New Books in Middle Eastern Studies

Angelic beings can be found throughout the Hebrew Bible, and by late antiquity the archangels Michael and Gabriel were as familiar as the patriarchs and matriarchs, guardian angels were as present as one’s shadow, and praise of the seraphim was as sacred as the Shema prayer. Mika Ahuvia recovers once-commonplace beliefs about the divine realm and demonstrates that angels were foundational to ancient Judaism. Ancient Jewish practice centered on humans' relationships with invisible beings who acted as intermediaries, role models, and guardians. Drawing on non-canonical sources—incantation bowls, amulets, mystical texts, and liturgical poetry—Ahuvia shows that when ancient men and women sought access to divine aid, they turned not only to their rabbis or to God alone but often also to the angels. On My Right Michael, On My Left Gabriel: Angels in Ancient Jewish Culture (U California Press, 2021) spotlights these overlooked stories, interactions, and rituals, offering a new entry point to the history of Judaism and the wider ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern world in which it flourished. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Who is ‘Uthman ibn Affan, and why does he matter? Why was his election as the third successor to the Prophet Muhammad so controversial? In fact, why is he a controversial figure in Islamic history? Who killed him, and was his murder the fault of his own leadership and character flaws or was he a victim of the time and context he lived in, of the legacy he inherited from his predecessors? In her excellent new book, ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan: Legend or Liability, published with OneWorld 2021. Heather Keaney sets out to explore answers to these questions by providing a historical overview of ‘Uthman’s life, leadership, and legacy. She investigates Muslim sources between the 8th and 14th centuries, Shi'i and Sunni. Keaney argues that Uthman as a historical figure is constructed by the biographies written about him, by a memory of him, and that these memories often result from polemical debates among Muslims.In today’s discussion, we talk at length about Uthman in all of his complexity. We talk about who he is, why he matters, his caliphate and the controversies around how he became the caliph, some of the challenges he faced as a caliph, and complaints about his character and leadership, his accomplishments, his murder, his legacy.Shehnaz Haqqani is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Mercer University. She earned her PhD in Islamic Studies with a focus on gender from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018. Her dissertation research explored questions of change and tradition, specifically in the context of gender and sexuality, in Islam. She is currently working on a book project on Muslim women's marriage to non-Muslims in Islam. Shehnaz runs a YouTube channel called What the Patriarchy?! (WTP?!), where she vlogs about feminism and Islam in an effort to dismantle the patriarchy and uproot it from Islam (ambitious, she knows). She can be reached at haqqani_s@mercer.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Although hip hop culture has widely been acknowledged as a global phenomenon that has spread far beyond its roots in American African-Caribbean-Latinx cultures, there are few studies that have examined the participation of women in global hip hop, and even fewer that examine the reception of female artists by other women.  Angela Williams's book Hip Hop Harem: Women, Rap and Representation in the Middle East (Peter Lang, 2020) explores the social reception of seven prominent female rappers from the region: Shadia Mansour (Palestine), Malikah (Lebanon), Soultana (Morocco), Soska (Egypt), Myam Mahmoud (Egypt), Amani (Yemen), and Justina (Iran), who use their music and personal styles to give voice to themes of self-determination and liberation within their own lives.Easily accessibly by undergraduates, Hip Hop Harem is an important work that allows Middle Eastern Muslim women to participate in knowledge creation about themselves in the western academic tradition, rooted in Third Wave Feminism and post-colonial theory.  Christopher S Rose is a social historian of medicine focusing on Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean in the 19th and 20th century. He currently teaches History at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

In the West, the study of the phenomenon known as the Crusades has long been dominated by European concerns: European periodization, European selection of important moments and personages, and, most of all, European sources. In recent years, scholars such as Carole Hillenbrand, Paul Cobb, and Michael Lower have mined Arabic-language material with the purpose of creating a more balanced view of the Crusades--one that gives the Muslim experiences a voice in the English language. Now, Dr. Suleiman Mourad, Professor of Religion at Smith College, and Dr. James Lindsay, Professor of History at Colorado State University, have produced an anthology known as Muslim Sources of the Crusader Period: An Anthology (Hackett, 2021). Covering a wide range of topics and a diverse set of sources, Muslim Sources of the Crusader Period makes new translations of primary source material available to English-speaking students and scholars of the Crusades.In our conversation, Jim, Suleiman and I touch upon how the Crusades are perceived differently in Muslim sources than they are in European sources; how to categorize an anthology, and what sort of sources to include; and the importance of establishing the diversity of opinion even within the Muslim sources.Aaron M. Hagler is an associate professor of history at Troy University. 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 Ottoman Syrians - residents of modern Syria and Lebanon - formed the first Arabic-speaking Evangelical Church in the region. Deanna Ferree Womack's book Protestants, Gender and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria (Edinburgh UP, 2020) offers a fresh narrative of the encounters of this minority Protestant community with American missionaries, Eastern churches and Muslims at the height of the Nahda, from 1860 to 1915. Drawing on rare Arabic publications, it challenges historiography that focuses on Western male actors. Instead it shows that Syrian Protestant women and men were agents of their own history who sought the salvation of Syria while adapting and challenging missionary teachings. These pioneers established a critical link between evangelical religiosity and the socio-cultural currents of the Nahda, making possible the literary and educational achievements of the American Syria Mission and transforming Syrian society in ways that still endure today.Byung Ho Choi and Sun Yong Lee are Ph.D. students in the Department of History & Ecumenics, focusing on World Christianity and history of religions at Princeton Theological Seminary.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Of the available sources for Islamic history published before the 9th century of the Christian Era, few are of greater importance than Kitab Futuh al-Buldan (The Book of the Conquest of Lands), by al-Baladhuri, a ninth-century administrator at the Abbasid court. The text has been heavily relied upon by scholars for centuries as they have compiled the history of the early Islamic empires.In Arab Conquests and Early Islamic Historiography: The Futuh al-Buldan of al-Baladhuri (I. B. Tauris, 2021), Ryan J. Lynch, Associate Professor of History at Columbus State University in Georgia, takes a deeper look at the text, its author, sources, genre, and reception. Al-Baladhuri wasn't a historian, and he wrote Futuh al-Buldan for a specific purpose -- what was he trying to achieve, and why?This fascinating volume not only brings new depths to al-Baladhuri's text, but offers insight into how historians of the Late Antique and Early Medieval Mediterranean can engage with sources in a more critical manner while still recognizing their historical value. Published in 2020, Arab Conquests and Early Islamic Historiography is out in paperback from I. B. Tauris, which makes it easily accessible to students, specialists, and generalists alike.Christopher S Rose is a social historian of medicine focusing on Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean in the 19th and 20th century. He currently teaches History at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

For more than thirteen centuries, caravans transported millions of enslaved people from Africa south of the Sahara into what is now the Kingdom of Morocco. Today there are no museums, plaques, or monuments that recognize this history of enslavement, but enslaved people and their descendants created the Gnawa identity that preserves this largely suppressed heritage. This pioneering book describes how Gnawa emerged as a practice associated with Blackness and enslavement by reviewing visual representation and musical traditions from the late nineteenth century to the present.Cynthia J. Becker addresses the historical consciousness of subaltern groups and how they give Blackness material form through modes of dress, visual art, religious ceremonies, and musical instruments in performance. She examines what it means to self-identify as Black in Morocco (a country typically associated with the Middle East and the Arab world), especially during this time of increased contemporary African migration, which has made Blackness even more visible. Her case studies draw on archival material and on her extended research in the city of Essaouira, site of the wildly popular Gnawa World Music Festival. Becker shows that Gnawa spirit possession ceremonies express the marginalization associated with enslavement and allow these unique communities to move toward healing, even as the mass-marketing of Gnawa music has resulted in some Gnawa practitioners engaging Blackness to claim legitimacy and spiritual power.This book challenges the framing of Africa’s cultural history into “sub-Saharan” versus “North African” or Islamic versus non-Islamic categories. Blackness in Morocco: Gnawa Identity Through Music and Visual Culture (U Minnesota Press, 2020) complicates how we think about the institution of slavery and its impact on North African religious and social institutions, and readers will better understand and appreciate the role of Africans in shaping global forces, including religious institutions such as Islam.This interview is part of an NBN special series on “Mobilities and Methods.”Cynthia J. Becker is associate professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Boston University. She is the author of Amazigh Arts in Morocco: Women Shaping Berber Identity. Her writing has been published in many journals and edited volumes, including Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa.Alize Arıcan is an incoming Postdoctoral Fellow at Rutgers University's Center for Cultural Analysis. She is an anthropologist whose research focuses on urban renewal, futurity, care, and migration in Istanbul, Turkey. Her work has been featured in Current Anthropology, City & Society, Radical Housing Journal, and entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Islam through Objects (Bloomsbury, 2021) represents the state of the field of Islamic material cultural studies. With contributions from scholars of religion, anthropologists, art historians, folklorists, historians, and other disciplines, Anna Bigelow, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University, brings together a wide range of perspectives on Islamic materiality to debunk myths of Islamic aversion to material aspects of religion. Each chapter focuses on a single object in daily use by Muslims, including prayer beads, coins, amulets, a cistern well, clothing, jewelry, and bodily and domestic adornments, to consider both generic and particular aspects of the object in question. Framed by an introduction that assesses the various approaches to Islamic material culture in recent scholarship, Islam through Objects provides a template for the study of religion and material culture, which engages current theory, subtle and nuanced narratives, and the creative and imaginal capacities of Muslims through history. In our conversation we discussed key subjects in material religion scholarship, theological foundations for Islamic notions of materiality, the uses of visual images as historical vantage points, the role of objects as a means for marking and making identity, the life of material items in ritual and social action, and the future study of Islam through objects. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kpeterse@odu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Samuel: The Making of the Monarchy, a volume of The Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel with Koren Publishers, offers an innovative and refreshing approach to the Hebrew Bible. By fusing extraordinary findings by modern scholars on the ancient Near East with the original Hebrew text and a brand new English translation, The Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel clarifies and explains the Biblical narrative, laws, events, and prophecies in context with the milieu in which it took place.The Koren Tanakh features stunning visuals of ancient civilizations including artifacts, archeological excavations, inscriptions, and maps, along with brief articles on ancient Near Eastern culture, geography, biblical botany, language, and more.Join us as we talk to David Arnovitz, Editor in Chief of the Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel.Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus (Peeters, 2012), Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus(IVP Academic, 2015), and Exodus Old and New: A Biblical Theology of Redemption(IVP Academic, 2020). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

There are more than 700,000 Bulgaristanlı migrants residing in Turkey. Immigrants from Bulgaria who are ethnically Turkish, they assume certain privileges because of these ethnic ties, yet access to citizenship remains dependent on the whims of those in power. Through vivid accounts of encounters with the police and state bureaucracy, of nostalgic memories of home and aspirations for a more secure life in Turkey, Precarious Hope: Migration and the Limits of Belonging in Turkey (Stanford UP, 2019) explores the tensions between ethnic privilege and economic vulnerability and rethinks the limits of migrant belonging among those for whom it is intimated and promised—but never guaranteed.In contrast to the typical focus on despair, Ayşe Parla studies the hopefulness of migrants. Turkish immigration policies have worked in lockstep with national aspirations for ethnic, religious, and ideological conformity, offering Bulgaristanlı migrants an advantage over others. Their hope is the product of privilege and an act of dignity and perseverance. It is also a tool of the state, reproducing a migration regime that categorizes some as desirable and others as foreign and dispensable. Through the experiences of the Bulgaristanlı, Precarious Hope speaks to the global predicament in which increasing numbers of people are forced to manage both cultivation of hope and relentless anxiety within structures of inequality.This interview is part of an NBN special series on Mobilities and Methods.Ayşe Parla is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Boston University.Alize Arıcan is an incoming Postdoctoral Fellow at Rutgers University's Center for Cultural Analysis. Her research focuses on urban renewal, futurity, care, and migration in Turkey. Her work has been featured in Current Anthropology, City & Society, Radical Housing Journal, and entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies