Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons^™

Topographies Of Being: World-Making And Ontological Formation In Modern Saint Catherine, South Sinai, Ahmad Mahana

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an exploration of the ecological and sociological processes involved in the production of the socionatural space of the contemporary town and natural protectorate of Saint Catherine, South Sinai. Revered by all Abrahamic religions as the site of the Great Theophany, the town has perpetually been considered an area of immense spiritual and natural significance. In recent decades, however, the town has undergone a series of modernizing campaigns that have not only threatened the region’s natural environment and indigenous lifeways but have also jeopardized the plurality of its extant lifeworlds. By relying on a variety of ethnographic methods, …

Reconfiguring The Category Of 'Sudan' Through The Literary Field: Representation, Disposability, Ambiguity And The 'Magical' In Four Post-Colonial Novels (2002-2022), Mourad Farahat

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis I shall argue that contemporary African literature, with ‘’both its ethnographic imagination and anthropological complexity’’ (Orock, 2022, p.3), its use of ‘disruptive’ characters, and its focus on the embeddedness of the ‘collective’, the ‘common’ and the ‘vulgar’ in the personal (Mbembe, 2003), may help us mitigate some social scientific limitations on the study of Africa, and may aid us in understanding relations of power within the post-colony. I seek to show how contemporary Sudanese literature has already moved beyond the fixed social categories, lines, and limits which dominate some of the social scientific literature on Sudan. Literature …

Anxious Futures: Capital, Nation And Advertising In Beirut, Lebanon, Caitlin Alais Callahan

Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary billboard advertising in Beirut fuels anxiety in Beirut’s citizens. In a city suffering from daily uncertainties caused by a devastating financial collapse in 2019, and mourning victims of the worst non-nuclear explosion to ever occur in the Port of Beirut in 2020, Beirutis are also faced with advertising which constantly reinforces uneasiness. Visual advertisements market visas to leave the country, purchasing second passports and money counting machines, forming quotidian reminders of the current state of the country. Using interviews and visual ethnographic material collected during the summer of 2023, this thesis discusses how billboards help to foster dialogue around …

Which Tools Can Aid The Management Of Intangible Cultural Heritage In Community Based Heritage Organizations In Cairo? A Case Study Of Shubra’S Archive, Mienke Zwemstra

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a comprehensive overview of cultural heritage management in Cairo, focusing particularly on intangible heritage and the potential benefits of digital tools in this field. It highlights the marginalization of community-based organizations in the broader narrative of heritage management in Cairo, along with the limited alignment and collaboration between local, national and international heritage institutions. Drawing from ethnographic research conducted at the Shubra’s Archive (SARD), this study identifies the challenges faced by such organizations, including the reliance on volunteers and international funding for mission implementation. It emphasizes the importance of strategic planning and collaboration with municipal and national …

Student Perceptions Of Icc Development And The Reasons For It During Casa@Auc, Stephen Wright

Theses and Dissertations

Research has described how studying abroad has become a major goal in the Arabic world, focusing on understanding the ideas and way of life of another culture and people. Study abroad programs increase students' “Intercultural communicative competence” as indicated by researchers like Maharaja (2018) and Lee and Song (2019). The current study is a case study involving three participants. It focuses on students' perceptions of the influence of the CASA@AUC study abroad program on their intercultural communicative competence (ICC) as reflected by ACTFL performance indicators they are capable of executing. Results of the study indicate that they have reached advanced …

Exploring My Father's Rare Books, Magazines, And Newspapers Collection, Amal Nagah Elbeshbishi

Performances, Events, and Presentations

This presentation was delivered at the a workshop under the title "Here be dragons: Navigating newspaper archives in Egypt and the Middle East". It provides background information about the Nagah Elbeshbishi collection which is held at AUC and Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

Regulating Change In Historic Cairo, Amina Abdel-Halim

Faculty Journal Articles

Renovation and conservation projects in Historic Cairo fall within a complex legal framework, which sometimes does more to hinder development than to promote it.

A Tale Of Two And A Half Mummies: An Intrusive Burial From The Tomb Of Karabasken (Tt 391), Hayley Ruth Goddard

Theses and Dissertations

In 2014, the South Asasif Conservation Project, directed by Elena Pischikova, discovered a previously unknown side chamber in the tomb of Karabasken (TT 391), a proto-Kushite tomb located in the South Asasif. Designated as Side Chamber 1A, it contained an intact burial assemblage. The contents of the tomb, all of which had suffered damage caused by repeated flooding, included three coffins which each contained a mummy. One of the mummies was most unusual, consisting of just the upper half of the body of a young man which was truncated at the waist.

This study is the first to assess and …

Printing Devotion: Sufi Books And Their Transregional Networks In An Age Of Print, Mariam Elashmawy

Theses and Dissertations

The production of printed books in the Muslim world is a story that encompasses an array of actors, spanning centuries, and taking place in remote, yet connected locales. This thesis provides an intellectual history of Ṣūfī print production of Islamicate mystical works in the nineteenth-twentieth centuries by examining three overlapping genres: poetry, Ṣūfī histories (hagiography), and litanies (aḥzāb). Texts such as the Dīwān of devotional poetry by Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 632/1234), the litany of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī (d. 656/1258), Ḥizb al-baḥr, and Rashaḥāt ʿayn al-ḥayāt, a history of the Naqshbandiyya order by Fakhr …

A Methodological Approach To Utilize Egyptian Colloquial Arabic As A Source For Ancient Egyptian Linguistic Analysis, Ahmed Osman

Theses and Dissertations

Traces of the ancient Egyptian language can still be observed in modern Egyptian colloquial Arabic, which is the form of Arabic adopted by Egyptians as their native spoken language. This thesis aims to better understand the ancient Egyptian language through the analysis of its lexical survivals. It presents a new methodological approach to utilize ancient Egyptian lexical survivals as a source to study the ancient Egyptian language. A selected set of fifty-five ancient Egyptian lexical survivals was computed by matching ancient Egyptian and documented Egyptian colloquial Arabic words having the same semantic fields. While it was generally assumed that the …

Texts, Language, And History In The Madhab-Law Tradition: A Study Of The ShāfiʿĪ School, Tarek Ghanem

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis advances the study of the legal literature from the madhhab-law tradition by way of studying the Shāfiʿī literary tradition and its two most authoritative classics. These two works are al-Nawawī’s (d. 676/1278) digest Minhāj al-ṭālibīn and Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī’s (d. 974/1567) commentary on it, Tuḥfat al-minhāj. This study will provide a typology of the development of the Shāfiʿī juristic texts. The typology is based on an indigenous and coherent periodization centered around an analysis of the intellectual and social developments within the Shāfiʿī legal tradition, not the classical Eurocentric periodization scheme. The main objective of this typology is …

Women's Self-Presentation In Ancient Egypt, Mariam Ayad

Faculty Book Chapters

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Al-Ghazali's Integral Epistemology: A Critical Analysis Of The Jewels Of The Quran, Amani Elshimi

Theses and Dissertations

The Jewels of the Quran by renowned Islamic scholar Abu Hamid al-Ghazali has usually been published as a two-volume publication, consisting of al-Ghazali’s hierarchy of sciences, followed by a thematic classification of verses from the Quran. A recent edition of the book includes a third chapter which is often published alone as The Book of Forty Religious Principles, but which al-Ghazali makes reference to in his introduction. A thorough, contextualized, critical analysis of the 3-chapter publication reveals al-Ghazali’s more comprehensive integral framework of knowledge – one which stems from and is held by a core experience of the Divine, and …

The Evolution Of Islamic Arches Till 1250, Ehsan Abushadi

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

This paper discusses the development of, and influences on, the form of arches in the Islamic period up until the year 1250; using examples from across the empire while charting the development from area to area through time. It starts with the semicircular arch and how that developed into the pointed arch with its varieties. The paper also explores how the shouldered arch developed, leading to the tri-lobed and keel arch. On the other hand, there is no clear development path for the horse shoe arch which suggests that it may have developed in various parts of the world at …

U.S Mediation At Camp David (I) And (Ii): A Reflection On Third Party Mediation Processes, Bassel Salah Mostafa

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Rise And Development Of Societal Obligation (Fardh Kifiiya) In Islamic Legal Philosophy, Nahla El-Haraki

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Even In Words, There's Greed: Stories About Power And The Everyday Among Christian Cement Carriers In Saft El-Laban, Fouad Halbouni

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Politics And The Irrevocable Land Convenant: A Theological And Practical History Of The Land In The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Ramy Makar

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Dialectic Of Past And Present In Eco's The Name Of The Rose And Al-Ghitani's Zayni Barakat, Martino Lovato

Archived Theses and Dissertations

This thesis compares an Italian and an Egyptian novel, Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and Gamal al-Ghitani's Zayni Barakat, paying particular attention to the way European and Arabic historiographies influence their composition. Both set at the end of the Middle Ages, the two novels are taken as representatives of the way contemporary European and Arabic literature portray the past in relation to their present. Starting with a reconstruction of the two historiographic patterns based on Salvation and Progress, and their influencing the notion of literary Medievalism, the two novels are treated separately in order to contextualize them in …

The Mut`Azilī Criteria For Evaluating Prophetic Traditions With Special Reference To Usụ̄L Al-Fiqh, Mohamed Ahmed Abdelrahman

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Narrative, Authority And The Voices Of Morality And Reason: An Intertextual Exploration Of Select Texts Of Mirror For Princes Literature & The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night With Select Sufi Literature, Sharon Allen

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Medical Healers In Ottoman Egypt, 1517-1798, Sherry Sayed Gad Elrab

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Stylistic Analysis Of The Use Of Simile In Kalila Wa Dimna By Ibn Al-Muqaffa', Cynthia Brandenburg Harlow

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Democratic Solutions To Identity Conflict: The Case Of Lebanon, Monty Roberson Jr.

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Cultural Persistence And The Bedouin Of Egypt's Sinai Penninsula, Simeon Roos-Eefsting

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Mamluk Carpets ( Cairene And Ottoman), Hala Mohamed Sayed

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Code Mixing In 'Ammiyat Al-Muthaqqafin: A Case Study On The Use Of The B-Prefix As A Tense Marker, Hanady Tawakol

Archived Theses and Dissertations

This study aims at investigating possible rules that govern code mixing between the two basic varieties (H and L; Ferguson, 1959) at the verbal phrase level (combining linguistic features of Fusha and ‘ammiya in spoken verbal sentences used in ‘ammiyat Al-Muthaqqafin). In this study, the feature of choice is the use of the b-prefix (an aspectual marker used as a prefix with present tense ‘ammiya verbs). In particular, this study aims at analyzing the possible rules that govern the use of the b-prefix from a linguistic perspective. Furthermore, this study attempts to determine whether morphological or syntactic factors affect its …

Kurds In The Mosul Province 1918-1932, Kristen Alff

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Saudi Arabia: Remodeling Authoritarianism For The 21 St Century, Kira D Jumet

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Ibn 'Arabi's Primacy Of Consciousness: Finding In Being Found By The Real, Reham Elnory

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.