This thesis, based on 14 months of fieldwork, examines middle-class Lahore, a milieu that is not only anxious about the growing religious violence in the country but also feels disappointed by the state and its false promises of progress. The ethnography explores how such tensions shape ideas on personal and public piety which, in turn, influence conceptions of modernity and a ‘successful life’. I examine the growing presence of a form of religiosity that emphasises the personal study of the Quran and other Islamic texts. The rising popularity of Quran schools and study circles, talks by television-based Islamic scholars, and discussions in homes are indicative of a sensibility which encourages individuals to discover the ‘real’ and ‘rational’ Islam by understanding the Quran for themselves. Although this religiosity centres around the individual and the cultivation of personal ethics, it also has a significant public aspect. Many believe that acquired Islamic ethics will not only help attain success in this life and the hereafter but also solve societal problems such as corruption, nepotism and economic disorder. Although such ideas have developed alongside a belief that the state is incompetent, they nevertheless reproduce many state-produced discourses on religion, morality and modernity. At a broader level, my thesis is concerned with how middle-class Pakistan perceives itself and its position in the world. I argue that prevailing ideas on Islam have been shaped by increased communication with the South Asian diaspora abroad and have developed in response to two struggles. First, the emerging middle-class uses this religiosity to contest the moral and economic domination of the established old-money elite. Second, anxieties about the gaze of an abstracted outsider – usually the West on the Muslim world – shape middle-class representations of self.

This thesis aims to examine both continuity and change in Egyptian foreign policy between 1970 and 1981. The overarching question of this work is: Why and how did President Sadat affect changes in foreign policy? More specifically, the thesis examines the evolution of Egyptian foreign policy in three concentric circles: the Superpowers, the Arab world, and Israel. The broader aim of the thesis is to provide a detailed study of Egyptian foreign policy in this period, which witnessed a multitude of watershed events. The topic is important because Egypt is a leading state in the Arab world, a core actor in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and a strategic ally of the superpowers during the Cold War. The thesis offers a detailed chronological account of Egyptian foreign policy during the 1970s. It advances a revisionist interpretation of the early Sadat years, arguing that there was much greater continuity with the foreign policy of Gamal Abdel-Nasser than is commonly believed. The account ends in 1981, with the assassination of Anwar Sadat and the succession of Hosni Mubarak. It is argued that Sadat not only managed to reverse Nasser’s radical path in foreign policy, but that he also succeeded in institutionalising his most significant policy changes: peace with Israel and the removal of Egypt from the Arab-Israeli conflict. The methodology of the thesis is principally empirical and qualitative in nature. The thesis is based on extensive archival research, recently declassified official documents, memoirs of policymakers in English and Arabic, and oral histories in the form of interviews and transcripts of discussions with former Egyptian policymakers.

The purpose of this study was to trace the historical development of the American University of Beirut and its educational contributions in Lebanon and the Middle East from 1920 to 1967. Through their activities in the Levant in the early nineteenth century, the American missionaries virtually laid the foundations of the Syrian Protestant College, later known as the American University of Beirut. Though religion was the cornerstone in the founding of the University, under the pressure of the local environment, its secular character was to be substituted for the religious one. The establishment of the University in 1866 marked the beginning of the system of higher education in the Arab world. As the first established institution of higher learning, the University played a significant role in raising the level of literacy throughout the region. Despite the difficult times that the University faced throughout its history, it survived and continued its dedicated mission to serve the people of Lebanon and the entire area. For the University, the first 50 years under Ottoman rule was a period of surviving and maintaining its existence. With the freedom it came to enjoy during the French Mandate and later during independence, the University moved into a period of advancing and expanding. By the 1960s the University had become a prestigious institution and captured the support of most people and governments in the area. The study's six chapters describe the historical setting of Lebanon and the origins of its religious groups, the historical background of the American University of Beirut, the educational activities of the University during the French Mandate, and its educational activities under independent Lebanon. The thesis showed that the University had a significant role in the education of the Lebanese and the peoples of the area, and that it has significantly contributed to the development of Lebanon and the Middle East.

The dissertation solves the empirical puzzle why similar regimes such as Morocco and Jordan vary in their engagement in family law reform between 1999 and 2013. Differences with respect to family law reform in the two monarchies are threefold: the way the reform processes were carried out, the content of the new family codes that were issued in Morocco in 2004 and in Jordan in 2010, and the way the laws were applied. Using Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice as a theoretical framework the dissertation establishes the links between the designs of the legal systems, how reform processes are carried out, the family laws countries end up with, and the way the laws are applied. French and British colonialism had shaped the legal systems of Morocco and Jordan to different degrees, producing a legal system that was unified after independence in Morocco whereas the Jordanian one continued to be divided into regular and religious courts. As a result, Moroccan family courts are less autonomous and more subjected to political decisions than Jordanian sharia courts. The institutional design of both judicial systems affected how family law reform was carried out because those systems contain biases towards different actors who are seen as competent of reforming family law and thus came to influence the reform process. The different access criteria to the juridical fields promote different types of cultural capital, so that actors participating in the process have different preferences regarding the development of the content of family law. In Jordan, the absence of the Jordanian king allowed the sharia court administration to exploit the structural bias in its favour and come to dominate both the process and content of family law reform. For this reason the 2010 Jordanian family law reflects to a lesser extent the demands of women's groups. The absence of the Jordanian king from the reform process demonstrates that change in authoritarian states is not necessarily imposed from above nor is it predetermined from the beginning. The Jordanian reform process saw little engagement from the top-level of the regime and could be classified as a mid-level process. It was led by a government body, the sharia court administration, which however enjoyed relative autonomy from the upper echelon of the regime. By contrast, the Moroccan family law reform was a textbook example of authoritarian politics, the reform being imposed from above and the king playing a leading role during the process. In contrast to the process and content of reform, the application of the reformed law in Morocco challenges the notion of the omnipotent authoritarian regime. While the monarch could impose legislative change, the state is at best partially able to enforce this very law or to impose a consensus over its interpretation. The designs of the legal systems again had an impact here. International law occupies different places in the Moroccan and Jordanian constitutions: Jordanian sharia courts enjoy greater autonomy, reject international law, and thus were able to resist its intrusion.

Cette thèse est une analyse comparée des approches théoriques et des méthodes de recensement élaborées par Alois Musil. Elle se fonde sur des sources historiographiques et archéologiques, ainsi qu’une analyse de la personnalité d’Alois Musil en tant qu’archéologue, dans le contexte des travaux scientifiques conduits au Proche-Orient. Cette thèse compare les résultats de ses travaux pionniers dans les domaines de l’archéologie et de l’anthropologie, avec les méthodes de recherche élaborées par plusieurs autres chercheurs, ainsi qu’avec leurs systèmes respectifs permettant la documentation des sites et leurs apports à la connaissance contemporaine. Bien que Musil ne se considérait pas lui-même comme archéologue, ses découvertes extraordinaires, de même que ses compétences en matière de documentation et d’interprétation ont permis ses écrits de traverser le temps et d’être toujours abondamment cités aujourd’hui. Toutefois, ce travail aborde également les limites de l’exploration de sites supposés Romains par Musil, dans la mesure o un certain nombre de lieux, classifiés comme Romains voire ‘indubitablement Romains’, n’étaient en réalité qu’une fraction du réseau résidentiel omeyyade à Bilād al-Shām. Par ailleurs, les découvertes archéologiques de Musil, en particulier celle de QuṣayrʿAmra, furent étroitement liées aux Bédouins. A ce titre, cette thèse aborde également le versant anthropologique de son œuvre, et sa contribution au développement de la recherche ethnographique sur le Proche-Orient. Enfin, ce travail décrit le développement des recherches sur les forteresses Omeyyades, ainsi que l’évolution des hypothèses et des méthodes développées par Musil. Elle comporte une base de données incluant les sites archéologiques visités et documentés par celui-ci. Elle repose aussi sur la comparaison des classifications et des recueils de données élaborés par Musil, avec les recherches de ses contemporains et, lorsque cela est possible, avec les travaux les plus récents. / This thesis is a comparative analysis of Alois Musil’s theoretical approaches and recording methods, based on historical and archaeological sources and the evaluation of the personality of Alois Musil as an archaeologist in context of scholarly work conducted in the Near East. It compares the results of his pioneering work in the field of archaeology and anthropology with the methods of research of several scholars, within the range of their work, with their system of site documentation and the contributions of their results to contemporary knowledge and revised prospections and excavations. Musil did not consider himself an archaeologist, nevertheless because of his extraordinary discoveries, documentary and interpretative abilities he is quoted to this day. The work is dealing with Musil’s exploration of the Roman limes as well, because some localities classified by Musil and his contemporaries as Roman or even, undoubtedly Roman were in reality a part of the network of Umayyad residential structures in Bilad al-Sham. Musil’s archaeological discoveries, including his discovery of Qusayr Amra, were bound with Bedouins, so this work also deals with Musil as an anthropologist and the developmet of ethnographic research in the Near East. The work describes the development of research of Umayyad castles, Musil’s hypothesis and the evolution of research, and it contains a database of archaeological sites visited and documented by Musil, the comparison of classification and documentation with the researches of his contemporaries and, where possible, with modern researches.

The education system in Oman underwent tremendous development during the past four decades, however, the national economy dependency on oil threatens the sustainability of its education funding. This study aims to explore the relationship between education funding and oil price fluctuations in Qatar, U.A.E., and Oman from 1975 to 2015. Moreover, it aims to suggest new economic alternatives to diversify the education funding sources in Oman. This quantitative study, under the framework of Human Capital Theory, utilized descriptive and associational approaches to study the association between oil prices and education expenditures in the three countries. Multiple regression analyses showed that oil prices significantly predicted the government expenditure on education in Oman and Qatar with (β = -0.40, p = 0.013) and (β = 2.47, p = 0.02) respectively, while it was not significant in predicting the government expenditure on education (β = 0.36, p = 0.40) in the U.A.E. This study highlighted how Qatar and U.A.E were successful in moving away from oil dependency. The researcher recommended that the Omani government must encourage the inflow of direct foreign investment into its education field, like establishment of new education hubs, educational cities, and opening new branches for some of the leading educational institutions from around the world. The researcher plans to conduct future qualitative research to enrich knowledge in this area.

Considéré comme un tournant dans l'histoire de la Syrie moderne, les raisons qui ont conduit Housni al-Zaim, Commandant des Forces Armées Syriennes en 1949, à effectuer son coup contre le président Kouatli, ce qui l’a conduit à prendre les décisions qui ont été les siennes sur le plan syrien mais surtout au niveau de la géopolitique moyen-orientale, restent ouvertes aux interprétations. L'objectif de cette thèse de doctorat est de fournir une nouvelle interprétation historique de l'interaction entre le principal protagoniste du premier coup d’Etat en Syrie, Housni al-Zaim, d'une part, et les acteurs moyen-orientaux et internationaux d'autre part, à travers l'étude de sources précédemment inexploitées et le réexamen de certaines déjà étudiées. Méthodologiquement, nous employons l'approche de Collingwood, « l’histoire étant le vécu, par l’historien, des pensées passées de son sujet d’étude », en nous penchant ainsi sur la reconstruction progressive des expériences de tous ceux qui furent impliqués dans les évènements du premier coup d’Etat de 1949, pour pouvoir nous prononcer sur la nature de la relation et de l’interaction, tout au long du régime d’al-Zaim avec les puissances étrangères, et jusqu’à quel point cette relation et interaction a-t-elle influencé le déroulement des événements. Notre étude s'appuie sur un large éventail de sources qui compose ainsi notre inventaire, et qui comprendra le plus grand nombre de mémoires et témoignages de personnalités et d'acteurs-clés rédigés en langue arabe, complétés par des rapports des services de renseignements libanais et américains, ainsi que par des documents d’archives diplomatiques françaises, britanniques et américaines. / Although considered to be a turning point in the history of modern Syria, the reasons that led Housni al-Zaim, the commander of the Syrian Armed Forces in 1949, to effectuate his coup against President Kouatli, as well as the reasons that led him to take the decisions he did in the course of his reign, decisions that both impacted Syria and Middle Eastern geopolitics, remained open to speculation. The objective of this doctoral dissertation is to provide a new historical interpretation of the interaction between Syria’s first coup d’Etat’s main protagonist – Husni al-Zaim, on one hand, and the regional and international actors on the other, an interaction that has long been a matter of discussion and speculation, through the study of previously untapped sources and the re-examination of some that have already been studied. Methodologically, we are employing Collingwood’s approach of history as the historian’s re-living of his subject’s past experience, by using a select number of sources to understand al-Zaim’s approach towards regional and international relations, in an attempt to first reconstruct the personal experiences of al-Zaim, and as much as possible, all of those of the protagonists of the events that his rule witnessed, so as to finally give our verdict on the extent to which this interaction with foreign actors influenced the turn of the events that his rule witnessed. Our study draws on a wide range of sources making up our inventory, which includes the largest number of memoirs and testimonies of key figures and actors written in Arabic, complemented with Lebanese and American intelligence reports, as well as with French, British and American diplomatic documents.

The need to incorporate interprofessional education (IPE) as part of any healthcare profession curricula is growing in an approach to prepare a collaborative practice-ready workforce. Pharmacy students should be equipped with the necessary competencies and skills needed for them to practise interprofessionally, commensurate with the expanding and evolving role of the pharmacist. Thus, the Qatar University College of Pharmacy has decided to incorporate IPE initiatives formally into the pharmacy curriculum in collaboration with other healthcare institutions in Qatar to meet the accreditation standards set by the Canadian Council for Accreditation of Pharmacy Programs (CCAPP) and fulfil the recommendations set in the World Health Organization (WHO) framework. To implement effective IPE strategies, it is important to consider the prior attitudes and expectations of various stakeholders in the process -- particularly students, faculty, and practising pharmacists. The overall aim of this PhD research is to explore the pharmacy perspectives of IPE and collaborative practice from a Middle Eastern context. The research started with a comprehensive systematic review of the literature focusing on the perspectives of pharmacy students, pharmacy faculty, and practising pharmacists on IPE and collaborative practice. Five themes have been identified from the systematic review: inconsistency in reporting IPE research, professional image of the pharmacist, lack of longitudinal follow-up, lack of IPE research on faculty, and lack of mixed method studies. This was followed by three sequential explanatory mixed method designs, to explore the perception of faculty, students, and practising pharmacists, individually. This was undertaken to gain an in depth understanding of the strengths and challenges of each group that can affect the implementation and perspectives toward IPE and collaborative practice. Two data collection methods were used: quantitative surveys and qualitative focus groups. Quantitative data were imported into SPSS® version 22 and analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Qualitative data from the focus groups were analysed using thematic analysis. For the quantitative surveys, the overall response rate was 117 out of 334 (35%) for pharmacy faculty in the Middle East, 102/132 (77%) for pharmacy students in Qatar and 178/285 (63%) for practising pharmacists in Qatar. This was followed by seven focus groups with a total of 51 participants. Findings, from both the survey and focus groups, support that students, faculty and practising pharmacists are ready to engage in IPE and collaborative practice. The findings further identified positive attitudes that reinforce the need to incorporate IPE into healthcare curricula. They perceive anticipated benefits to them as professionals and to the patients. However, a large number of challenges have been highlighted, including the existence of a hierarchical culture, pharmacists’ role and image, a weak sense of professional identity among pharmacists, their marginalised contribution, resistance from the healthcare teams to the evolving role of the pharmacists, and the heterogeneous background of healthcare professionals. Promisingly, the education and healthcare system in Qatar is undergoing significant changes with some positive influences noted within education and practice settings. This is the first study investigating pharmacy perspectives of IPE in Qatar, the Middle East, and worldwide. The findings from this research generated a body of knowledge regarding the pharmacy perspectives of IPE and provided a better understanding of what shapes this perspective from a Middle Eastern context. The research presents a new model based on collective input, efforts, and readiness in five key stages: academic institution, faculty, student, practice, and environment. The model moves beyond focusing on the individual stages separately and expands to consider the complexity of linking and aligning the stages together. Coordinated efforts, between the stages, focused on a more comprehensive and holistic implementation, is essential for successful implementation of IPE and collaborative practice.

The purpose of this study was to examine the parents' expectations before they left their child in preschool and their experiences of the earliest time in preschool, for parents with the origin in Middle East. The issues were; what expectations do parents, with origin from the Middle East, have of preschool and how do parents, with other language than Swedish, experience leaving their children in preschool. The survey consisted of qualitative semi-structured interviews. Previous research presented in the present study has mostly described preschool teacher´s experiences and perceptions. The theoretical perspectives on which the study is based are the connection theory and the sociocultural perspective. The four themes presented in the result are security, collaboration, language and expectations of learning. The parents emphasize that they want the children to learn a lot already in the preschool, partly social interaction but also a knowledge-based learning. The study shows some shortcomings in communication and collaboration between educators and caregivers. An important part of this is that the caretakers in the survey, even though they are interested and engaged in their children's everyday life in the preschool, do not seem to have insight into the preschool's governing documents such as the curriculum and the preschool's assignments. The conclusion of the study is that language and language difficulties are an important aspect when it comes to the collaboration between educators and parents. Despite this, the parents in the study says that it feels good to leave their children in preschool. / Studiens syfte var att undersöka vårdnadshavares förväntningar inför den första tiden i förskolan och deras upplevelser av densamma, då vårdnadshavarna har ursprung från Mellanöstern. Frågeställningarna var; vad har vårdnadshavare med ursprung från Mellanöstern för förväntningar på förskolan och hur upplever vårdnadshavare, med annat förstaspråk än svenska, att lämna sina barn i förskolan. Undersökningen bestod av kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer. Tidigare forskning som presenteras i föreliggande studie har till stor del beskrivit förskollärares erfarenheter och uppfattningar. Teoretiska perspektiv som undersökningen baseras på är anknytningsteorin och det sociokulturella perspektivet. De fyra teman som presenteras i resultatet är trygghet, samarbete, språk och förväntningar om lärande. Vårdnadshavarna poängterar att de önskar att barnen ska lära sig mycket redan i förskolan, dels socialt samspel men även ett kunskapsbaserat lärande. Undersökningen visar på en del brister i kommunikationen och samarbetet mellan pedagoger och vårdnadshavare. En väsentlig del i detta är att vårdnadshavarna i undersökningen trots att de är intresserade och engagerade i sina barns vardag i förskolan inte verkar ha insikt i förskolans styrdokument läroplanen och förskolans uppdrag. Slutsatsen i undersökningen är att språk och språksvårigheter är en viktig aspekt när det gäller samarbetet mellan pedagoger och vårdnadshavare. Trots detta säger vårdnadshavarna i undersökningen att det känns bra att lämna sina barn i förskolan.

This thesis offers a fresh study of the sources on the history of the city of Jerusalem in the period between the reigns of the Roman emperors Theodosius the Great and Justinian I. In the Holy Land, this period roughly coincides with the arrival of St Jerome in 385 and the completion of Jerusalem's last major church building before the Persian and Muslim conquests, the Nea church, dedicated in 543. One of the main aims of this thesis is to investigate the role of imperial patronage in the city and contrast it with the growing influence of local actors, i.e. bishops, monks, and rich pilgrims who settled there. My reading of the sources makes clear that Jerusalem and the imperial court were more closely connected than previously assumed. This manifested itself not only in imperial building projects, but also in the exchange of theological concepts and ideas. One of my key findings about this traffic is that the cult of saints was introduced to Jerusalem from Constantinople, while, in contrast, the veneration of the Virgin Mary originated in the holy city and reached the capital from there. The thesis offers a new interpretation of patriarchal politics in the times of the Christological controversies following the Council of Chalcedon (451) and of the political self-perception of Jerusalem from the beginning of the sixth century onwards, when the city with its loca sancta entered into a new form of relationship with the emperor Justinian, who bestowed his favour on Jerusalem in the form of imperial donations in return for the support of his ecclesiastical policies by the clergy and monks of Jerusalem.