The fifth issue of Ostour, the ACRPS' quarterly journal on historical studies was published in February, 2017. The complete, Arabic versions of the texts are available for sale through our network of distributors and the ACRPS' electronic bookstore (click here to see the link for the latest Ostour).
English translations of the abstracts are available (see the Table of Contents).
Abstracts for the Fifth Edition of Ostour
The Transition from the Timar System to the Iltizam System in the Ottoman Sanjak of Tripoli: The Formation of a Local Ottoman Nobility in the Alawite Mountains in the 17th and 18th Centuries
The 1729 Peace Treaty between the Eyalet of Algiers and the Kingdom of Sweden
The Functions of the Traditional Amazigh Inafless Council before the French Protectorate of Morocco: the Case of the Idawtanan Tribe
Merchants and the Drive for Democracy in Kuwait (1921 - 1939)
From Negotiations to Infiltration: the relationship between the Jewish Agency and the Syrian National Bloc and the Shahbandar opposition
The Knowledge of Everyday Life: Marxism as Critical Knowledge of Everyday life
From Establishing the Palestine Students’ Union to Resisting Forced Resettlement: the Fathi Balawi memoirs
The Ostour Symposium: “Teaching History in Arab Universities”
How Academic Research Contributes to Enhanced Definitions of Terms: The Case of Etymology
Academic research plays a vital role in constantly improving the definitions of technical terms across all fields of knowledge, including fields where public awareness plays a major role and where words and phrases carry considerable cultural baggage and connotation. This reflects the reality that all phrases and their meanings are rooted in time and place: while the temporal and geographical contexts in which specific phrases are used may change, the words never completely lose touch with their original meanings. Etymology is, in this regard, the only academic discipline capable of preserving the original meaning of words throughout their various transformations. The rigorous process of philology is what ultimately allows the field of etymology to continue to be relevant even as words are separated from their original meanings contexts.
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Echoes of Ancient Myths and Rituals in Contemporary Abrahamic Religions
This paper presents some of the mythology of millennia-old ancient civilizations and the rituals which accompanied these myths before exploring the significant and essential resemblance to the beliefs of contemporary Abrahamic religions. One difference is that the latter have been granted a sense of sanctity, presented as uncorrupted and incorruptible and as divinely ordained beliefs which are entirely unrelated to their “pagan” precedents.
The author explores this broader truth by investigating the similarities between the three Abrahamic faiths and a set of classical civilizations: the Mesopotamian, Ancient Greek, Roman, Persian, Chinese, Indian and Ancient Egyptian. Specifically, the author concentrates on a select group of rituals and myths which exist across this spectrum of belief systems: the Creation myth, the Great Flood, the Adam and Eve myth, circumambulation/veneration, purification, and the offering of sacrifices and atonements.
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The Transition from the Timar System to the Iltizam System in the Ottoman Sanjak of Tripoli: The Formation of a Local Ottoman Nobility in the Alawite Mountains in the 17th and 18th Centuries
This paper examines how the replacement of the Timar land-holding system with the Iltizam form within the Ottoman Eyalet of Tripoli impacted the Alawi religious community settled in the “Nusayri” (or “Alawite”) Mountain (“Jabal Al Alaouieen”, along the coast of present-day Syria) which fell within that administrative district. In the new Eltizam form of land holding, the tax revenues were divided between the Ottoman state and a Multazim, nurturing the rise of a stratum of local notables from within the Alawite community. The author studies the ensuing transformation as a historical-social-economic process which unravelled over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a period during which the two systems of land holding coexisted side-by-side. When this transformation was complete, local authority was invested in regional Alawite notables, and drawn away from the central authority of the Sublime Porte. Gradually, the authority of these Alawite notables was sanctioned by the religious authorities in Tripoli who officially recognized their responsibility for the maintenance of peace and security and of public works. This process was accelerated by the rise of tobacco as a cash crop harvested in the Jabal Al Alaouieen, and the region’s increased integration into the world economy.
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The 1729 Peace Treaty between the Eyalet of Algiers and the Kingdom of Sweden
This paper explores the “Treaty of Peace and Commerce” which was joined by the Eyalet of Algiers and the Kingdom of Sweden in 1729. The author details the day-to-day negotiations which built up to the final accord (the first of its kind between Sweden and a state in the Islamic world) as well as the measures which the Swedes took to ensure that the agreement was a success. Of particular note is that the Treaty did not come at the end of what could be understood, in today’s terms, to be a war. Breaking with the dominant tradition which dates Sweden-Algeria relations to the post-independence era, this paper roots these ties firmly in the 17th Century, at the first attempts of Sweden to pay ransom for its sailors held captive in Algerian jails.
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The Functions of the Traditional Amazigh Inafless Council before the French Protectorate of Morocco: the Case of the Idawtanan Tribe
The Amazigh institution of the Inafless was a significant factor in the social and legal acclimation of Moroccans living in traditional tribal societies prior to the French Protectorate (1912). These were judicial institutions whose authority rested on a set of by-laws formulated by Sunni Muslim jurisprudents of the Maleki school who lived alongside the mountain-dwelling Amazigh tribesmen who were free of the rule of the central authorities (the Makhzen in Rabat). The Idawtanan tribe, whose territory lies in the Sous region of Morocco, provides the compelling case study subject for this paper. While the Makhzen attempted to utilize of the Inafless and other instruments of traditional Amazigh tribal authority to unify the territory under its rule, repeated compromises which ultimately curtailed the Sultan’s power were inevitable. Thus, the intensity of the deliberate assimilation of the Amazigh was curtailed, resulting in the ability of rural tribal groups to self-government. Depending on the nature and urgency of events at any given time, traditional Amazigh structures were strong and unshakeable, established organs or weak and marginalized. The final equilibrium saw the traditional Amazigh justice system thrive off of the relative weakness of the Makhzen in the periphery.
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Merchants and the Drive for Democracy in Kuwait (1921 - 1939)
This paper explores the contribution of merchants to the rise of democracy in Kuwait during the early part of the twentieth century. In that period, a number of incidents combined to lay the foundations of a robust democratic system in Kuwait. Notwithstanding the specific flaws of each of these chains of incidents, they combined together to give rise to Kuwait’s first elected legislature, which held its first session in January of 1963. In examining these events, the author focuses particularly on the role which Kuwaiti merchants played in achieving democracy for their country and securing their political rights, and how this group imported democratic ideas and experiences from abroad, tempering the ideas to align better with local norms and customs. Of specific interest is the relationship which tied the merchant families to the ruling family of Kuwait.
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From Negotiations to Infiltration: The relationship between the Jewish Agency and the Syrian National Bloc and the Shahbandar opposition
This paper examines the secret relationship between the Jewish Agency, the leaders of the Syrian independence movement, as well as the Shahbandar opposition during the Great Palestinian Rebellion of 1936 - 1939. The paper follows and examines the nature of the secret relationship that the intelligence service of the Jewish Agency established with the leaders of the Syrian National Bloc as well as the Syrian Shahbandar opposition. This research is based mainly on primary sources, particularly on the reports and minutes of the contacts and meetings between the Intelligence Services of the Jewish Agency and its leaders with the Syrian National leaders. These classified reports have been kept for decades in the Israeli Archives.
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The knowledge of everyday life: Marxism as critical knowledge of everyday life
This article provides the Arabic translation of the second and third chapters, Volume I of Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life. This work which regards quotidian life, despite being overwhelmed by commodification and fraud, to be the sole remaining source of change and resistance and goes on to define Marxism as the perfect form of critique of everyday life, offering a wholly new methodology for the writing of history. The three-volume Critique of Everyday Life is Lefebvre’s most important work, a book through which he explores the minutiae of contemporary society and which can be said to be the foundational text of the field now known as Cultural Studies.
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From Establishing the Palestine Students’ Union to Resisting Forced Resettlement: the Fathi Balawi memoirs
This paper forms the nucleus of a lecture which the author intends to deliver in Doha, Qatar It is based entirely on the unpublished personal diaries of Fathi Balawi, which are archived in Doha by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies. The diaries cover Balawi’s recollections of Palestinian student life in Cairo between 1945 and 1955, intersecting with both the Palestinian Nakba in 1948 and the establishment of the earliest Palestinian student association. This Cairo-based institution would itself give rise to the General Union of Palestine Students, an institution that later proved to be the springboard for a Palestinian national leadership which survives to this day. Balawi’s papers also cover the 1955 popular uprising in the Gaza Strip, which had prevented attempts at the forced resettlement of Palestinian refugees, as well as his own involvement in the formation of the Gaza Teachers’ Union. The Balawi memoirs presented here offer a rare glimpse of the Palestinian political life during a crucial period, offering an alternative narrative to the official version of Palestinian history which ignores the history of GUPS prior to the 1954 onset of the leadership of Yasser Arafat, (or which present the late President Arafat as the founder of the group).
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The Ostour Symposium: “Teaching History in Arab Universities”
In this edition of the journal, the Ostour Symposium offers an overview of the International Academic Conference hosted in 2015 by the Department of Humanities at Qatar University , which surveyed the changes to academic history across Arab national universities over five decades. The symposium on The Teaching of History in Universities and Higher Education Institutes: Visions, Curricula and Subjects, which was held on November 25 - 26, 2015 , offered scholars an opportunity to discuss the changes to the academic study of history as well as the interfaces of history with the other social sciences and humanities. The four papers included in this edition of Ostour look at how these issues affect the teaching of history in Arab universities, with special reference to educational plans, the status of “world history” within history curricula, universities in the Gulf and how they approach proscribed topics in Gulf History, and the periodization of historical pedagogy in universities in the Arab Maghreb.
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