The first part of this thesis, divided into two chapters, deals with the early background of European Romanticism; the reasons behind its appearance and problems of definition. There follows a discussion on the question of the originality of Arabic Romanticism, with ,a brief review of the roots and main literary groups of this movement in Arabic poetry. Part two examines the influence of English poetry and thought on three Arab Romantic poets: Nāzik Sādiq al-Malā'ika, Abū al-Qāsim al-Shābbī and Abd aI-Rahmān Shukrī. This is discussed parallel with the channels of this influence. The main focus of this research is however, to show the ways in which al-Malā'ika, al-Shābbī and Shukrī perceived and reflected nature and death in their poetry. Their attitudes towards certain phenomena in nature such as the countryside, night, the sea, childhood and moral and social lessons of nature are compared with certain attitudes of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and Shelley. Themes such as life and death, fear of death, fatalism, immortality and death as a welcome experience are also the concern of this thesis, with a comparison of these themes in the poetry of the Arab and English Romantic poets. However, owing to the popularity of Keats and Shelley with the three Arab Romantic poets, this thesis concentrates on their poetry. This research has selected only certain phenomena and themes from nature--and death because of the dominance of these subjects in the poetry of al-Malā'ika, al-Shābbī and Shukrī. The translations of Arabic poetry in this thesis are intended to convey the general sense of the source texts, rather than to give a precise rendering of these texts into English.

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This thesis explores new ideas for the foundations for state violence in Iraq by looking specifically at the outbreaks of spectacular violence during the Qasim Era (1958-1963). In order to frame the discussion, this study looks first at how the British established a model for state violence during the Monarchy period (1921-1958), which eventually both validated and radicalized the opposition parties. The second chapter examines the violence of the everyday in Iraq, and how the spectacular violence of the Qasim Era finds historical context within everyday violence and ritual. In the final chapter, this thesis discusses how the radicalized violence of the opposition parties melded with the violence of the everyday to create spectacular acts of ritualized violence. After the coup d’état of 8 February 1963, the Ba’ath Party institutionalized this radical new brand of violence, creating a foundation for the state violence to come under Saddam Hussein. This violence was experienced only by the Iraqi Communists at first, but was later experienced by the whole nation. / text

This thesis examines the reinvention of jihād ideology in twelfth‑century al‑Shām. In modern scholarship there is a tendency to speak of a revival of jihād in the twelfth century, but discussion of this revival has been dominated by study of the practice of jihād rather than of the ideology of jihād. This thesis addresses this imbalance by studying two twelfth‑century Damascene works: the Kitāb al‑jihād (Book of Jihād) of ʿAlī b. Ṭāhir al‑Sulamī (d. 500/1106), and the al‑Arbaʿūn ḥadīthan fī al‑ḥathth ʿala al‑jihād (Forty Hadiths for Inciting Jihād) of Abū al‑Qāsim Ibn ʿAsākir (d. 571/1176). Through discussion of these texts, this thesis sheds light on twelfth‑century perceptions of jihād by asking what their authors meant when they referred to jihād, and how their perceptions of jihād related to the broader Islamic discourse on jihād. A holistic approach is taken to these works; they are discussed not only in the context of the 'master narrative' of jihād, wherein juristic sources have been privileged over other non‑legal genres and corpora, but also in the context of the Sufi discourse of jihād al‑nafs, and the earliest traditions on jihād which thrived from the eighth century onwards on the Muslim‑Byzantine frontier. This thesis argues that both al‑Sulamī and Ibn ʿAsākir integrated elements from these different traditions of jihād in order to create models of jihād suited to their own political contexts, and that it is only in the context of a more nuanced appreciation of jihād ideology that their attempts can be properly understood. At the same time, this thesis argues against the model of the 'counter‑crusade', which holds that the revival of jihād began in earnest only in the middle of the twelfth century, by stressing that there was no delay between the arrival of the Franks and attempts to modify jihād ideology.