The Palestine Exploration Fund, established in 1865, is the oldest organization created specifically for the study of the Levant. It helped to spur evangelical tourism to the region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries which in turn generated a huge array of literature that presented Palestine as a 'Holy Land', in which local populations were often portrayed as a simple appendix to well-known Biblical scenarios. In the first book focused on modern and contemporary Palestine to provide...

Quando oggi si pensa all'Iraq vengono in mente immagini forti, caotiche: la dittatura di Saddam Hussein, le lotte regionali, le tensioni etnico-religiose e, non da ultimo, il jihadismo dell'ISIS. Come si è arrivati a questo punto? Questa raccolta di saggi prova a dare delle risposte, seguendo tre linee guida. Si ripercorreranno gli eventi storici che hanno plasmato il paese. Poi si analizzeranno le dinamiche politiche regionali e internazionali in cui è coinvolto. Infine si parlerà di soci...

The emerging literature on the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ has largely focused on the evolution of the uprisings in cities and power centres. In order to reach a more diversified and inner understanding of the ‘Arab Spring’, this edited book examines how peripheries have reacted and contributed to the historical dynamics at work in the Middle East and North Africa. It rejects the idea that the ‘Arab Spring’ is a unitary process and shows that it consists of diverse Springs which differed in te...

Cultural heritage and illicit trafficking in the Middle East are two key topics of our time. The book sheds light on both aspects, and identifies the need to democratize cultural heritage, by giving greater control to local communities. It also investigates the link between local hotbeds of conflict and violence in countries such as Syria and Iraq, as well as war economics, transnational criminal networks and the politics of deliberate destruction and theft of cultural heritage. Finally, t...

In this edited book, several leading scholars address a number of security-related issues, all connected to one main research question: What (in)security means from the perspective of people living in the Middle East and North Africa? In doing so, the contributors shed light on the contours of a stable and legitimate order that responds to the needs of the peoples in the region, on what history tells us about the ongoing debates on security and stability in the region, and, last b...

Come recita un antico detto spagnolo, quando si verifica un'inondazione - di informazioni, nel nostro caso - la prima cosa che manca è l'acqua potabile. Per farsi un'idea sulle grandi questioni del nostro tempo, molti ricorrono a Wikipedia, alla televisione o a instant book come quelli pubblicati nei mesi seguiti al 7 ottobre 2023: testi spesso scritti da giornalisti o studiosi che non conoscono le lingue locali, non hanno mai lavorato su fonti primarie del Mediterraneo orientale ...

History Below the Global aims to foster an entangled knowledge of global history, and to place "others" at the centre stage, to better understand the fluid world which we inhabit.Relying on primary sources in seven languages and books written by hundreds of African, Asian, Middle Eastern and South American scholars, Lorenzo Kamel examines the coloniality of power in historical research and sheds light on the largely neglected roles of the "others" and their modernities in ...