The second American Gulf War, which started in 2003, gave rise to much debate and a large amount of academic literature. Most of this literature has focused either on what led to the Iraq war and whether the war can be justified, or on the war strategies and the involvement of each country in this war (McGoldrick 2004, Copson 2003, Nikolaev and Hakanen 2006,
Lewis 2006, Harvey 2012, Cordesman 2003). In this paper, however, the post-combat period of this war will be taken into concideration, while concentrating on state-building policies implemented in Iraq and their implications. To be more precise, this paper will try to answer the research question: ‘to what extent has democratic peace-building been successful in the case of Iraq?’. In order to do this, this paper will be divided into two sections of analysis. First, a theoretical analysis will be made of the theories regarding state-building and democratic peace-building. Secondly, Iraq’s postcombat period will be analyzed, using the previously mentioned theories, after which a conclusion will be drawn that answers this paper’s research question.

در ماه‌های اخیر مطهری به یکی از خبرسازترین منتقدین درون نظام تبدیل شده است. برخی تحلیل‌گران سیاسی مطهری را نشانی از شکاف در نظام جمهوری اسلامی قلمداد می‌کنند. این نگاه از آنجایی ناشی می‌شود که آنها تصور دارند جمهوری اسلامی یک نظام سیاسی کاملا یک دست است و هر نوع نقدی در آن نشان از شکافی است که می‌تواند در "بزنگاهی" نظام را از درون متلاشی کند. از این رو تصور می‌شود هر نوع نقد اشخاص سیاسی کشور از این "نظام یک دست" برتابیده نخواهد شد. در صورتی که نظام جمهوری اسلامی ایران از ابتدا منتقدینی که برتابیده باشد را به خود دیده، از جمله. پس لزوما هر کسی که اصلاح طلب باشد و انتقاد بکند محکوم نمی‌شود، برای مثال روحانی و عارف، و هر کسی هم که اصولگرا باشد نمی‌تواند آزادانه و بدون محدودیت انتقاد کند، برای مثال مطهری و احمدی‌نژاد. این مقاله نوعی "قالب" و المنهای مربوطه برای این قالب بندی را برای بررسی این شخصیتها شرح میدهد.

In this article, we discuss the spatiotemporal interlegalities of 22 women living in Iraq, understood as an emerging legal landscape characterised by legal and normative entanglements rather than parallel systems of laws and morals. Iraqi women are situated at the intersections of the coexisting legal spaces and stratifications of various scales and multiple normative orders that have been deeply embedded in Iraqi religious and tribal traditions throughout time. It is at these intersections that experiences of non-freedom and struggles for freedom are intimately felt and possible contradictions among the multiple legal spaces and normative orders encountered. Herein, we assess women’s opportunities to negotiate the boundaries of their spaces, their abilities to govern those spaces, and the constraints they encounter on their routes to freedom. We used a map metaphor to elucidate the women’s processes for finding their way. Women’s freedom in the Iraqi context is complex, indicative ...

The paper attempts to trace the Arab sense of national belonging to the Ottoman state in the immediate prelude to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. It analyzes Arab popular sentiment toward the Ottoman state, specifically toward the Committee of Union and Progress (İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti, CUP or Unionists) during the period between 1909 and 1914. In doing so, it seeks to deconstruct the post-Ottoman, Arab, nationalist, meta-historical narrative that commonly links the development of Arab proto-nationalism during the CUP period (1908–1918) with the creation of Arab nation states in the post-Ottoman period, in which the Arab (Sharifian) revolt of 1916 is often presented as the main event that gave way to that transition.

This article studies the life and works of a hardly known littérateur and anthologist who lived in early Abbasid Baghdad and al-Fustat: Yusuf b. Ibrahim b. al-Daya. The first part of the article gives an attempted biography on the basis of personal information that can be found in anecdotes that are said to be taken from Yusuf ’s works. In the second part, these anecdotes and their relation to Yusuf ’s largely neglected literary output will be studied.

This article presents the edition of a legal document from c. 44/664–5, written in Arabic,
that records a woman’s debt of a third of a dinar. It is the oldest preserved original of its
kind. A study of the formulary of this document and contemporary copies of similar
documents reveals a hitherto overlooked validity clause which states that the recorded
financial transactions are in accordance with ‘the normative procedure of the believers’
(sunnat qaḍāʾ al-muʾminīn). This clause gives documentary evidence for the existence of
ideas about legal identity among the Muslim community in Egypt as early as the beginning of Umayyad rule.

The importance of documentary sources for the history of the official postal system (barīd) in the first century of Islam has long been acknowledged. In addition to a small number of documents from the eastern part of the Muslim Empire, Egyptian papyri from the 90s/710s and 130s/750s form the main documentary sources for modern studies on the postal system. These papyri belong to a distinct phase in Islamic history. Papyri from other, especially earlier, phases have largely been neglected. The present article addresses the history of Egypt’s official postal system from the Muslim conquest up to c. 132/750. It argues that the postal system gradually developed out of Byzantine practices and was shaped by innovations by Muslim rulers through which their involvement in the postal system’s administration gradually increased. The article ends with an edition of P.Khalili II 5, a papyrus document from 135/753 on the provisioning of postal stations.

In the "Rise of a Capital: Al-Fusṭāṭ and Its Hinterland, 18/639-132/750", Jelle Bruning maps al-Fusṭāṭ’s development from a garrison town founded by Muslim conquerors near modern Cairo (Egypt) in c. 640 C.E. into a bustling provincial capital a century later. Synthesising contemporary papyri, archaeology and narrative sources, this book argues that al-Fusṭāṭ’s position in Egypt changed with the different policies of the Rightly-Guided and Umayyad caliphs and their provincial representatives. Because these policies affected the town’s centrality in the administration as well as in commercial and legal networks throughout Egypt, from Alexandria in the north to Aswan in the south, "The Rise of a Capital" offers valuable new insights into Egypt’s society during the first century of Muslim rule.

This article discusses the commercial, socio-economic and legal dynamics of slave trading in Egypt on the basis of papyri from the AH third-fourth/ninth-tenth centuries CE. Particular focus is given to the activities of slavers, the networks of professional slave traders, the socio-economics of slave acquisition, and commercial dynamics at slave markets. Much of the discussion draws on the contents of five contemporary papyrus documents that are presented, translated and annotated in the appendix.

This workshop aims to explore forms and functions of slavery represented in textual sources from the early-Islamic empire, ca. 600-1000 CE. It addresses questions about the realities of slavery. E.g., what makes a person slave? How does (un)freedom  affect an individual’s social status? To what extent did slavery and related practices differ across historical, cultural, and geographic contexts?  Hence, is it appropriate to use generic terminology, such as ‘slave’ and ‘slavery’, when we speak of forms of unfreedom throughout the Islamicate world? By integrating textual sources from the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, Egypt, the Near East, Arabia, Persia and Central Asia, this workshop aims to better understand the complexity of slavery in the early-Islamic empire.

This article offers an edition, translation, and study of a hitherto unknown text about Ayyubid or early Mamluk Alexandria. The author, one Abū Khuzayma Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, gives a short yet rich description of the city based as much on Alexandria’s real cityscape as on legends. The text treats famous monuments, such as the city’s lighthouse and the Column of the Pillars, as well as less well-known buildings, such as mosques, colleges, watchtowers, and gates. An analysis of the account leads to the conclusion that its author wrote the account in order to mobilize Muslims for the defense of the city against Frankish or Byzantine attacks on Alexandria or Egypt’s Mediterranean coast in general.

In light of the reverence for Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem in medieval (and present-day) Islamic thought, the question whether the Egyptian city of Alexandria was of any religious significance for medieval Muslims seems trivial. Yet, there is ample evidence that some Muslims held that city in great esteem. They considered some of Alexandria’s architecture as precious remnants of the age of prophets, they believed that the city was the ultimate place to defend the Muslim polity against enemies of Islam, and they held that the first signs of the Apocalypse would appear in Alexandria.

This lecture discusses a tenth-century CE book devoted to Alexandria’s place in Islamic sacred geography. This book is not only one of the main sources for Muslim views of Alexandria, it is known to have remained popular for centuries. The lecture will first introduce the audience to the book and its author. It will then focus on two important themes the book addresses: Alexandria’s connection with the activities of Dhu al-Qarnayn and the prophet Muhammad’s alleged visit to the city during his night-journey. These themes illustrate how medieval Muslims dealt with Egypt’s pre-Islamic past and argued for its significance in the present.