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This thesis examines the work of the missionaries from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) and the rise of a Protestant community in Ottoman Syria, from the commencement of the missionary station at Beirut in 1823, to the dissolution of the community in 1860. The primary goals of this thesis are to investigate the history of this missionary encounter and the culture of the new community. This analysis is guided by the theoretical framework of Practice Theory and employs gender as a lens to explore the development of the Protestant identity. It argues that the Protestant community in Ottoman Syria emerged within the expanding port-city of Beirut and was situated within both the American and Ottoman historical contexts. The social structures that defined this community reflect the centrality of the ABCFM missionaries within the community and reveals a latent hierarchy based upon racial difference. However, tensions within the community and subversions to the missionaries’ definition of Protestantism persisted throughout the period under review, which eventually led to the fragmentation of the community in 1860. The contribution of this thesis lies in its investigation onto the activities of women and their delineation of Protestant womanhood and motherhood, as an important manifestation of Protestant culture. This work demonstrates the centrality of women to the development of the Protestant community in Ottoman Syria and reveals the complex interpersonal relationships that defined this missionary encounter.

The Muslim tradition tells us that when Muslims migrated to Medina and their number increased, they felt the need for an efficient means to convoke the community for the daily prayers. Jews and Christians both had well-established summoning rituals involving different instruments, that Muslims considered adopting. They eventually developed a distinct, simple ritual consisting of a small set of chanted formulæ, which became known as the adhān, the Islamic call to prayer. This is the narrative thread that we find in all major Sunnī collections of aḥādīth - reported sayings of Muḥammad and his companions - which recount the introduction of the adhān. The present work postulates that this thread or 'proto-narrative' was used by several narrators, transmitters, and collectors until the third/ninth century who modified it and added new elements in order to settle political and religious controversies of their times. This proto-narrative is outlined in the main chapter (chap. 3), which highlights how it was modified and why, using close textual analysis of both Sunnī and Shī'ī texts with data-dense graphs of relations, locations, and times produced via network visualisation tools. Five major Sunnī legal treaties from the second/eighth century onwards were also scrutinised (chap. 4) to better understand the general context in which the aḥādīth about the introduction of the adhān were being circulated and confirm the results obtained through the textual analysis. The conclusions reveal specific mechanisms used in the formation and transmission of aḥādīth. In the case of the adhān, aḥādīth represent half of a 'conversation' between people, students, or rulers on one side, asking questions about the origins and the right form of the call to prayer, and on the other side, scholars or jurists who answer with adapted narratives. Only the latter was preserved, yet the present thesis shows that it is often possible to reconstruct, to a certain extent, the former part of this 'conversation'.

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In the following pages an attempt is made to demonstrate how the system of slavery fits into the concept of man in the Qur'an. Thia thesis is an humble attempt to clarify the Qur'anic position on slayery which has often been misinterpreted or misunderatood by modern Muslim writers. Modern men have an aversion towards some of the social practices of ancient times, one of which is slavery. [...]

<p> This cultural study critically investigates the mechanics of the revolutionary posters that were used for mobilizing the Iranian masses and later incorporated by the Islamic propaganda machinery to mark the continuity of the Iranian Revolution. The posters are organized thematically: The initial posters incorporate the religious/secular symbolism of coffeehouse-style poster paintings from the Qajar-era and are followed by posters showcasing the means and spaces of mobilization including the influence of the mosque, religious seminaries, cassette tapes and city walls. The posters in the middle of the thesis try to showcase how influential the rhetoric of Shi'ite Ideology was as projected by the revolutionary ideologues in appealing to the different religious minorities and classes under the Pahlavi state for the resistance movement. The photographic posters follow these national cohesion posters and bridge history and memory, thus situating these posters in the realm of sites of memory, mourning and commemoration. The posters in the last segment include the following themes: gender, commemoration of national and international events including the Iran-Iraq War, and the Gathering of the Liberation Movements of the World. Contrary to the argument portraying posters as insignificant to the Iranian Revolution, this study locates the propaganda images in the milieu of "small media" sparking a "big revolution." Simultaneously, this study reveals the inescapability faced by the ideologues in utilizing abstract, grotesque and profane themes to mobilize and mark the continuity of Anti-Western, Anti-Modern Islamist Revolution.</p>