Middle East

The story of how Arab editors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries revolutionized Islamic literatureIslamic book culture dates back to late antiquity, when Muslim scholars began to write down their doctrines on parchment, papyrus, and...

One of the world's most ancient and enduring civilizations, Iran has long played a central role in human events and continues to do so today. This book traces the spread of Iranian culture among diverse populations ranging from the Mediterranean to the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781541699236Author Adrian GoldsworthyFormat PaperbackPage Count 288Imprint Basic BooksPublisher Basic BooksWeight(grams) 227gDimensions(mm) 206mm * 137mm *...

When Naser al-Din Shah, who ruled Iran from 1848 to 1896, claimed the title Shadow of God on Earth, his authority rested on premodern conceptions of sacred kingship. By 1941, when Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi came to power, his claim to authority as the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9789652296016Author Dov IndigFormat PaperbackPage Count 190Imprint Gefen Publishing HousePublisher Gefen Publishing HouseWeight(grams) 264g

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780993597589Author Andrew LeatherbarrowFormat PaperbackImprint Andrew LeatherbarrowPublisher Andrew Leatherbarrow

Reza Shah's authoritarian and modernising reign transformed Iran, but his rule and Iran's independence ended in ignominy in 1941. In this book, Shaul Bakhash tells the full story of the Anglo-Soviet invasion which led to his forced abdication, drawing...

Some Islamic scholars hold that Salafism is an innovative and rationalist effort at Islamic reform that emerged in the late nineteenth century but gradually disappeared in the mid twentieth. Others argue Salafism is an anti-innovative and antirationalist...

The destruction of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire in 1915-16 was a brutal mass crime that prefigured other genocides in the 20th century. By various estimates, more than a million Armenians were killed and the survivors were scattered across the...

In June 1887, a man known as General Husayn, a manumitted slave turned dignitary in the Ottoman province of Tunis, passed away in Florence after a life crossing empires. As a youth, Husayn was brought from Circassia to Turkey, where he was sold as a...

Current standard narratives of Ottoman, Balkan, and Middle East history overemphasise the role of nationalism in the transformation of the region. Challenging these accounts, this book argues that religious affiliation was in fact the most influential...

The history of pearling is inextricably linked to the history of Bahrain, the strategically-located Gulf archipelago set amidst one of the richest and most plentiful pearl fisheries in the world. Sea of Pearls tells the story of pearl fishing in the...

A century before the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism, a passionate discourse emerged in the Ottoman Empire, rebutting politicized Western representations of the East. Until the 1930s, Ottoman and early Turkish Republican intellectuals, well...

A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceWhy the conventional wisdom about the Arab Spring is wrongThe Arab Spring promised to end dictatorship and bring self-government to people across the Middle East. Yet everywhere except Tunisia it led to either...

Although scholars have begun to revise the traditional view that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries marked a decline in the fortunes of the Ottoman Empire, Baki Tezcan's book proposes a radical approach to this period. While he concurs that decline...

Writing about Palestine and the Palestinians continue to be controversial. Until the late 1980s, the question of Palestine was approached through Western social theories that had appeared after World War 2. This endowed European settlers and colonists...

Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) was an influential Egyptian ideologue credited with establishing the theoretical basis for radical Islamism in the post colonial Sunni Muslim world. Lacking a pure understanding of the leader's life and work, the popular media has...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780999412794Author Michael HarrisFormat PaperbackPage Count 224Imprint Shorehouse BooksPublisher Shorehouse BooksWeight(grams) 304gDimensions(mm) 229mm *...

In 1943, Lebanon gained its formal political independence from France; only after two more decades did the country finally establish a national central bank. Inaugurated on April 1, 1964, the Banque du Liban (BDL) was billed by Lebanese authorities as...

Revealing what is 'Islamic' in Islamic art, Shaw explores the perception of arts, including painting, music, and geometry through the discursive sphere of historical Islam including the Qur'an, Hadith, Sufism, ancient philosophy, and poetry. Emphasis on...

In this book, a leading authority on Iranian political parties offers the first history of the Mojahedin, a little-known radical group that was instrumental in bringing the Ayatollah Khomeini to power but that now constitutes the main opposition to his...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781989555637Author Lawrence StevensonFormat HardbackPage Count 280Imprint The Sutherland House Inc.Publisher The Sutherland House Inc.Weight(grams) 454g

In the latter half of the twentieth century, a revolutionary idea promised to upend the global order. Anti-imperialist militancy, bolstered by international solidarity, would lead to not only the national liberation of oppressed peoples but universal...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.AwardsWinner of Lionel Gelber Prize and New York Times Notable Book and Pulitzer Prize (Non-Fiction).Book InformationISBN 9780143034667Author Steve CollFormat PaperbackPage Count...

A poignant, deeply human portrait of Egypt during the Arab Spring, told through the lives of individuals A FINANCIAL TIMES AND AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR 'This will be the must read on the destruction of Egypt's revolution and democratic moment'...

The Silk Road and Beyond attempts to capture lived realities across Central Asia, Iran, Turkey, Spain, Italy, Morocco, Finland, Britain, USA, Palestine, Switzerland, Finland, and the subcontinent. It also aims at initiating readers into encountering...

First published in 1960, this work describes the lives and labours of six great scholars - Simon Ockley, Sir William Jones, E. W. Lane, E. H. Palmer, E.G. Browne and R. A Nicholson. These men were devoted to building a bridge between the peoples and...

Pre-modern Arabic biography has served as a major source for the history of Islamic civilization. In this 2000 study exploring the origins and development of classical Arabic biography, Michael Cooperson demonstrates how Muslim scholars used the notions...

What does it means to be Palestinian in the diaspora? This collection of 100 personal reflections on being Palestinian is the first book of its kind. Reflecting on Palestinian identity as it is experienced at the individual level, issues of identity,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781629636511Author Thomas SchmidingerFormat PaperbackPage Count 192Imprint PM PressPublisher PM Press

Janet Afary is a native of Iran and a leading historian. Her work focuses on gender and sexuality and draws on her experience of growing up in Iran and her involvement with Iranian women of different ages and social strata. These observations, and a...

The Bundahisn, meaning primal or foundational creation, is the central Zoroastrian account of creation, cosmology, and eschatology. Compiled sometime in the ninth century CE, it is one of the most important surviving testaments to Zoroastrian literature...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780755638543Author William GranaraFormat PaperbackPage Count 240Imprint I. B. Tauris & CompanyPublisher I. B. Tauris & CompanyWeight(grams) 156g

Reza Shah’s authoritarian and modernising reign transformed Iran, but his rule and Iran’s independence ended in ignominy in 1941. In this book, Shaul Bakhash tells the full story of the Anglo-Soviet invasion which led to his forced abdication, drawing...

British discourse during the Mandate, with its unremitting convergence on the problematic 'native question', and which rested on racial and cultural theories and presumptions, as well as on certain givens drawn from the British class system, has been...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780197547274Author Assistant Professor of History Faisal H HusainFormat HardbackPage Count 272Imprint Oxford University Press, USAPublisher Oxford...

A prominent historian provides an engaging on-the-ground account of the everyday authoritarianism that produced the Arab Spring in Egypt "A visceral and perceptive study of life under autocracy."-Publishers Weekly An unmatched contemporary history of...

2014 Dayton Literary Peace Prize - Nonfiction Runner Up The complex histories and memories of Jewish and Palestinian Israelis today frame Israel's future possibilities for peace. 1948: As Jewish refugees, survivors of the Holocaust, struggle toward...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781989875049Author Ibn Al-JawziFormat PaperbackPage Count 240Imprint AlreshahPublisher AlreshahWeight(grams) 327gDimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 13mm

In February 2003, Patrick Cockburn secretly crossed the Tigris river from Syria into Iraq just before the US/British invasion, and has covered the war ever since. In The Occupation, he provides a vivid and disturbing picture of a country in turmoil, and...