
The seventh issue of Ostour, the ACRPS bi-annual journal
devoted to the academic study of history and historiography was published in
March, 2018.
Research papers included in this edition include:
“Byzantium's Official Attitude towards Islam as imagined by
Abu Sufyan: The Impact of the Imaginary on Self-Perception
and Perception of the Other” by Bechir Labidi; “Sassanian
Sultanic Literature in the Early Abbasid Court and the Question of its Transfer”
by Nasir Al-Kaabi; “Manifestations of Renewal in the Field of History in Tunisia between the 17th and 19th
Centuries” by Abdelhamid Henia; “Historical Knowledge Production in
post-independence Morocco” by Abderrahman Benhadda; “The Algerian Elite and its
Connection to a Reform Movement” by Noureddine Teniou; and “Collective Memory
as a Subject of Historical Research: a
Study of Selected Historians from the Third Generation of the Annales School” by
Yassin Yahyaoui.
Book reviews carried in this latest edition include: Mohammed Al-Amrani’s
review of The Islamic Minority in Sicily between Integration, Confrontation
and Identity Conflict (484-591 AH / 1091- 1194 AD): Contribution to the Study of
the History of Minorities; Mustapha El Ghachi’s review of The Paradise
of the Infidels: the Travel Account of Mohammed Effendi to Paris in 1721; and
Bilal Mohammed Shalash’s Biography and Contemporary History: Reading the
Memoirs of Salim Hijja.
This seventh edition carried an account of the latest Ostour
Symposium. The event, held on 15-16 January, 2017, was devoted to the theme
of “History as the Preserve of the State in the Arab World” and was hosted by the
History Department at Qatar’s Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
Translations (into Arabic) carried in this issue included Thaer
Deeb’s translation of Carlo Ginzburg’s Microhistory: Two or Three Things
That I know about it.
Finally, the seventh edition of Ostour closed with coverage
of a symposium devoted to Khaled Ziadeh’s book on Sharia Court personal status
documents in the city of Tripoli in present-day Lebanon.