Islamic World and Near East History Commons^™

Time Machine Research And Approach, Tarek Bouraque

Theses and Dissertations

Time Machine is a hybrid documentary that explores the logics of enslavement, colonialism, eurocentrism and their interconnectedness in our globalized world. Mustapha Azemmouri, born in 1502, undertakes a journey to the 21st century to recount his own story of enslavement and exploration, and reflects on a collective puzzle of 500 years of hidden history.

The Case For Early Arabia And Arabic Language: A Reply To The New Arabia Theory By Ahmad Al-Jallad, Saad D. Abulhab

Publications and Research

A reply to an article published on May 23rd, 2018, in The New Yorker magazine by Elias Muhanna, titled A New History of Arabia, Written in Stone, introducing a new theory by Ahmad al-Jallad, a Harvard trained scholar of ancient Near East languages and scripts, asserting that the Arabic language (and presumably the Arabs) was originated in the south Levant desert and migrated southward. This theory would reverse the established conclusions set forth by the esteemed work of numerous Islamic Arab linguists and historians, over more than a thousand years, who believed the Arabs and the Arabic language originated in …

African Heritage And African-American Experience, Tanzeem S. Ajmiri

Open Educational Resources

This class is Introduction to Black roots from ancient Africa to contemporary America as an orientation to the nature of Black Studies emphasizing its relationships to world history, Europe, Asia, the Americas, slavery, Reconstruction, colonization, racism, and their politico-economic and cultural impact upon African descendants worldwide. In this course we will learn to do close readings of texts to draw evidence from them and use that evidence to produce well developed, historically situated arguments using evidence to support conclusions. Students will evaluate evidence and arguments critically and analytically to build their critical thinking skills.

Finally, students will gather, interpret, and …

Humayun Ahmed And Archival Hauntings: The Subaltern Experience Of The 1971 Liberation War Of Bangladesh As Portrayed In Debi, Nilima Islam

Dissertations and Theses

In this paper, I argue how Humayun Ahmed's Debi offers insight into the function that archives play in creating radical nationalism in a country like Bangladesh; how these archives work to consolidate political power for a select few, and how they further subjugate and silence the country’s subalterns.

Lost In Translation, Presumption, And Interpretation: Adam, Noah, And The Ancient Mesopotamian Mythology Of The Creation And The Flood, Saad D. Abulhab

Publications and Research

The common, biblical believes in an initial, single human creation, and a subsequent survival of a punishing, catastrophic flood were among the key forming pillars of the Near East monotheist religions. The other key pillar was, arguably, the belief in the existence of a one, supreme god and creator. However, neither the two stories of human creation and catastrophic flood, nor the belief in one supreme god, were originally introduced by these monotheist religions. Key inscriptions from ancient Mesopotamia have clearly indicated that various versions of these beliefs were commonplace for thousands of years before. Despite the differences in details, …

Death Of The Caliphate: Reconfiguring Ali Abd Al-Raziq’S Ideas And Legacy, Arooj Alam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The demise of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924 generated vigorous debates throughout the Muslim world regarding the political future of the Ummah. While several prominent Muslim thinkers contributed to this “Caliphate debate,” none left as contested a legacy as the Egyptian intellectual, ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq(1888-1966). In his scholarly publication, Islam and Foundations of Governance,Abd al-Raziq argued against the revival and resurrection of the Caliphate by redefining it as coercive, monarchal, and as the antithesis of the community first established by Prophet Muhammad. While Abd al-Raziq’s book attracted tremendous criticisms in 1925, numerous scholars today have commended and …

Conceptions Of Modern Egyptian Childhood During The Period Of The “Liberal Experiment” In Egypt, 1922–1952: A Comparative Study Of Taha Hussein’S, “An Egyptian Childhood,” And Sayyid Qutb’S, “A Child From The Village”, Nora Elgabalawy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Counter to French social historian Philippe Aries’ argument, the concept of an Egyptian childhood has its own traceable history, separate from the modern Western European concept of childhood. As shown, with the presence of language on childhood, in a number of pre-modern Arabic/Islamic literature, notions of childhood had a rich history outside of modern Western Europe. But, depictions of an Egyptian childhood in modern Egyptian literature, specifically two childhood autobiographies/memoirs, Taha Hussein’s An Egyptian Childhood and Sayyid Qutb’s A Child from the Village, do not emerge seamlessly from these early pre-modern depictions of childhood. Both Hussein and Qutb wrote …

Migration, Colonialism, And Belonging: Tunisians Around The First World War, 1911-1925, Chris J. Rominger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the little-examined transnational experiences of ordinary North Africans around the First World War, demonstrating how the war catalyzed a wide and unexpected range of concepts of political and social belonging. With the Mediterranean once again the site of massive migration provoked by war and economic inequality, scholars and commentators have begun to revisit the First World War’s legacy in the Arab world. Yet much work focuses on the emergence of Arab nationalism or on the diplomatic folly of the European victors. My research confronts scholarly assumptions about the temporal and geographic boundaries of the First World War …

The Impact Of Ethnic Cleansing And The Eurocentric International System On The Entrance Of The Ottoman Empire Into The Great War, 1878-1914, Parker Lake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the reasons for the Ottoman Empire’s entrance into the First World War. It claims that the Empire’s decision was rooted in the failure of the European international system to uphold its diplomatic agreements and the resulting refugee crisis in the Balkans caused by Russian imperialism.

What Kinds Of Comparison Are Most Useful In The Study Of World Philosophies?, Nathan Sivin, Anna Akasoy, Warwick Anderson, Gérard Colas, Edmond Eh

Publications and Research

Cross-cultural comparisons face several methodological challenges. In an attempt at resolving some such challenges, Nathan Sivin has developed the framework of “cultural manifolds.” This framework includes all the pertinent dimensions of a complex phenomenon and the interactions that make all of these aspects into a single whole. In engaging with this framework, Anna Akasoy illustrates that the phenomena used in comparative approaches to cultural and intellectual history need to be subjected to a continuous change of perspectives. Writing about comparative history, Warwick Anderson directs attention to an articulation between synchronic and diachronic modes of inquiry. In addition, he asks: If …

Cuneiform And The Rise Of Early Alphabets In The Greater Arabian Peninsula: A Visual Investigation, Saad D. Abulhab

Publications and Research

Scholars trace the roots of most historical and modern alphabets in the Near East and Europe, including Arabic and Latin, to a single obscure script, namely the Proto-Sinaitic or Proto-Canaanite script. This presumed script was attested by Western scholars in the early 20^th Century following the discovery in 1905-06 of a few, very short graffiti inscriptions at “Serabit el-Khadim” in the Sinai Peninsula and the subsequent discovery in 1999 of a few similar ones at “Wadi el-Hol” in the middle of Egypt. According to these scholars, Proto-Sinaitic was derived from the Egyptian Hieroglyphs writing system between 18^th-15 …

The Law Code Of Hammurabi: Transliterated And Literally Translated From Its Early Classical Arabic Language, Saad D. Abulhab

Publications and Research

This book, which includes new translations of the old Babylonian laws of Hammurabi, is the second book by the author examining, from a historical Arabic linguistic perspective, a major Akkadian document. The first book offered new translations of three tablets from a literary work, the Epic of Gilgamesh, written in a late Babylonian language. The pioneering methodology used by the author to decipher the ancient Mesopotamian texts in both documents involves the primary utilization of old etymological Arabic manuscripts written by hundreds of accomplished scholars more than a thousand years ago. Using this methodology does not only provide more accurate, …

Displaced Once More: Armenians Flee Syria To Montreal, Sean A. Shoemaker

Capstones

Since 2012, the Armenian community in Syria has sought refuge in Montreal, less than one hundred years since they left their homes and relocated to Syria as a result of the Armenian genocide that took place in 1915.

https://seanshoemaker.exposure.co/displaced-once-more

Tracing A Gypsy Mixed Language Through Medieval And Early Modern Arabic And Persian Literature, Kristina Richardson

Publications and Research

In this paper I will analyze and trace samples of a tribal dialect that thrived in medieval Islam and has survived into the modern period. It is a mixed language or para-language that takes the form of embedding a substitutive vocabulary into the grammatical structure of other languages and it has historically been spoken within communities of peripatetics and commercial nomads, or Gypsy 1 groups. In 10th-century Arabic sources produced in Būyid Iraq and Iran, non-speakers named this language lughat al-mukaddīn (the language of the beggars), another demonstration of an outsider’s perspective. However, speakers of this language called it lughat …

Owing And Owning: Zubayr Pasha, Slavery, And Empire In Nineteenth-Century Sudan, Zachary S. Berman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Mahdist revolt provides a quandary: why did Africans revolt against imperialism in defense of slavery? This study approaches the issue by analyzing the life of Zubayr Pasha, most well-known of Sudanese slave-traders in the decades leading to the Mahdist Revolt. What I found in interviews with him, parliamentary debates over him, articles about him, and proclamations concerning him, was that the emotional responses to his story show different perspectives on the processes of overlapping imperialisms, voluntary slavery, and a host of integrated issues. To himself he was a trader, a businessman working within the letter of the law; to …

Violence Against Architecture: The Lost Cultural Heritage Of Syria And Iraq, Heidi James Fisher

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines ancient architecture within Syria and Iraq that has been deliberately destroyed by violence. The act of destroying architecture and monuments in both Syria and Iraq, which is often-historical UNESCO protected, will invariably violate various laws, such as the 1954 Hague Convention or the Rome Statute. Since post-2011 Syria, all of humanity has been shocked by continuous warfare that, in addition to causing untold loss of human life and suffering, has included a series of episodes of violence against architecture, all of which is so egregious that foreign governments and non government organizations are constantly engaged in efforts …

Review Of Muslims And Jews In France. History Of A Conflict By Maud S. Mandel, Bryan Turner

Publications and Research

The mood of European scholarship with respect to the recognition and integration of Islam is typically pessimistic. The rise of anti-immigrant and anti-Islam political parties – Golden Dawn in Greece, the Northern League in Italy, Marine Le Penn and the National Front in France, and the English defense league in Britain – have exposed a hitherto hidden or ignored under-current of resentment against foreigners. In the context of these developments, Maud Mandel’s study of Muslims and Jews in France is a welcome corrective to the dominant focus on anti-Islam in the academic literature and in the popular media. The historical …

The Epic Of Gilgamesh: Selected Readings From Its Original Early Arabic Language. Including A New Translation Of The Flood Story, Saad D. Abulhab

Publications and Research

This book introduces the earliest known literary and mythology work in the world, the Epic of Gilgamesh, in its actual language: early Classical Arabic. It provides a more accurate translation and understanding of the important story of the flood, one of the key stories of the monotheistic religions. In this book, the author was able to decipher the actual meanings and pronunciations of several important names of ancient Mesopotamian gods, persons, cities, mountains, and other entities. He was able to uncover the evolution path of the concept of god and the background themes behind the rise of the monotheistic religions. …

The French Revolution In The French-Algerian War (1954-1962): Historical Analogy And The Limits Of French Historical Reason, Timothy Scott Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the use of the French Revolution as an explanatory device for discussing the French-Algerian War (1954-1962). Anticolonial intellectuals in France invoked the French Revolution to explain their reasons for supporting colonial reform as well as their solidarity with Algerian nationalist aims. Through an examination of intellectuals’ public interventions alongside French and Algerian historical narratives, I examine the ways in which historical alignment signaled political and cultural distance between France and Algeria. Making an independent Algeria analogous to eighteenth-century revolutionary France lent political and conceptual legitimacy to Algerian claims to an independent national identity while also reinforcing the …

Conflict And Cooperation: Western Economic Interests In Ottoman Iraq 1894-1914, Jameel N. Haque

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates underutilized U.S. archival sources in order to discuss certain aspects of late Ottoman history in Baghdad and Basra, between 1894 and 1914. Since these sources have been underutilized, their inclusion will widen the scope of possible historical investigation in the study of Late Ottoman Baghdad and Basra. This research will suggest that, in this period, there was an expanding role/presence for America and Americans that is not currently reflected in the historiography. This should, of course, be qualified since Americans and American interests in the region, although on the increase, were still significantly less than those of …

Engagement And Resistance: African Americans, Saudi Arabia And Islamic Transnationalisms, 1975 To 2000, Jeffrey Diamant

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the 1960s, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has financed missionary efforts to Muslims around the world, attempting to spread a Salafi form of Islam that professes strict adherence to Islamic sacred scripture. The effects of this transnational proselytization have depended on numerous factors in “host countries.” This project explores the various impacts of Saudi transnational religious influence in the United States among African-Americans. By relying on previously unused documentary sources and fresh oral histories, it shows how Saudi “soft power” attempted to effect change in religious practices of African-American Muslims from 1975 through 2000. It provides the most detailed …

The Sciences Of The Soul: The Emergence Of Psy-Sciences And The Modern State In Turkey, Kutlughan Soyubol

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the epistemological and conceptual formation and articulations of madness, mental health, and selfhood in the context of creating a modern Turkish nation (1923-1960). Three inter-related themes run through the study. First, the emergence of new and often contested medical discourses on mental health that engaged with and participated in the construction of healthy secular subjects within the imaginary milieu of the Kemalist nationalist project. Second, the processes through which psy-sciences, armed with scientific rationality, came to engage with and appropriate the language and the terrain once occupied by religion. And third, the intricate discursive fluctuations over the …

Heroic Depiction Vs. Modern Slaughtering -The Great War In The Middle East As A Semi-Modern War, Frank Jacob, Riccardo Altieri

Publications and Research

The paper discusses the reception of the Middle East during the First World War comparing different areas of campaigns and battles in the region.

Scholar Asks How Mesopotamians Lived, Felt, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Resource-Sharing And Genealogical Research On Islamic Chinese Names In Guilin, Sheau-Yueh J. Chao

Publications and Research

Jiapu家譜, the Chinese Family Register, has been used for thousands of years to trace the genealogical history of a clan and lineage, including a family’s origin, its collateral lines, the migration history of the clan, names and ages of the members, records of marriages, births and deaths, merits and deeds, ancestral biography and ancestral locality. This paper examines the historical evolution and value of Chinese genealogical records with the focus on researching the Islamic Chinese names found in Jiapu and used by the people living in Guilin, Guangxi Province. It provides the historical background of genealogical records and analyzes the …

Inscriptional Evidence Of Pre-Islamic Classical Arabic: Selected Readings In The Nabataean, Musnad, And Akkadian Inscriptions, Saad D. Abulhab

Publications and Research

This book investigates the ancient roots of Classical Arabic through detailed tracings and readings of selected, Pre-Islamic, ancient inscriptions from the Northern and Southern Arabian Peninsula. It provides detailed readings of important Akkadian, Nabataean, and old Arabic Musnad inscriptions, including Namarah and the Epic of Gilgamesh inscriptions. The book provides clear inscriptional evidence indicating that Classical Arabic was predominantly utilized in the major population centers of the greater Arabian Peninsula, including Mesopotamia and the Levant regions, many, many centuries before Islam. In his book, the author presents several important new readings. Among them, a new reading of two important Classical …

Problematizing "Autonomy" And "Tradition" With Regard To Veiling: A Response To Seval Yildirim, Anissa Helie

Publications and Research

Debates related to Muslim women’s dress, specifically, often pit religious freedom, individual liberty, and cultural rights against women’s rights and gender equality. Hélie's response to Yildirim (specifically her discussion of national and international legal responses to “headcoverings”) does not focus on legal aspects, but rather on gendered practices and their ideological roots.

Hélie adopts a global lens, recognizing that whilst historical and socio-political specificities are crucial to grasp the nuances of each context, questions related to dress codes in Muslim contexts nevertheless relate to issues affecting our world at large. Hélie discusses two main aspects of Yildirim's argument - namely: …

The Politics Of Abortion Policy In The Heterogeneous "Muslim World", Anissa Helie

Publications and Research

Legal frameworks inspired by Muslim jurisprudence (also referred to as Shari’a) regulate the lives of as many as 600 million women around the world, a majority of them living in Asia. Personal Status Codes or Family Codes impact various aspects of women’s status as citizens, professionals, wives, mothers, etc.

As in many other, non-Muslim contexts, questions linked to women’s bodies tend to generate fierce debates especially in the arena of reproductive rights. A number of women’s rights defenders from Muslim societies have noted that Family Codes often become more restrictive where conservative and/or extremist religious voices are able to influence, …

Dearabizing Arabia: Tracing Western Scholarship On The History Of The Arabs And Arabic Language And Script, Saad D. Abulhab

Publications and Research

This book is a reference book on the history of the Arabic Language and script, which goes beyond the sole discussion of technical matters. It studies objectively the evidence presented by modern-day western archeological discoveries together with the evidence presented by the indispensable scholarly work and research of past Islamic Arab civilization era. The book scrutinizes modern western theories regarding the history of the Arabs and Arabic language and script in connection with the roles played by Western Near East scholarship, religion and colonial history in the formation of current belief system, which is an essential step to study this …

Las Cuestiones Sicilianas De Ibn Sab‘Īn: El Texto, Sus Fuentes Y Su Contexto Histórico, Anna Ayşe Akasoy

Publications and Research

The Sicilian Questions are the earliest pre-served text of the philosopher and Sufi Ibn Sab‘īn of Murcia (c. 614/1217-668/1270). Even though the prologue of the text claims that it is a response to questions sent by Frederick II to the Arab world, it seems more likely that it was an introductory manual for Arab students of philosophy, dealing with four specific and controversial problems as away of presenting general concepts of Aristotelian philosophy. This article analyses the structure and way of argumentation in the Sicilian Questions. Particular attention is being paid to the relationship between mysticism and philosophy and …