The first major biography of the founder of modern Iraq, a charismatic champion of Arab independence and unity

Describes the history, politics, customs, etc. of India.

Incorporating a rich series of case-studies covering a range of geographical areas, this collection of essays examines the history of modern intellectuals in the Islamic world throughout the twentieth century. The contributors reassess the typology and history of various scholars, providing significant diachronic analysis of the different forms of communication, learning, and authority. While each chapter presents a separate regional case, with an historically and geographically different background, the volume discloses commonalities, similarities and intellectual echoes through its comparative approach. Consisting of two parts, the volume focuses first on al-Manar, the influential journal published between 1898 and 1935 that inspired much imagination and arguments among local intelligentsias all over the Islamic world. The second part discusses the formation, transmission and transformation of learning and authority, from the Middle East to Central and Southeast Asia. Constituting a milestone in comparative studies of the modern Islamic world, this book highlights the range of and transformation in the role of intellectuals in Islamic societies.

This book examines how dependent development and struggles for power within and outside the state apparatus led to formation of alliances with imperial powers and how the latter used these alliances to manipulate political development in Afghanistan to their own advantage.

This volume discusses the emergence and role of the art salon in the Arab region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq. Institutional forms of exhibiting and teaching art emerged in the Middle East and North Africa in late colonial and early post-colonial contexts. The book examines how the salon had an impact on the formation of taste and on debates on art, and discusses the transfers and cultural interactions between the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Following the institutional model of the Paris salons, art salons emerged in Algiers, Tunis and Cairo starting in the late 1880s. In Beirut, the salon tradition reached its peak only after independence in the mid-twentieth century. Baghdad never had a formal salon, but alternative spaces and exhibition formats developed in Iraq from the late 1940s onwards. As in Paris, the salons in the region often defined the criteria of artistic production and public taste. The impact of the salon also lay in its ability to convey particular values, attitudes and aspirations. At the same time, the values and attitudes promoted by the salon as well as the salon itself were often subject to debate, which led to the creation of counter-salons or alternative exhibition practices. The art salon helps us to understand changes in the art systems of these countries, including the development of art schools, exhibition spaces and artist societies, and gives insight into the power dynamics at play. It also highlights networks and circulations between the Arab region and Europe.

Saudi Arabia is generally and justifiably viewed as a country with the fewest democratic institutions and the weakest traditions of pluralism in the world. It is therefore surprising to learn that at least in one corner of the Saudi world, there is a plurality voices. Jörg Matthias Determann brings this element to light by analysing an important field of cultural activity in Saudi Arabia: historical writing. By exploring the emergence of a plurality of historical narratives in the absence of formal political pluralism, Determann seeks to paint a more nuanced picture of Saudi Arabia than has previously been drawn. Since the 1920s local, tribal, Shi'i and dynastic histories have contributed to a growing plurality of narratives, diverging from and contesting the histories which focus on the royal family. Instead, they have emphasized the communities' historical independence from the House of Saud or asserting the communities' importance in Saudi national history. In addition to this, during the 1970s, distinct social and economic histories began to be developed, new narratives which have described important historical events evolving from wider social and economic factors rather than resulting from the actions of individual rulers or communities. Paradoxically, this happened because of the expansion of the Saudi state, including state-provision of mass education. A variety of previously illiterate and relatively poor sections of Saudi society, including former Bedouin, were thus empowered to produce histories which, while conformist for the most part, also provided a vehicle for dissenting voices. Furthermore, Determann argues that this proliferation of alternative histories is also due to globalizing processes, such as the spread of the internet. It is through this phenomenon that narrative plurality has been facilitated, by putting Saudi historians in contact with different ideologies, methodologies and source material from abroad. In challenging the widely-held perception of Saudi Arabia as an irredeemably closed and monolithic society, Historiography in Saudi Arabia provides a deeper understanding of modern Arab historiography, the Saudi state, and education and scholarship in the Middle East.