- HISTORY: Middle East: Egypt (see also Ancient
- HISTORY: Middle East: General
- HISTORY: Middle East: Israel
- Al Qaeda in Its Own Words
- To reveal Al Qaeda’s inner workings, Gilles Kepel and his collaborators, all scholars of Arabic and Islam, have collected and brilliantly annotated key texts of the major figures from whom the movement has drawn its beliefs and direction. The resulting volume offers an unprecedented glimpse into the assumptions of the salafist jihadists who have reshaped political life at the beginning of the third millennium.
- Hardcover 2008
- Arab-Byzantine Coins
- This illustrated handbook presents a concise history of the development of the coinage of the early Arab caliphate in the seventh century. The historical introduction, which includes descriptions of all the basic types, is followed by a summary catalogue of the recently acquired collection of Arab-Byzantine coins at Dumbarton Oaks.
- Paperback 2009
- The Armenian Inscriptions from the Sinai
- Hardcover 1983
- The Blue and the Yellow Stars of David
- Hardcover
- The Breakdown of the State in Lebanon, 1967-1976
- Straddling the boundaries of politics and history, Farid el Khazen's arresting book shows how Lebanon was led toward its fate by its neighbors, yet ultimately undid itself. The Palestine Liberation Organization's presence was of central importance to the breakdown of the state, while the porousness of the democratic system could not contain the problems and violence. The breakdown was less a civil war in the conventional sense than a series of little wars with outside interference.
- Hardcover 2000
- Byzantium and the Slavs
- These reprints of articles, reviews, and other short pieces by the well-known Byzantinist, Ihor Ševčenko, are gathered together in one volume for the first time. It is a lively guide along a varied journey through the world of Byzantium and the Slays and reconstructs the relationship between the two in the light of texts, both literary and scientific.
- Hardcover 1991
- Cairo
- Gaze toward the Nile from the desert hills of Mokattam and the vast city of Cairo unfolds before you, with its monumental architecture, teeming populace, and thousands of years of rich history. The extraordinary tapestry of Cairo's past and present comes vividly to life in this magisterial study by André Raymond, arguably the premier social historian of the Arab world.
- Hardcover 2001 / Paperback 2002
- Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University
"Area studies"--a distinctively American way of organizing knowledge about the rest of the world--have been in a state of crisis in recent years, especially since the end of the cold war and the spread of globalization. In no field of inquiry has that crisis been as acute as in Middle Eastern studies. This volume focuses on one of the leading institutions in the field, Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), which was founded fifty years ago to further research and teaching about a region that remains enigmatic to the United States.
The book is divided into three parts: the first presents a critical look at the history of the Center against the backdrop of ongoing debates about Middle Eastern studies and area studies in general; the second examines the multifaceted operations of CMES that serve the scholarly community within and beyond Harvard; and the third consists of a series of essays, mainly by members of the core faculty of the Center, offering diverse assessments of the state of Middle Eastern studies today as well as visions of how Harvard might meet the complex challenges to the field in the years ahead.
- Paperback 2006
- Contest of Symbols
- This book is a sociological study of election campaigns in Israel through analysis of election ephemera from the ninth, tenth and eleventh Knessets (1977-1984).
- Paperback 2005
- The Dome of the Rock
- This book tells the story of the Dome of the Rock, from the first fateful decades of its creation to its modern acquisition of different and potent meanings for Muslim, Christian, and Jewish cultures. Primarily it is as a work of art that the Dome of the Rock stands out from these pages, understood for the quality that allows it to transcend the constrictions of period and perhaps even those of faith and culture.
- Hardcover 2006
- Dreaming Across Boundaries
- This volume explores the context of theological speculations and political aspirations through the medium of dreams to present fascinating insights into the social history of the pre-modern Islamic world in all its cultural diversity. Wider cultural exchanges are discussed through concrete examples such as the Arabic version of the Aristotelian treatise De divinatione per somnum, and some of the current scholarly assumptions about dreams are challenged by personal reports that express individual personalities, self-awareness, and spiritual development.
- Hardcover 2008 / Paperback 2008
- Dreaming Across Boundaries
- This volume explores the context of theological speculations and political aspirations through the medium of dreams to present fascinating insights into the social history of the pre-modern Islamic world in all its cultural diversity. Wider cultural exchanges are discussed through concrete examples such as the Arabic version of the Aristotelian treatise De divinatione per somnum, and some of the current scholarly assumptions about dreams are challenged by personal reports that express individual personalities, self-awareness, and spiritual development.
- Hardcover 2008 / Paperback 2008
- The Economic History of Byzantium
- Hardcover 2002 / Paperback 2008
- Empires of the Sand
- Rejecting the view of modern Middle Eastern history as an offshoot of global power politics, Efraim and Inari Karsh argue that the main impetus for the developments of the momentous long nineteenth century (1789-1923) came from the local actors. Empires of the Sand sees a pattern of pragmatic cooperation and conflict between the Middle East and the West during the past two centuries, rather than a "clash of civilizations," a vision affording daringly new ways of viewing the Middle East's past as well as its volatile present.
- Hardcover 1999 / Paperback 2001
- Everyday Jihad
- As southern Lebanon becomes the latest battleground for Islamist warriors, Rougier plunges us into the heavily populated Palestinian refugee camp at Ain al-Helweh, which became a site for militant Sunni Islamists in the early 1990s. Rougier documents how Sunni fundamentalists, through their own interpretations of sacred texts and jihad, took root in this Palestinian milieu, and explains how radical religious allegiances overcome traditional nationalist sentiment in communities marked by poverty and despair.
- Hardcover 2007 / Paperback 2008
- The Failure of Political Islam
- Olivier Roy demonstrates that the Islamic Fundamentalism of today is still the Third Worldism of the 1960s: populist politics and mixed economies of laissez-faire for the rich and subsidies for the poor. In Roy's striking formulation, those marching today beneath Islam's green banners are the same as the "reds" of yesterday, with similarly dim prospects of success. Richly informed, powerfully argued, and clearly written, this is a book that no one trying to understand Islam can afford to overlook.
- Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1998
- The Foreign Policy of Saudi Arabia
- Goldberg's Saudi perspective, unlike the British perspective of earlier studies, focuses on the marked changes in the years from 1902 to the disappearance of the Ottomans in 1918. By focusing on the roots of Saudi foreign policy, he highlights the distinctive characteristics that make Saudi Arabia inherently different from other Middle Eastern states.
- Hardcover 1986
- From Egypt to Babylon
- For those who believe that globalization is a purely modern phenomenon, this book holds a startling and absorbing lesson. Readers are immersed in a world of exotic empires and states as they waxed and waned and interacted in a period of extraordinary internationalism—all before the rise of the Persian Empire.
- Hardcover 2008
- The Galilee in Late Antiquity
- Paperback / Hardcover
- Histoires Grecques
- Sartre spans the grand narrative of Greek culture over a thousand years and a vast expanse of land and sea. Ranging from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean world, these excursions amount to a panoramic vision of one of the most important civilizations of all time.
- Hardcover 2009
- History of Vardan and the Armenian War
- Elishē's History of Vardan and the Armenian War expresses in more general terms his attitude as a Christian Armenian to the problems of cultural survival and patriotism in a hostile environment. His history profoundly influenced Armenian writers from classical times to the present; its hero, Vardan, remains the ideal figure of a patriot even in Soviet Armenia.
- Hardcover 1982
- The History of an Islamic School of Law
- The Hanafi school of law is one of the oldest legal schools of Islam, coming into existence in the eighth century in Iraq, and surviving up to the present. So closely is the early development of the Hanafi school interwoven with non-legal spheres, such as the political, social, and theological, that the study of it is essential to a proper understanding of medieval Islamic history. Tsafrir offers a thorough examination of the first century and a half of the school's existence, the period during which it took shape.
- Hardcover 2004
- History of the Armenians
- Hardcover 1978
- Holon
- Excavations at the open-air site of Holon, carried out by Tamar Noy between 1963 and 1970, were some of the first successful salvage projects in the region. This volume brings together the results of interdisciplinary research on the site of Holon--geology, dating, archaeology, paleontology, taphonomy, and spatial analysis--by a team of leading international researchers. This book will be an essential point of reference for students and specialists working in the archaeology of human evolution.
- Paperback 2008
- In the Shadow of the Sultan
- Since the ninth century, Morocco has been ruled by a sultan-king who has monopolized the levers of power. This striking longevity invites questions about the institutions and social processes that bolster the monarchy's stability. This collection of twelve articles approaches the question of power by bringing together the most recent scholarship on Moroccan political culture as seen from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and historical moments, from the medieval period until today. Focussing primarily on popular understandings of authority, the studies in this volume encompass themes of sainthood, ceremony, submission, tolerance, violence, sexuality, gender, and intergenerational conflict.
- Paperback 1999
- Inside the Arab World
- The first book to include developments since the Gulf War and the historic pact between Israel and the PLO, Inside the Arab World gives us a complete and detailed picture of the region as it is today, as well as a clear sense of how Arab affairs have evolved and where they may lead.
- Hardcover 1995 / Paperback 1996
- The Iraq War
- In this unprecedented account of the intensive air and ground operations in Iraq, two of America's most distinguished military historians bring clarity and depth to the first major war of the new millennium. Reaching beyond the blaring headlines, embedded videophone reports, and daily Centcom briefings, Williamson Murray and Robert Scales analyze events in light of past military experiences, present battleground realities, and future expectations.
- Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2005
- Islam without Fear
- For the last several decades an influential group of Egyptian scholars and public intellectuals has been having a profound effect in the Islamic world. Raymond Baker offers a compelling portrait of these New Islamists--Islamic scholars, lawyers, judges, and journalists who provide the moral and intellectual foundations for a more fully realized Islamic community, open to the world and with full rights of active citizenship for women and non-Muslims.
- Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2006
- Islamic Legal Interpretation
- The world knows of Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa in the Salman Rushdie case, yet this key institution in Muslim society has not been the subject of a major examination until now. Islamic Legal Interpretationoffers a casebook of interdisciplinary analyses of fatwas over a wide range of times and places.
- Hardcover 1996
- Jerusalem
- Jerusalem is more than a tourist site—it is a city where every square mile is layered with historical significance, religious intensity, and extraordinary stories. It is a past marked by three great forces: religion, war, and monumentality. In this book, Goldhill takes on this peculiar archaeology of human imagination, hope, and disaster to provide a tour through the history of this most image-filled and ideology-laden city.
- Hardcover 2008
- Lighting in Early Byzantium
- This book is the first general survey of lighting in Byzantium. The first part of the book discusses the technology and types of lighting devices and explains their decorative symbolism and social function. The second half illustrates this narrative by drawing on a Dumbarton Oaks exhibition.
- Paperback 2009
- The Lost Capital of Byzantium
- Paperback 2009
- Makina/Medina
- Paperback 2009
- The Middle East under Rome
- Sartre has written a long overdue and comprehensive history of the Semitic Near East (modern Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel) from the eve of the Roman conquest to the end of the third century C.E. and the dramatic rise of Christianity. His broad yet finely detailed perspective takes in all aspects of this history, not just the political and military, but economic, social, cultural, and religious developments as well.
- Hardcover 2005 / Paperback 2007
- Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs
- Focusing on idealists and visionaries who believed that Justice could reign in our world, this book explores the desire to experience utopia on earth. Reluctant to await another existence--another form, or eternal life following death and resurrection--individuals with ghuluww, or exaggeration, emerged at the advent of Islam, expecting to attain the apocalyptic horizon of Truth. In their minds, Muhammad's prophecy represented one such cosmic moment of transformation.
- Paperback 2003
- The Orientalizing Revolution
- The splendid culture of the ancient Greeks has often been described as emerging like a miracle from a genius of its own, owing practically nothing to its neighbors. Walter Burkert offers a decisive argument against that distorted view, pointing toward a balanced picture of the archaic period "in which, under the influence of the Semitic East--from writers, craftsmen, merchants, healers--Greek culture began its unique flowering, soon to assume cultural hegemony in the Mediterranean.
- Paperback 1998 / Hardcover
- The Palestinian Peasant Economy under the Mandate
- Challenging the claim that Palestine's peasant economy progressed during the 1920s and 1930s, Amos Nadan skillfully integrates a wide variety of sources to demonstrate that the period was actually one of deterioration on both the macro (per capita) and micro levels.
- Paperback 2006
- The Palestinian People
- In a timely reminder of how the past informs the present, Baruch Kimmerling and Joel Migdal offer an authoritative account of the history of the Palestinian people from their modern origins to the Oslo peace process and beyond. They unravel what went right--and what went wrong--in the Oslo peace process, and what lessons we can draw about the forces that help to shape a people. The authors present a balanced, insightful, and sobering look at the realities of creating peace in the Middle East.
- Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2003
- The Quest for Democracy in Iran
- The Constitutional Revolution of 1906 launched Iran as a pioneer in a broad-based movement to establish democratic rule in the non-Western world. In a book that provides essential context for understanding modern Iran, Azimi traces a century of struggle for the establishment of representative government.
- Hardcover 2008
- Revolution Until Victory?
- The PLO is now almost a government in Gaza and the West Bank. In this in-depth account of its ideology, strategy, and tactics, its relationship to other Arabstates, and its confrontations with Israel, Barry Rubin documents how the PLO was transformed from revolutionary organization into the administrator of its own territory.
- Paperback 1996 / Hardcover
- Shifting Lines in the Sand
- Hardcover
- Sources and Studies on the Ottoman Black Sea, Volume I, The Customs Register of Caffa, 1487-1490
- Halil Inalcik, the acknowledged dean of American Ottoman studies, has contributed a stunning new study of economic life of the Black Sea under Ottoman Rule by examining the customs register of Caffa. All those interested in the Ottoman period and Black Sea history will find this to be a signal publication.
- Paperback 1997
- Sowing the Dragon's Teeth
- The military achievements of the emperors Nikephoros Phokas, John Tzimiskes, and Basil II brought the Byzantine Empire to the height of its power by the early eleventh century. This volume presents new editions and translations of two military treatises–the Praecepta militaria of Nikephoros Phokas and the revised version included in the Taktika of Nikephoros Ouranos.
- Paperback 2008
- Spiritual Wayfarers, Leaders in Piety
- This book represents the first continuous history of Sufism in Palestine. Covering the period between the rise of Islam and the spread of Ottoman rule and drawing on vast biographical material and complementary evidence, the book describes the social trajectory that Sufism followed.
- Paperback 2008
- The Temple of Jerusalem
- It was destroyed nearly 2000 years ago, and yet the Temple of Jerusalem--cultural memory, symbol, and site--remains one of the most powerful, and most contested, buildings in the world. This glorious structure, imagined and re-imagined, reconsidered and reinterpreted again and again over two millennia, emerges in all its historical, cultural, and religious significance in Simon Goldhill's account.
- Hardcover 2005
- That the World May Know
- What can we do to prevent more atrocities from happening in the future, and to stop the ones that are happening right now? That the World May Know tells the powerful and moving story of the successes and failures of the modern human rights movement. Drawing on firsthand accounts from fieldworkers around the world, the book gives a painfully clear picture of the human cost of confronting inhumanity in our day.
- Hardcover 2007
- Three Byzantine Military Treatises
- Threatened on all sides by relentless enemies for a thousand years, the Byzantines needed ready armies and secure borders. To this end, experienced commanders compiled practical handbooks of military strategy. Three such manuals are presented here. These treatises provide information not only on tactics and weaponry but also on the motivations of the men who risked their lives to defend the empire.
- Hardcover 1985 / Paperback 2009
- The Transformation of Palestinian Politics
- A comprehensive overview and analysis of the Palestinians' move from revolutionary movement to state, The Transformation of Palestinian Politics outlines the difficulties in the transition now under way arising from Palestinian history, society, and diplomatic agreements. Drawing from documents in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, as well as interviews and direct observations, Barry Rubin writes about their search for a national identity, the choice of an economic system, and the structure of government. His charting of the triumphs and difficulties of this state-in-the-making helps predict and explain future dramatic developments in the Middle East.
- Hardcover 1999 / Paperback 2001
- Two Faiths, One Banner
- Hardcover 2009
- The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran
- The shah of Iran would remain on the throne for the foreseeable future: This was the firm conclusion of a 1978 CIA analysis. One hundred days later the shah was overthrown by a popular revolution. The CIA was not alone in its myopia, as Kurzman reveals in this penetrating work; Iranians themselves considered a revolution inconceivable until it actually occurred. This book offers rare insight into the nature and evolution of the Iranian revolution and into the ultimate unpredictability of protest movements in general.
- Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2005
- Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages
- Hardcover 1978