Family remains the most powerful social idiom and one of the most powerful social structures throughout the Arab world. To engender love of nation among its citizens, national movements portray the nation as a family. To motivate loyalty, political leaders frame themselves as fathers, mothers, brothers, or sisters to their clients, parties, or the citizenry. To stimulate production, economic actors evoke the sense of duty and mutual commitment of family obligation. To sanctify their edicts, clerics wrap religion in the moralities of family and family in the moralities of religion. Social and political movements, from the most secular to the most religious, pull on the tender strings of family love to recruit and bind their members to each other. To call someone family is to offer them almost the highest possible intimacy, loyalty, rights, reciprocities, and dignity. In recognizing the significance of the concept of family, this state-of-the-art literature review captures the major theories, methods, and case studies carried out on Arab families over the past century. The book offers a country-by-country critical assessment of the available scholarship on Arab families. Sixteen chapters focus on specific countries or groups of countries; seven chapters offer examinations of the literature on key topical issues. Joseph’s volume provides an indispensable resource to researchers and students, and advances Arab family studies as a critical independent field of scholarship.

This study is divided into three chapters. Chapter one deals with the Kurds and their country Kurdistan. It covers a short account on the geography of the area, the population of the people, situation of the Kurds in the countries where they live, their origin and their language and literature. In chapter two the following two points are discussed: 1.The appearance of the first Kurdish newspaper. 2.A general survey of the previous works on the Kurdish newspapers and periodicals. Chapter three covers in chronological order, the Kurdish newspapers and other periodical publications from 22nd April 1898, the date of the first Kurdish newspaper KURDISTAN until 14th July 1958. Each entry where possible, is given a full bibliographical description, followed by the locations of the surviving issues in all libraries in Kurdistan and abroad. There follows a detailed discussion on the political and historical circumstances, the editor(s), owner, manager(s), contributors, contents, frequency, number of issues published, the income and financial position and the printing press(es)used. This chapter also reveals the following facts: 1.Most of these publications had short lives. 2.All these publications were subsidised by their owners and editors. 3.During this period (1898 1958) there were no daily Kurdish newspapers. 4.Their contents were mostly political and literary.

This text analyses how modern Jordanian identity was created and defined. The author studies two key institutions, the law and the military, and uses them to create an analysis of the making of modern Jordanian identity.

A career soldier with on-the-ground experience presents a gripping history of the imperial British experience in Waziristan, a remote area of Pakistan. Distills the hard-earned British experience and offers some potentially useful lessons for the West and its current troubles in the same region--once described as the "epicenter of terrorism" and reputedly the hiding place of Osama bin Laden.

This set includes all four volumes of the critically acclaimed History of Central Asia series. The epic plains and arid deserts of Central Asia have witnessed some of the greatest migrations, as well as many of the most transformative developments, in the history of civilization. Christoph Baumer's ambitious four-volume treatment of the region charts the 3000-year drama of Scythians and Sarmatians; Soviets and transcontinental Silk Roads; trade routes and the transmission of ideas across the steppes; and the breathless and brutal conquests of Alexander the Great and Chinghiz Khan. Masterfully interweaving the stories of individuals and peoples, the author's engaging prose is richly augmented throughout by colour photographs taken on his own travels. This set includes The Age of the Steppe Warriors (Volume 1), The Age of the Silk Roads (Volume 2), The Age of Islam and the Mongols (Volume 3) and The Age of Decline and Revival (Volume 4)