This volume is part of the definitive edition of letters written by and to Charles Darwin, the most celebrated naturalist of the nineteenth century Notes and appendixes put these fascinating and wide-ranging letters in context, making the letters accessible to both scholars and general readers Darwin depended on correspondence to collect data from all over the world, and to discuss his emerging ideas with scientific colleagues, many of whom he never met in person The letters are published chronologically: volume 27 includes letters from 1879, the year in which Darwin completed his manuscript on movement in plants He also researched and published a biography of his grandfather Erasmus The Darwins spent most of August on holiday in the Lake District In October, Darwin's youngest son, Horace, became officially engaged to Ida Farrer, after some initial resistance from her father, who, although an admirer of Charles Darwin, thought Horace a poor prospect for his daughter

The Correspondence of Charles Darwin

Preface ix PART I Introduction Chapter 1: The Puzzle of the Middle East's Economic Underdevelopment 3 Chapter 2: Analyzing the Economic Role of Islam 25 PART II Organizational Stagnation Chapter 3: Commercial Life under Islamic Rule 45 Chapter 4: The Persistent Simplicity of Islamic Partnerships 63 Chapter 5: Drawbacks of the Islamic Inheritance System 78 Chapter 6: The Absence of the Corporation in Islamic Law 97 Chapter 7: Barriers to the Emergence of a Middle Eastern Business Corporation 117 Chapter 8: Credit Markets without Banks 143 PART III The Makings of Underdevelopment Chapter 9: The Islamization of Non-Muslim Economic Life 169 Chapter 10: The Ascent of the Middle East's Religious Minorities 189 Chapter 11: Origins and Fiscal Impact of the Capitulations 209 Chapter 12: Foreign Privileges as Facilitators of Impersonal Exchange 228 Chapter 13: The Absence of Middle Eastern Consuls 254 PART IV Conclusions Chapter 14: Did Islam Inhibit Economic Development? 279 Notes 303 References 349 Index 393

The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East

In the analysis of ethnic separatism and secession, two approaches can be distinguished. One is to ask what forces are responsbile for the general upsurge in secessionist movements, from Burma te-Biafra and Bangladesh, from Corsica to Quebec, and from Eritrea to the Southern Philippines. Another approach is to ask what moves certain territorially discrete ethnic groups to attempt to leave the states of which they are a part (or at least to secure substantial territorial autonomy), whereas other groups, also regionally concentrated, make no such attempts. The first question calls for a general explanation of aggregate trends; it aims to compare the present with some period in the past. The second calls for an explanation that can discriminate among classes of cases; it entails comparison not across time, but across space.

Patterns of Ethnic Separatism

The Phoenicians were the dominant traders in the Mediterranean Sea two thousand to three thousand years ago and expanded from their homeland in the Levant to establish colonies and trading posts throughout the Mediterranean, but then they disappeared from history. We wished to identify their male genetic traces in modern populations. Therefore, we chose Phoenician-influenced sites on the basis of well-documented historical records and collected new Y-chromosomal data from 1330 men from six such sites, as well as comparative data from the literature. We then developed an analytical strategy to distinguish between lineages specifically associated with the Phoenicians and those spread by geographically similar but historically distinct events, such as the Neolithic, Greek, and Jewish expansions. This involved comparing historically documented Phoenician sites with neighboring non-Phoenician sites for the identification of weak but systematic signatures shared by the Phoenician sites that could not readily be explained by chance or by other expansions. From these comparisons, we found that haplogroup J2, in general, and six Y-STR haplotypes, in particular, exhibited a Phoenician signature that contributed > 6% to the modern Phoenician-influenced populations examined. Our methodology can be applied to any historically documented expansion in which contact and noncontact sites can be identified.

/pdf/identifying-genetic-traces-of-historical-expansions-2xj8zwwofk.pdf

Identifying genetic traces of historical expansions: Phoenician footprints in the Mediterranean

Lebanon is an eastern Mediterranean country inhabited by approximately four million people with a wide variety of ethnicities and religions, including Muslim, Christian, and Druze In the present study, 926 Lebanese men were typed with Y-chromosomal SNP and STR markers, and unusually, male genetic variation within Lebanon was found to be more strongly structured by religious affiliation than by geography We therefore tested the hypothesis that migrations within historical times could have contributed to this situation Y-haplogroup J∗(xJ2) was more frequent in the putative Muslim source region (the Arabian Peninsula) than in Lebanon, and it was also more frequent in Lebanese Muslims than in Lebanese non-Muslims Conversely, haplogroup R1b was more frequent in the putative Christian source region (western Europe) than in Lebanon and was also more frequent in Lebanese Christians than in Lebanese non-Christians The most common R1b STR-haplotype in Lebanese Christians was otherwise highly specific for western Europe and was unlikely to have reached its current frequency in Lebanese Christians without admixture We therefore suggest that the Islamic expansion from the Arabian Peninsula beginning in the seventh century CE introduced lineages typical of this area into those who subsequently became Lebanese Muslims, whereas the Crusader activity in the 11th–13th centuries CE introduced western European lineages into Lebanese Christians

https://www.cell.com/ajhg/pdf/S0002-9297(08)00206-1.pdf

Y-chromosomal diversity in Lebanon is structured by recent historical events.

Traces the history of Palestine, discusses the formation of Israel, and describes the attitudes on each side of the Mideast conflict.

George Kirk

Papers

The Arab-Israeli Dilemma

A Short History of the Middle East

The Middle East in the War

A Biographical Dictionary of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan

Lebanon in History: From the Earliest Times to the Present