Global changes during the 1980s promoted a rising group of regional powers, with economic and military development having produced a new form of independence for certain states in the developing South. Using a conceptual framework that focuses on the role of Emergent Regional Powers in the international system, the author uses as a model for analysis the important Gulf States Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Through various themes he examines their efforts during the period 1988-1991 to expand their capabilities and to encourage international regimes sympathetic to their interests. The book considers growing tensions in the Gulf after 1988 and the significance of the Kuwait crisis, and surveys the Allied Iraqi war and the dismantling in 1990-91 of much of Iraq's power, which redefined relations in the Gulf and in the wider region.

Emergent Regional Powers and International Relations in the Gulf: 1988-1991 (International Politics of the Middle East, No 2)

Politics & Social Sciences

Murden, Simon

Politics & Government

Garnet Pub Ltd

This book is the author's way to fulfil a belief in ideas as movers of a history in the making. In a Middle East where the Arab-Israeli and Gulf conflicts cannot be thought separately there is a need for an effective redirecting of the structural frameworks towards a comprehensive and innovative peace where borders and armies count less, and for a practice of change in Iraq which is based on working opposition institutions. Whilst the appreciation of Iranian Islamic expansionism should operate primarily with a view to Iran's own fault-lines and the domestic set-ups in the countries concerned, the whole search for a kinder and richer Middle East must refine its language by a series of detours. The detours include the weaving of the classical tradition of Islamic law into modern legal experiments, the appreciation of what really makes a state stable, the difficult theoretical questions raised by Islamic movements, and the need for new constitutional frameworks and a legal fluidity in the region as a whole, in which nation-states get less rigid, and freedom of movement and political expression for the individual are made issues of priority.

The Middle East into the 21st Century: The Japan Lectures and Other Studies on the Arab-Israeli Conflict, the Gulf Crisis and Political Islam

Mallat, Chibli

Freya Stark's first experience of the Near East was in 1927, when she stayed in Beirut, taking lessons to improve her Arabic. Boarding at a mission in Broumana, she began to explore the surrounding countryside, then a tranquil and idyllic area of deep, wooded valleys. In 1928 she moved to Damascus and was then able to visit Baalbek.Throughout the interwar years she travelled extensively in the Levant. In Syria she explored the castles of the Assassins, the Jebel Druze and the deserted Byzantine cities of the Orontes Valley. In Palestine, Acre and Jerusalem gradually won her affections, and in Jordan she visited the new capital city of Amman, then scarcely more than a village, and the ancient Nabatean 'lost city' of Petra.She returned to the Levant frequently during the war, and also throughout the 1950s. Her final trip to the region was in 1977, when she travelled by raft down the Euphrates River. For Freya Stark the Levant was the foundation of her love for the Middle East and the starting point for many of her travels further afield. This volume contains many of her best photographs, spanning the fifty years of her love affair with the Levant.

Freya Stark in the Levant (The st Antony's College Middle East Archives)

History

STARK, Freya

Ruthven, Malise

St. Antony's College (University of Oxford) Middle East Archives

Africa

For Freya Stark her experiences in Iraq must count amongst her most romantic. She first arrived by car in the late 1920s, driving across the open desert in the company of pilgrims bound for Mecca. On a return visit in 1930 the desert was in full bloom with tulips, anemones and marigolds and, as the guest of a Bedouin sheikh, she stayed in a tent filled with white mattresses and purple cushions. Introduced to a visiting Yezidi sheikh, she visited Yezidi villages and captured some unique photographs of their often-misunderstood 'devil-worshipping' ceremonies. In 1932 she took her first and only steady job, as a sub-editor on the Baghdad Times, and published her first book, Baghdad Sketches. Baghdad thronged with different cultures and nationalities, and Freya provoked scandal by choosing to live in the 'native quarters' where she could observe the bustle of the city at first hand. She also made excursions to Mosul, Nineveh and Takrit and, protected by a veil, visited the holy shrines of Najaf and Kadhimain. In the 1940s she travelled to the marshes north of Basra, and made a ten-day tour of Kurdistan. Her visit ended in high drama when she was caught in the siege of the British Embassy. On her various expeditions to Kuwait she again visited the marsh Arabs and also witnessed the bustle of the fishing fleets and pearl divers' boats. She enjoyed the bazaars of Kuwait City, and leaves us with a photographic record from before the oil boom which replaced much of the old city's architecture and way of life.

Freya Stark in Iraq & Kuwait

Travel

Malise Ruthven

Asia

"The magnificent canyons of Wadi Hadhramaut inspired Freya Stark to produce some of her best photographs. Dame Freya's particular empathy with local people resulted in charming pictures of people she worked or travelled with, and the homes and costumes of the period."

Freya Stark in Southern Arabia

Middle East

Unlike Syria and Iraq, where Europeans were well protected, Persia in 1930 was an independent country only recently recovering from years of lawlessness. Despite its apparent dangers, Freya Stark's romantic soul found an affinity with people who seemed to prefer poverty with freedom to sub-colonial affluence. Before venturing into Mazanderan Dame Freya spent a month in Hamadan. She set out for Alamut in the middle of May heading for the castle of Hassan-i Sabbah. She returned to the valleys the following year, in August 1931, to explore the castle of Lamasur, one of the last of the Ismaili strongholds. She sojourned briefly in Tehran in September 1931, before the prospect of buried treasure took her to Luristan. In March 1943, while employed by the Ministry of Information, she was invited to spend her leave with Lord Wavell in Tehran. She received permission to use an official car to make the journey from Dehli and set off from Quetta. She travelled for several days across Baluchistan to Meshed, from there a detour of some 1200 miles took her to Tehran by way of Kerman and at last allowed her to visit Isfahan.

Freya Stark in Persia

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

Seen through the eyes of a nine-year old girl, Huda, this novel captures the atmosphere of Baghdad in the 1940s. A city of public steam baths, of roadside butchers, of spinning tops and childhood games played in the streets, streets where political demonstrations are beginning to take place. With real perception the complex web of family relationships is illustrated by the tension between the fiery and feisty nature of Huda and her powerlessness as a child. Huda's father, a prison guard and a bully, hides his weakness beneath apparent strength. He drives his desperately ill wife from the family home, replacing her with his pregnant second wife. But Huda has two allies; her devoted and beloved brother Adil and her grandmother, who is the real power in the family.

Mothballs (Arab Women Writers)

Theroux, Peter

Mamdouh, Alia

Mamduh, Aliyah

Literature & Fiction

The Eye of the Mirror (Arab Women Writers)

Badr, Liyānah

Kawar, Samira

Contemporary

Nadia rebels against the traditional role cast for women in the Arab world and joins the Palestinian resistance movement. However, she soon becomes disillusioned by their tactics and emigrates to France. The author shows the conflict between the individual and the military establishment.

The Homeland (Arab Women Writers)

Nana, Hamidah

Asser, Martin

From her cell in a women's prison, Aziza decides to create a golden chariot to take her to heaven, where her wishes and dreams can be fulfilled. As she muses on who to take with her, she tells the life stories of her fellow prisoners and decides in her heart which ones deserve a free ride to paradise. Aziza's cruelly frank comments about her friends and their various crimes, including murder, theft, and drug-dealing-weave these tales together into a contemporary Arabian Nights. Salwa Bakr takes a wry and cynical look at how women from widely differing backgrounds, some innocent and some guilty, come together in a single prison ward. Salwa Bakr's writing depicts life at the grassroots of Egypt's culture, admiring its resilience in the face of poverty and inequality. With a strong distrust of imported kitsch, western consumerism is contrasted with the indigenous culture. In The Golden Chariot, Salwa Bakr opens a magical door, through which we are able to see the injustices of a society in transition. Beyond these stories of crime, we glimpse the yearning and longing for a better life, and the problems of not being able to realize these dreams by honest means.

Golden Chariot (The Arab Women Writers Series)

Bakr, Salwa

World Literature

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