Since this is my last gesture as President of the Association I should like to thank you all warmly for the honor you have done me in electing me as President and for the opportunity of working with the Board of Directors and with the Secretary, Michael Bonine, on your behalf. It also happens that I am just about to finish a book on the history of Islamic societies. In a very different way this project has also been a special privilege. I have been able to branch out from my basic and abiding interest in the Arab Middle East and from my studies in early Islamic history to learn something about Muslim peoples all over the world. To learn so much and to work out a way of presenting such a large subject in a coherent way has made this a wonderfully rewarding project. Like a great puzzle, it has occupied my mind for seven years. I hope that the book I am writing will return the rewards of this learning to the reader.

The Major Lacuna in Palestinian historiography is the lack of social and economic histories, especially for the Ottoman period.

Sijillāt al-maḥākim airshar‘īya (records of the Islamic religious courts), preserved in the major cities and towns of historic Palestine, are local Palestinian archives which can go a long way towards filling this gap. These records, some of which date from the first decades of the Ottoman occupation to the present, are akin to a people’s history. Literally hundreds of volumes illustrate in a concrete and detailed manner nearly every aspect of daily human interaction – be it in the personal, social, economic, religious, or administrative fields.

In Recent Years, many discoveries in the history of Islamic mathematics have not been reported outside the specialist literature, even though they raise issues of interest to a larger audience. Thus, our aim in writing this survey is to provide to scholars of Islamic culture an account of the major themes and discoveries of the last decade of research on the history of mathematics in the Islamic world. However, the subject of mathematics comprised much more than what a modern mathematician might think of as belonging to mathematics, so our survey is an overview of what may best be called the “mathematical sciences” in Islam; that is, in addition to such topics as arithmetic, algebra, and geometry we will also be interested in mechanics, optics, and mathematical instruments.

In the past fifteen years, the MESA Bulletin has published numerous reports about research facilities in various Middle East countries, including several on Arab states (Zartman 1970; Williams 1970; Brown, Rollman, and Waterbury 1970; Coury 1971; Raccagni and Simmons 1972; Hudson 1972; Bechtold 1973, Zghal and Karoui 1973; Miller 1973; Hale and Hale 1975; Rassam 1976; Mandaville 1979; Anderson 1980; Reinhart 1980; Clancy-Smith 1984; Crystal 1984). None of these, however, has focused on doing survey research in the region. In part, this seemed to indicate a lack of interest in, and/or feasibility for, carrying out this type of research. In fact, when in 1973 MESA members were asked to share with their colleagues the data from surveys they had carried out, only twenty-one individuals responded, and in only nine cases were there survey data gathered in Arab states (“A Preliminary Listing …” 1974). Since then, the situation has improved somewhat. Thus, Palmer et al. (1982) have compiled an analytical index detailing more than 350 studies using survey research techniques in different Arab countries. Also in 1983, an international conference on the evaluation and application of survey research in the Arab world was held at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy. The Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation sponsored the conference, which was attended by twenty-four individuals from the United States and seven Arab countries. A book based on the papers and proceedings of the conference will be published soon, edited by Tessler et al. (forthcoming).

In Recent Years and on several occasions Eugen Wirth (1977; 1983a; 1983b), probably the leading German geographer on the Near and Middle East, has given critical evaluations and assessments of German geography related to the Near and Middle East. One of his findings, published in a volume by the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), on the state of art of research in the Federal Republic of Germany reads as follows: “Thus one may possibly say that the geographical Middle East research of the Federal Republic of Germany in terms of number and breadth, as well as in terms of contents and depth of its publications, may be considered internationally leading” (Wirth 1983a; translated by E. E.).

Arabic Papyrology is relevant to more than the first three hundred years of Islamic Egypt. In its larger sense, papyrology is the use of documentary sources for the study of civilization. To limit the definition of Arabic papyrology by the medium on which documents are written would be to ignore the possibility of millenia-long historical investigation. Analysis of time-series of like documents—for example, marriage or sales contracts—without regard to the change from papyrus to paper, will permit the unprecedented study of a particular institution over time, as well as understanding of variations in language and formulary. Arabic papyrology, hence, presents us with the possibility of in-depth cross-cultural studies of institutions which lie at the very foundations of Middle Eastern civilization.