The Sudanese Mahdī has been pictured as a villain, as a hero, as a reactionary, as an anti-imperialist revolutionary, and in many other ways. The romance and excitement of the nineteenth-century Mahdiyya has inspired novels and movies, while the many faceted reality of the movement has caught the attention of a wide range of scholars in search of case studies of specific phenomena. In recent years the Mahdī has been used as an example of a ‘charismatic’ leader,1 the founder of a religionpolitical party in the ‘third world,’2 the leader of a millenarian revolt,3 an African rebel against alien rule,4 and a Semitic messiah in an African context. Many of these analyses are the constructive products of the changing situation in the world of contemporary historical studies. Each tends to reflect a broader analytical concern aroused by modern developments.

One of the more interesting phenomena in Islamic religious history is the development of the schools of law. This phenomenon has seldom failed to arouse ourinterest, though it has consistently eluded our understanding. The difficulty in grasping the significance of the schools of law is evidenced by vacillation in translating the termmadhhab. This term was first translated as ‘sect,’ then as ‘rite’ or ‘school.’ But a Sunni madhhab could not be a sect, since the term ‘sect’ is applied to a dissenting religious body, one that is heretical in the eyes of other members within the same communion. That is not the case with the Sunni madhhabs, all of which are regarded equally as orthodox. Nor is the term ‘rite’ an adequate one, since it applies to a division of the Christian church as determined by liturgy; and, unlike a transfer from one rite to another in Christianity, a transfer requiring certain formalities, the transfer in Islam is made from one madhhab to another without any formalities whatsoever. The term ‘school,’ for lack of a better term, is the most acceptable; it is the one that offers the least difficulty.

Among the various institutions and practices singled out as distinctly Ottoman contributions to Islamic civilization, one has drawn surprisingly little comment and analysis. Neither so eye-catching as the devşirme system nor as fundamental as the kanun, it still emerges as an important factor in Ottoman, thence Islamic, history. This is the legitimized practice of usurious piety, the waqf al-nuqūd (pl. awqaf al-nuqud), the establishment of a trust with money the interest from which might pay the salary of a teacher, or preacher, or even unashamedly pass into the pocket of the founder of the trust.

When the Prophet Muhammad died on 7 June 632, the larger part of Arabia had already accepted Islam. In fact, Islam had created a solid Arab community that dominated Arabia and was ready to begin its amazing expansive movement in world history. The Arab conquests put an end to the Sassanid Empire and deprived the Byzantine Empire of its Asiatic dominions up to the Taurus and all its African possessions. Muslim troops crossed Gibraltar and subdued almost all the Iberian peninsula. In brief: with their conquests in the seventh and eighth centuries (634–751) the Arabs became the neighbors of the Franks and Byzantines on the other side of the Mediterranean. In Asia the subjection of Persia brought them into northern India and the Turkish vassal states of China in Central Asia.

Although contemporary Europeans often stated that the Ottoman government kept no population statistics, the Ottomans in fact often kept very detailed population records. The Ottoman ‘censuses’ recently used in scholarly research are only general summaries of population. More exact demographic research demands information on demographic structure, such as age, sex, and family affiliation. Since general ‘censuses’ are useless for such analysis, population registers (nüfus defterleri) must be used.

Since the first printed books and newspapers, official censorship has been the norm, not the exception. Although we often regard freedom of the press as an integral part of Anglo-American law, the principle was only established after 1688. The English press did not completely escape such press control measures as seditious libel prosecutions and confiscatory taxes until the 1860s.1 Official censorship in the United States has been directed against left-wing agitation, alleged pornography, and most recently, exposure of national secrets. France and Germany have suffered various degrees of official censorship, including the most draconian. Russia has scarcely known any period in which both preand postpublication censorship was not practiced. In view of the universality of censorship, Ottoman censorship in Lebanon and Syria deserves close examination in its historical context instead of the unanimous condemnation accorded it heretofore.

Since the reign of the Qājārs in Iran (1779–1925) and aslate as the early sixties of the present century, Iranian ‘ulamā’ proved, repeatedly, their ability and appeal to spearhead political opposition against the national government. Seeking the sources ofthe ‘ulamā’'s effective political power, several students ofmodern Iranian history and politics have attempted to determine the doctrinal status accorded to the ‘ulamā’ in Twelver Shi‘i Islam, the religion of Iran since the sixteenth century.Even though substantial research has been devoted in the West to Sunni juridical thought, the field of Twelver Shi'i jurisprudence has remained all but unknown. In the absence of systematic studies of Twelver Shi'i juridical sources, Twelver Shi'i theology and political theory, Western scholars have thus drawn on opinions expressed, sometimes orally, by contemporary Iranian learned men, mostly ‘ulamā’, to define the status of the ‘ulamā’. Lacking the advantage of scholarly collation provided by a firsthand acquaintance with the primary sources, they have accepted notions as Twelver Shi'i tenets that bestow on the ‘ulamā’ certain statutory privileges. Under scrutiny, though, these prove to be in contradiction with the spirit as well as the letter of Twelver Shi'i legal and theological doctrines.

The purpose of the paper is to give a broad outline of the policies and principal features of economic developments in the fifty-year period that has elapsed since the foundation of the Republic, with a view toward helping to evaluate future trends and policies, hopefully in the coming fifty years.

The aim of this essay is to analyse the rise and development of a new labour movement in Egypt between 1919 and 1939, the crucial interwar period. As the history of the movement was inextricably linked to the Wafd as well as to the competing political forces in Egypt at the time, I examine the extent to which the various political parties and personalities were able to hamper the development of an independent trade union movement during those years. I also discuss the factors which assisted or hindered, at times, the promulgation of labour laws, and view the achievements of the trade union movement (in different sub-periods) in terms of its success in satisfying the demands of workers, which were being opposed by those of the predominantly foreign local bourgeoisie.

The British military presence in Egypt established in 1882 ended on 27 July 1954 with an agreement providing for withdrawal of forces from the Suez Canal Zone within twenty months. The signing was a victory for Colonel Jamāl 'Abd al-Nāsir and a defeat for Anthony Eden who had sought to retain British forces on air bases within the Zone. British attempts to regularize their occupation of Egyptian territory after World War II in the face of nationalist demands had failed, its doom foretold with the advent of the officers’ regime which took over Egypt on 23 July 1952 and exiled Fārūq three days later.

The attempt to estimate per capita income for Egypt from 1886/1887 to 1937, presented in this paper, is part of an effort to evaluate British colonial economic policyduring the period of the British occupation of Egypt. For such an evaluation national income estimates covering the whole period would be very helpful. National income estimates worth the name, however, go back only to 1935–1939, and for years earlier than the 1950s they are of very poor quality. Compared with so many other lessdeveloped countries, Egypt has relatively rich statistics extending backward to the decades before World War I; but they do not really suffice for building up a national income series from either the production or the expenditure side, and from the income side there is hardly any information. In this situation, which both development economists and economic historians know only too well, the problem is how to make maximal use of existing production and expenditure indicators in order to come out with some idea of what per capita income developments may have looked like. Apart from gauging per capita income in Egypt during half a century before World War II, the paper serves more generally to illustrate a methodology that may find application for other countries.

In the course of studying all surviving copies of Arabic Dioscorides manuscripts I have come across some interesting statements in the introduction and colophon of a Leiden manuscript of De Materia Medica. This manuscript belongs to the Warner Collection or Legatum Warnerium of the Library of the University of Leiden, Cod. Or. 289. This vast and valuable collection of oriental manuscripts was acquired by Levinus Warner in the early seventeenth century during his term of appointment as Dutch ambassador to the Ottoman court in Istanbul. The collection was given to the university upon the death of Mr. Warner in 1665.

The aim of this essay is to explore the possibility, remote as it is or might be, of dramatists employing their trade and using their skill to transmit political messages. In Arabic culture, there is enough ground to suspect that such an endeavor is possible, forthe culture is known to have used the medium of drama to support religiopolitical ideas. I am referring to the well-known fact that the Shī'a sect of Islam, perhaps as early as the time of Yazīd (late A.D. seventh century) has been mourning the martyrdom of Husayn at Karbalā in dramalike fashion. We may well pause to contemplate the ultimate sociopolitical reason for the performance of this ancient Arabo-Islamic passion play.

Without knowing its exact dimensions, political scientists have taken government to be the primary unit for the study of political behavior. No matter how far modern analysis appears to be from the formalism embodied in mere descriptions of government, political science still assumes that the institutions of government form the major system within which political activity is embedded.1 Government is understood not simply as the organization ordering political activity, but also as the foundation of the moral community within which people live. Government not only symbolizes but also defines appropriate political behavior, proper political associations, and, of course, legality and illegality. Government is thought to define right by virtue of its possession of legitimacy, a power that holds people together through their adherence to a public morality supposedly articulated and certified through the government.2 Political scientists attribute legitimacy to governments when it appears that the community over which such governments rule is cohesive. The legitimacy of government is understood as an isomorphism of the coherence of the political community.

Most analyses of Egypt in the 1970s, whether political or economic, have a central concern, the liberalization policies of the Sadat regime. The reason for this focus is clear; rather striking and deep-seated changes took place in Egypt under the heading of that policy. Most analyses, however, suffer two major drawbacks; they fail to integrate the political and the economic and they take an approach with a very short historical vision. In doing so, they run the risk of critical misinterpretations of the nature of the policy, the regime, and the changes in Egypt.

It is customary to view the mystic and his experience from at least three angles: the theological, the philosophical, and the psychological. To be sure, the mystical experience represents an extraordinary phenomenon of the highest psychological complexity. Mysticism, nowadays, in this age of Aquarius, many would dismiss as a sick or superstitious accident; on the other hand, those who are acquainted with the phenomenon of religion and the history of its development would view it as a true and viable human state, as man's religious consciousness.

Today we are witnessing a very rare phenomenon in world history: a state suddenly deluged with an apparently inexhaustible amount of wealth as occurred in sixteenth-century Spain and Portugal when the riches of the New World flowed to the Iberian peninsula. Now the ‘black gold’ under the sands of the Arabian desert has provided one of the most underpopulated and under developed regions of the world with an equivalent bonanza. The new wealth of Spain helped to ruin that country. What will be the fate of Saudi Arabia and its small neighbors?

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of a group of‘rebels’ (in Iran they are called looties) who made significant contributions to the Iranian Constitutional Movement in 1908–1909. A discussion of the norms and values of this group and the way they fit the social situationand events of that period in Iran, serves to explain their involvement in the Constitutional Movement.

The study of Middle Eastern women, past and present, poses a number of methodological problems, some common to Third World studies and others peculiar to the Middle East. Recent research and editorial experience lead me to some conclusions regarding research on Middle Eastern women, both historical and contemporary. The most obvious problem is that, as compared either with many other areas of Middle Eastern history or with numerous geographical areas of women's history, almost no serious scholarly historical work has been done.