By engaging with recent developments in the study of empires, this book examines how inhabitants of Roman imperial Syria reinvented expressions and experiences of Greek, Roman and Syrian ...identification. It demonstrates how the organization of Greek communities and a peer polity network extending citizenship to ethnic Syrians generated new semiotic frameworks for the performance of Greekness and Syrianness. Within these, Syria's inhabitants reoriented and interwove idioms of diverse cultural origins, including those from the Near East, to express Greek, Roman and Syrian identifications in innovative and complex ways. While exploring a vast array of written and material sources, the book thus posits that Greekness and Syrianness were constantly shifting and transforming categories, and it critiques many assumptions that govern how scholars of antiquity often conceive of Roman imperial Greek identity, ethnicity and culture in the Roman Near East, and processes of 'hybridity' or similar concepts.
This study examines how mobilization for war by the Ottoman state reshaped the social and political institutions of a provincial city. Using local court records, it traces profound changes in the ...life of residential quarters, military garrisons, and guilds.
This volume is dedicated to the circulation of the book as a commodity in the Mamluk sultanate. It discusses the impact of princely patronage on the production of books, the formation and management ...of libraries in religious institutions, their size and their physical setting.
What role does military force play during a colonial occupation? The answer seems obvious: coercion crushes local resistance, quashes political dissent and consolidates the dominance of the occupying ...power. However, as this discerning and theoretically rigorous study suggests, violence can have much more ambiguous consequences. Set in Syria during the French Mandate from 1920 to 1946, the book explores a turbulent period in which conflict between armed Syrian insurgents and French military forces not only determined the strategic objectives of the colonial state, but also transformed how the colonial state organised, controlled and understood Syrian society, geography and population. In addition to the coercive techniques, the book shows how civilian technologies such as urban planning and engineering were also commandeered in the effort to undermine rebel advances. Colonial violence had a lasting effect in Syria, shaping a peculiar form of social order that endured well after the French occupation.
Ebla and its Landscape Matthiae, Paolo; Marchetti, Nicoló
2013, 20160616, 2016-06-16
eBook
The discovery of 17,000 tablets at the mid-third millennium BC site of Ebla in Syria has revolutionized the study of the ancient Near East. This is the first major English-language volume describing ...the multidisciplinary archaeological research at Ebla. Using an innovative regional landscape approach, the 29 contributions to this expansive volume examine Ebla in its regional context through lenses of archaeological, textual, archaeobiological, archaeometric, geomorphological, and remote sensing analysis. In doing so, they are able to provide us with a detailed picture of the constituent elements and trajectories of early state development at Ebla, essential to those studying the ancient Near East and to other archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, and linguists. This work was made possible by an IDEAS grant from the European Research Council.
In this book, the distinguished scholar Hanna Batatu presents a comprehensive analysis of the recent social, economic, and political evolution of Syria's peasantry, the segment of society from which ...the current holders of political power stem. Batatu focuses mainly on the twentieth century and, in particular, on the Ba`th movement, the structures of power after the military coup d'état of 1963, and the era of îvfiz al-Asad, Syria's first ruler of peasant extraction. Without seeking to prove any single theory about Syrian life, he offers a uniquely rich and detailed account of how power was transferred from one demographic group to another and how that power is maintained today.
Batatu begins by examining social differences among Syria's peasants and the evolution of their mode of life and economic circumstances. He then scrutinizes the peasants' forms of consciousness, organization, and behavior in Ottoman and Mandate times and prior to the Ba`thists' rise to power. He explores the rural aspects of Ba`thism and shows that it was not a single force but a plurality of interrelated groups--prominent among them the descendants of the lesser rural notables--with different social goals and mental horizons. The book also provides a perceptive account of President Asad, his personality and conduct, and the characteristics and power structures of his regime. Batatu draws throughout on a wide range of socioeconomic and biographical information and on personal interviews with Syrian peasants and political leaders, offering invaluable insights into the complexities of a country and a regime that have long been poorly understood by outsiders.
In Urban Autonomy in Medieval Islam Fukuzo Amabe offers the first in-depth study on autonomous cities in medieval Islam stretching from Aleppo to Toledo.
Rejecting conventional explanations for Syrian foreign policy, which emphasize the personalities and attitudes of leaders, cultural factors peculiar to Arab societies, or the machinations of the ...great powers, Fred H. Lawson describes key shifts in Damascus's response to regional adversaries in terms of changes in the intensity of political struggles at home. Periodic eruptions of domestic conflict have inspired Syria's ruling coalition to adopt a wide range of programs designed to buy off domestic rivals and perpetuate the predominance of individual coalition members. These programs have undermined the unity of the Ba'thi regime, increasing the chances that opponents will overturn the established order. Challenges to the Ba'thi regime become most threatening whenever crises of accumulation shake the domestic political economy, Lawson contends. Opposition forces gain strength when the state cannot sustain new investment or when competition increases between public and private enterprises. Political and economic trends inside Syria have determined why Damascus has since 1963 alternately escalated tensions with regional rivals and adopted more accommodating postures. Lawson traces this dynamic through five major episodes: the 1967 war with Israel; limited intervention in Jordan in 1970; the widening conflict in Lebanon in 1976; the defusing of conflict with Iraq in 1982; and the rapprochement with Turkey over Kurdish separatism in 1994. These patterns, Lawson suggests, may be characteristic of nations changing from one domestic economic system to a radically different one, as Syria has in the transition from state socialism to a privatized political economy.
Revolt in Syria Starr, Stephen
2012, 2015, 2012-10-16, 2012-06-20
eBook
In January 2011 President Bashar al-Assad told the Wall Street Journal that Syria was "stable" and immune from revolt. In the months that followed, and as regimes fell in Egypt and Tunisia, thousands ...of Syrians took to the streets calling for freedom, with many dying at the hands of the regime. In Revolt in Syria: Eye-Witness to the Uprising, Stephen Starr delves deep into the lives of Syrians whose destiny has been shaped by the state for almost fifty years. In conversations with people from all strata of Syrian society, Starr draws together and makes sense of perspectives illustrating why Syria, with its numerous sects and religions, was so prone to violence and civil strife. Through his unique access to a country largely cut off from the international media during the unrest, Starr delivers compelling first hand testimony from both those who suffered and benefited most at the hands of the regime. Revolt details why many Syrians wanted Assad's government to stay as the threat of civil war loomed large, the long-standing gap between the state apparatus and its people and why the country's youth stood up decisively for freedom. Starr also sets out the positions adhered to by the country's minorities and explains why many Syrians believe that enforced regime change might precipitate a region-wide conflict.
