Showing papers in "International Journal of Middle East Studies in 1976"

Urban Population in Anatolia in the Sixteenth Century: A Study of Kayseri, Karaman, Amasya, Trabzon, and Erzurum

Abstract: The rapid rise in the population of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century is well known. Omer Lutfi Barkan long ago published a table showing that twelve important Ottoman cities grew from a combined population of 142,562 in 1520/1530 to a population of 271,494 in 1571/1580; likewise he has shown that the population of five major provinces in Anatolia grew 59.9 per cent in the same period, from 872,610 to 1,360,474. Fernand Braudel supports the thesis that there was a general 100 per cent population growth throughout the Mediterranean basin in the sixteenth century, and Barkan claims that growth at the Ottoman end of the Mediterranean was even more dynamic. However, there is still need for specialized studies of Ottoman population and its flux in the sixteenth century.

Meaning and Society in the Near East: Examples from the Black Sea Turks and the Levantine Arabs (I)

Abstract: In this part,* the concept of honor among Black Sea Turks is compared with the concept of honor among clans (hamula) of Levantine Arabs. The system of meaning among the Arabs is similar to that among the Black Sea Turks, but the cultural structuring of this system of meaning is different. First, the differences in cultural structuring are explained in detail. Then, the two contrasting structurings are shown to provide an understanding of a number of contrasts between the two societies with regard to ‘marriage’ and ‘affinal and maternal relationships.’

The Shu'ûbîyah Controversy and the Social History of Early Islamic Iran

Abstract: “In a state of rude nature”, wrote Edmund Burke, “there is no such thing as a people… The idea of a people is the idea of a corporation. It is wholly artificial; and made, like all other legal fictions, by common agreement. What the particular nature of that agreement was, is collected from the form into which the particular society has been cast”. Whether the Iranians in the early Islamic period — that is, the period from the seventh to the twelfth century — were in Burke's sense a “people” is a question that the cautious scholar would be eager to disregard and loath to handle. After all, those specialists on early Islamic Iran who have, directly or indirectly, expressed opinions on this subject have all too often projected events from the life of their own nation and times back to these earlier centuries. In no case is this projection more obvious than in the many essays written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which see this question only as a question of “national liberation”: did the Iranians hate the Arabs, and did they hope to regain their empire by destroying, or profoundly reshaping, the empire of the Muslim caliphs?

The Iraqi-British War of 1941: A Review Article

Abstract: The events that took place in Iraq in 1941, commonly called Rashid Ali al-Kaylani or the Revolution of 1941 by the Iraqis, were very important to the subsequent political development of that country. They led Iraq to war with Britain, and most of what happened after that date, including the July 14, 1958, Revolution, can be explained in one way or another as an extension of what happened in May 1941.

Political Modernization as Reflected in Bureaucratic Change: The Turkish Bureauracy and A “Historical Bureaucratic Empire” Tradition

Abstract: Political modernization is a difficult concept to grapple with1. The traditional approach is to view the political systems of industrially developed Western countries as a model of, or sometimes even as a synonym for, a politically developed polity.

Political Attitudes and Activities of the Ulama in the Liberal Age: Tunisia as an Exceptional Case

Abstract: During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries religion continued to play an obvious role in the Middle East. Among observers of that area the significance of the impact of religion on political development was consequently never minimized to the extent that it was among observers of political trends in the West. Western scholars interested in the Middle East, however, have tended to overrate the importance of the Muslim modernists with whom they felt a certain affinity. They also have accepted too uncritically the views of modernists concerning the lifelessness of traditional expressions of Islam. As a result, not until recently have we begun sufficiently to appreciate traditional Muslim religious leaders both for their impact on and for the diversity of their responses to modern political and intellectual currents. I believe that this diversity is not accidental but rather is susceptible to analysis and explanation. This essay demonstrates how four variables (historical circumstances, theological considerations, socioeconomic considerations, and governmental policies toward Muslim religious leaders) affected the political involvement of the Islamic ulama throughout the Middle East generally and in Tunisia particularly during the ‘liberal age’.

Kinship, Primordial Ties, and Factory Organization in Turkey: An Anthropological View

Abstract: The social organization of industrial work in Turkey provides us with an interesting case for the examination of the relationship between established social forms and meanings and the technological ad organizational exigencies of economic production. The organization of Turkish industrial production is, on the one hand, clearly an outgrowth of the technological apparatus that was imported from the Vest in the process of development since the nineteenth century. On the other hand, it is also deeply rooted in an indigenous social structure and culture. In this paper I hope to outline the interrelationship between these diverse factors.

Islamic and Non-Islamic Origins of Mu'tazilite Ethical Rationalism

Abstract: The ethical theory of the Mu'tazila is properly called ‘rationalism’, because it held that the values of human and divine actions are knowable in principle by natural human reason. Since this doctrine and related parts of the theory (mentioned in the next section) were the prevailing ethical theories in the major preIslamic religious cultures of Iran and Byzantium, the question easily arises, to what extent were the Mu'tazila as the first systematic theologians in Islam indebted to these cultures for their ethics?

Britain and The Launching of the Armenian Question

Abstract: In August 1894, as if by prearranged signal, a series of Muslim attacks on the Gregorian Armenian subjects of the Porte broke out in eastern Anatolia and spread gradually, province by province, throughout most of Asiatic Turkey. These disorders raged sporadically for two years until finally, in August 1896, they culminated in a similar assault on the Gregorian Armenian community of Istanbul, beneath the very windows of the embassies of the Great Powers. European estimates placed the total of Armenians killed throughout this period at between 250,000 and 300,000 men, women, and children, and 10 percent of the entire Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire.

Nomad-Sedentary Interethnic Relations in Iran and Afghanistan

Abstract: The following is a report of a pilot study on nomad-sedentary relations viewed in terms of exchange. The study was conducted in the Zagros Mountains of Iran and in the central Hazarajat of Afghanistan during the summer of 1971. The research involved the application in a field situation of a theoretical framework that links exchange and social structure. In previous research we had investigated the relationship between social structure and exchange in societies having a particular kind of exchange system—the potlatch. Utilizing Levi-Strausss approach to structure, we have taken certain kinds of rules, preferential marriage rules or rules of succession, and built models of social structure on the basis of such rules (Levi-Strauss, 1963). These were related to other models based upon the analysis of exchange behavior. In an earlier volume, Feasting with Mine Enemy, we demonstrated the applicability of this approach in our analysis of six Northwest Coast societies by relating their different forms of social structure to the variations they exhibited in their potlatch activity (Rosman and Rubel, 1971). The purpose of the pilot study reported on here was to apply our conceptual framework relating exchange and social structure to more complex social systems.

The Importance of the Cairo Geniza Manuscripts for the History of Medieval Female Attire

Abstract: Over the past two decades scholars have become aware of the great importance of the so-called Cairo Geniza documents as a primary source for medieval Mediterranean socioeconomic history. This awareness is due principally to the indefatigable work of S. D. Goitein. The Geniza documents also provide an important source for one aspect of the art history of the period. The some 750 trousseau lists from the Cairo Geniza, in combination with ancillary Geniza records, offer a wealth of information—hitherto unexploited—on the attire of Jewish women in medieval Egypt, and by extension, the attire of Muslim women as well. The trousseau lists dating mainly from the Fatimid and Ayyubid periods (969–1250)—and to a lesser extent from the Mamluk (1250–1517)—contain the complete wardrobe of a medieval Egyptian bride.

Iran's Policy toward the Persian Gulf

Abstract: Only recently has the Persian Gulf assumed primacy in Iran's foreign policy. Basic reasons for this ascendency lie in: (a) stabilized relations with the superpowers since the early 1960s, (b) progressive enhancement of the Gulf's role in Iran's economic and strategic interests, and (c) competitive and conflicting interests and aspirations of nonlittoral states of this region.

Why This War

Abstract: The course of events in the Middle East since 6 October 1973 has been as surprising and as unexpected as the very events of that day. In retrospect, of course, the surprises of that day have been depreciated and obscured by journalists, scholars, and politicians who have begun to treat the outbreak of the war as part of a chain of natural developments initiated in June 1967, or in May 1948, or in 1897 depending upon their historical bent. But hindsight notwithstanding, no one expected war to break out in the Middle East in 1973. For this reason, the decision to launch a war against Israel must be examined for what it was: a complex calculation encompassing not one or two but a broad range of considerations. The decision to go to war is never a commonplace decision, nor is it one taken lightly or made naturally – not even in the Middle East. Rather, it is a complex phenomenon whose threads must be unraveled in order to be understood.

Dialouge With Gustave E. von Grunebaum

Abstract: In 1970, I published in Melanges de l'Institut Dominicain d'Etudes Orientales (MIDEO) a long article entitled ‘La civilisation musulmane dans l'aeuvre du Professeur von Grunebaum’ which was part of a study in preparation for publication. This study although sympathetic was a very objective approach to the works of Gustave E. von Grunebaum. He appreciated it but urged me to make a personal critical evaluation of his work, without hesitating, if necessary, to contradict any of his opinions. As a close friend, I accepted willingly.I composed it under the form of 'some questions posited to M. Grunebaum'. He read my essay and found the questions provocative andinteresting enough to answer. But alas, death snatched him before the essay was published. As tribute to his memory and as a historical document I thought it would be interesting to publish it as is, without any recasting.