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Qal'at Jabar Pottery
A Study of a Syrian Fortified Site in the Late 11th–14th Centuries
Cristina Tonghini
Council for British Research in the Levant, 1999
By studying both the archaeological evidence and the written records, this volume provides a new means of interpreting and reconstructing the history of an important fortified site of the middle Euphrates valley, Qalat Jabar, and clarifies its connection with the neighbouring regions. A detailed classification of the pottery finds from the late eleventh to the fourteenth centuries provides a chronological framework for the major changes in ceramic production - a valuable model which can be used for other sites. This is an example of the detailed archaeological research that has greatly advanced our understanding of the history of the Euphrates valley in the Middle Ages.
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Qatar
A Modern History
Allen J. Fromherz
Georgetown University Press, 2011

What role does Qatar play in the Middle East and how does it differ from the other Gulf states? How has the ruling Al-Thani family shaped Qatar from a traditional tribal society and British protectorate to a modern state? How has Qatar become an economic superpower with one of the highest per capita incomes in the world? What are the social, political, and economic consequences of Qatar’s extremely rapid development?

In this groundbreaking history of modern Qatar, Allen J. Fromherz presents a full portrait that analyzes Qatar's crucial role in the Middle East and its growing regional influence within a broader historical context. Drawing on original sources in Arabic, English, and French as well as his own fieldwork in the Middle East, the author deftly traces the influence of the Ottoman and British empires and Qatar’s Gulf neighbors on the country prior to Qatar’s meteoric rise in the post-independence era. Fromherz gives particular weight to the nation's economic and social history, from its modest origins in the pearling and fishing industries to the considerable economic clout it exerts today, a clout that comes with having the second-highest natural gas reserves in the region. He also looks at what the future holds for Qatar's economy as the country tries to diversify beyond oil and gas. Furthermore, the book examines the paradox of Qatar where monarchy, traditional tribal culture, and conservative Islamic values appear to coexist with ultra modern development and a large population of foreign workers who outnumber Qatari citizens.

This book is as unique as the country it documents—a multi-faceted picture of the political, cultural, religious, social, and economic make up of modern Qatar and its significance within the Gulf Cooperation Council and the wider region.

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Qatar
A Modern History, Updated Edition
Allen J. Fromherz
Georgetown University Press, 2017

What role does Qatar play in the Middle East, and how does it differ from the other Gulf states? How has the ruling Al-Thani family shaped Qatar from a traditional tribal society and British protectorate to a modern state? How has Qatar become an economic superpower with one of the highest per-capita incomes in the world? What are the social, political, and economic consequences of Qatar’s extremely rapid development?

In this groundbreaking history of modern Qatar, Allen J. Fromherz analyzes the country’s crucial role in the Middle East and its growing regional influence within a broader historical context. Drawing on original sources in Arabic, English, and French as well as his own fieldwork in the Middle East, the author deftly traces the influence of the Ottoman and British Empires and Qatar’s Gulf neighbors prior to Qatar’s meteoric rise in the post-independence era.

Fromherz gives particular weight to the nation’s economic and social history, from its modest origins in the pearling and fishing industries to the considerable economic clout it exerts today, a clout that comes from having the region’s second-highest natural gas reserves. He also looks at what the future holds for Qatar’s economy as the country tries to diversify beyond oil and gas. The book further examines the paradox of Qatar where monarchy, traditional tribal culture, and conservative Islamic values appear to coexist with ultramodern development and a large population of foreign workers who outnumber Qatari citizens.

This book is as unique as the country it documents—a multifaceted picture of the political, cultural, religious, social, and economic makeup of modern Qatar and its significance within the Gulf Cooperation Council and the wider region.

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Queer Beirut
By Sofian Merabet
University of Texas Press, 2014

Gender and sexual identity formation is an ongoing anthropological conversation in both Middle Eastern studies and urban studies, but the story of gay and lesbian identity in the Middle East is only just beginning to be told. Queer Beirut is the first ethnographic study of queer lives in the Arab Middle East. Drawing on anthropology, urban studies, gender studies, queer studies, and sociocultural theory, Sofian Merabet’s compelling ethnography suggests a critical theory of gender and religious identity formations that will disrupt conventional anthropological premises about the contingent role that society and particular urban spaces have in facilitating the emergence of various subcultures within the city.

From 1995 to 2014, Merabet made a series of ethnographic journeys to Lebanon, during which he interviewed numerous gay men in Beirut. Through their life stories, Merabet crafts moving ethnographic narratives and explores how Lebanese gays inhabit and perform their gender as they formulate their sense of identity. He also examines the notion of “queer space” in Beirut and the role that this city, its class and sectarian structure, its colonial history, and religion have played in these people’s discovery and exploration of their sexualities. In using Beirut as a microcosm for the complexities of homosexual relationships in contemporary Lebanon, Queer Beirut provides a critical standpoint from which to deepen our understandings of gender rights and citizenship in the structuring of social inequality within the larger context of the Middle East.

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Queer in Translation
Sexual Politics under Neoliberal Islam
Evren Savci
Duke University Press, 2021
In Queer in Translation, Evren Savcı analyzes the travel and translation of Western LGBT political terminology to Turkey in order to illuminate how sexual politics have unfolded under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's AKP government. Under the AKP's neoliberal Islamic regime, Savcı shows, there has been a stark shift from a politics of multicultural inclusion to one of securitized authoritarianism. Drawing from ethnographic work with queer activist groups to understand how discourses of sexuality travel and are taken up in political discourse, Savcı traces the intersection of queerness, Islam, and neoliberal governance within new and complex regimes of morality. Savcı turns to translation as a queer methodology to think Islam and neoliberalism together and to evade the limiting binaries of traditional/modern, authentic/colonial, global/local, and East/West—thereby opening up ways of understanding the social movements and political discourse that coalesce around sexual liberation in ways that do justice to the complexities both of what circulates under the signifier Islam and of sexual political movements in Muslim-majority countries.
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The Quest for Democracy in Iran
A Century of Struggle against Authoritarian Rule
Fakhreddin Azimi
Harvard University Press, 2010

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, Fakhreddin Azimi traces a century of struggle for the establishment of representative government.

The promise of constitutional rule was cut short in the 1920s with the rise of the Pahlavi dynasty. Reza Shah, whose despotic rule Azimi deftly captures, maintained the façade of a constitutional monarch but greeted any challenge with an iron fist: “I will eliminate you,” he routinely barked at his officials. In 1941, fearful of losing control of the oil-rich region, the Allies forced Reza Shah to abdicate but allowed Mohammad Reza to succeed his father. Though promising to abide by the constitution, the new Shah missed no opportunity to undermine it.

The Anglo-American–backed coup of 1953, which ousted reformist premier Mohammed Mosaddeq, dealt a blow to the constitutionalists. The Shah’s repressive policies and subservience to the United States radicalized both secular and religious opponents, leading to the revolution of 1979. Azimi argues that we have fundamentally misunderstood this event by characterizing it as an “Islamic” revolution when it was in reality the expression of a long-repressed desire for popular sovereignty. This explains why the clerical rulers have failed to counter the growing public conviction that the Islamic Republic, too, is impervious to political reform—and why the democratic impulse that began with the Constitutional Revolution continues to be a potent and resilient force.

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