Beirut is the cultural, commercial and economic hub of Lebanon. But to what extent has the city affected and shaped the formation and perceptions of Lebanese national identity? Ghenwa Hayek here explo
Over the last three decades Afghanistan has been plagued by crisis – from Soviet invasion in 1979 and Taliban rule to US invasion following the events of 9/11. Here the top specialists on Afghanistan,
The uprisings that were seen throughout the Middle East during 2010 and 2011, make it difficult to over-state the role of educated youth in the region’s politics. Daniele Cantini combines an analysis
The Palestine Campaign undertaken by the British during the Great War has become one of the most glorified military offensives of the 20th Century. Shattering the reach of Ottoman imperial power for t
People are on the move across the Arab world, organizing politically in new ways. The Arab media have also undergone a transformation and are still in a state of flux. It is therefore crucial to be ab
What is ‘Arab’ about Arab subcultures? This is the first book to set out to delineate different ways of studying and theorising Arab subcultural groups and practices, including film, graffiti, music,
Despite the attention placed on the fate of minorities in Syria as a result of the conflict in the country, the Druze of Syria are a community about which very little is known. A. Maria A. Kastrinou's
From the ancient Egyptian tale of a Shipwrecked Sailor through to Sinbad and Robinson Crusoe, the stranded castaway living and philosophizing alone on a strange, desert island is a theme which has cap
The so-called ‘Cedar Revolution’ in Lebanon, triggered by the assassination of the former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005, brought to an end three decades of Syrian military presence in t
The leaders of the oil-rich rentier states of the Middle East, and in particular in the Gulf, have hitherto often predicated their legitimacy on a tacit social contract with their (much poorer) popula
From the First Gulf War to the present upheaval in Syria, the Kurdish question has been a crucial issue within the Middle East region and in international politics. Spread across several countries, th
Saudi Arabia, with its US alliance and abundance of oil dollars, has a very different economic story to that of Iran, which despite enormous natural gas reserves, has been hit hard by economic, trade,
During the 2003 War in Iraq, American news media found it difficult to convey their pro-war perspective outside the United States. Since the war was unpopular in many parts of the world, failure to wi
In the aftermath of World War I Syria paved a path towards democracy. Initially as part of the French mandate in the Middle East and latterly as an independent republic, Syria put in place the instrum
The role of women in politics in the Gulf is a much-debated and often little-understood subject in the West. In Gender and Politics in Kuwait the author sheds new light on the struggle of Kuwaiti wome
The decline and eventual collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the Turkish Republic were among the most momentous events of the early twentieth century. This book shows that, although tra
The stateless (bidun) of Kuwait represent around 10 per cent of Kuwaiti nationals—approximately 100,000 people. With their origins in the tribes of the northern Arabian deserts (spanning today's Iraq,
