are now Europe, Asia and Africa. It was the place where exotic produce and products could be traded or exchanged for things that had their origins perhaps thousands of miles away. But wherever trade takes place, a similar exchange of ideas, technology and culture also occurs. This book presents thirty papers on this very subject, looking at the ways in which we can measure the transmission of culture, and how this transmission varied across time and space.

This volume focuses on a wide range of scholarship on one of the most compelling periods in the antiquity of the Mediterranean and Near East. It presents new interpretive approaches to the problems of the Bronze Age to Iron Age transformation.

Avner Ben-Zaken reconsiders the fundamental question of how early modern scientific thought traveled between Western and Eastern cultures in the age of the so-called Scientific Revolution. Through five meticulously researched case studies—in which he explores how a single obscure object or text moved in the Eastern world—Ben-Zaken reveals the intricate ways that scientific knowledge moved across cultures. His diligent exploration traces the eastward flow of post-Copernican cosmologies and scientific discoveries, showing how these ideas were disseminated, modified, and applied to local cultures. Never before has a student of scientific traffic in the Mediterranean taken such pains to see precisely which instruments, books, and ideas first appeared where, in whose hands, by what means, and with what implications. In doing so, Ben-Zaken challenges accepted views of Western primacy in this fruitful exchange. He shows not only how Islamic cultures benefited from European scientific knowledge but also how Eastern understanding of classical Greek texts informed developments in the West. Ben-Zaken’s mastery of different cultures and languages uniquely positions him to tell this intriguing story. His findings reshape our understanding of scientific discourse in this critical period and contribute to the growing field of cross-cultural Christian-Muslim studies.

The organization of human smuggling from the Middle East and Africa through Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean has become a contemporary political concern throughout Europe, receiving intense and polarised media attention. This timely book reformulates how we conceive of human smuggling, challenging popular and political conceptions of the practice in Europe. This book proposes a new framework for examining the causes and effects of human smuggling in the Mediterranean, analysing the contingent patterns of human smuggling in the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean with a geographic focus on Turkey. Building on unique empirical material from fieldwork in Turkey and Greece, this book describes the rise of human smuggling as a practice, viewed through a framework of multiple 'contingencies'. Uniquely, this book includes in-depth testimonies of migrants who have survived crossing the Aegean Sea and details the strategies and tactics of the facilitators who help them. In Human Smuggling in the Eastern Mediterranean, Theodore Baird puts a human face to the tragedies occurring in the Mediterranean while maintaining that contingent historical, political, economic, and geographic forces have aligned to propel the practice of human smuggling forward. The book will be of interest to scholars working in migration studies, as well as scholars in the fields of sociology, criminology, law, political science, anthropology, and geography.

The two-volume Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture bridges the gap between monograph and survey text by providing a new level of access and interpretation to Islamic art. The more than 50 newly commissioned essays revisit canonical topics, and include original approaches and scholarship on neglected aspects of the field. This two-volume Companion showcases more than 50 specially commissioned essays and an introduction that survey Islamic art and architecture in all its traditional grandeur Essays are organized according to a new chronological-geographical paradigm that remaps the unprecedented expansion of the field and reflects the nuances of major artistic and political developments during the 1400-year span The Companion represents recent developments in the field, and encourages future horizons by commissioning innovative essays that provide fresh perspectives on canonical subjects, such as early Islamic art, sacred spaces, palaces, urbanism, ornament, arts of the book, and the portable arts while introducing others that have been previously neglected, including unexplored geographies and periods, transregional connectivities, talismans and magic, consumption and networks of portability, museums and collecting, and contemporary art worlds; the essays entail strong comparative and historiographic dimensions The volumes are accompanied by a map, and each subsection is preceded by a brief outline of the main cultural and historical developments during the period in question The volumes include periods and regions typically excluded from survey books including modern and contemporary art-architecture; China, Indonesia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sicily, the New World (Americas)