Middle East

The suffering woman, Blandina, emerges as an archetypal figure of the martyrs of Lyon. This slave-woman ultimately arises to engage in battle with the powers of the Roman Empire. Through the application of Bowen Family Systems Theory and the writings of Michel Foucault the book explains the function of anxiety, and the dynamics at work in the system that result in the failure of Roman authority to use power to quell the rise of Christianity. The reactions of those who might appear to be the most powerful are essential in gifting power to this lowly slave.

Self and Other explores the complex dynamic between the individual and the collectivity, narrative and identity that define the short fiction of Yūsuf al-Shārūnī, pioneer of Arab literary modernism. With a range of translated extracts, Kate V.M. Daniels offers English-speaking readers an invaluable introduction to one of Egypt's greatest short story-writers.

For almost a century after it was first published in 1845 Grace Aguilar's Women of Israel was presented as a high school graduation gift and even as a Christmas present to employees. More than 150 years before the current proliferation of books on women in biblical narrative and biblical law, Aguilar offered brilliant and innovative interpretations of abiding value. She took for granted that her readers could read Hebrew and that they, like herself, knew the King James Bible from memory. The extensive introduction and notes will make this new edition once again accessible to laypersons, students, and scholars.

This book investigates the socio-cultural and maritime history of 18th century – early 19th-century Southern Iran and the Persian Gulf in terms of the merchants, mariners and captains who lived and died in the turbulent waters of the western Indian Ocean. This “uncertain frontier” between a revitalized Ottoman Empire to the west and an emergant British India to the east became a testing grounds for the communities of the Gulf. Generally assumed to be a period of anarchy, the 18th-century maritime peoples resolved differences by marriage, forged alliances, and adapted their mercantile skills to the emerging age of global power.

This critical study of Demetra Vaka Brown, one of the most significant Greek American writers of the turn of the last century, is framed within the fields of “Orientalism” and cultural studies. At once a white female and a Greek immigrant from the Ottoman Empire, she worked as a writer in the United States, publishing in English and contributing her work to mainstream publications. The book presents the identity politics of Vaka Brown, recovering the discursive techniques in her identification processes and assessing the significance of her agency in the context of the themes and preoccupations of Orientalism.

In the 17th century Britons left their country in vast numbers - explorers, diplomats, ecclesiastics, merchants, or simply “tourists.” Only the most intrepid ventured into the faraway lands of the Ottoman Empire. Their travel narratives, best-sellers in their day, provide an entertaining but also valuable testimony on the everyday life of Orthodox Christians and their coexistence with the Turks. Greek Christians, though living under the Ottoman yoke, enjoyed greater religious freedom than many of their brothers in Christian Europe. The travelers’ intellectual curiosity about Greece opened a window on the Orthodox Church, and paved the way for future dialogue.

The United States’ standing in the Middle East eroded as a result of its policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict from 1947 to 1967, with Eisenhower’s “immediate deterrence” proving the lone exception. This period was especially critical as it introduced dynamics into the Middle Eastern balance of power that have proved particularly difficult to address. While the responsibility for seeking an end to conflict ultimately lies with the belligerents, the United States bears a heavy historical responsibility for the course of events and must now constitute the driving force behind a peaceful resolution of the dispute.

The present volume contains a collection of papers on different aspects of Aramaic linguistics, history and culture. These diverse papers are specifically intended for an informed Aramaic readership interested in raising awareness of their own culture. A fresh range of topics is therefore presented in this flagship volume of the series, offering a renewed vision of Aramaic and Syriac studies even for the specialists in the field.

Kassia the Nun offers a unique glimpse into ninth-century Byzantium in the only woman whose works were included in the corpus of liturgical hymns. This volume explores Kassia’s thought on Christology, on gender, and on monasticism itself. It provides readers with an opportunity to know this woman of remarkable intellect, wit, and piety by drawing primarily on her own words. Kassia’s is one of the only female voices from ninth-century Byzantium and this volume accordingly examines her reflections on gender in the context of her society and concludes that she represents a perspective that might be described as feminist.

Written by one of the most scandalous figures in the beau monde and published just prior to the French Revolution, A Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople (1789) transported readers to the most exclusive courts of Russia and the Ottoman Empire.

This book is a collection of essays on Ottoman history, focusing on how sultans of the Ottoman Empire were viewed by the public.

This volume of collected essays focuses on Middle Turkic and Ottoman literature.

This monograph of the religious life of the late Ottoman Empire covers several significant features of the Turkish religious landscape. Indispensable for historians of Islamic breakaway religions, Alkan’s monograph fills a gap in many accounts of emergent religions.

Djuneyd: Un personnage remuant de l'époque des Sultans Mehmed I et Mourad II Deux oracles concernant le règne de Michel VIII : Prédictions et prophéties vers la fin de l'Empire byzantin L'étendard de Mourad, conte historique Bayazid et Roxana, fiction historique Romain IV Diogène à Manzikert.

Iraq has been a centre of Syriac Christianity for almost two thousand years. This volume of collected papers from the Christianity in Iraq I-V Seminar Days (2004-2008) explores the Christian heritage of Iraq, highlighting the churches’ innate ability to transcend barriers of language, culture, ethnicity and religion.

The aim of this book is to demonstrate the movement of Greek thought into Arabic via the Syriac language. Al-Hamad devotes the four sections of this book to profiling four different authors who either wrote in Syriac or whose works were transmitted into Arabic via Syriac translations: Porphyry, John Philoponos (‘the Grammarian’), Jacob of Edessa and Dionysios of Tellmahre.

This book begins with a discussion of the contribution of the areas of al-Raqqa (Kallinikos) and Diyar Mudar for translations into the Arabic language; it also covers the importance of Christian monasteries in the region of the Jazira for the history of translations into Greek.

This is a collection of poems and essays by Ghattas Maqdasi Elias, an important figure in twentieth-century Syrian Orthodox letters and education, also known as ‘Malfono Denho.’ The book contains writings previously published in books and journals as well as items published for the first time in this volume.

The West Syrian Liturgy has come down to the present in three major traditions: that of Za‘faran, that of Sadad and that of Edessa. This book represents the culmination of many years of recording and effort, undertaken in both the Middle East and the US, aimed at preserving the complete Beth Gazo of Edessa in musical annotation.

Among the works Jacob al-Bartilli has left us is this theological treatise, entitled The Book of Treasures, which has here been translated in its entirety into Arabic. The Syriac text remains unpublished and this Arabic translation has been executed by the Deacon Behnam Daniel al- Bartilli on the basis of three different manuscripts.

Nearly three years were spent assembling and editing this volume, which contains the diary of Mar Georgios Dionysios, the former Bishop of Aleppo. The diary covers the years 1943-1981 and offers a fascinating look at the day-to-day life of an important figure in the Syrian Orthodox Church over the course of nearly 40 years.

The question of the relationship between Arab identity and Islam is a pressing one for all Christian minorities in the Middle East. In this book, Syrian and Arab intellectual George Jabbur publishes a series of lectures concerned with examining the matter of Arabness, Arabhood, Islam, and political participation and belonging in the constitutions of the countries of the Arab world.

The Gospels mention that Jesus had twelve male disciples who aided Him in His earthly mission of proclaiming the Gospel. But were Jesus’ helpers only men? Convinced that women played an important role in assisting Jesus’ preaching and proclamation of the Kingdom of Heaven, Tuma al-Khuri has written a book, in Arabic, highlighting twelve different females who appear in the Gospel text—the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, Mary the sister of Lazarus, the Samaritan woman, and the Syro-Phoenician woman, among others.

This small book is part of the ‘Allah Ma‘na’ (God With Us) series, created by the Syrian Orthodox community of Aleppo for use in Christian schools, Sunday schools, and Church educational programs. This particular volume is intended for use by third-graders and is meant to introduce them to the basic outlines of the life of Christ—covering all the major events from the Annunciation to Pentecost—in language they can understand.

This small book is part of the ‘Allah Ma‘na’ (God With Us) series, created by the Syrian Orthodox community of Aleppo for use in Christian schools, Sunday schools, and Church educational programs. This volume presents students with actual scriptural passages from a number of the most important passages in the Gospels, including: the Annunciation, the Prologue of John, the Baptism of Christ, the Temptation, the confession of Peter, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection.