SUNY series in the Social and Economic History of the Middle East

A detailed history of a small neighborhood community of Ottoman Istanbul.

Combining the vivid and colorful detail of a micro-history with a wider historical perspective, this groundbreaking study looks at the urban and social history of a small neighborhood community (a mahalle) of Ottoman Istanbul, the Kasap İlyas. Drawing on exceptionally rich historical documentation starting in the early sixteenth century, Cem Behar focuses on how the Kasap İlyas mahalle came to mirror some of the overarching issues of the capital city of the Ottoman Empire. Also considered are other issues central to the historiography of cities, such as rural migration and urban integration of migrants, including avenues for professional integration and the solidarity networks migrants formed, and the role of historical guilds and non-guild labor, the ancestor of the "informal" or "marginal" sector found today in less developed countries.

Addresses the ideals and institutions through which Middle Eastern societies have confronted poverty and the poor.

Offering insights and analysis in a field that has only recently come into existence, this book explores the ideals and institutions through which Middle Eastern societies-from the rise of Islam in the seventh century C.E. to the present day-have confronted poverty and the poor. By introducing new sources and presenting familiar ones with new questions, the contributors examine ideas about poverty and the poor, ideals and practices of charity, and state and private initiatives of poor relief over this extensive time span. They avoid easy generalizations about Islam and the Middle East as they seek to set the ideals and practices in comparative perspective.

Contributors include Beth Baron, Michael Bonner, Mark R. Cohen, Juan R.I. Cole, Natalie Zemon Davis, Mine Ener, Eyal Ginio, Miriam Hoexter, Timur Kuran, Kathryn Libal, Ingrid Mattson, Nadir Oèzbek, Adam Sabra, Miriam Shefer, Amy Singer, and Yasser Tabbaa.

A revisionist interpretation of the early origins of the Ottoman Empire.

Drawing on surviving documents from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, The Nature of the Early Ottoman State provides a revisionist approach to the study of the formative years of the Ottoman Empire. Challenging the predominant view that a desire to spread Islam accounted for Ottoman success during the fourteenth-century advance into Southeastern Europe, Lowry argues that the primary motivation was a desire for booty and slaves. The early Ottomans were a plundering confederacy, open to anyone (Muslim or Christian) who could meaningfully contribute to this goal. It was this lack of a strict religious orthodoxy, and a willingness to preserve local customs and practices, that allowed the Ottomans to gain and maintain support. Later accounts were written to buttress what had become the self-image of the dynasty following its incorporation of the heartland of the Islamic world in the sixteenth century.

Challenges conventional assumptions about the family and the modern Middle East.

Despite the constant refrain that family is the most important social institution in Middle Eastern societies, only recently has it become the focus for rethinking the modern history of the Middle East. This book introduces exciting new findings by historians, anthropologists, and historical demographers that challenge pervasive assumptions about family made in the past. Using specific case studies based on original archival research and fieldwork, the contributors focus on the interplay between micro and macro processes of change and bridge the gap between materialist and discursive frameworks of analysis. They reveal the flexibility and dynamism of family life and show the complex juxtaposition of different rhythms of time (individual time, family time, historical time). These findings interface directly with and demonstrate the need for a critical reassessment of current debates on gender, modernity, and Islam.

Challenges existing views of crafts and service workers in Egypt in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This book charts new directions in Egyptian social history, providing the first systematic account of adaptation and protest among crafts and service workers in Egypt in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using a wealth of new sources, John T. Chalcraft challenges conventional notions of craft stagnation and decline by recovering the largely unknown histories of crafts workers' restructuring in the face of world economic integration, and their petitions, demonstrations, and strike-action at a time of state-building and colonial rule. Chalcraft demonstrates the economic importance of petty producers and service providers, and tells the story of widespread collective assertion couched in new discourses of citizenship and nationalism. He also gives a new interpretation of the end of the guilds in Egypt and addresses larger debates about unevenness under capitalism.

Ethnographic study of textile factory workers in Alexandria, Egypt.

In Shop Floor Culture and Politics in Egypt, Samer S. Shehata provides us with a unique and detailed ethnographic portrait of life within two large textile factories in Alexandria, Egypt. Working for nearly a year as a "winding machine operator" provided Shehata with unprecedented access to workers at the point of production and the activities of the work hall. He argues that the social organization of production in the factories-including company rules and procedures, hierarchy, and relations of authority-and shop floor culture profoundly shape what it means to be a "worker" and how this identity is understood. Shehata reveals how economic relations inside the factory are simultaneously relations of significance and meaning, and how the production of wool and cotton textiles is, at the same time, the production of categories of identity, patterns of human interaction, and understandings of the self and others.