Books in the Cambridge Middle East Studies series

Tripoli, Lebanon's 'Sunni City' is often presented as an Islamist or even Jihadi city. However, this misleading label conceals a much deeper history of resistance and collaboration with the state and the wider region. Based on more than a decade of fieldwork and using a broad array of primary sources, Tine Gade analyses the modern history of Tripoli, exploring the city's contentious politics, its fluid political identity, and the relations between Islamist and sectarian groups. Offering an alternative explanation for Tripoli's decades of political troubles - rather than emphasizing Islamic radicalism as the principal explanation - she argues that it is Lebanese clientelism and the decay of the state that produced the rise of violent Islamist movements in Tripoli. By providing a corrective to previous assumptions, this book not only expands our understanding of Lebanese politics, but of the wider religious and political dynamics in the Middle East.

Islamic law entitles women to inherit property and to manage their own income. This book examines under what circumstances they claim property rights and when they are prevented from doing so.

This is the first study of Israeli foreign policy towards the Middle East and selected world powers including China, India, the European Union and the United States since the end of the Cold War. It provides an integrated account of these foreign policy spheres and serves as an essential historical context for the domestic political scene during these pivotal decades. The book demonstrates how foreign policy is shaped by domestic factors, which are represented as three concentric circles of decision-makers, the security network and Israeli national identity. Told from this perspective, Amnon Aran highlights the contributions of the central individuals, societal actors, domestic institutions, and political parties that have informed and shaped Israeli foreign policy decisions, implementation, and outcomes. Aran demonstrates that Israel has pursued three foreign policy stances since the end of the Cold War - entrenchment, engagement and unilateralism - and explains why.

Based on extensive interviews and oral histories as well as archival sources, Women and the Islamic Republic challenges the dominant masculine theorizations of state-making in post-revolutionary Iran. Shirin Saeidi demonstrates that despite the Islamic Republic's non-democratic structures, multiple forms of citizenship have developed in post-revolutionary Iran. This finding destabilizes the binary formulation of democratization and authoritarianism which has not only dominated investigations of Iran, but also regime categorizations in political science more broadly. As non-elite Iranian women negotiate or engage with the state's gendered citizenry regime, the Islamic Republic is forced to remake, oftentimes haphazardly, its citizenry agenda. The book demonstrates how women remake their rights, responsibilities, and statuses during everyday life to condition the state-making process in Iran, showing women's everyday resistance to the state-making process.

Although Middle Eastern states are commonly referred to as 'police states', little has been written about their police. By studying the 'low policing' of interpersonal disputes in Jordan, this book outlines the inconspicuous, daily methods the state uses to create and sustain the social order.

This first study into the role of US and European 'democracy promoters' in Jordan uses a diverse range of original source material to reveal what democracy promotion looks like in practice, vividly illustrating what a greater US and European policy presence in the Global South really means.

Khaled Fahmy offers a new interpretation of modern Egyptian history and the rise of Egyptian nationalism in a theoretically informed study. The book challenges traditionally held views about early nineteenth-century Egypt and the role of Mehmed Ali as the founder of modern Egypt.

A History of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt 19682018. Politics, social theory, history of ideas, Middle East government, politics, policy, Middle East history

A wide-ranging account of the Muslim Brotherhood's long history and complex relationship with the Jordanian state, parliament and society since its founding in 1945, showing the ideological and behavioural development of a group which relies on age-old concepts derived from classical Islam to influence beliefs in the modern-day nation-state.

Family law continues to be one of the most controversial legal areas in all Muslim-majority countries. In this book, Doerthe Engelcke explores the remarkable differences in the engagement with family law in the 2000s by Morocco and Jordan, both ostensibly similar regimes.

The first study of Israeli foreign policy towards the Middle East and selected world powers, including China, India, the European Union and the US since the end of the Cold War to the present, providing essential historical context for the domestic political scene during these pivotal decades.

The AKP period in Turkey has often been understood as a break from the 'secular' pattern of state-building. Ceren Lord challenges this by showing how Islamist mobilisation in Turkey has been facilitated by state institutions established during early nation-building, offering a new perspective on the politicisation of religion.

Zoltan Pall examines how Salafism, a globally significant Islamic movement, has entrenched itself in the religiously diverse Lebanese society and continues to reshape religious authority within the Sunni community. Appealing to scholars of Islamic and Middle East studies, the book provides a model to examine religious movements as networks transcending national borders.

In this book, Zahra Ali foregrounds a wide range of interviews with a variety of women involved in women's rights activism. Using these life stories, Ali provides a nuanced understanding of the everyday lives of women, the production and reproduction of gender norms and relations, and the development of feminisms in Iraq.

Why and how did independent trade unions emerge in Egypt, despite its history of state control over organized labour? And why was the movement pioneered by traditionally quiescent civil servants? Bishara examines the relationship between labour organizations and the state to reveal how political change occurs under an authoritarian regime.

Salwa Ismail provides an original analysis of the routine and spectacular violence witnessed in Syria under the rule of the Asad family over the last four decades. Ismail examines how the political prison and the massacre developed as apparatuses of rule, shaping Syrians' political subjectivities and their relations with government.

Noam Leshem examines the radical transformation of Arab landscapes seized by Israel in the 1948 war. By looking at the spatial history of Arab villages, Leshem highlights the intricate and often intimate engagements between Jews and Arabs in the present day.

Focusing on the writings and media contributions of intellectuals, journalists, and members associated with Hizbullah, Bashir Saade demonstrates that the party has developed its own understanding of 'being Lebanese' that it reproduces and deploys in varying combinations to meet evolving political challenges.

This accessible scholarly work traces the regional politics of the Shia in the Eastern Province of Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia since the nineteenth century. The first book in English on the topic, it casts new light on the survival strategies and political mobilization of the Shia community as it confronts the repressive machinery of the Saudi regime.

Madawi Al-Rasheed's goes beyond the conventional tropes that describe women in Saudi Arabia to probe the historical, political and religious forces that have thwarted their emancipation. It demonstrates how women have become hostage to contradictory political projects that demand female piety and encourage modernity.

Details the effects of political aid in the Middle East by analyzing discursive and professional practices in four key subfields.

Contends that Yemen's recent history is a mirror of its past and that, despite national unification in 1990, the country continues to suffer from regional fragmentation. The book unravels the complexities of the Yemeni state and its domestic politics with a particular focus on the post-1990 years.

The first comprehensive study of Syria's religious scene and the Sunni ulama. This book shows how the secular, non-Sunni Ba'thist regime has been compelled to bring the clergy into the political fold. Pierret affords a new perspective on Syrian society now at the crossroads of political, social and religious fragmentation.

Distinguished historian Ali M. Ansari explores ideas about nationalism and how they apply to twentieth-century Iran.

This book contributes to the debate on the Islamization of Turkish politics by focusing on the Imam-Hatip schools, founded in 1924. Through textual analysis and interviews, it explores how Imam-Hatip education shapes students' politics and behaviour and examines the schools' role in Turkey's Islamization at both the high and grassroots levels of politics.

Examines the endurance and influence of mystical beliefs on political strategy in Iran from the Safavid dynasty to the present day. Rahnema demonstrates, with examples from contemporary Iranian politics, that this has allowed leaders to present themselves as representatives of the divine, and their rivals as the embodiment of evil.

Saudi Arabia is widely considered to be the heartland of radical Islamism. This 2010 book presents the first ever history of Saudi jihadism based on extensive fieldwork in the kingdom and primary sources in Arabic. It offers a powerful explanation for the rise of Islamist militancy in Saudi Arabia.

Moore's book is the first to examine relations between state authority and elite business representation in the Middle East. By considering the Kuwait and Jordan cases, he concludes that unleashing the private sector alone is insufficient to change current political and economic arrangements when established political infrastructures remain in place.