Severe epidemics of plague, cholera, and typhus swept across Tunisia between the years 1780 and 1900. The society was galvanized into medical practitioners, religious authorities, and political leaders all tried to deal with the deadly crises. Muslims had, over many centuries, evolved ideas concerning the origin, prevention, and treatment of epidemic diseases that differed somewhat from those of their European counterparts. With European economic and political expansion that accelerated after the Napoleonic Wars, Muslims found themselves confronted not only by a new source of political power but by a new set of medical ideas. This study traces the medical confrontation through the society's response to epidemic disease.

This is the first comprehensive study of the life and works of Muhammad Baqer as-Sadr - an Iraqi scholar who made an important contribution to the renewal of Islamic law and politics in the contemporary Middle East. Executed in 1980, Sadr was the most articulate thinker and a major political actor in the revival of Shi'i learning, which placed Najaf in Southern Iraq at its centre. Dr Chibli Mallat examines the intellectual development of Sadr and his companions who included Ruhullah al-Khumaini and assesses Sadr's innovative approaches to the study of law, economics and banking. The author convincingly demonstrates how Sadr's ideas and activities were influential in the rise of political Islam across the Middle East and played an important part in the Iranian revolution of 1979.

Womanpower unveils the lively but little-reported debate on women's positions in the modern Arab world. It paints a picture drawn from individual stories as well as from national development programs and attempts to explain why the process of social change in the region has been slow and uneven by linking it to political and economic developments. By illustrating particular themes—personal status laws, development policies, political rights—with examples from specific countries, Nadia Hijab builds up an informative overview of the Arab world today.

Essaouira was founded n 1764 by Sultan Sidi Muhammad b. Abdullah as his port for developing trade with Europe. Through a group of Jewish middlemen, it served as a link between Europe, Morocco and su-Saharan Africa. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries its fame rivalled Tripoli, Tunis and Algiers. Based on extensive untapped archive in Morocco, papers of Jewish merchant houses and consular records of Britain, France and the United States, this book gives an account of the city in its heyday. Essaouira was an opening to foreign penetration, but it was also important to the Moroccan government, because potentially dissident regions became tied to its commercial and political activities. The control of the sultans was undermined as foreign powers imposed liberal trade and intervened in Moroccan affairs. This study of a specific city and region throws light on the problems of traditional societies in the age of European economic imperialism.

Cairo University has been crucially important in shaping the national life of twentieth-century Egypt. It has educated much of the political, professional and cultural elite; doctors and lawyers, novelists and philosophers, bankers and prime ministers have all studied there. Founded in 1908 and for many years competing only with the religious al-Azhar, the European-inspired Cairo University quickly became the prime indigenous model for other state universities in the region and its influence has spread even beyond the Arab world. Professor Reid has drawn on university archives hitherto untapped by Western scholars and on a wide range of other Arabic and Western sources. He explains the university's part in the national quest for independence from Britain, in the perennial tension between secular and religious world views, and in the push for a more egalitarian society. Nasser and Sadat, Kings Fuad and Faruq, nationalist hero Saad Zaghlul and Nobel Prize winner Najib Mahfuz, all feature prominently in this fascinating history of Egypt's most important modern educational institution.

In this newly updated edition, Olivier Roy expands his penetrating study of the history, ideology and structures of the Afghan resistance movement to mid-1989. He examines the evolution of the military and political situation inside Afghanistan during the last years of the Soviet presence and discusses relations between the Afghan resistance and the Islamic fundamentalist movements. The situation created by the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan is also explored and in a new conclusion Professor Roy assesses to what extent the war has altered the traditional fabric of Afghan society.

On July 31, 1988, King Hussein of Jordan renounced all administrative and legal ties with the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the River Jordan, initiating a new turning point in the Middle East peace process. In this path-breaking study, Madiha Madfai explores Jordan's role in the USA's peacemaking efforts during the Carter, Reagan and Bush administrations. She examines the events culminating in the action of 1988 and convincingly demonstrates the history of anger, anguish and frustration that lay behind the Jordanian decision.

Why do states in arid regions fail to cooperate in sharing water resources and how can they be encouraged to do so? In a provocative and well-researched analysis of the history and current status of the dispute over the waters of the Jordan River basin and its relationship to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Dr. Miriam Lowi explores the answers to these questions. This book will be of value to all those with an interest in the region, and to those concerned with the environmental issues of the politics of water scarcity.