Osman Hamdi and the Long Duration of History

Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 2020

The book under review is the very first translation of al-Azdi's Futult al-Sham, one of the early extant examples, if not the earliest one, of Arabic historical works. As the Arabic title suggests, al-Azdi's writing belongs to the so-called/utuh ('conqttest') literature, and its main focus is on the conquests of Greater Syria in the early seventh century.

NYU Abu Dhabi Critical Humanities, 2019

In the middle of the 13th century, the fall of the Almohad empire meant the end of the Islamic West unity over the Strait of Gibraltar. A century later, an Andalusian family will propitiate, in connection with the Maghreb, the last joint Arab-Islamic cultural splendor between the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa before the advent of European modernity. This presentation highlights the work of an Arab elite who bequeathed an exceptional output in such a context. First, it shows an outbreak of self-expression that will culminate in the memoirs of exile and the autobiography of the two most prominent figures: the Granadian Ibn al-Khatib and the Tunisian Ibn Khaldun. Second, it places both characters within a network of sages who contributed to a wave of innovations in various fields of knowledge, with a clear tendency towards pragmatism and the centrality of human experience. Third, it questions the general idea of a gap between the two sides of the Strait after the fall of Granada. Finally, the presentation will advocate for the necessity of a dialogue between philology and language technologies in this case study, indicating some of the challenges that Arabic poses in this process.

Historical Archaeology, 2023

The following article considers the imperial as experienced through the daily lives of peasants in southern Syria during the early Ottoman period. Control of critical resources was a flashpoint in the relationship between the state and village communities; thus, it is through the lens of land use that peasant dependency and agency in the face of the Ottoman state can be best evaluated. Two archaeological sites in Jordan and Israel provide data for detailed investigation of patterns noted in the scholarly literature. After a critical assessment of the contributions of archaeology to the large field of (overwhelmingly text-dominated) Ottoman studies, I turn to three areas of peasants' lives that reflected, to different degrees, encounters with the imperial: land tenure and land use, household consumption, and material culture. Resumen En el siguiente artículo se considera lo imperial tal y como se experimentaba a través de la vida cotidiana de los campesinos en el sur de Siria durante el período otomano temprano. El control de recursos críticos fue un punto crítico en la relación entre el Estado y las comunidades rurales; por lo tanto, es a través de la lente del uso de la tierra como se puede evaluar mejor la dependencia y la agencia de los campesinos frente al Estado otomano. Dos sitios arqueológicos en Jordania e Israel proporcionan datos para una investi-gación detallada de los patrones observados en la literatura académica. Después de una evaluación crítica de las contribuciones de la arqueología al amplio campo de los estudios otomanos (abrumadoramente dominados por estudios de textos), paso a tres áreas de la vida de los campesinos que reflejaron, en diferentes grados, encuentros con lo imperial: tenencia y uso de la tierra, consumo del hogar y cultura material. Résumé L'article suivant examine la règle impériale telle qu'elle s'exerçait au cours de la vie quotidienne des paysans du sud de la Syrie durant la période initiale de la domination ottomane. Le contrôle des ressources essentielles était un point conflictuel de la relation entre l'état et les communautés villageoises. Ainsi, c'est au travers de la perspective de l'utilisation des terres que la dépendance et la capacité d'action des paysans face à l'état ottoman peuvent être le mieux évaluées. Deux sites archéologiques en Jordanie et en Israël recèlent des données permettant une recherche approfondie des modèles relevés dans les publications de recherche universitaire. Après une analyse critique des contributions de l'archéologie en faveur du vaste champ des études de l'empire ottoman (dominées majoritairement par le texte), j'aborde trois aspects de la vie des paysans qui illustraient à différents niveaux, les interactions avec le pouvoir impérial : le régime foncier et l'utilisation des terres, la consommation des ménages et la culture matérielle.

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2022

For almost a century, scholars of the modern Middle East have usually tried to understand the formation and history of the latter with a perspective that foregrounds the rise of nationalisms, the birth of nations, and the emergence of new states. Michael Provence's The Last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East is a significant challenge to this deeply rooted perspective forged within the framework of nationalism in the early twentieth century. Offering a novel outlook that exceeds the horizons of the former, Provence's book seeks to understand the making of the modern Middle East by focusing, instead of on the birth of new nations and states, on the slow demise of the old Ottoman Empire whose institutions and elite survived after the defeat in the Great War of -. Thus, Provence's book situates the emergence of the modern Middle East within the late Ottoman context as "the common legacy of the late Ottoman modernization project is second only to the colonial legacy in shaping the history of the region and its peoples" (p. ). Having noted the decisive influence of both the late Ottoman and colonial periods in the making of the modern Middle East, Provence underlines that this process should be studied with a beyond national approach since the "tendency to view the history of the region through the lens of national histories […] obscures the commonalities that were clear to all until at least the s" (p. ). One theme that intersects both the two periods and enables such an approach is the life trajectories of "the last Ottoman generation", who were the products of the late Ottoman education system and shared a sense of belonging to the empire but later turned into the military and political elites of various post-Ottoman countries in the Middle East. Tracing the life trajectories of the members of this generation, Provence's book provides a transnational and connected history of the formative period of the modern Middle East. That is to say, rather than recounting the separate histories of the colonial states of Iraq, Syria, Greater Lebanon, Transjordan, and Palestine, Provence's book highlights the common historical trajectory these countries shared and, thus, represents a significant break from the existing literature that mostly underlines ruptures in the transition from empire to nation-state, such as the First World War, the end of the Ottoman state, and the imposition of colonial rule. The book, in this respect, opens with a chapter on "Ottoman modernity in the long nineteenth century", which surveys the development of the Ottoman education and training system that raised the last Ottoman generation. Sketching the formative years of these 'Ottoman sons' coming from different regional and ethnic backgrounds, this chapter argues that the stories of the future statesmen, revolutionaries, and nation builders of the interwar Middle East begin not with the Turkish or Arab nationalism they eventually espoused, but with their transformation into self-conscious Ottoman state elite in late Ottoman schools and institutions, which inculcated them with love for, and loyalty to, the empire. The second chapter examines the wartime arrangements and post-war negotiations for the partition of Ottoman territories by Britain and France. Besides the establishment of Anglo-French colonial rule in the Middle East following the end of the Great War, the chapter also surveys how Britain and France legitimised their continued presence in the region with the League of Nations mandate system, which bore deep traces of religious and race-hierarchical theories of the time that did not qualify Muslim Arabs for independence and self-governance. In the third chapter, Provence returns to the last Ottoman generation and explores how its members coped with the defeat and subsequent developments between  and . Refuting the widespread view that many Arab officers deserted the Ottoman army during the war to join the British-sponsored revolt of Sharif Husayn and Faysal, Provence

Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 2020

It is becoming increasingly clear that it is no longer necessary to emphasise the need to include Islam in any considerations of Mediterranean history, small or large; this is by now almost self-evident, as Islam has become an acknowledged constituent of all things medieval Mediterranean. For this reason, there is no longer any need for our journal either to emphasise Islam’s integral contribution to Mediterranean history, or to nurture any false ideas of Mediterranean dichotomies. In the twenty-first century, the concept has come to maturity of the medieval Mediterra- nean as a valuable unit of historical analysis that takes into account the full complex- ity of the agencies of medieval Mediterrean sea- and landscapes.

International Journal of Middle East Studies 46 (2014): 828-30

H-Net Medieval, 2019

Christophe Picard's new book, Sea of the Caliphs, is the translation of his La mer des califes: Une histoire de la Méditerranée musulmane, VIIe-XIIe siècle (2015). In it, he argues that the importance of the Mediterranean to early Islam has been misunderstood and sets out to demonstrate just how fundamental it was to the thinking of early men of letters as well as to the caliphs who conquered and ruled the vast territory spanning from Central Asia to the Atlantic. Although the Mediterranean did come to be dominated by Latins by the thirteenth century, he pushes back against the perception, created in part by the nature of the sources, that during the first centuries of Islam, the sea was nothing more than a venue for sporadic piracy. Instead he shows how it featured in the shifting ideas of jihad propounded by the Umayyad, Abbasids, Fatimid, and Andalusi caliphates. The book has lofty and important goals but unfortunately falls short of providing a well-organized argument to achieve them.

Events 2021-22-Mediterranean Forum The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us a lot about virtual exchanges. All of our Mediterranean Forum lectures were converted to a hybrid format (in-person and online), which, on the bright side, has allowed for broader exposure and wider international audiences. Additionally, many lectures were recorded and are now available on the HCMH's YouTube channel. 31st March 2022. A hybrid lecture by Prof. Theo Maarten van Lint, University of Oxford, Fellow of the Fund for the Advancement of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Israeli Academy of Sciences. The lecture titled "Christian Apologetics and Muslim-Christian Interaction in Eleventh Century Armenia. The Case of Grigor Magistros Pahlawuni and Amir Ibrahim" was co-hosted by the Department of General History, University of Haifa. Available on the HCMH's YouTube channel! 26th April 2022.

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2014