Islamic World and Near East History Commons^™

A Subcontinent's Sunni Schism: The Deobandi-Barelvi Rivalry And The Creation Of Modern South Asia, William Kesler Jackson

History - Dissertations

This work presents the first-ever history of the 150-year religio-political rivalry between the Deobandis and the Barelvis--arguably the most important schism in the "Muslim world," and certainly the most significant within Sunni Islam. More recently, that rivalry has often been expressed by means of bullets and bombs, especially in Pakistan. But beyond the headline-grabbing violence of the Deobandi-Barelvi schism lies the story of a century-and-a-half-long religious antagonism: at first over converts, later for competing visions of the political future, then for a place within a new "Islamic" polity--for dominance within its political structure. For Deobandis, the rivalry was defined by …

“All Things Forget The Forest:” The Convergence Of The War And The Pastoral In Edward Thomas’S Body Of Work, Nicole Trobaugh

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Edward Thomas, often identified as a war poet, eludes definitive characterization despite the fact that his poems are often anthologized as war poems. However, unlike other widely-known war poets, such as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, the imagery present in Thomas’s poetry contains much subtlety and features dominant usage of nature themes. This project attempts to navigate the multi-faceted world of Edward Thomas through consideration of his love for nature, his melancholic predispositions, and his preoccupations with the looming Great War in order to study Thomas’s use of natural imagery in the context of grief, melancholy, and traumatic experience. To …

From Pre-Islam To Mandate States: Examining Cultural Imperialism And Cultural Bleed In The Levant, Gabriel Willman

HIM 1990-2015

To a large degree, historical analyses of the Levantine region tend to focus primarily upon martial interaction and state formation. However, perhaps of equitable impact is the chronology of those interactions which are cultural in nature. The long-term formative effect of cultural imperialism and cultural bleed can easily be as influential as the direct alterations imposed by martial invasion. While this study does not attempt to establish comparative causal weight or catalytic impact between these types of interactions, it does contend that the cultural evolution of the Levant has been significantly influenced by external interaction for a period of time …

Imagining Kurdish Identity In Mandatory Syria: Finding A Nation In Exile, Ahmet Serdar Akturk

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation looks at the activities of the Kurdish nationalists from Turkey who were exiled in Syria and Lebanon during the period of the French mandate, and especially Jaladet and Kamuran Bedirkhan. Scions of a princely Kurdish family from the Botan region in Eastern Anatolia, the Bedirkhan brothers initiated a Kurdish cultural movement in exile following the failure of two armed rebellions against the new Turkish Republic in 1925 and 1930. Central to this cultural movement was the publication of journals in Damascus and Beirut, namely Hawar (1932-1943) Ronahi (1942-1945), Roja Nu/Le Jour Nouveau (1943-1946), and Ster (1943-1945).

This study …

Review Of Nazan Çiçek, The Young Ottomans: Turkish Critics Of The Eastern Question In The Late Nineteenth Century, Bedross Der Matossian

Department of History: Faculty Publications

The ‘Eastern Question’, coined by European powers in the nineteenth century, came to denote the diplomatic and political problems posed by the decline of the Ottoman Empire. The historiography on the Eastern Question has been mostly Eurocentric, addressing the diplomatic history of the Eastern Question without taking into consideration the Eastern actors of the Question, that is, the Muslim Turks. One of the major actors to emerge during the height of the Eastern Question was a group known as the Young Ottomans who became extremely critical of the Tanzimat reforms in general and the Ottoman Porte’s handling of the Eastern …

Muslim Vs Islamic, Jan-E-Alam Khaki

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

No abstract provided.

The Palestinian Diaspora 1947 Onwards: Social And Political Reasons, Margaret Sheppard

Young Historians Conference

The Palestinian diaspora in 1948 was the result of many social and political factors, including the impact of Jewish immigration, conflicts between the Arab world and the new Jewish state, and the Zionist desire for a Jewish homeland. The diaspora did not stem from anyone single incident or motivation, instead it was the result of numerous events and growing tensions. It was the end product of social upheaval and pro Israeli political policies during the formation of the state of Israel. In this paper, the diaspora is explained in terms of its social and political causes.

Kemalism: A Revolutionary Ideology And Its Islamist Opposition, Juliann Merryman

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

“Kemalism: A Revolutionary Ideology and its Islamist Opposition” seeks to define the Kemalist reform period as a revolutionary movement. During the 1920s and 1930s, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his authoritarian government undertook a series of sweeping social and political reforms. This paper seeks to establish these reforms and the underlying Kemalist ideology as a revolutionary ideology. Using a functionalist perspective, the essay illustrates the various crises that faced the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A number of reform efforts failed to effectively address the entirety of Ottoman societal ills.

The rise of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the …

Media Focus In Afghanistan News Coverage, Abdul Qahar Jawad

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the Media Focus in Afghanistan News Coverage to examine what categories of Afghanistan-related news received the largest amount of coverage during periods from 2010 to 2012. This study covered reports in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and The Daily Outlook Afghanistan, a national Afghan news outlet, as a sample within a period of three months over three years (June 2010, July 2011, and August 2012). The 147 news stories' headlines of the four news organizations were studied to find what categories (process: peace talks, negotiation, and economic development; conflict: violence and military action; …

The History Of Nusayris ('Alawis) In Ottoman Syria, 1831-1876, Ali Capar

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire experienced significant events, such as the Egyptian invasion, the Tanzimat Reforms and the increasing activities of Protestant missionaries between 1831 and 1876. In this thesis, I tried to analyze the course of the Ottoman-Nusayri relationship between 1831 and 1876, the treatment of the Ottoman government toward the Nusayris, outcomes of the Egyptians and the Ottoman reforms in the region and among the Nusayris, the reaction of the Nusayris to these reform policies, and the activities of the Protestant missionaries among the Nusayri community.

Agricultural Production And Stability Of Settlement Systems In Upper Mesopotamia During The Early Bronze Age (Third Millennium Bce), Tuna Kalayci

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the relationship between rainfall variation and rain-fed agricultural production in Upper Mesopotamia with a specific focus on Early Bronze Age urban settlements. In return, the variation in production is used to explore stability of urban settlement systems. The organization of the flow of agricultural goods is the key to sustaining the total settlement system.

The vulnerability of a settlement system increases due to the increased demand for more output from agricultural lands. This demand is the key for the success of urbanization project. However, without estimating how many foodstuffs were available at the end of a production …

The Battle Of Beersheba: Strategic And Tactical Pivot Of Palestine, Zachary D. Grafman

Senior Honors Theses

The Battle of Beersheba, fought on October 31, 1917, was a vital turning point in the British campaign against the Ottoman Turks. The battle opened a gap in the Turkish line that eventually resulted in the British takeover of Palestine. The British command saw the cavalry charge of the 4th Light Horse Brigade as a new tactical opportunity, and this factored into the initiative for new light tank forces designed around the concepts of mobility and flanking movements. What these commanders failed to realize was that the Palestine Campaign was an anachronistic theater of war in comparison to the rest …

Democracy, Identity And Anti-Americanism In Turkey: Implications For United States-Turkey Relations, Jeff Easterling '13

Honor Scholar Theses

No abstract provided.

The Death Of Al-ʿAbbās B. Al-MaʾMūn And A “Thwarted” Coup D’État, John P. Turner

Faculty Scholarship

This article focuses on the point at which the slave soldiers of al-Muʿtaṣim (r. a.h. 218–227/833–842 c.e.) rose to the political forefront and came to dominate the holder of the Caliphal seat. It is a study of the mechanisms by which the center of the state, and more specifically the Caliph, came to be their captives.

The Evolution Of The Term ‘Qarn’ In Early Islamic Sources, Abed El-Rahman Tayyara

World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

In modern standard Arabic, recurrences of the term qarn (pl. qurun), of the root q-r-n, revolve around two meanings: a "horn" or "one hundred years."2 The association of qarn with "horn" is borrowed from the animal domain due to the eye-catching sight oft he animal's horns. Hence, the etymology of qarn is based on the notion that two things are situated parallel to each other. This study, however, will not examine the first meaning of qarn, but instead focus on the second. The attestations of qarn in early Islamic sources point to a composite term that retained a wide range …

Disease, War, And Famine In The Sudan And Haiti: A Crisis Noticed And A Crisis Ignored, Melissa Whalen

Masters Theses

The media acts as a gatekeeper and decides what material to cover and what not to cover. In order to better understand why one disaster receives media coverage and another crisis is virtually unnoticed by the media, the motives behind covering one story over another is analyzed in this study. Three major American newspaper articles concerning the Haitian earthquake and the crisis in Darfur are examined in order to discover the media's motives for covering Haiti over Darfur.

I Am A Yakhchal, Scott M. Shafer

Student Publications

A description of the history and function of a traditional Iranian ice house, known as a Yakhchal, as told through the eyes of one such ice house surviving into the present day.

Clay-Potter Imagery In The Bible: Theological And Practical Implications For Daily Christian Life, Karl Stelzer

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

God, the Master Potter, uses clay-potter imagery to explain spiritual truth. These passages are ignored, explained superficially, or misinterpreted and have not had the divinely intended impact. Theologically, doctrines of Theology Proper, Bibliology, and Anthropology have been compromised. Practically, the Holy Spirit has been hindered. To demonstrate the need for clay-potter instruction, research will include a comparative analysis of information gathered through questionnaires to churches that have held a clay-potter conference and those that have not, and an examination of written material and popular presentations. This author combines professional pottery expertise and biblical training to present accurate exposition. This thesis …

Shadows Of Kabul: Qiam Amiry Now Ponders Afghanistan's Troubles From Afar, John Campbell

Colby Magazine

A few years ago, Qiam Amiry ’09 was walking the streets of Kabul working as an interpreter for the British military. Now, on Mayflower Hill, Amiry has found sanctuary but has not escaped the issues facing his country.

The Marwani Musalla In Jerusalem: New Findings, Beatrice St. Laurent, Isam Awwad

Art and Art History Faculty Publications

Shortly after Caliph ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab’s (579-644, caliph 634-644) arrival in Jerusalem in 638, he is said to have constructed a rudimentary mosque or prayer space south of the historical Rock now contained within the Dome of the Rock (completed 691) on the former Temple Mount or Bayt al-Maqdis known popularly since Mamluk and Ottoman times as the Haram al-Sharif. Though later textual evidence indicates that ‘Umar prayed somewhere south of the “rock” and later scholars suggest that he constructed a rudimentary prayer space on the site, there is no surviving physical evidence of that initial structure. After his appointment …