<p> The Failure of Mehdi Bazargan How the Revolutionary Council, the Clerical Oligarchy, and United States Foreign Policy Undermined the Liberal Democracy of Iran in 1979 The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate that the downfall of Mehdi Bazargan and the Provisional Government is due less to the deliberate manipulations of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, as depicted in popular narratives, than to both the conflicts between rival power centers in the government, foreign influence, and Bazargan&rsquo;s administrative mismanagement, poor leadership skills, and failure to successfully project his own vision. </p><p> The conclusions of this thesis were reached based on leading secondary sources from both Western and Iranian writers, as well as the extensive use of contemporary news sources, revealed internal Iranian government communiques, and archived interviews with principle actors. </p><p> The thesis identifies the rival power centers at conflict in Iran during the Provisional Government Era from February &mdash; November 1979 as Bazargan&rsquo;s Provisional Government, the Revolutionary Council, Ayatollah Khomeini&rsquo;s evolving concentration of power, and U.S. foreign policy. Chapter one describes the oppositional background of Bazargan, illuminates his own vision for Islamic government, and introduces his deliberate methodology for instituting revolution. </p><p> Chapter two explains the rival power centers at play during the Provisional Government Era. The Provisional Government is depicted as Bazargan&rsquo;s main source of support, the legal administrators of the transitional government, and as such, it represents his vision. The Revolutionary Council, dominated by clerics loyal to Khomeini, referred to as the clerical oligarchy, represent diverging agendas within the clerical leadership who operated in Khomeini&rsquo;s name but often without his explicit consent. The clerics within the Revolutionary Council exerted their greatest usurpation of Bazargan&rsquo;s legal authority through their control over the extralegal revolutionary committees and the judiciary, circumventing his ability to provide state-controlled security and enact state-sanctioned justice. Khomeini lacked consolidated control in the early months of the Provisional Government Era, instead relying on the infighting between the government and the Revolutionary Council, and allowing for the popular momentum of the revolution to guide his political moves, but ultimately exercised decisive action to consolidate all political authority. Finally, the thesis argues that U.S. foreign policy had been to support the Provisional Government through intelligence-sharing, hoping that by supporting the liberal democratic stream of power they could offset the radical religious stream and undermine Khomeini&rsquo;s personal influence. </p><p> Chapter three reveals how Bazargan chose to react to the challenges each rival power center presented. Despite the momentum of the popular revolution, Bazargan insisted in moderating the tone and progress of change, ignoring how ineffective his methods were in effecting positive change.</p>

In the tenth century, a confluence of two unrelated events shaped the Twelver Shia community in Baghdad: the Occultation of the Twelfth Imam in 939/329 and the takeover of Baghdad in 945 by the Buyid princes, who were largely tolerant towards their Shia subjects. Twelver intellectual life flourished during this era, led by the exegetes who are the subject of this dissertation. Chief among them were al-Shaykh al-Tusi and al-Sharif al-Murtada, who - along with many of their contemporaries - comprised a "Baghdad school" of Twelver intellectuals. This dissertation analyzes the Qur'anic commentaries (tafsir) written by this core group of medieval Twelver exegetes, most of whom lived and wrote in Baghdad, although others - such as al-Ayyashi - remained on the margins.

Persia's importance in the latter part of the nineteenth century stemmed from her position between the rapidly expanding Russian empire on one side and Great Britain's Indian empire on the other. Three departments in London the Foreign Office, the India Office, and the War Office were concerned with the affairs of that country. This study is, in part, an analysis of their interests. British statesmen approached the Persian problem from two points of view. Some favoured building the country into a strong and truly independent buffer state. Then Persia, like Afghanistan, would constitute a substantial outwork in Indian defence and a barrier to the Russian movement south. Others, however, believed that the obstacles in the way of reform and regeneration were too great to be surmounted. Their alternative was agreement with Russia and the eventual division of the country into spheres of influence. In the years of this study, from 1885 to 1892, Lord Salisbury was the dominating personality in foreign affairs. As a result of his previous service as Secretary of State for India he was keenly aware of the problems of Central Asia. Persia figured more prominently in his plans than in those of many of his colleagues. He upheld the principle of the buffer state, and he sent Sir Henry Drummond Wolff to Tehran for the purpose of giving life to that policy. Wolff's years in Persia, 1888 to 1891, were successful ones. He sponsored measures, such as the opening of the Karun river to navigation and the establishment of the Imperial Bank, which would promote the welfare of Persia as well as strengthen the position of England there. Simultaneously, however, he carried on the negotiations for an understanding with Russia.

<p> Palestine exists in our minds, not in nature. If Palestine doesn&rsquo;t exist, why do we identify with it? We identify with Palestine, first, because it has a name. In fact, we <i>only</i> identify with places we&rsquo;ve named. Unnamed places, such as 22&deg;29'05&rdquo;N 22.48 to 53&deg;46'19&rdquo;E 53.77, have no identities based on them. But we don&rsquo;t identify with every place we&rsquo;ve named. We need to hear stories about a place if we are going to identify with it, stories about famines and wars, conquests and tribes, history, geography, economy, archeology and millions more topics. The more engaging the stories, the more likely we are to identify with places like Palestine. We also make maps of places like Palestine. The more maps we make, the more likely we are to identify with places like Palestine as well. Finally, we distinguish Palestine from other places. We exaggerate its glory and beauty and claim we have a special relationship to it. This dissertation explains when, how and why it all happened.</p><p>

Archaeological research into the Late Islamic period in the Middle East is a fertile field which has rarely been plowed, especially for the period of the Ottoman Empire. A great potential exists for using archaeological materials to address questions of social and historical significance for the integration of the region into the modern world system. In this dissertation, I examine archaeological assemblages from 1500 to 1900, in order to contribute an understanding of consumption and material culture for Middle Eastern archaeology and to shed light on aspects of social change for Palestine during the rule of the Ottoman Empire (1516-1917). I review the state of knowledge on several categories of material culture (settlement pattern, architecture, tombstones, foodways, and ceramics), then focus on clay tobacco pipes as an example of material two levels: (1) their presence in the archaeological record provides chronological tools for furthering archaeological excavations and (2) their synchronic and diachronic patterns are an entry point to discussing societal tensions and global processes of change in the region. The chronological discussions of tobacco pipes provides a tool for differentiating material events--a necessary step for uncovering differences from the archaeological record. The historical background on tobacco as a commodity allows interpretations of the material culture within its social dimensions. Both in terms of diversity of styles over time and their function, the clay tobacco pipes from multiple archaeological sites provide insights into questions of history and social diversity for Palestine. These objects are the case study in this work; I address theoretical issues relating to the study of material culture, methodology for linking objects to social action, techniques for differentiating the corpus of archaeological data, and interpretations of archaeological data within an historical anthropological context. The interpretations lead to a framework for analyzing cultural landscape across the area which is today Israel. This study is conceptualized as the first steps towards an archaeology of Palestine during the Ottoman centuries and an avenue towards an archaeology of capitalism in the Middle East, a way to break down the divide between past and present in the region.

<p> This dissertation examines the career of the Arab Academy of Science in Damascus roughly over its first formative decade, from 1919 to 1930. It situates the Academy&rsquo;s work in relation to concerns about language modernization characteristic of the <i>Nahda,</i> or Modern Arab Renaissance, and in the context of great changes in the political and social order of the Middle East. It highlights the ways the pioneering Levantine man of letters Jurji Zaydan sought to reconcile indigenous traditions of linguistic thought with modern concepts of evolutionary change and historicism in the development of a new science of language and the cultivation of a new kind of scholarly elite, from the late nineteenth century to the eve of the First World War. This dissertation also analyzes Arab Academy founding member &lsquo;Abd al-Qadir al-Maghribi&rsquo;s wide-ranging writings in matters of religion, politics, ethics, and language. Al-Maghribi wrote on behalf of the Islamic and Arab <i> umam</i> or communities, as well as for a constitutional Ottoman caliphate around the time of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. The educability of the public was central to his vision as ordinary believers and Arabic-speakers became the population of the new national state of Syria following the Ottomans&rsquo; defeat in 1918. This project demonstrates how the three succeeding political orders over the territory that would become modern Syria influenced the thought of the founding members of the Academy in Damascus and contributed to the life of their institution: the late Ottoman state, the Amir Faysal&rsquo;s short-lived Arabist kingdom in the aftermath of the First World War, and the imposition of the French Mandate for Syria from 1920. It argues that the late Ottoman Empire and its revolutionary and constitutional moment imparted qualities of ecumenicalism and worldliness, and that the Academy shared a spirit of experimentation and standardization with the Faysali and Mandatory regimes. Finally, this project turns to the relations of Arab Academy founding members, notably of their president Muhammad Kurd &lsquo;Ali, with the Western orientalist scholars elected as corresponding members of their company. It chronicles how Arab and European scholars of Islam and Arabic collaborated in producing a body of knowledge and a discourse of friendship in their shared area of study, characterized by both sympathetic and objective norms. It argues that the Arab Academicians and their Western colleagues collectively sketched the contours of a globalized discussion of <i>Nahda,</i> history, and modernity in the quasi-colonial context of French Mandate Syria. </p>

<p> The Roman-Sasanian War of the seventh century CE was the last conflict of late antiquity. <i>&Scaron;ahan&scaron;ah</i> Xusr&omacr; II nearly conquered the Roman Empire. James Howard-Johnston has studied the war extensively. Walter Kaegi has produced a biography of Xusr&omacr; II's opponent, Heraclius, while Geoffrey Greatrex and Touraj Daryaee have written articles focusing on Xusr&omacr; II. Scholars, however, have not attempted a major study of him. This dissertation seeks not only to understand how different authors depicted Xusr&omacr; II but to understand the man's personality. </p><p> Roman authors who witnessed the war sought to highlight only the negative aspects of Xusr&omacr; II. He was, according to the Romans, an enemy of God. Fear of Xusr&omacr; II was the basis for these depictions. Pseudo-Seb&emacr;os, an Armenian historian, depicted Xusr&omacr; II as an arrogant, blasphemous ruler. Pseudo-Seb&emacr;os, however, did not write anything positive about the Romans, either, because both the Romans and Sasanians wanted to control Armenia. </p><p> Christians living under Xusr&omacr; II's rulership also seemed to despise him. They portray Xusr&omacr; II as wicked because, in an attempt to punish them, he did not let allow them to elect a ruler. A careful reading of these sources, however, suggests these authors were aware of how Xusr&omacr; II took care of Christians in his realm. Finally, Arab and Persian sources differ in their portrayals of Xusr&omacr; II because both groups, although both Muslim, were competing for legitimacy in the post-Islamic conquest of Iran, due to ethnic tensions. Arab authors emphasized Xusr&omacr; II's faults. Persian authors, on the other hand, presented his good qualities. </p><p> Ultimately, all of these different depictions of Xusr&omacr; II demonstrate that he possessed a fierce will and embraced a vision of how to rule. Xusr&omacr; II wanted to conquer the Romans and extend his domain and be remembered forever. Xusr&omacr; II's drive might have made him seem arrogant to the authors studied in this dissertation, and they depicted him accordingly. We should not, however, lose sight of the man he truly was: a man who dared to dream.</p>

This dissertation examines the memory of Ras Beirut and the various claims to its exceptionalism. I frame its history as a landscape of memory born of the convergence of narratives of exceptionalism. On the one hand, Ras Beirut's landscape inspired Anglo-American missionary future providence such that they chose it as the site of their college on a hill, the Syrian Protestant College (SPC, later renamed the American University of Beirut [AUB]). On the other hand, the memory of Ras Beirut's "golden age" before the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975 inspired longings for a vanished past to Ras Beirut's oldest inhabitants. Shaped by the push of prospect and the pull of recollection, Ras Beirut emerges as a place formed out of the contest of these overlapping articulations of exceptionalism. Moreover, Ras Beirut's narratives have a wider significance and application in their transnational and interconfessional relevance. The missionary New England microcosm of the SPC represented the transnational transposition of memory onto Ras Beirut in an architectural narrative of exceptionalism. The monumental size and scale of their buildings oriented Ras Beirut and realized a "city upon a hill." Drawing from letters written to and from the US, I examine their ambiguous relationship to Ras Beirut that made them both part of the place and apart from the people. At the same time, the local Muslim-Christian community of Ras Beirut argued that Ras Beirut's distinct character rested on their own history of harmonious coexistence. In the early twentieth century, Arab Protestant converts settled in Ras Beirut and became known as the Protestants of Ras Beirut in their affixed identity and collective rootedness to place. This dissertation draws upon archival research and tangible sources in the changing architectural and urban environment. It also relies on oral history and memory to capture the multi-disciplinary making of place that best relates the textured history of Ras Beirut while giving meaning to everyday lived lives. In the process, the connections between the Middle East and the US unfold in transnational terms while the idea of Ras Beirut as a paradigm of coexistence unfolds interconfessional terms.

No description available.

<p> Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Pentecostalism has started to reshape global Christianity. Many scholars argue that Pentecostalism, including its different waves of renewal, is the world&rsquo;s fastest-growing movement. Numerous studies were dedicated during the previous decades to examining the spread and characteristics of Pentecostalism in different countries around the world. Nevertheless, little attention has been given to Pentecostalism in Egypt. </p><p> This dissertation examines Egyptian Pentecostalism. It presents a historical perspective on Pentecostalism in Egypt and offers a theological analysis of various movements and waves of Egyptian Pentecostalism. Taking into consideration plurality in the Egyptian society, this study situates different permutations of Egyptian Pentecostalism within a wider sociocultural and religious context. Through the examination of Egyptian Pentecostalism, this dissertation fills a notable gap in Pentecostal scholarship and contributes to the historical and theological understanding of global Pentecostalism. </p><p>