Evliya Çelebi (d. after 1685), in his Seyahatname, Book of Travels, completed circa 1683, records a host of languages and dialects spoken within the Ottoman Empire at the time and provides practical word lists in transcription, especially for those less familiar to his Turkophone audience, such as Hungarian in the western borderlands and varieties of Kurdish in the eastern regions. Evliya also remarks of places where he met bilingual speakers. For instance, about the city of Ohrid in the central province of Rumelia, he informs us that, though its people mainly speak Greek or Bulgarian, they could converse in “elegant Turkish,” some in a “very urbane and witty” manner typical of Ottoman literati. Yet curiously, about the capital of Istanbul, his hometown, Evliya says nothing specific about any interaction, besides that he had learned “fluent Greek and Latin” from a Christian goldsmith, to be able to read certain chronicles, and in exchange instructed Persian to the craftsman.

It is perhaps not surprising that discussions on the topic of destruction gain the most traction in the work of heritage in public and academic discourses alike, since this is an instrumental part of the epistemology that constructs heritage as a subject of study—what is heritage if not a subject “at risk”? Concordantly, discussions of heritage destruction are a dominant theme in contemporary conversations and concerns for the fate and management of cultural heritage in the Middle East overall (i.e. Exell and Rico 2013), a tendency that is associated with the persistence and visibility of conflict in the region during a time when heritage concerns are significantly shaped by various global “observers.” What is problematic, however, is first the way that the inherently negative mantle of destruction dominates every conversation about the heritage of the Middle East, and how easily academic debates have incorporated institutional and public discourses about destruction, empowering a monolithic debate that would benefit from a more critical—and ethical—analysis. Secondly, what is also alarming is the degree to which destruction is often associated with specific perpetrators in this region, notably, a caricaturized Islam whose main feature is a dislike for preservation that articulates through scandalous acts of iconoclasm across the broad Middle East region (witnessed through highly circulated vignettes of destruction in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Mali, and other countries and regions). Yet, the representation of an Islam that is at odds with global heritage constructs has been extensively challenged academically, considering the varied and changing attitudes to non-Muslim forms of representation through time (Elias 2012), individual variations (Flood 2002), and their relationship to changes in political regimes (Elias 2007; Flood 2002), in such a way that a consistent or universal attitude to this type of representation cannot be supported. But, as I argue in this essay, the specter of the iconoclast unfortunately remains firmly established in popular discourse—and surprisingly, in some disciplinary discourses. But what happens outside of the realm of destruction in the heritage of the Middle East? Further, how can heritage studies support the integration of Islam in the heritage debates for the region in a way that circumvents the current misrepresentation?

In thinking about a focus for the 2008 Presidential Address, I could not help but be influenced by the fact that this year marked the thirtieth anniversary of Edward Said’s seminal book on Orientalism. I chose to examine the connection between power and knowledge, central to his work, and how this has influenced not only the study of the Middle East, but how it has influenced the members and activities of the Middle East Studies Association, the largest North American professional association devoted to the study of the region, an organization whose influence sometimes extends beyond its territorial boundaries to other parts of the world.

This essay explores insights from our experiences teaching undergraduates a set of paired history and political science courses on protest and revolution in the Middle East. Working in groups, students developed simulations of key moments of revolution or protest explored during the courses. The simulation assignment was designed to engage students in an active learning setting and as a shared assignment across both courses. The most interesting result of this project, from the teaching perspective, was its unanticipated ability to expose students to the contingency and emotion that scholarship has recently emphasized as critical to understanding social movements, but which so often falls out of the study of history and political science analyses of protest and revolution. In this paper we explore the simulation assignment, how student groups designed the simulations with limited guidance from instructors, how students took on the assigned roles by engaging deeply with the histories of the events, and how the engagement in the simulations complicated the analyses that formed the bedrock of our course readings. In our analysis we draw on two iterations of the paired courses and use both student qualitative assessments of the course and student reflections on the simulations that were included in group papers.

This article evaluates Saudi Arabia's anti-Communist stance between 1958 and 1967, in the midst of the Cold War. It presents an alternative interpretation of how anti-Communism was framed as a struggle against Arab Nationalism and Zionism in the Middle East. Furthermore, it highlights the different perspectives on anti-Communist agitation provided in primary sources and Saudi historiography and offers fresh insight into the Saudis’ anti-Communist stance. The analysis shows that Saudi attitudes in the Cold War were dominated by a fear of the Soviet Communists that subsequently extended to all other secular ideologies. The article concludes that the Saudi strategy of anti-Communism was a crucial building block to curb the spread of Communism in the twentieth century.

With the worldwide expansion of the modern university system during the twentieth century, higher education has become an important feature of our modern society at a global level. Islamic universities form part of this global phenomenon, but so far major studies on the globalized higher education system have ignored the role of religion in this field. This article briefly explores the role of Islam at three Islamic universities in India, with a primary focus on the Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) in New Delhi. JMI was established in 1920 and holds a long history of providing higher education, particular for Muslims, within the specific national context of India, where Muslims constitute a significant minority. More precisely, the article investigates how the “Islamic” is defined and expressed differently at the three institutions and what that difference means in conceptual terms. Finally, the findings are placed in relation to the issue of standardization/localization within the theory on globalized education.

Finding suitable settlements to civil wars, then proceeding to reconcile and reintegrate civilian communities to realize such settlements and avoid future conflict, poses many seemingly insurmountable challenges. The Syrian conflict is a case in point. Not only has a settlement proved elusive, but little is known about how the millions of civilian refugees who have fled the war feel about postconflict reconciliation and the future of their country. We use an original survey of 1,384 Syrian refugees conducted in Turkey in 2016 to draw attention to how refugees view the politics of postconflict reconciliation and reconstruction. We find that refugees desire peace in Syria more than anything else, yet they also desire harsh punishments for the perpetrators of violence, especially against civilians, from all sides of the conflict, which is likely to complicate any process of reconciliation.

This article analyzes two important genres of Arab music that are heard in Syria in the course of the performance of the wasla, or suite of songs: the muwashshahât and the popular songs known as al-qudûd al-halabiyya. Many consider the muwashshahât (sing, muwashshah) to be the epitome of Arab music. Poetically, melodically, and vocally, the muwashshahât constitute a veritable treasure-house of Arabic culture and civilization. The qudûd (sing, qadd) are sung in both standard and colloquial Arabic, but because of their simpler melodic rhythmic structure are generally considered to be simplified versions of muwashshahât; therefore in this article I treat them as a sub-set of the muwashshahât.

Historians of the Middle East and the Balkans have paid little attention to intercommunal relations in Ottoman cities prior to the onset of nationalism and the spread of communal violence in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Each national and religious community has, therefore, focused on writing and imagining its own history with very little attention to the larger social milieu, economic and social conditions, and interactions outside confessional boundaries in the pre-modern period. The history of the Jewish community has received more attention from scholars, while that of the Greek and Armenian communities has been largely ignored. The literature on Islamic cities also tends to emphasize the homogenous composition of residential neighborhoods in contrast to the diversity of the market place. I will show that in Istanbul, residential quarters remained mixed in their social and religious make-up until Muslim migration from the Balkans during the nineteenth century enhanced the ratio of Muslims. Moreover, the debate among Ottomanists has focused on the existence or absence of the millet system (autonomous communal organizations) prior to the nineteenth century. Scholars have argued that the millet system was a nineteenth century development and that there was great fluidity and interaction among the minority communities and the Muslim majority in Ottoman cities. In the nineteenth century, Tanzimat reforms also centralized the administration of confessional communities and set legal boundaries between them that used to be more porous. Elsewhere, I have discussed the plural legal system in eighteenth century Istanbul.

Arabic instruction in Israeli government schools in the Jewish sector is unsatisfactory by both subjective and objective measures. The general consensus among educators, academics and other interested parties, most notably the security apparatus—the main employer of Jews with knowledge of Arabic—is that not enough students study Arabic, and that those who do fail to achieve proficiency in the language (Uhlmann 2010, Ben-Rafael and Brosh 1991, Spolsky and Shohamy 1991, Spolsky et al. 1995, Lustigman 2008, State Comptroller 1996:367). Dissatisfaction with Arabic instruction has been an integral feature of the field since the very inception of the modern, secular, public Hebrew school system in the days of the British Mandate over Palestine (see especially early papers in Yonai 1992 and Landau 1961). This enduring educational fecklessness is remarkable given the available resources and the powerful stakeholders that drive for deepening and broadening Arabic instruction in Jewish schools.

Previous analyses of the problems of Arabic instruction have focused on language ideology and Jewish pupils’ attitudes towards Arabic and Arabs (e.g. Ben-Rafael & Brosh 1991, Ben-Rafael 1994, Kraemer and Olshtain 1994, cf. the comprehensive overview by Spolsky et al. 1995). However, language ideology is but one aspect of the broad political and institutional structuring of Arabic instruction in Israel, and it is this complex as a whole that is responsible for the state of Arabic instruction.

The Ottoman Empire, contrary to the stereotype, was a key player in global commerce until well into the nineteenth century. Customs registers (gümrük defterleri) compiled by the Ottoman administration provide abundant information on ships, seamen, merchants, goods, and prices. This article summarizes the history of Ottoman customs taxation, enumerates the various types of records that contain information on trade and customs dues, and surveys current scholarship on the customs registers. It also includes lists of customs registers found in the Maliyeden Müdevver collection of the Prime Minister's Ottoman Archive (Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi) and other collections also containing customs registers and related documents. The purpose is to stimulate further research into the Ottoman Empire's role in global interaction and exchange, a core topic in the growing field of world history.