Violence and the City in the Modern Middle East

by Nelida Fuccaro (Editor)

Overview

This book explores violence in the public lives of modern Middle Eastern cities, approaching violence as an individual and collective experience, a historical event, and an urban process. Violence and the city coexist in a complicated dialogue, and critical consideration of the city offers an important way to understand the transformative powers of violence—its ability to redraw the boundaries of urban life, to create and divide communities, and to affect the ruling strategies of local elites, governments, and transnational political players.

The essays included in this volume reflect the diversity of Middle Eastern urbanism from the eighteenth to the late twentieth centuries, from the capitals of Cairo, Tunis, and Baghdad to the provincial towns of Jeddah, Nablus, and Basra and the oil settlements of Dhahran and Abadan. In reconstructing the violent pasts of cities, new vistas on modern Middle Eastern history are opened, offering alternative and complementary perspectives to the making and unmaking of empires, nations, and states. Given the crucial importance of urban centers in shaping the Middle East in the modern era, and the ongoing potential of public histories to foster dialogue and reconciliation, this volume is both critical and timely.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804795845
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	03/09/2016
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Nelida Fuccaro is Reader in the Modern History of the Middle East, University of London, SOAS. She is the author of Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf: Manama Since 1800 (2009).

Table of Contents

Figures and Maps vii

Contributors ix

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xv

Part 1 Rethinking Violence in Urban History

1 Urban Life and Questions of Violence Nelida Fuccaro 3

2 The Semantics of Violence and Space Rasmus Christian Elling 23

Appendix to Part 1 Further Readings 37

Part 2 Civic Struggles: Norms and Practices of Conflict

3 Elite Conflict and the Urban Environment: Eighteenth-Century Cairo James E. Baldwin 43

4 Urban Space and Prestige: When Festivals Turned Violent in Jeddah, 1880s-1960s Ulrike Freitag 61

5 Citizenship Rights and Semantics of Colonial Power and Resistance: Haifa, Jaffa, and Nablus, 1931-1933 Lauren Banko 75

Part 3 Urban Connections: The City as a Front Line

6 Challenging the Ottoman Pax Urbana: Intercommunal Clashes in 1857 Tunis Nora Lafi 95

7 A Tamed Urban Revolution: Saudi Arabia's Oil Conurbation and the 1967 Riots Claudia Ghrawi 109

8 Making and Unmaking Spaces of Security: Basra as Battlefront, Basra Insurgent, 1980-1991 Dina Rizk Khoury 127

Part 4 Eventful Ruptures: Order and Disorder

9 A Patriotic Uprising: Baghdadi Jews and the Wathba Orit Bashkin 151

10 Dissecting Moments of Unrest: Twentieth-Century Kirkuk Nelida Fuccaro 169

11 War of Clubs: Struggle for Space in Abadan and the 1946 Oil Strike Rasmus Christian Elling 189

12 Urban Rupture: A Fire, Two Hotels, and the Transformation of Cairo Yasser Elsheshtawy 211

Afterword Nelida Fuccaro 231

Notes 237

Index 289

Editorial Reviews

"Through the use of both empirical and theoretical approaches based on original research, Violence and the City in the Modern Middle East demonstrates the mutually constitutive relationship between violence and the city. The volume should be considered a major contribution to the field of urban violence and urban history in general and to the burgeoning field of urban violence in the Middle East in particular. With urban violence having been inflicted on different cities of the Middle East from Syria to Iraq, the essays in this volume provide us with fresh insights into the connection between violence and the city that goes beyond rudimentary and essentialist arguments to the deconstruction of space, language, state, and society, and their relationship to urban violence."

American Historical Review - Bedross Der Matossian

"This outstanding collection of essays is a revelation in many senses. Its consistently meticulous scholarship uncovers the details of a wide range of episodes that are further enhanced by serious engagement with theoretical debates concerning violence in urban politics. This empirical breadth and theoretical depth make it invaluable for students both of Middle Eastern history and of the politics of the city."

University of London - Charles Tripp

"Fuccaro's volume of twelve essays showcases an ambitious interdisciplinary collaboration in the growing field of urban violence in the Middle East....By prioritizing the specific spatial characteristics, temporal rhythms, and diverse actors, [the essays] move beyond common stereotypes about the Middle East, providing a nuanced portrayal of the variegated urban constituencies, the alliances they build, the challenges they endure, and the tensions they experience."––Zeynep Kezer, International Journal of Islamic Architecture

From the Publisher

"Violence has long been a major feature of social and political life in Middle Eastern cities, but no single volume surveys so much of the area in the way that this one does. It is extremely wide-ranging in its concerns, from 18th century Egypt, to early 20th century Iran, to Saudi Arabia in the late 1960s, based on diplomatic documents, contemporary chronicles and grounded in careful theorization and conceptualization. Altogether, it is a truly path-breaking collection."

National University of Singapore - Peter Sluglett Middle East Institute

"Violence in the City is an impressive work, and it represents a bold move to foreground violence in considerations of the Middle Eastern city. The powerful and convincing arguments in this book will resonate widely."

The University of Texas at Austin - Benjamin Brower