New Books in Middle Eastern Studies

Today I talked to Joseph Sassoon about his book The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire (Pantheon, 2022)They were one of the richest families in the world for two hundred years, from the 19th century to the 20th, and were known as ‘the Rothschilds of the East.’Mesopotamian in origin, and for more than forty years the chief treasurers to the pashas of Baghdad and Basra, they were forced to flee to Bushir on the Persian Gulf; David Sassoon and sons starting over with nothing, and beginning to trade in India in cotton and opium.The Sassoons soon were building textile mills and factories, and setting up branches in shipping in China, and expanding beyond, to Japan, and further west, to Paris and London. They became members of British parliament; were knighted; and owned and edited Britain’s leading newspapers, including The Sunday Times and The Observer.And in 1887, the exalted dynasty of Sassoon joined forces with the banking empire of Rothschild and were soon joined by marriage, fusing together two of the biggest Jewish commerce and banking families in the world.Against the monumental canvas of two centuries of the Ottoman Empire and the changing face of the Far East, across Europe and Great Britain during the time of its farthest reach, Joseph Sassoon gives us a riveting generational saga of the making of this magnificent family dynasty.Geraldine Gudefin is a French-born modern Jewish historian researching Jewish family life, legal pluralism, and the migration experiences of Jews in France and the United States. She is currently a research fellow at the Hebrew University’s Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

The twenty years between the World Wars saw remarkable changes in the Middle East. In Palestine, Britain struggled to maintain its Mandatory Authority as Arabs and Jews fought not only each other but the British Government too. Failing to satisfy either side Britain was stuck in the middle, and separating the warring parties was a distraction they hardly needed. In Mandate: The Palestine Crucible, 1919-1939 (Vallentine Mitchell, 2021), Turnberg explores why the British Government maintained its responsibilities under the Mandate at a time when they were suffering severe economic and social problems at home, and the threat of war with Germany. How was it possible for the Zionists' dream of a homeland in Palestine to survive when they were faced by a Government regretting its commitments, exasperated by both Jewish demands and placating the Palestinian Arabs. The Jews were outnumbered ten to one by the Arabs, but they persisted and, as described here, survived. Events in the first twenty years of the Mandate turned out to be as important to the survival of the Jewish homeland as both the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the international revulsion at the horrors of the holocaust for the creation of the State of Israel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

The doctrine of the modern law of the sea is commonly believed to have developed in Renaissance Europe. The role of Islamic law of the sea and customary practices is often ignored though. In Islamic Law of the Sea: Freedom of Navigation and Passage Rights in Islamic Thought (Cambridge UP, 2019), Hassan S. Khalilieh highlights Islamic legal doctrine regarding freedom of the seas and its implementation in practice. He proves that many of the fundamental principles of the pre-modern international law governing the legal status of the high seas and the territorial sea, though originating in the Mediterranean world, are not necessarily European creations. Beginning with the commonality of the sea in the Qur'an and legal methods employed to ensure the safety, security, and freedom of movement of Muslims and aliens by land and sea, Khalilieh then goes on to examine the concepts of the territorial sea and its security premises, as well as issues surrounding piracy and its legal implications as delineated in Islamic law.Hassan S. Khalilieh is a senior lecturer in the Maritime Civilizations and Multidisciplinary Studies departments and a senior research fellow in the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies, Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences at the University of Haifa, Israel. His publications include Islamic Maritime Law: An Introduction (1998) and Admiralty and Maritime Laws in the Mediterranean Sea (ca.800-1050): The Kitāb Akriyat al-Sufun and the Nomos Rhodion Nautikos (2006).Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University, Near Eastern Studies Department. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners’ feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice (Brill, 2020) brings together the latest research on Islamic occult sciences from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, namely intellectual history, manuscript studies, and material culture. Its aim is not only to showcase the range of pioneering work that is currently being done in these areas but also to provide a model for closer interaction amongst the disciplines constituting this burgeoning field of study. Furthermore, the book provides a rare opportunity to bridge the gap on an institutional level by bringing the academic and curatorial spheres into dialogue.Dr. Liana Saif pays special attention to intercultural exchanges of esoteric and occult ideas between the Islamicate and Latinate worlds all the way to the European Renaissance, as reflected in her first monograph “The Arabic Influences on Early Modern Occult Philosophy” published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2015. She explores there the Islamic scientific and natural-philosophical foundations of the theories of astral influences that “naturalised” astrology and astral magic, becoming sciences that explore the dynamics that link the terrestrial and celestial worlds, thus co-producing knowledge about nature and the cosmos, and resulting in a universe more intelligible to both Muslim scientists and philosophers, and their European counterparts.Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University, Near Eastern Studies Department. His research focuses on the intersection of the occult sciences and the environment across the western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners’ feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Daniel Boyarin's new book The No-State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto (Yale University Press, 2023) is a provocative anti-Zionist manifesto pleading for a new understanding of Jewish peoplehood and sketching an alternative vision for a Jewish future beyond the nation-state: the Diaspora nation. He aims to drive a wedge between the "nation" and the "state," only very recently conjoined, and recover a robust sense of nationalism that does not involve sovereignty. Professor emeritus of Talmudic culture at the University of California, Berkeley, Daniel Boyarin has been one of the most influential and paradigm-shifting scholars in Jewish Studies generally and of rabbinic culture and the study of Judaism and Christianity specifically. His publications include Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (1993), Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Judaism and Christianity (1999), Queer Theory and the Jewish Question (2003), A Traveling Homeland: The Babylonian Talmud as Diaspora (2015) and Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion (2018).Miriam Chorley-Schulz (neé Schulz) holds a Ph.D. in Yiddish Studies from Columbia University. She is an Assistant Professor and Mokin Fellow in Holocaust Studies at the University of Oregon. Miriam is the co-founder of the EU-funded project We Refugees. Digital Archive on Refugeedom, Past and Present and the author of the award-winning monograph Der Beginn des Untergangs: Die Zerstörung der jüdischen Gemeinden in Polen und das Vermächtnis des Wilnaer Komitees (Berlin: Metropol, 2016). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

A Jewish Childhood in the Muslim Mediterranean: A Collection of Stories Curated by Lela Sebbar (U California Press, 2023) brings together the fascinating personal stories of Jewish writers, scholars, and intellectuals who came of age in lands where Islam was the dominant religion and everyday life was infused with the politics of the French imperial project. Prompted by novelist Leïla Sebbar to reflect on their childhoods, these writers offer literary portraits that gesture to a universal condition while also shedding light on the exceptional nature of certain experiences. The childhoods captured here are undeniably Jewish, but they are also Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Egyptian, Lebanese, and Turkish; each essay thus testifies to the multicultural, multilingual, and multi-faith community into which its author was born. The present translation makes this unique collection available to an English-speaking public for the first time. The original version, published in French in 2012, was awarded the Prix Haïm Zafrani, a prize given by the Elie Wiesel Institute of Jewish Studies to a literary project that valorizes Jewish civilization in the Muslim world.Translation by Lia Brozgal, Jane Kuntz, Rebekah Vince and Robert Watson.A free ebook version of this title is available here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

A new account of the Mediterranean economy in the 10th to 12th centuries, forcing readers to entirely rethink the underlying logic to medieval economic systems. Chris Wickham re-examines documentary and archaeological sources to give a detailed account of both individual economies, and their relationships with each other.Chris Wickham offers a new account of the Mediterranean economy in the tenth to twelfth centuries, based on a completely new look at the sources, documentary and archaeological. Our knowledge of the Mediterranean economy is based on syntheses which are between 50 and 150 years old; they are based on outdated assumptions and restricted data sets, and were written before there was any usable archaeology; and Wickham contends that they have to be properly rethought.The Donkey and the Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950-1180 (Oxford UP, 2023) is the first book ever to give a fully detailed comparative account of the regions of the Mediterranean in this period, in their internal economies and in their relationships with each other. It focusses on Egypt, Tunisia, Sicily, the Byzantine empire, Islamic Spain and Portugal, and north-central Italy, and gives the first comprehensive account of the changing economies of each; only Byzantium has a good prior synthesis. It aims to force our rethinking of how economies worked in the medieval Mediterranean. It also offers a rethinking of how we should understand the underlying logic of the medieval economy in general.Chris Wickham is Chichele Professor of medieval history emeritus at University of Oxford.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

The move away from post-Cold War unipolarity and the rise of revisionist states like Russia and China pose a rapidly escalating and confounding threat for the liberal international order. In Iraq Against the World: Saddam, America, and the Post-Cold War Order (Oxford University Press, 2023), Dr. Samuel Helfont offers a new narrative of Iraqi foreign policy after the 1991 Gulf War to argue that Saddam Hussein executed a political warfare campaign that facilitated this disturbance to global norms. Following the Gulf War, the UN imposed sanctions and inspections on the Iraqi state—conditions that Saddam Hussein was in no position to challenge militarily or through traditional diplomacy. Hussein did, however, wage an influence campaign designed to break the unity of the UN Security Council. The Iraqis helped to impede emerging norms of international cooperation and prodded potentially revisionist states to act on latent inclinations to undermine a liberal post-Cold War order.Drawing on internal files from the ruling Ba'th Party, Dr. Helfont highlights previously unknown Iraqi foreign policy strategies, including the prominent use of influence operations and manipulative statesmanship. He traces Ba'thist operations around the globe—from the streets of New York and Stockholm, to the mosques of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, to the halls of power in Paris and Moscow. Iraqi Ba'thists carried out espionage, planted stories in the foreign press, established overt and covert relations with various political parties, and attempted to silence anyone who disrupted their preferred political narrative. They presented themselves simply as Iraqis concerned about the suffering of their friends and families in their home country, and, consequently, were able to assemble a loose political coalition that was unknowingly being employed to meet Iraq's strategic goals. This, in turn, divided Western states and weakened norms of cooperation and consensus toward rules-based solutions to international disputes, causing significant damage to liberal internationalism and the institutions that were supposed to underpin it. A powerful reconsideration of the history of Iraqi foreign policy in the 1990s and the early 2000s, Iraq against the World offers new insights into the evolution of the post-Cold War order.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

With Afghanistan once again under Taliban rule and Pakistan reeling under a severe economic and political crisis, the relationship between the neighbouring countries is growing increasingly tense. How can we understand this contentious situation? And, what are the consequences for the civilian population? To discuss these question, and current Afghanistan-Pakistan relations more generally, Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by Farhat Taj (University of Tromsø).Farhat Taj is an associate professor at the University of Tromsø, the Arctic University of Norway.Kenneth Bo Nielsen is an Associate Professor at the dept. of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and one of the leaders of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies.The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo.We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Süleyman, who ruled the Ottoman Empire between 1520 and 1566, was a globally recognized figure during his lifetime. In Peerless Among Princes: The Life and Times of Sultan Süleyman (Oxford University Press, 2023), Kaya Şahin presents the life of this sultan, whose domain extended from Hungary to Iran, and from the Crimea to North Africa and the Indian Ocean. The wealth of his treasury, the strength of his armies, and his personality were much discussed by historians, poets, courtiers, diplomats and publics across Eurasia.Süleyman was engaged in bitter rivalries with the Catholic Habsburgs in Europe and the Shiite Safavids in the Middle East. He presided over a multilingual and multireligious empire that promised peace and prosperity to its subjects. During his reign, the Ottoman Empire became a truly global power. Imperial governance expanded considerably, and the law was emphasized as the main bond between the ruler and the ruled. Süleyman's prolific poetic output, his frequent appearances during public ceremonies, his charity, and his patronage of arts and architecture enhanced his reputation as a universal ruler with a well-rounded character.Behind the public façade of might and glory, Süleyman led a complicated life. He grew up with an overbearing father whose legacy was both an advantage and a burden. Defying established practice, he married a concubine named Hürrem whose love and affection became a true refuge. Towards the end of his life, he had to overcome both debilitating sickness and the agitations of his sons to remain on the throne.Nearly half a millennium after his death, the life of Süleyman has been obscured by romanticized and exoticized narratives. Based on original sources in multiple languages, the book narrates Süleyman's achievements as well as his failures. What emerges is a compelling account of a ruler, his family, his close associates, and the Ottoman imperial project itself during the transformational sixteenth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies