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There are more than 15 million people over age 65 currently living in the Arab world, yet little attention has been paid to the cultural significance of growing old. The book recognizes the widespread silence by countering the critical corpus that reads the modern Arabic novel as a political discourse with an emphasis on youth achievement. By offering close readings of 16 fictional works from different parts of the Arab world such as novels by Alia Mamdouh, Sahar Khalifah, Iman Kachachi, Rashid al-Daif and Alaa al-Aswany, the study utilizes biological and cultural theories of ageing- particularly from the perspective of gender and feminism- that shed light on the representation of ageing in the Arabic novel. The study makes use of feminist theories of ageing and gerontology that focus on sexism and ageism, including works by Simone de Beauvoir and Margaret Marganroth Gullette to present aging as a relational formation between men and women, and their idiosyncratic experiences of the process of ageing, revealing that there is no prototype of oldness in the Arabic novel and that older men and women manifest a multiplicity of identities, concerns and experiences. The study challenges the ungendered image generally attributed to older persons and examines how they navigate old age and subvert it. As they grow older men and women manifest a multiplicity of identities, concerns, and experiences revealing that the ageing process is an ongoing inherently unstable project.

The idea of the museum as a space committed to dialogue and inclusive representation which is paramount to museology in the Global North has had trouble finding ground in the Middle East and North Africa where museums remain—and have mostly been depicted as—the carriers of homogenous national identities, at the expense of cultural and social difference. Research recently undertaken by anthropologists, museum specialists and historians reveal that this monolithic museographic conception of culture is in the process of being challenged. Whilst some public museums in the region have engaged in the reconsideration of the narratives underpinning their collections, the past two decades have also seen a boom in private museum initiatives led by social and cultural minority groups whose experiences have until now been marginalised within, or absent from, state-led exhibitionary practices. This volume discusses the contradictions and opportunities museums have created for minority groups across the Mediterranean basin, from the early twentieth century to the contemporary period. It explores whether museums can provide a suitable canvas for minorities to express their voice, what kind of narratives is articulated, and whether these can challenge cultural and social stereotypes and deploy new kinds of identities.

This edited volume addresses the ways in which the city has been explored in works of literature by classical and modern ‘Arab’ authors from different theosophical and ideological backgrounds. Crucial to its organizing theoretical paradigm is its rejection of the stark rupture that most often separates the pre-modern and modern Arabic literary traditions. Instead, we view the entirety of the tradition as an evolving continuum, making our collection relevant to scholars of both classical and modern Arabic literature.

Classical Caledonia explores eighteenth-century attitudes towards Scotland’s ancient history and heritage, looking in particular at how Roman Scotland was interpreted at this time. It discusses the research of early modern antiquarians and historians both north and south of the border and looks at how Scotland’s ancient past was often misinterpreted and manipulated in attempts to create a new national identity for a country undergoing rapid and dramatic change. The book uncovers the political, patriotic and intellectual influences which fuelled the heated eighteenth-century debates surrounding the success or failure of the Roman conquests of Scotland, a place sometimes referred to in ancient sources as ‘Caledonia’, and the disagreements regarding the impact of Roman invasion on the evolution of the modern nation. Analysing the period’s historiography, antiquarianism, political propaganda and literature, Classical Caledonia investigates the widespread interest in Scotland’s Roman past during the eighteenth century and reveals the influence of folklore, myth and tradition on the accounts of Scotland’s ancient tribes and their supposed resistance to conquest by the Roman Empire. It also examines the fading interest in the subject of Roman Scotland in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as the Scottish Enlightenment and the rise of Romanticism and associated notions of the nation’s origins overtook the desire to establish a classical heritage in the region north of Hadrian’s Wall.

As the British expanded their empire from near colonies such as Ireland to those in remote corners of the world, such as Barbados, Ceylon and Australia, they left a trail of physical remains in every parish where settlement occurred. Between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, gravestones and elaborate epitaphs documented identity and attachment to both colony and metropole. This collection by leading migration historians and archaeologists seeks to explore what this evidence tells the twenty-first century reader about the attachment remote British and Irish migrants had to ‘home’ in life and death. As well as making public statements about imperial allegiance, the bereaved carved in stone the reunification of disparate families in death. Such mourning left an important seam of material culture that has hitherto received scant comparative analysis by scholars. Focusing on nodal areas of British and Irish trade around the world, each chapter reveals the social, religious, political and personal milieu of remote migrants in all continents where the British and Irish lived, worked and ultimately died.

This is a study of Enlightenment in Edinburgh like no other. Using data and models provided by urban innovation and Smart City theory, it pinpoints the distinctive features that made Enlightenment in the Scottish capital possible. In a journey packed with evidence and incident, Murray Pittock explores various civic networks – such as the newspaper and printing businesses, the political power of the gentry and patronage networks, as well as the pub and coffee-house life – as drivers of cultural change. His analysis reveals that the attributes of civic development, which lead to innovation and dynamism, were at the heart of what made Edinburgh a smart city of 1700.

This the first comprehensive study of the Gaelic language in modern Scotland, covering the period from 1872 to the present. It considers in detail the changing role of Gaelic in modern Scotland - from the introduction of state education in 1872 up to the present day - including the policies of government and the work of activists and campaigners who have sought to maintain and promote Gaelic. In addition, it scrutinises the competing ideologies that have driven the decline, marginalisation and subsequent revitalisation of the language. Taking an interdisciplinary approach - at the boundary of history, law, language policy and sociolinguistics - the book draws upon a wide range of sources in both English and Gaelic to consider in detail the development of the language policy regime for Gaelic that was developed between 1975 and 1989. It examines the campaign for the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 and analyses its contents and implementation. It also assesses the development and delivery of development and delivery of Gaelic education and media from the late 1980s to the present.

This book examines the life of George Strachan (1572-1635), early 17^th century Scottish humanist scholar, Orientalist and traveller. Drawing on a wealth of newly discovered archival material to offer new insights into Strachan’s life and work, it also utilises recent scholarship on the relationship between the cultures and religions of East and West. Tom McInally explains the voyages that the Catholic exile took to many of the Catholic courts of Europe as a scholar and spy before turning eastwards to embark on a 22-year journey around the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires. By becoming fully literate in Arabic and Farsi, Strachan was able to gain a unique knowledge of Eastern societies. His collection of Arabic and Farsi texts on Islam, philosophy and humanities – which he translated and sent to Europe for the advancement of European knowledge of Islam and Islamic societies – became Strachan’s real intellectual legacy.

The book is the first print publication of Henrietta Liston’s Turkish Journals, a significant yet virtually unknown work of women’s travel writing. It is composed of the full text of the 1812-1814 journal and some further writings, such a significant 1813 letter from Liston to her nephew, Dick Ramage and extracts from other journals, and these are preceded by an extensive critical introduction. The journals reveal that as the wife of the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Liston had privileged access to the Ottoman elite and to the diplomatic corps. They reflect on British-Ottoman relations, combining Orientalist perspectives with a human-centred version of the picturesque. Liston offers astute commentaries on people, places, and events – including a plague-ridden Constantinople, the harem of the Grand Vizier’s deputy, the presentation of ambassadors in the Seraglio and the departure of pilgrims on the hajj. The introduction includes sections on Liston’s life and the diplomatic context of her writings, and the Ottoman social and political context of the period. Liston’s writings are considered in relation to the discourses of travel writing, to British-Ottoman relations, to Orientalism and the picturesque, and to other eighteenth-and nineteenth-century women travellers and their works on the Ottoman Empire. There is also discussion of the manuscripts on which the book is based, and of issues such as their composition, revision, and transcription.

Hydrofictions identifies water as a new topic of literary and cultural analysis at a critical moment for the world’s water resources, focusing on the urgent context of Israel/Palestine. It argues for the necessity of recognising water’s importance in understanding contemporary Israeli and Palestinian literature, covering topics including representations of the River Jordan; the history of Zionist and Israeli swamp drainage; the emergence of Israeli and Palestinian environmentalisms; the role of the Mediterranean in Israeli identity; and the hydropolitics of war and occupation. In doing so, it shows that water is as culturally significant as that much more obvious object of nationalist attention, the land. This book offers new insights into Israeli and Palestinian literature and politics, and into the role of culture in an age of environmental crisis. Hydrofictions shows that how we imagine water is inseparable from how we manage it. It is vital reading for students and scholars in Middle East Studies, postcolonial ecocriticism, the environmental humanities and anyone invested in the future of the world’s water.

This book is the first in-depth survey of illuminated manuscripts from late medieval Anatolia (Rum) before the rise of the Ottoman Empire. Between the Mongol invasions in the mid-thirteenth century and the emergence of Ottoman domination in the late fourteenth century, the Lands of Rum were marked by instability and conflict. Despite this, a rich body of illuminated manuscripts from the period survives, explored here and fully illustrated in colour with many unpublished or hard-to-find images. Meticulously analysing fifteen beautifully decorated Arabic and Persian manuscripts, including Qur’ans, mirrors for princes, historical chronicles and Sufi works, such as the Masnavi of Jalal al-Din Rumi, the author traces the development of calligraphy and illumination in late medieval Rum. She shows that the central Anatolian city of Konya, in particular, was a dynamic centre of artistic activity and that local Turcoman princes, Seljuk bureaucrats and Mevlevi dervishes all played important roles in manuscript production and patronage. The volume also includes a detailed catalogue that is comprised of codicological data and numerous translations of new and unpublished primary sources, including manuscript colophons, dedications and endowment notes.

This book examines the circumstances of the Kurds in 21^st-century Turkey under the hegemony of the AKP government and presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan. Recording Kurdish voices from Istanbul and Diyarbakır, it highlights the elements of Kurdish ethnic identity and the dimensions of Kurdish political aspirations in Turkey. Kurds have long occupied a troubled position in Turkey’s political landscape – where once their very existence was denied, now there is grudging acceptance of their presence and political organisations. Within the context of Turkey’s troubled trajectory towards democratisation, the book documents Kurdish narratives of oppression and resistance and enquires how Kurds reconcile their distinct ethnic identity with their citizenship in modern Turkey. Recent geopolitical changes in the Middle East have seen Kurdish political actors win global recognition and support, the effects of which have reverberated through Turkey. The book argues that although they may still mobilise and operate under pressure from state and military authorities, the Kurds form a key constituency in Turkey. It further argues that as long as political processes remain free and open then Kurds will continue to recognise and value their citizenship of Turkey.

This book examines the relationships forged between police officers and the diverse urban and rural communities in which they lived and worked in Scotland across the twentieth century. It considers the formal structures and rhetoric that defined and prescribed the policing ideal, as well as the ways in which policing was experienced from a range of grassroots’ perspectives. Drawing on a wealth of archival materials, oral history interviews, and memoirs, as well as previously unused primary sources, the authors identify factors that led to co-operation, consensus and the building of trust as well as tension and conflict across a century of social, political and technological change. The book compares the practices, cultures and repertoires of policing in urban and rural areas, highlighting the ways in which gender (as embodied and performed) shaped occupational identities, as well as race, ethnicity and religion.

Prophetic Translation: The Making of Modern Egyptian Literature explores the move from Qur’anic to secular approaches to literature in early 20th-century Egyptian literary translations, asking what we can learn from that period and the promise that translation held for the Egyptian writers of fiction at that time. Through their early adaptations, these writers crafted a prophetic, secular vocation for the narrator that gave access to a world of linguistic creation and interpretation unavailable to the common reader or the religious cleric. This book looks at the writers’ claim to secular prophecy as it manifests itself in the adapted narrative voice of their translations to suggest an original sense of literary resistance to colonial oppression and occupation in the early Arabic novel.

Religion has played a major role in the Arabic novel since its inception. From the first forays into realism in the early decades of the twentieth century to the technically sophisticated and experimental works of the late 1960s to the present, the Arabic novel has consistently engaged with religious themes and issues. This book is an original, in-depth study of the intricate and enduring relationship between religion and the Arabic novel in Egypt. Part One addresses questions of form and ideology and explores the role of religion in the Arabic novel as it came of age. It examines religion in a selection of early works in the context of nation formation, modernity and secularism, and develops a concept of religion as the ‘other’, with all the tension and ambivalence that this implies. Part Two explores religious themes and subjects in the Arabic novel from the late 1960s onwards. Through close readings of representative texts, it analyses intertextual dialogues with religion (chapter 5) Sufi dimensions (chapter 6), the Coptic theme (chapter 7) and feminist literary engagements with Islam and Christianity (chapter 8) in the Arabic novel. The essential question underpinning the study is why and how is the Arabic novel, as a modern form which eschews faith and dogma, so heavily involved with religion and what does this reveal about religious, secular and novelistic discourse?

Few causes before or since have inspired such passion, determination and sacrifice than the Spanish Civil War (1936-9). This book explores the many ways in which Scots responded to the war in Spain, covering the activists and humanitarians who raised funds and awareness at home, as well as the hundreds of Scots who journeyed to Spain to fight as part of the International Brigades that fought for the Republican cause. Their stories reflect much larger narratives of the rise of European fascism, the networks and cultures of international communism and the wider modern phenomenon of transnational foreign war volunteering. Scots and the Spanish Civil War is a groundbreaking study of Scottish involvement in one of the 20th century’s most famous and divisive conflicts, drawing on newly-declassified government documents and international archives in Spain and beyond. As well as shedding new light on Scottish politics in the 1930s, it is argued that this case study – part of the largest wave of foreign war volunteers in the 20th century – can help us understand other such mobilisations, past and present.

Global migration flows in the 20^th century have seen the emergence of Muslim diaspora and minority communities in Europe, North America and other parts of the world. While there is a growing body of research on Muslim minorities in various regional contexts, the particular experiences of Shi’a Muslim minorities across the globe has only received scant attention. This book offers new comparative perspectives of Shi’a minorities outside of the so-called “Muslim heartland” (Middle East, North Africa, Central and South Asia). It includes contributions on Shi’a minority communities in Europe, North and South America, Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia that emerged out of migration from the Middle East and South Asia in the 20^th and 21^st centuries in particular. As ‘a minority within a minority’, Shi’a Muslims face the double-challenge of maintaining an Islamic as well as a particular Shi’a identity in terms of communal activities and practices, public perception and recognition. The book provides comparative insights into Shi’a Muslim communities across the globe, set in Muslim minority contexts and makes an important contribution to understanding the global dynamics of contemporary Shi’a Islam. Illustrating how transnational Shi’a networks operate in Muslim minority contexts, it discusses the impact of events in the Middle East on Shi’a Muslim minorities across the world.

The book examines the trajectory of the state sponsored novel in Iraq and considers the ways in which explicitly political and/or ideological texts functioned as resistive counter narratives. It argues that both the novel and ‘progressive’ discourses on women were used as markers of Iraq’s cultural revival under the Ba‘th and were a key element in the state’s propaganda campaign within Iraq and abroad. In an effort to expand its readership and increase support for its pan-Arab project, the Iraqi Ba‘th almost completely eradicated illiteracy among women. As Iraq was metaphorically transformed into a ‘female’, through its nationalist trope, women writers simultaneously found opportunities and faced obstacles from the state, as the ‘Woman Question’ became a site of contention between those who would advocate the progressiveness of the Ba‘th and those who would stress its repressiveness and immorality. By exploring discourses on gender in both propaganda and high art fictional writings by Iraqis, this book offers an alternative narrative of the literary and cultural history of Iraq. It ultimately expands the idea of cultural resistance beyond the modern/traditional, progressive/backward paradigms that characterise discourses on Arab women and the state, and argues that resistance is embedded in the material form of texts as much as their content or ideological message.