This paper examines several historical and political contexts in which connections have been forged between modernity and identity in the field of Baghdad’s twentieth century architecture and urban space. Given that for some Iraqi critics, historians, or professionals, “westernization” is embedded in “modernization” and even to a certain extent in modernity, I’ll attempt to define the ways and the limits within which architecture and urban planning or urban space in Baghdad have been deployed in the different narratives of affirmation of an “Arab” or “Iraqi” identity.
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Arab Cities in the Ottoman Period: Cairo, Syria and the Maghreb, by André Raymond. Burlington: Ashgate Variorum Collected Studies Series, 2002. 288 pages, maps, footnotes, index. US$99.95 (Cloth) ISBN 0-86078-874-1 - Volume 41 Issue 1
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
Putting Assyrians into Middle East Literature: Memoirs and Novels - An Assyrian Odyssey: Covering the Journey of Kasha Yacoub Yauvre and his Wife Mourassa from Urmia to the Court of Queen Victoria (1879-1881) and the Exodus of Assyrians from their Ancestral Home 1918, edited by Youel A. Baaba. California: Youel A. Baaba Library, 1998. 175 pages, illustrations, family tree. - Yesterday’s Children: Growing Up in Persia, by Elizabeth Yoel Campbell. Traralgon: LV Printers, 1999. 112 pages, index. (Paper) ISBN 0-646-5434-5 - Mount Semele, by Ivan Kakovitch. Alexandria: Mandrill, 2002. 360 pages, chronology. US$35.00 (Cloth) ISBN 0-9771873-4-9 - Volume 41 Issue 1
James McDougall. History and the Culture of Nationalism in Algeria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 266 pages, footnotes, bibliography, index, 18 B/W photographs. Hardcover US$85.00 ISBN: 0-521-84373-1 - Volume 41 Issue 2
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An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
The Kurdish nationalist tradition is surely not very old. The earliest origins of Kurdish nationalism coincide with the beginning of modernity in Kurdistan, which emerged with the secular humanism of the ‘Western Enlightenment,’ ushering in a gradual decline of traditional Islamic identity. The nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries in Kurdish history were a period for the incubation and growth of nationalism in Kurdistan. The famous temporary conquest of Iranian Kurdistan by Sheikh ‘Ubaydullah Nehrî (d. 1883), son of Sheikh Sayyid Taha, is the most important event in the history of early Kurdish nationalism. What I want to present here is in no way a complete investigation of the revolt of ‘Ubaydullah and his nationalist efforts. This is no more than an introduction to some newly-found Persian documents from the Institute of Persian National Records (IPNR) in Tehran, a schema of basic subjects surrounding the rebellion of ‘Ubaydullah and the Kurdish tribes as reflected in Persian diplomatic reports. Here I can only list the documents without entering into much detail. This collection has attracted little attention yet, but is well worth intensive investigation.
Valentine M. Moghadam, ed. From Patriarchy to Empowerment: Women’s Participation, Movements and Rights in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2007. 414 pages, appendix, bibliography, index. Paper US$45.00 ISBN 978-0-8156-3111-8 - Volume 41 Issue 2
Discussing the banning of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses in some Islamic countries, Vijay Mishra and Bob Hodge argue: For the Islamic postcolonial world, the moral is clear and succinct: to write in the language of the colonizer is to write from within death itself. Postcolonial writers who write in the language of the Empire are marked off as traitors to the cause of a reconstructive post-colonialism. Postcolonial writers compose under the shadow of death (Williams & Chrisman 1993:277). Apparently, the consequences triggered by the publication of Rushdie’s novel, in the preceding century, raised many significant questions about the relationship between East and West, colonized and colonizer. Nevertheless, the hostility toward the book in some Middle Eastern and Islamic countries is not related to the issue of language, identified by Mishra and Hodge as “the language of the empire.” The use of colonial languages rarely represents a threat to Islamic culture because unlike the literature of ex-colonies in Asia, Africa, South America, the West Indies and the Caribbean, dominantly written in the language of the western colonizers, literature in a large part of the Arab-Islamic world is composed in indigenous languages. It is important to point out therefore that the issue of language, raised above, is irrelevant because the campaign against Satanic Verses is rooted in the radical constructs of religious hegemony integral to contemporary political Islamic doctrines.
Oman: The Islamic Democratic Tradition, by Hussein Ghubash. Translated from French by Mary Turton. New York: Routledge, 2006. 252 pages, maps, glossary, notes, bibliography, index. US$115.00 (Cloth) ISBN 0-415-375678-1 - Volume 41 Issue 1
Thérèse Delpech. Iran and the Bomb: The Abdication of International Responsibility. Translated by Ros Schwartz. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 158 pages, notes, bibliography, chronology, index. Cloth US$26.95 ISBN 978-0-231-70006-1 - Volume 41 Issue 2
Edmund Burke, III and David N. Yaghoubian, eds. Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East, Second Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. 434 pages, 12 photographs, 1 map, glossary, list of contributors. Paper US$24-95 ISBN 978-0-520-24661-4 - Volume 41 Issue 2
Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia, edited by John Curtis and Nigel Tallis. Berkeley: University of California Press in association with the British Museum, 2005. 272 pages, color illustrations. US$49.95 (Cloth) ISBN 0-520-24731-0 - Volume 41 Issue 1
Brynjar Lia. A Police Force without a State: A History of the Palestinian Security Forces in the West Bank and Gaza. Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 2006. 479 pages, Hardcover US39.90 ISBN 978-0863723049 - Volume 41 Issue 2
Soraida: A Woman of Palestine (Canada/Palestine) 2004.52 min. In Arabic with English subtitles. Director/filmmaker: Tahani Rached; Distributor: Women Make Movies, 462 Broadway, Suite 500Q, New York NY10013 (212-925-0606; fax: 212-925-2052; info@wmm.com; www.wmm.com). - Volume 41 Issue 1
