Middle East

Surrounded on all borders but its western coastline by hostile and aggressive neighbors, the state of Israel resembles the walled city of the Middle Ages. But its walls are not stone and mortar, they are flesh and blood-they are the soldiers, both men...

Exploring the furthest reaches of the globe, Persian travelers from Iran and India travelled across Russian and Ottoman territories, to Asia, Africa, North and South America, Europe and beyond. Remapping the world through their travelogues, Reversing the...

"Sarah Tuttle-Singer brings Jerusalem's Old City to life like no writer before her?penning a ferocious love letter that will infuriate zealots and enthrall most everybody else. . . .Ultimately a plea for Jerusalem, as she puts it, not to be 'ripped to...

The contemporary world is increasingly defined by dizzying flows of people and ideas. But while Western travel is associated with a pioneering spirit of discovery, the dominant image of Muslim mobility is the jihadi who travels not to learn but to...

Britain relied upon secret intelligence operations to rule Mandatory Palestine. Statecraft by Stealth sheds light on a time in history when the murky triad of intelligence, policy, and security supported colonial governance. It emphasizes the role of the...

Partners of the Empire offers a radical rethinking of the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Over this unstable period, the Ottoman Empire faced political crises, institutional shakeups, and popular insurrections. It...

The story of the succession to the Prophet Muhammad and the rise of the Rashidun Caliphate (632-661) is familiar to historians from the political histories of medieval Islam, which treat it as a factual account. The story also informs the competing...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.AwardsNominated for Plutarch Award 2014.Book InformationISBN 9780307476418Author Scott AndersonFormat PaperbackPage Count 624Imprint Anchor BooksPublisher Random House USA...

In Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats, the most thorough treatment of the political economy of Saudi Arabia to date, Steffen Hertog uncovers an untold history of how the elite rivalries and whims of half a century ago have shaped today's Saudi state and...

This Handbook is a current, comprehensive single-volume history of Iranian civilization. The authors, all leaders in their fields, emphasize the large-scale continuities of Iranian history while also describing the important patterns of transformation...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780809098828Author Steven C CatonFormat PaperbackPage Count 352Imprint Hill & Wang Inc.,U.S.Publisher Hill & Wang Inc.,U.S.Weight(grams) 499gDimensions(mm)...

British General Sir Allan Cunningham was appointed in 1945 as high commissioner of Palestine, and served in this capacity until the end of the British mandate on May 15, 1948. The three years of Cunningham's tenure were tremendously complex politically:...

How the Ottomans refashioned and legitimated their rule through mystical imageries of authorityThe medieval theory of the caliphate, epitomized by the Abbasids (750-1258), was the construct of jurists who conceived it as a contractual leadership of the...

In one of the first ever environmental histories of the Ottoman Empire, Alan Mikhail examines relations between the empire and its most lucrative province of Egypt. Based on both the local records of various towns and villages in rural Egypt and the...

By combining their expertise in English literature and anthropology, Ibrahim Muhawi and Sharif Kanaana bring to these folktales an integral method of study that unites a sensitivity to language with a deep appreciation for culture. As native...

In this innovative book, Keith Watenpaugh connects the question of modernity to the formation of the Arab middle class. The book explores the rise of a middle class of liberal professionals, white-collar employees, journalists, and businessmen during the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780684823423Author Hanan AshrawiFormat PaperbackPage Count 328Imprint TouchstonePublisher Simon & SchusterWeight(grams) 483gDimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm *...

For thousands of years, Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean have been subject to constant colonial interference, which has disenfranchised the indigenous population from their own history. Basem L. Ra'ad uncovers this history and begins the process...

Blood, according to Gil Anidjar, maps the singular history of Christianity. As a category for historical analysis, blood can be seen through its literal and metaphorical uses as determining, sometimes even defining Western culture, politics, and social...

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...

Colonial Effects analyzes the creation and definition of modern Jordanian identity. Massad studies two key institutions-- the law and the military--and uses them to create an original and precise analysis of the development of Jordanian national identity...

The Druze and the Maronites arguably the two founding communities of modern Lebanon have the reputation of being primordial enemies. Makram Rabah attempts to gauge the impact of collective memory on determining the course and the nature of the...

The Middle East plays a major role in the history of genetic science. Early in the twentieth century, technological breakthroughs in human genetics coincided with the birth of modern Middle Eastern nation-states, who proclaimed that the region's ancient...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780853036722Author Mustafa KabhaFormat PaperbackPage Count 292Imprint Vallentine Mitchell & Co LtdPublisher Vallentine Mitchell & Co LtdWeight(grams)...

Zachary Lockman's informed and thoughtful history of European Orientalism and US Middle East studies, the 'clash of civilizations' debate and America's involvement in the region has become a highly recommended and widely used text since its publication...

Is the idea of the "Middle East" simply a geopolitical construct conceived by the West to serve particular strategic and economic interests-or can we identify geographical, historical, cultural, and political patterns to indicate some sort of...

Islamic Central Asia is the first English-language anthology of primary documents for the study of Central Asian history. Scott C. Levi and Ron Sela draw from a vast array of historical sources to illustrate important aspects of the social, cultural,...

Professor Dresch combines ethnography with history to describe the tribal system over the last thousand years, and examines the values the tribal people themselves bring to the contemporary world of nation states. Drawing heavily on local histories and...

Against the backdrop of the revolutionary uprisings of 2011-2013, Samuli Schielke asks how ordinary Egyptians confront the great promises and grand schemes of religious commitment, middle class respectability, romantic love, and political ideologies in...

Drawing on the accounts of early European travelers, original Arabic sources on jurisprudence and etiquette, and treatises on coffee from the period, the author recounts the colorful early history of the spread of coffee and the influence of coffeehouses...

For almost two centuries, followers of the Baha'i faith, Iran's largest religious minority, have been persecuted by the state. They have been made scapegoats for the nation's ills, branded enemies of Islam and denounced as foreign agents. Since the...

The death of the Islamic Republic's revolutionary patriarch, Ayatollah Khomeini, the bitter denouement of the Iran-Iraq War, and the marginalisation of leading factions within the political elite, in tandem with the end of the Cold War, harboured immense...

The Ottoman Scramble for Africa is the first book to tell the story of the Ottoman Empire's expansionist efforts during the age of high imperialism. Following key representatives of the sultan on their travels across Europe, Africa, and Arabia at the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781643139241Author Katherine PangonisFormat HardbackPage Count 272Imprint Pegasus BooksPublisher Pegasus BooksWeight(grams) 454gDimensions(mm) 234mm * 152mm...

Finalist for the 2016 National Translation Award given by the American Literary Translators' Association The life, birth, and early years of 'the Fariyaq'-the alter ego of the Arab intellectual Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq Leg over Leg recounts the life,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781908531520Author Ghayth ArmanaziFormat HardbackPage Count 264Imprint Nomad PublishingPublisher Nomad PublishingWeight(grams) 450g

From its earliest days, the dominant history of the Turkish Republic has been one of national self-determination and secular democratic modernization. The story insisted on total rupture between the Ottoman Empire and the modern Turkish state and on the...

It would not be an overstatement to say that Cemal Kafadar has transformed the field of Ottoman history. As a result of his pathbreaking books and articles, the field is experiencing a turn within itself as well as recasting its relationship with world...

Amid the tensions and uncertainties that plagued the globe before the Second World War, the Republic of Turkey appeared to many as a unique and constructive model for how a state was to be reformed and governed in the modern era. For many interwar...

Michael Wolfe's "exemplary" (Library Journal) collection of historical writings on the Hajj, now updated with a new introduction by Reza Aslan.Since its inception in the seventh century, the pilgrimage to Mecca, or the Hajj, has been the central theme in...