This is the first serious attempt to understand modern Iraq through a close examination of the political discourse used by the Ba'th regime and its leader, Saddam Hussein. By analyzing political terms, concepts, and idioms as disseminated through the official Iraqi mouthpieces, author Ofra Bengio illuminates Iraq's political culture and the events that these expressions have both reflected and shaped. Not only does this study add to our understanding of the "Saddam enigma;" it also offers a more universal truth: that under any regime, political culture is built on public discourse....

Charles Issawi's collection of essays, Cross-Cultural Encounters and Conflicts, has been written in the belief that a study of the past encounters and conflicts between the world's major cultures can shed light on their nature and importance. Though the emphasis is on the Middle East, of which Issawi is one of our foremost scholars, the subjects covered here range in scope from the great ancient civilizations to Shelley's passion for the Middle East, from the failures of the Greeks as empire builders to the preeminence of English as an international language today. Other essays...

This book aims to alter profoundly the accepted version of the history of post-World War II Egyptian foreign policy. To this end, Doran convincingly demonstrates the absence of any true pan-Arab front from the very beginning of the Arab League. Reconsidering Cairo's policy decisions during the critical years from 1944 to 1948, he proves that Egyptian national interests were always placed before the united Arab front against Israel. Even while participating in the 1948 war with Israel, Egypt regarded Zionism and the Palestine Question as less important than achieving independence from Britain...

This book will completely transform the standard interpretation of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, a watershed event in the late Ottoman Empire and a key to the emergence of the modern nation-states in the Middle East and Balkans.

Preparation for a Revolution is the first book on the Young Turk Revolution to draw on both the extensive memoirs and papers of the Young Turks and on the extensive diplomatic archives around the world. The author has plumbed not only the Ottoman Archives but collected documents from archives in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem, London, Paris, Rome, Athens,...

Combining international and domestic perspectives, this book analyzes the transformation of the Ottoman Empire over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It views privatization of state lands and the increase of domestic and foreign trade as key factors in the rise of a Muslim middle class, which, increasingly aware of its economic interests and communal roots, then attempted to reshape the government to reflect its ideals.

Focusing on Near Eastern history in Mamluk and Ottoman times, this book, dedicated to Michael Winter, stresses elements of variety and continuity in the history of the Near East, an area of study which has traditionally attracted little attention from Islamists.

Ranging over the period from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century, the articles in this book look at the area from Istanbul down through Syria and Palestine to Arabia, the Yemen and the Sudan. The articles demonstrate the great wealth of the materials available, in a wide variety of languages, from archival documents to...

The Anglo-French clash in the Middle East during World War II not only marked a turning point in the region's political development, but also became a sticking point in wartime relations between the two powers. This study examines the events and consequences of this conflict.