Middle Eastern History

THEY TOLD YOU WHAT THEY WERE DOING WHILE THEY DID IT "Blow up and flatten everything . . ." These chilling words, said by Amichai Eliyahu, a minister in the Israeli government, have been a message to the world and the people of Gaza: destroying everything—homes, businesses, lives—is justified. Even beautiful. For fifteen months and in full view of the...

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire straddled three continents and encompassed extraordinary ethnic and cultural diversity among the estimated thirty million people living within its borders. It was perhaps the most cosmopolitan state in the world—and possibly the most volatile. A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire now gives scholars and general readers a concise...

What do you do when divine law and the justice demanded by your conscience clash? Muslims have wrestled with this problem since the earliest caliphates. The mazalim courts, dating back to the eighth century, were the answer: courts where any subject could appeal directly to an Islamic ruler regarding any matter of justice. Mazalim courts, which were not bound by...

Children of Abraham was selected as a Financial Times Book to Read in 2026. Muslims and Jews have engaged with one another—sometimes for better, sometimes for worse—for over 1,400 years. Yet, recent discourse tends to focus on only the most antagonistic aspects of the two communities' interactions. Marc David Baer paints a more nuanced picture of Muslim-Jewish relations, from Muhammad's...

The story of imperialism and resistance from the nineteenth century to the age of Trump, told in six gripping chapters each filled with ironic plot twists and colourful actors. Axis of Empire narrates the dramatic tale of how America’s missionaries and educators, oilmen and CIA agents, scholars and arms dealers, diplomats and presidents have played roles in the Middle East....

The 1979 Islamic Revolution triggered a cold war between Iran and the United States – former fast friends. Despite the US’s relentless efforts at containment, Iran has risen as a formidable power in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza. Its newfound status not only frustrates the US but has swiftly become a thorn in the side of Israel and Saudi...

“Shehadeh's books are like beacons held up against the darkness” Observer “A heartbreaking, hopeful look at how Palestinian culture endures” Irish Times Forgotten is a search for hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine—now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories—and what they might tell us about the land and the people who live on our small slip of...

This dynamic exploration of two key modes of visual culture - fashion and photography - in 19th-century Istanbul contributes to an expanding body of research on fashion and the dressed body outside the Euro-American context. Based on meticulous analysis of visual, written and material objects, it focuses on women's lived experience during a time of dramatic change in the Ottoman...

For over a century, the Middle East has been riven by conflict driven by Jewish and Arab nationalism. They came about at the same point in history with claims over the same territory. Their encounter has evolved into one of the most enduring and divisive geopolitical issues of the modern era - one defined by its complexity and its extremism...

In late summer 1929, a countrywide outbreak of Arab-Jewish-British violence transformed the political landscape of Palestine forever. In contrast with those who point to the wars of 1948 and 1967, historian Hillel Cohen marks these bloody events as year zero of the Arab-Israeli conflict that persists today. The murderous violence inflicted on Jews caused a fractious—and now traumatised—community of Zionists,...

A detailed study of the Great Mongol Shahnama, considered to be the greatest of all Persian illustrated manuscripts The Great Mongol Shahnama is widely considered to be the definitive version of Firdausi’s epic poem, and the greatest of all Persian illustrated manuscripts. The paintings from this manuscript are held in private collections and institutions around the world, and have only...

The Diagram as Paradigm is the first book that examines medieval diagrams from a cross-cultural perspective, focusing on three regions—Byzantium, the Islamicate world, and the Latin West—each culturally diverse and closely linked through complex processes of intellectual, artistic, diplomatic, and mercantile exchange. The volume brings together case studies, often of little-known material, by an international group of specialists. It is...

A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. In 1938, Mahatma Gandhi wrote a bracing and, at times, discomfiting essay on the claims of justice and nationhood in Palestine. Profoundly informed by its author's sympathy for the plights of Jews and Arabs alike, this text is also uncompromising in its advocacy of the...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A “fascinating and very moving” (Aaron Sorkin, award-winning screenwriter of The West Wing and The Social Network) chronological timeline spanning from Biblical times to today that explores one of the most interesting countries in the world—Israel. Israel. The small strip of arid land is 5,700 miles away but remains a hot-button issue and a thorny...

Drawing from a rich array of visual and literary material from nineteenth-century Iran, this groundbreaking book rereads and rewrites the history of Iranian modernity through the lens of gender and sexuality. Peeling away notions of a rigid pre-modern Islamic gender system, Afsaneh Najmabadi provides a compelling demonstration of the centrality of gender and sexuality to the shaping of modern culture...

The seas have long served as both connective tissue for and barriers between intellectual, social, and artistic traditions. Nowhere is this dual role more evident than within the visual and material cultures of the Islamic world. This remarkable new book, The Seas and the Mobility of Islamic Art, brings together an international group of scholars and curators whose contributions address...

A repository of subversive, melancholic and existentialist themes and ideas, the rubaiyat (quatrains) that make up the collected poems attributed to the 12th century Persian astronomer Omar Khayyam have enchanted readers for centuries. In this modern translation, complete with a critical introduction and epilogue, Juan Cole elegantly renders the verse for contemporary readers. Exploring such universal questions as the meaning...

Andrew N. Palmer’s vivid translation of the Syriac Life of Barsauma opens a fascinating window onto the ancient Middle East, seen through the life and actions of one of its most dramatic and ambiguous characters: the monk Barsauma, ascetic hero to some, religious terrorist to others. The Life takes us into the eye of the storm that raged around Christian...

Dismantling the myths that divide Islam and the West, this cutting-edge work of critical thinking proposes new ways to reread Islamic and world histories. Extending from the front-page news coverage of our daily lives back into the deepest and most revelatory histories of the last two hundred years and earlier, Hamid Dabashi's The End of Two Illusions is a daring,...

Bridging the gap between migration studies and the anthropological tradition, Ghassan Hage illustrates that transnationality and its attendant cultural consequences are not necessarily at odds with classic theory. In The Diasporic Condition, Ghassan Hage engages with the diasporic Lebanese community as a shared lifeworld, defining a common cultural milieu that transcends spatial and temporal distance—a collective mode of being here...

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. When Nafir Suriyya—The Clarion of Syria—was penned between September 1860 and April 1861, its author Butrus al-Bustani, a major figure in the modern Arabic Renaissance, had witnessed his homeland undergo unprecedented violence in what many today...

Stories between Christianity and Islam offers an original and nuanced understanding of Christian–Muslim relations that shifts focus from discussions of superiority, conflict, and appropriation to the living world of connectivity and creativity. Here, the late antique and medieval Near East is viewed as a world of stories shared by Christians and Muslims. Public storytelling was a key feature for these...

In the early 1990s, Israeli television began dedicating Memorial Day airtime to videos produced by the grieving families of soldiers killed in the line of duty. When these videos first appeared, during a period of growing Israeli discontent with the occupation of southern Lebanon, they were widely perceived as a challenge to the state, reclaiming the dead from Israel’s militaristic...

Who are the Assyrians and what role did they play in shaping modern Iraq? Were they simply bystanders, victims of collateral damage who played a passive role in the history of Iraq? And how have they negotiated their position throughout various periods of Iraq's state-building processes? Reforging a Forgotten History details the narrative and history of Iraq in the 20th...

Contrary to the distorted and in many places all-too prevalent view of Islam as somehow inherently or uniquely violent, there is a dazzling array of Muslim organisations and individuals that have worked for harmony and conciliation through history. The Qur’an itself, the Muslim scripture, is full of peace verses urging returning good for evil and wishing peace upon harassers, alongside...

In the winter of 2011, Nobel-Prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk took 8,500 colour photographs from his balcony, offering a panoramic view of Istanbul. This view encompassed the entrance of the Bosphorus, the old town, the Asian and European sides of the city, the surrounding hills, and the distant islands and mountains. At times, he would leave his writing desk to...

Winner of the Prix littéraire France-Liban 'A stunningly stylish, breathtakingly evocative tribute in words and art to the cosmopolitan Levant that exists in defiance of war and empire. I treasure my copy' — Molly Crabapple, artist My Great Arab Melancholy is a beautiful, elegiac and award-winning book from Lebanese writer and illustrator Lamia Ziadé. Blending the author's years of research,...

Rather than focus solely on theological concerns, this well-rounded introduction takes an expansive view of Islamic ideology, culture, and tradition, sourcing a range of historical, sociological, and literary perspectives. Neither overly critical nor apologetic, this book reflects the rich diversity of Muslim identities across the centuries and counters the unflattering, superficial portrayals of Islam that are shaping public discourse today....

Based on extensive field research in Turkey, Istanbul, City of the Fearless explores social movements and the broader practices of civil society in Istanbul during the critical years before and after the 1980 military coup, a defining event in the neoliberal reengineering of the city. Bringing together developments in anthropology, urban studies, cultural geography, and social theory, Christopher Houston offers...

Published in 1974, Marshall Hodgson’s The Venture of Islam was a watershed moment in the study of Islam. By locating the history of Islamic societies in a global perspective, Hodgson challenged the orientalist paradigms that had stunted the development of Islamic studies and provided an alternative approach to world history. Edited by Edmund Burke III and Robert Mankin, Islam and...

How should we understand ISIS today? Despite its territorial defeat in Iraq and Syria in 2019, ISIS has evolved and expanded globally. This book is the most comprehensive study of ISIS to date, benefitting from Arabic sources previously unavailable to an English-speaking audience. Renowned scholar and political philosopher, Azmi Bishara, stresses the need to place ISIS in its historical, social...

Despite their centrality to the history of Christianity in the East, Syriac Christians have generally been excluded from modern accounts of the faith. Originating from Mesopotamia, Syriac Christians quickly spread across Eurasia, from Turkey to China, developing a distinctive and influential form of Christianity that connected empires. These early Christians wrote in the language of Syriac, the lingua franca of...

The story of Ireland’s stunning transformation from a rural nation to a global communications hub. Like most of the world today, Ireland is abuzz with telecommunications. The country’s software industry includes nine of the world’s top ten tech firms and generates €50 billion in annual exports. Yet it was only a few decades ago that Ireland was a largely agrarian...

The little-known story of the sophisticated and vibrant Arabic book culture that flourished during the Middle Ages. During the thirteenth century, Europe's largest library owned fewer than 2,000 volumes. Libraries in the Arab world at the time had exponentially larger collections. Five libraries in Baghdad alone held between 200,000 and 1,000,000 books each, including multiple copies of standard works so...

Provides a balanced historical narrative of the contemporary causes of conflict in the Middle East, ideal for students and scholars. The recent history of the Middle East has involved unprecedented violence and war. The Contemporary Middle East: Foreign Intervention and Authoritarian Governance Since 1979 explores the causes of the sustained turbulence in the region by focusing on three separate yet...

In August 2020, Donald Trump announced that his administration had brokered a groundbreaking treaty between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, the first normalization agreement between Israel and an Arab state in more than twenty years. Soon afterward, Bahrain joined the agreements, known as the Abraham Accords. How were these treaties achieved, and why did the parties involved see normalization...

Of profound importance in late antiquity, the Sasanian Empire is virtually unknown today, except as a counterpoint to the Roman Empire. In this highly readable history, Touraj Daryaee fills a significant gap in our knowledge of world history. He examines the Sasanians' complex and colourful narrative and demonstrates their unique significance, not only for the development of Iranian civilization but...

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. For centuries, the Mosque of Eyüp Sultan has been one of Istanbul’s most important pilgrimage destinations, in large part because of the figure buried in the tomb at its center: Halid bin Zeyd Ebû Eyûb el-Ensârî,...

Shortlisted for the Conflict Research Society’s 2021 Book of the Year Prize Shortlisted for the British-Kuwait Friendship Society 2021 Book Prize After the overthrow of the Qadhafi regime in 2011, Libya witnessed a dramatic breakdown of centralised power. Countless local factions carved up the country into a patchwork of spheres of influence. Almost no nationwide or even regional organisations emerged,...

Avinoam Patt examines the relationship between two of the most significant events in modern Jewish history, the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel. While there may be no direct causal connection between the Holocaust and the founding of the Jewish state in 1948, the memory of the Holocaust has been a constant presence in Israeli politics, culture,...

In essays drawn from over the course of his distinguished career, Roy Mottahedeh explores such diverse topics as the social bonds that connected people in the early Islamic Middle East, the transmission of learning in the Muslim world, and the theme of ‘wonders’ in The Thousand and One Nights. His rich corpus attends to the early Islamic period, the medieval...

An illustrated study of the ongoing career of the iconic B-52, chronicling its frontline service after Operation Desert Storm in 1991. First flown in 1955, the B-52 has become an icon of deterrence and the long reach of American air power. The aircraft was conceived as a long-range nuclear bomber, but its versatility saw it used as a heavyweight ‘bomb...

Inspired by stories he heard in the West Bank as a child, Hillel Cohen uncovers a hidden history in this extraordinary and beautifully written book—a history central to the narrative of the Israel-Palestine conflict but for the most part wilfully ignored until now. In Army of Shadows, initially published in Israel to high acclaim and intense controversy, he tells the...

Superb. A tour de force.– Ebrahim Moosa Provocative. Aydin ranges over the centuries to show the relative novelty of the idea of a Muslim world and the relentless efforts to exploit that idea for political ends.– Washington Post When President Obama visited Cairo to address Muslims worldwide, he followed in the footsteps of countless politicians who have taken the existence...

The Gulf monarchies—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates—play crucial roles in world markets and politics. Their economies, which have traditionally been driven by oil revenues, have simultaneously propelled transformative change and preserved the traditional order. Fossil fuel wealth has underwritten an implicit social contract characterised by generous welfare states, ruler-centric politics, and a heavy state...

This incisive analysis of where Palestinians and Israelis are and the possible avenues to a just and durable peace has been fully updated in the aftermath of September 11 and the Israeli Defence Force's campaign against the West Bank and Gaza. It lays out the causes of the Second Intifada and argues that this new rising shows that there can...

In Quest of Justice provides the first full account of the establishment and workings of a new kind of state in Egypt in the modern period. Drawing on groundbreaking research in the Egyptian archives, this highly original book shows how the state affected those subject to it and their response. Illustrating how shari’a was actually implemented, how criminal justice functioned,...

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In God's Other Book, Mohammad Salama presents a powerful critique of the ways we study and analyse early Islam and its sacred text, filling a glaring hole in our understanding of this formative environment. Interrogating the...

The legacy of the greatest teacher the world has known, the greatest man to ever walk the Earth, the Messenger of Allah, is attested to by the greatness of his students: the Companions. None more so than his four successors, the four men famed as the Rightly Guided Caliphs. The Blessed Prophet's words and deeds have reached us from across...

Groundbreaking research that utilises archaeological discoveries and ancient texts to revolutionise our understanding of the beginnings of Judaism "A bravura study."—Publishers Weekly (starred review) Throughout much of history, the Jewish way of life has been characterised by strict adherence to the practices and prohibitions legislated by the Torah: dietary laws, ritual purity, circumcision, Sabbath regulations, holidays, and more. But precisely...

An analysis of boundaries and boundary-making. This collection explores alternative definitions of bounded identities, facilitating new approaches to spatial and architectural forms. Taking as its starting point the emergence of a new definition of "boundary" in the wake of the twentieth-century transformation of large, heterogeneous empires into a mosaic of nation-states in the Islamic world, it shows how that new...

The life, dramatic reign, and enduring legacy of the pharaoh Ramesses the Great, with lessons for the present, from internationally acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson. "The author succeeds in bringing this distant age to life through telling detail and insightful analysis. . . . Whenever he can, the author takes advantage of opportunities to peer beneath the mask."—The Economist Ramesses the...

Since 1967, Israeli decision-makers have opted to conquer, occupy, colonise and dominate the Gaza Strip. Why has this sliver of land – home and refuge to around 400,000 Palestinians at the time of the 1967 War – been so important? Why has it come to play such a major role in Israeli-Palestinian affairs, Israeli domestic and foreign policy, and –...

Written during a genocide, After Savagery reveals the ethical bankruptcy of 'Western philosophy' and how it undergirds the erasure of the colonised. The death toll in Gaza continues to rise—a cold, lifeless number representing entire communities crushed under the weight of settler colonialism. What remains of the theories we use to understand our world? With lyrical and lucid fury, Hamid...

The traumatic history of Israel in the past 2000 years is widely known, but the Jews of ancient Israel and the Mediterranean world also have an exciting history that is less well known. It includes the first references to Israelites in an early Egyptian inscription, the kings of Israel, the Persian province of Yehud, the Greek and Roman rule of...

The History of Ancient Israel: A Guide for the Perplexed provides the student with the perfect guide to why and how the history of this most contested region has been studied, and why it continues to be studied today. Philip R. Davies, one of the leading scholars of Ancient Israel in recent years, begins by examining the relevance of the...

A groundbreaking collection of writings by political prisoners in Egypt, offering a unique lens on the global rise of authoritarianism during the last decade. This book contains letters, poetry, and art produced by Egypt's incarcerated from the eruption of the January 25, 2011, uprising. Some are by journalists, lawyers, activists, and artists imprisoned for expressing their opposition to Egypt's authoritarian...

Founded in 331 BC by Alexander the Great, Alexandria’s unique urban, political and religious organisation evolved alongside the numerous scientific innovations and philosophical expressions that shaped the city into one of the ancient world’s civilisational centres. Located at the intersection of art and history, this book revisits the former Egyptian megapolis of Alexandria with the aim of going beyond the...

In his iconic musical travelogue Heavy Metal Islam, Mark LeVine first brought the views and experiences of a still-young generation to the world. In We'll Play till We Die, he joins with this generation's leading voices to write a definitive history of the era, closing with a cowritten epilogue that explores the meanings and futures of youth music from North...

This much needed new edition provides a complete and essential guide to this fast developing, ever-changing, and often tense region. This book, fully updated for 2024, examines the origins and development of the events which have dominated the headlines for the last seven decades. Covering everything from religion and politics in the aftermath of the Second World War to the...

Naseej, meaning 'tapestry' in Arabic, is a book about diverse forms of life, communities, histories and continuities in Palestine. It compiles essays, short stories, poetry, interviews, and visual art to tell an aspect of the Palestinian story that has not been told: the severing of Palestinians from vast and ancient regional histories. Palestine has always been a precious patchwork of...

Compelling . . . offers a richly detailed account of Israel's Black Panthers in the 1970s.―Haaretz Forces us to confront the sometimes vast distance between constitutional aspiration and social and political practice.―Jewish Book Council The powerful story of an activist movement that challenged the racial inequities of Israel. Israel's Black Panthers tells the story of the young and impoverished Moroccan...

Their voices come from Bethlehem and Hebron. You can hear them from Jerusalem to Nazareth, and witness their protests in Gaza and Ramallah. From the refugee camps in the West Bank, you can hear the voices of the Palestinian people call out to demand self-determination and a better quality of life. But outside of Israel and the occupied territories, these...

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. A Jewish Childhood in the Muslim Mediterranean brings together the fascinating personal stories of Jewish writers, scholars, and intellectuals who came of age in lands where Islam was the dominant religion and everyday life was infused...

The Book of Saladin is the fictional memoir of Saladin, the Kurdish liberator of Jerusalem, as dictated to a Jewish scribe, Ibn Yakub. Saladin grants Ibn Yakub permission to talk to his wife and retainers so that he might present a full portrait in the Sultan's memoirs. A series of interconnected stories follows, tales brimming over with warmth, earthy humour,...

A leading genocide scholar explores the history of Zionism, Israel's lurch towards extreme oppression and violence, and why it stands accused of crimes against humanity. Professor Omer Bartov was born on a kibbutz, grew up in Tel Aviv and served in the Israel Defence Forces during the Yom Kippur War. He went on to become an expert on the German...

In scarcely a century, Salafism has transformed Sunni Islam. Claiming to be a revival of the purest form of Islam, this movement promotes ultraconservative social and religious norms and rejects all non-Sunni religious groups. In Egypt, its influence has grown to the point of reshaping mainstream conceptions of the faith. How did such a deep religious transformation sweep through Egypt...

An instant New York Times bestseller, from the author of Crusaders, that finally tells the real story of the Knights Templar—“Seldom does one find serious scholarship so easy to read.” (The Times, Book of the Year) A faltering war in the Middle East. A band of elite warriors determined to fight to the death to protect Christianity's holiest sites. A...

You Gentiles is a 1924 book written by Romanian-born British and American-Jewish author Maurice Samuel. It discusses points of difference in behavior between Jews and Gentiles focusing on physical activity, religion, concepts of good and evil, loyalty, science, fair play, discipline, and much more.

In The Last Treaty, Michelle Tusan profoundly reshapes the story of how the First World War ended in the Middle East. Tracing Europe's war with the Ottoman Empire through to the signing of Lausanne, which finally ended the war in 1923, she places the decisive Allied victory over Germany in 1918 in sharp relief against the unrelenting war in the...

In the early period of Ancient Egyptian history, earlier than in any other culture, before the Hindus, Buddhists, Kabbalists and Taoists, there was a teaching of the TREE OF LIFE and the teaching of the SERPENT POWER. This was a special teaching describing the secret wisdom about the nature of the universe and of the soul as well as a...

Drawing on contributions from fifty established and emerging academics, The I.B. Tauris Handbook of the Late Ottoman Empire explores the scholarship that has emerged in recent decades on the Late Ottoman period and its legacies. Seven chronological sections, featuring thirty-four chapters and eight supplementary essays, guide the reader from the late eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century. The first...

A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had...

North American edition with an exclusive afterword and photographs INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BESTSELLER In early October 2023, Palestinian Plestia Alaqad was a recent university graduate dreaming of a career as a journalist. But by the end of November, her homeland was unrecognisable—and she was broadcasting videos of violence and...

The emancipatory potential and limits of land justice, when land is at once home, property, territory, and homeland.  Peasant farming was once an integral part of Palestine's agrarian fabric. But after military occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Israeli land confiscations and economic policies pushed rural cultivators into wage labor. In recent decades, Palestinian land titling and private developers have...

Chomsky and Pappéeacute; discuss the past and future of Palestine.

How do we learn to defetishise disability in our everyday lives? In Disabling Relations, Sona Kazemi probes this and other questions that consider how processes and relations of patriarchy, imperialism, and religious fundamentalism, as well as class and ideology, rework the dialectics of disability in transnational contexts. Kazemi focuses on the disabled dissidents who were incarcerated and tortured by the...

Wie entsteht Geschichtsschreibung? Die Studie untersucht die Anfänge hethitischer Historiographie und analysiert, wie Erinnerungen in kulturelles Gedächtnis übergehen. Im Mittelpunkt stehen Berichte zu den frühen hethitischen Königen, besonders der sogenannte Zalpa-Text, und einem bisher in diesem Kontext noch wenig bekannten König Ḫuzzija. Jörg Klinger liefert damit eine fundierte Analyse zur Entstehung historiographischer Traditionen im hethitischen Kontext.

WINNER OF THE 2024 PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NON-FICTION Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, The Economist, Time, The New Republic, and the Financial Times. Immersive and gripping, an intimate story of a deadly accident outside Jerusalem that unravels a tangle of lives, loves, enmities, and histories over the course of one revealing, heartbreaking day....