The Arab Middle East began indigenous nation building relatively late in the twentieth century. Issues of legitimacy, identity, and conflicts with the West have plagued Arab nations. Arab states have espoused universal ideologies as solutions to the problems of Arab nation building. The two ideologies of Pan-Arabism and Islamic modernism provided universal solutions to the Arab states. Both Pan-Arabism and Islamic modernism gained validity in political polemics aimed against colonialism, imperialism, Zionism, and the West. Both ideologies promised simple solutions to complex questions of building modern Arab society. Irrespective of ideology, Arab states have always acted in self-interest to perceived external threats. The West has perpetuated universal solutions to Arab nation building through continued intervention in the Middle East. The Arabs perpetuated universal solutions to Arab- nation building as panacea to the problems of becoming modern nations.

In 1969, Richard M. Nixon became the thirty-seventh President of the United States. He brought with him an aggressive foreign policy aimed at retarding the escalating Cold War and ending America's war with Vietnam. In his inaugural address, he exclaimed that under his leadership the United States was going to enter an era of negotiation, leaving the age of confrontation behind. Determined to create a structure of peace around the world, Nixon and his administration fashioned a policy to reflect their goals. This study seeks to understand why the Nixon administration allowed the Middle East to fall into the peripheries of their foreign policy. A conflict as devastating as the October War was certainly the kind of incident Nixon and his advisors wished to avoid. Between the years of 1969 and 1973, they worked tirelessly in the Middle East and around the globe to secure a more hospitable international climate; so why, despite their efforts, did the Arab-Israeli conflict spiral so devastatingly out of control?

This dissertation analyzes the struggle between the imperial court and the periphery in the context of Justinian’s reforms in the early A.D. 530s. The reforms targeting select Roman provinces sought to reduce the size of the imperial bureaucracy while simultaneously attempting to maintain imperial vertical authority. The reforms epitomize the imperial court’s struggle to rein in the imperial bureaucracy in the provinces of the Roman Empire. The analysis is framed within the cultural, social, political and economic evolution occurring in Late Antiquity. It shall be proposed that the reforms are one example of the imperial court’s attempt to limit the distance between itself and its provincial resources, particularly with regard to fiscality. The reforms also embody the political dynamics between the emperor and his bureaucracy, which is composed of the Roman elite. Roughly two centuries earlier, the Tetrarchic reforms fundamentally changed the relationship between both parties. Specifically, the upper stratum of the aristocracy saw the balance of power tilt in its favor substantially.

The Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party was established in Syria during the mid-twentieth century, originally championing Arab unity and freedom from foreign influence. The party eventually managed to rise to power in Syria and Iraq, thereby concluding the widespread political instability that had previously plagued both countries. In each of these contexts, autocratic leaders emerged at the forefront of the ruling regimes and manipulated the party to bolster their rule for over three decades. This paper examines the Ba’ath party’s history and ideology to understand the party’s source of strength. It also discusses the party’s role in achieving power as well as the different functions it undertook in Syria and Iraq once autocratic rule was established. Finally, it studies the fall of both regimes and the status of the Ba’ath party today.

L’art des Turkmènes qarâ qoyunlu (782-873 h./1380-1468) et âq qoyunlu (780-914 h./1378-1508) alongtemps été dédaigné dans l’histoire de l’art du monde iranien. Pourquoi assimiler systématiquement cesoeuvres aux productions timourides ? Ne pourrait-on donc parler d’un « art turkmène » ? À partir d’un corpusde cinquante ensembles décoratifs en céramique, l’objectif de cette étude est de retracer une histoire desproductions turkmènes, de leurs formes, de leurs techniques, et d’en comprendre les articulations artistiques.L’ensemble des monuments qarâ qoyunlu et âq qoyunlu connus est dans un premier temps exploré,regroupés selon une présentation régionale : un parti pris permettant de souligner la force de traditionsartistiques locales autour de centres tels que Tabriz, E½fahân, Yazd ou encore Kâshân. Cette approche liminaireest suivie d’une analyse technique et ornementale des céramiques architecturales. Le dernier axe de cetterecherche s’intéresse à l’organisation de la production. L’enjeu est d’abord de comprendre les confluencesartistiques complexes s’exerçant alors en Iran, avant de s’arrêter sur les acteurs de cette production : lesmécènes et les artisans.Cette étude cherche à apporter un regard nouveau sur certains pans de la céramique architecturaleislamique. La « charnière turcomane » constitue en effet un jalon important de l’histoire de l’art : un point decontact avec les territoires timouride, mamlouk et ottoman frontaliers, et une passerelle vers les Empiresmodernes du siècle suivant. / Qarâ Qoyunlu (782-873 h./1380-1468) and Âq Qoyunlu (782-873 h./1380-1468) Turkman’s art haslong been disregarded in the art history of the Iranian world. This research brings the nature of Turkman art intoquestion, through the example of tiling art. Based on a group of fifty ornamental ceramic groups, this studyattempts to trace the history of Turkman decorative features, their designs, their techniques, and to understandtheir artistic connections.This research first proposes to explore every known qarâ qoyunlu and âq qoyunlu monument, sharedout among regional groups so that the strength of the regional traditions could be underlined around suchartistic centers as Tabriz, E½fahân, Yazd, or Kâshân. This part is followed by a technical and ornamental studyof Turkman tiles. The last component of that research is the organization of the production. It aims to givestatements about artistic confluences in Iran, and then to present actors of tiling production : the patrons andcraftsmen.This study intends to bring a new eye on some groups of Islamic tiles. The Turkman transition makesan important step in history of art: a meeting point between Timurid, Mamluk and Ottoman’s borderlineterritories, and a bridge to Modern Empires of the next century.

L’art des Turkmènes qarâ qoyunlu (782-873 h./1380-1468) et âq qoyunlu (780-914 h./1378-1508) alongtemps été dédaigné dans l’histoire de l’art du monde iranien. Pourquoi assimiler systématiquement cesoeuvres aux productions timourides ? Ne pourrait-on donc parler d’un « art turkmène » ? À partir d’un corpusde cinquante ensembles décoratifs en céramique, l’objectif de cette étude est de retracer une histoire desproductions turkmènes, de leurs formes, de leurs techniques, et d’en comprendre les articulations artistiques.L’ensemble des monuments qarâ qoyunlu et âq qoyunlu connus est dans un premier temps exploré,regroupés selon une présentation régionale : un parti pris permettant de souligner la force de traditionsartistiques locales autour de centres tels que Tabriz, E½fahân, Yazd ou encore Kâshân. Cette approche liminaireest suivie d’une analyse technique et ornementale des céramiques architecturales. Le dernier axe de cetterecherche s’intéresse à l’organisation de la production. L’enjeu est d’abord de comprendre les confluencesartistiques complexes s’exerçant alors en Iran, avant de s’arrêter sur les acteurs de cette production : lesmécènes et les artisans.Cette étude cherche à apporter un regard nouveau sur certains pans de la céramique architecturaleislamique. La « charnière turcomane » constitue en effet un jalon important de l’histoire de l’art : un point decontact avec les territoires timouride, mamlouk et ottoman frontaliers, et une passerelle vers les Empiresmodernes du siècle suivant. / Qarâ Qoyunlu (782-873 h./1380-1468) and Âq Qoyunlu (782-873 h./1380-1468) Turkman’s art haslong been disregarded in the art history of the Iranian world. This research brings the nature of Turkman art intoquestion, through the example of tiling art. Based on a group of fifty ornamental ceramic groups, this studyattempts to trace the history of Turkman decorative features, their designs, their techniques, and to understandtheir artistic connections.This research first proposes to explore every known qarâ qoyunlu and âq qoyunlu monument, sharedout among regional groups so that the strength of the regional traditions could be underlined around suchartistic centers as Tabriz, E½fahân, Yazd, or Kâshân. This part is followed by a technical and ornamental studyof Turkman tiles. The last component of that research is the organization of the production. It aims to givestatements about artistic confluences in Iran, and then to present actors of tiling production : the patrons andcraftsmen.This study intends to bring a new eye on some groups of Islamic tiles. The Turkman transition makesan important step in history of art: a meeting point between Timurid, Mamluk and Ottoman’s borderlineterritories, and a bridge to Modern Empires of the next century.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Chechens fought against the Russians for independence. The focus in the literature available has been on the wars and the atrocities caused by the wars. The literature then hypothesizes that the insurgency of today is just a continuation of the past. They do not focus on a major event in Chechen history: the Soviet liquidation of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1944. It is this author’s assertion that the liquidation of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR forever changed the mindset of the people because it fractured a society that was once unified. This project will compare the Chechen insurgency from the beginnings until the deportation and after the deportation. This will allow me to show how the deportation changed the Chechen mindset and disprove the assertion that these two Chechen wars were just a continuation of the past.

The oral traditions in the Islamic world presented only the moral benefits of Jihad. Yet, the fact is that, though the moral benefits continued to exist before and after the First Crusade, though the interest seemed to have been present and the necessary intellectual theories continued on, Muslims did not advance the practical Jihad. Nonetheless, the disastrous Second Crusade struck a powerful chord among Muslims. It forced Muslims to battle for their very survival, and to do so they would have to adapt, but equally they could only survive by drawing on their imperial inheritance built up over centuries. A number of concerns identified with the “golden age” of the Islamic empire influenced the Jihad movements for Muslims associated the imperial traditions with Islam itself. Given the examples of the First and Second Crusades, this study proposes that the idea of “Islamic Empire” constituted Muslims’ practical response to the crusades.

This thesis examines how Jews of the Ottoman Empire responded to newfound opportunities that emerged across the domains of the late Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century due to the Ottoman bureaucratic reforms (Tanzimat). It challenges the discourses that argue that Jews engaged probing issues such as nationalism in a monolithic fashion. Rather, Sephardi and Arab Jews, based on socioeconomic status and geographic location in the Empire approached questions of affiliation with the Empire or attachment to new forms of nationalism based on divergent structures that informed their lives and personal political choices. This project explores the main avenues that Jews in the Ottoman world used to approach questions that animated the public discourse not just of Jews, but of peoples across the globe who struggled to find new avenues for belonging in shifting geopolitical terrains. For Jewish communities in the Ottoman world, four dominant avenues and attitudes emerged: traditionalists who desired to maintain the status quo; those who sought an Ottoman or Turkish Republican future; Sephardi Zionists who believed they were integral to Ottoman communal history; provincial nationalists who agitated for distinct regional identities. The thesis also briefly examines the Armenian millet’s socio-political situation during the nineteenth and twentieth century in order to show the ways in which the Jewish millet was both in tandem with broader nationalist discourses but were also less cohesively politically organized than other millets in the Empire.

A study of ten Louisiana newspapers during May 15-31,1948 revealed a period in which articles varied in their coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict and wider international relations. Discourse about Arabs and Israelis which became evident in newspapers in later years had emerged but was not fully developed. This coverage revealed a silence about the Holocaust and a subtext about the United Nations.