In the late 1300s and early 1400s, when firearms made their arrival in the lands of Islam, the various dynasties exhibited differing responses. While the Ottoman sultanate wasted no time in incorporating firearms into their formidable military machine, both the Mamluks of Egypt and the Safavids of Persia were far more reluctant in adopting the new weapons. David Avalon, investigating the question of Mamluk reluctance, identified the rigid sense of pride in the traditional forms of warfare to be found in the ruling class; however, the same attention has not yet been paid to the Safavids. A paucity of relevant references in the accounts of European travellers combined with a tendency in the Safavid sources to apply identical terms to both gunpowder and non-gunpowder weapons made the relative abundance of firearms difficult to quantify. In all, the same stubborn attitude found in the Mamluks was also found in the Safavid elite, but in the case of Persia, this cannot be considered the sole answer. Instead, the historical background and military situation also played an important role.

The earliest, but scarce, evidence of cuneiform signs being used syllabically to write Akkadian words and proper nouns is at Fara and Tell Abu Salabikh between 2600 BC and 2500 BC. Between around 2350 BC and 1800 BC, there is an increase in the development and use of signs with syllabic values across Mesopotamia and Syria, but these syllabic values (together called 'syllabaries') are still very local in nature with significant and observable differences in sign usage and values between sites. Starting around 1800 BC, reforms to the system begin to be enforced that standardise these signs and their values, which essentially ends any major variability in the script within specific periods. This provides us with a period of almost 600 years, spanning the second half of the third millennium and early second millennium BC, during which there is a wealth of textual data documenting the first full adaptation of the cuneiform script to syllabically write Semitic words and proper nouns. This thesis investigates the attestations and usage of syllabic values to write Semitic lexemes in the cuneiform text corpora from Ebla, Mari, Nabada, Tuttul, Adab, Eshnunna, Kish, Tutub, Assur, and Gasur - with a particular focus on the Syrian sites - during the second half of the third millennium BC and early second millennium BC in order to answer the following two research questions: 1. Did each third millennium site in Mesopotamia and Syria have its own unique syllabary? 2. What were the primary factors that influenced the differences between the syllabaries? This research uses a series of three interdependent techniques to determine and understand the use and distribution of syllabic values within the cuneiform writing system during the second half of the third millennium BC and early second millennium BC. The results suggest that during this period cuneiform syllabaries are variable, and that variation can further inform us about the regional, temporal, and dialectical contexts in which they existed. The addition of this research to the wider literature on the early adaptation of cuneiform will enhance the field's understanding of how cuneiform syllabic values began to develop and emerge across the ancient Near East, and demonstrates how scientific and computational methods of analysis can be applied to research questions in humanities subjects.

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Using the Material Engagement Theory of Cognitive Archaeologist Lambros Malafouris as its framework, the thesis offers a unique synthesis of data from neuroscience, ethnography, linguistics, and archaeology to outline how number concepts are realized, manipulated, and elaborated. The process is described as an interactivity of psychological processes like numerosity, behaviors that manipulate objects into concept-generating stimuli, and material objects with semiotic qualities distinct from those of language and agency distinct from that of brains and bodies. The counting technologies of the Ancient Near East (ANE) are then analyzed through archaeological and textual evidence spanning the late Upper Paleolithic to the Bronze Age, from the first realization of number concepts in a pristine original condition to their elaboration into one of the ancient world's greatest mathematical traditions, a foundation for mathematical thinking today. Insights from the way numbers are realized through psychological-behavioral-material interactivity are used to challenge three dominant conceptualizations of ANE numbers: first, the idea that the ANE numerical lexicon would have counted only to very low numbers; second, that Neolithic tokens were the first counting technology; and third, that numbers were 'concrete' before they became 'abstract'. Considering archaeological evidence from the Epipaleolithic Levant and drawing on linguistic and ethnographic evidence to characterize the regional prehistory, the thesis suggests that the numerical lexicon would have included relatively high numbers prior to the Neolithic; that finger-counting (linguistically attested) and tallies (archaeologically attested) would have preceded tokens; and that numbers are 'abstract' concepts whose content changes in conjunction with the incorporation and use of different material forms. The evidence provided to support these alternatives implies that numbers may have originated in the late Upper Paleolithic and arithmetic early in the Neolithic, pushing the onset of these capabilities further back than is commonly held. In addition to tallies and tokens, the thesis explores fingers and numerical notations as material artifacts, enabling an analysis of how materiality might structure numerical concepts, influence a number system's capabilities, limitations, and elaboration potential, and affect brains and behavior over cultural spans of time. Insights generated by the case study are then applied to the role of materiality in cognition more generally, including how concepts become distributed across multiple material forms; the reasons why materiality might be transparent (or invisible) in cognition; and the differences between thinking through and thinking about materiality.

Since the euphoria of a hard-won independence and the hopes attached to socialist nation-building, Algeria has experienced liberalisation, increasing inequality and civil war. This thesis sets out to explore memories of post-independence nation-building in the 1970s, interrogating the past-present relationship, by asking how Algerians remember their own recent past, and what these memories reveal about contemporary subjectivities. Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in the low-income Algiers neighbourhood of Bab el-Oued, the research focuses specifically on memories of politics, urban space and sociability. While the authoritarianism of the period was rejected for its repression of civil liberties, the overwhelming narrative on the period was nostalgic, with the past routinely couched as more positive than the present. Memories of intense social mobility and rising living standards within the context of state-led development, competent urban management and warm neighbourhood relations governed by traditional morality and solidarity were used to critique the present; particularly the retreat of the state from its responsibilities since the 1980s and the fragmented, consumerist society that has emerged from civil conflict since the 1990s. However, social memory also translated a series of principles that demonstrated the continued relevance of the egalitarian claims made by postcolonial nationalism. Popular notions of social justice mapped future aspirations for the Algerian polity. Nostalgia was not only a matter of the past, but of the lost future of material plenty and equality promised by industrial modernisation that once seemed just over the horizon, but is now divorced from present experience. Such memories translated the passing of the dream of mass utopia, even though the modernist principles of equality, justice and progress continued to underpin both daily interactions and the political aspirations of the present.

This dissertation deals with a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to the socio-economic relations between the Ancient Near East and East Africa during the Old Testament period. In my opinion this multidisciplinary approach by using inter alia Biblical Archaeology, History and Economics has the potential to offer various comprehensive opportunities for the analysis and discussion of such socio-economic relationships. For example, the relationship between the United Monarchy of Israel and Phoenicia involves the geopolitical, economic and other situations. In the last chapter attempts are made to integrate all the relevant dimensions in a wellfounded conclusion. / Biblical and Ancient Studies / M.A. (Biblical Archaeology)

No abstract available / Biblical and Ancient Studies / M. A. (Biblical Archaeology)

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / The Edict of Ammisaduqa and the Jubilee Year legislation in Leviticus 25 provide the most extensive evidence for the debt relief tradition throughout the ancient Near East. A comparative analysis of these texts points to an indirect relationship between them based upon a common theme, debt-slavery of the head of the household, and terminology, andurārum and drr. However, the substantial differences in content between the two texts suggest that there is no direct relationship between them. In light of this analysis it is possible that the tradition of debt relief entered ancient Israel in some form at an early date and then was later re-emphasized during the late monarchic period under Neo-Assyrian influence. This possibility rests upon the debt relief tradition existing in Syro-Palestine under influence from Mari and the Hittites, as well as later under the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Internal evidence in Leviticus 25 also potentially points to an early rural situation for the origination of the Jubilee tradition.

This thesis traces the development of the concept of freedom through three generations of the Modern Arab Renaissance (Nahda). The first chapter challenges the claim that the concept of freedom, in the sense of a political right, was absent from Arab thought prior to the French occupation of Egypt (1798-1801). ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti’s (1754-1825/6) chronicle of the occupation reveals that he possessed the concept of freedom despite the lack of an Arabic word to identify it. Therefore, when Rifa’a Rafi’ al-Tahtawi (1801-73) translated the French term liberté into Arabic, through a semantic expansion of the word hurriyah, he was naming rather than introducing the concept. The second chapter turns to Syria and examines how Butrus al-Bustani’s (1819-83) advocacy of the freedom of conscience (hurriyat al-damir) as an individual right reflects the influence of his American missionary mentors. However, while the missionaries used this concept to defend their narrow sectarian interests, Bustani believed that the freedom of all citizens must be protected equally by a secular government. The third chapter follows two Syrian friends, Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865-1935) and Farah Antun (1874-1922), who migrated to Egypt where their differing visions of reform brought them into conflict on the pages of their respective literary journals. While Antun argued that secularism provides the best guarantee of freedom, Rida contended that true freedom is only found in Islam. Despite this divide, they shared the same fundamental understanding of the value and meaning of freedom. This chapter shows that the concept of freedom is compatible with differing political ideologies while maintaining its core semantic field. Although there were some changes in how Arab intellectuals conceived of freedom during the nineteenth century, this study demonstrates that there was considerable continuity. / text

This thesis contends that from the inception of Zionist ideology until the formation of Israel, the Zionist leadership, through the skillful use of narratives and the process of articulating a specific position and constraining opposing narratives, has been highly effective in creating and molding the historic perspectives and collective memories which have shaped, and continue to shape, Jewish identity and experience in Palestine. This study argues that the Israeli Declaration of Independence of May 1948 formalized core Zionist narratives and national myths within Israeli national self-identity, while simultaneously promoting their acceptance among world Jewry and the international community. This paper also maintains that these key narratives were used to legitimize the attitudes and actions of the early Zionists, and later Israelis, towards the indigenous (and surrounding) Arab populations. The impact of these narratives and national myths on the Palestinian Arabs, the effects of which continue to reverberate, is particularly addressed.