Transforming Damascus

Transforming Damascus PDF

Author: Leila Hudson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2008-07-30

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 0857717464

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In 1860, Damascus was a sleepy provincial capital of the weakening Ottoman Empire, a city defined in terms of its relationship to the holy places of Islam in the Arabian Hijaz and its legacy of Islamic knowledge. Yet by 1918 Damascus had become a seat of Arab nationalism and a would-be modern state capital. How can this metamorphosis be explained? Here Leila Hudson describes the transformation of Damascus. Within a couple of generations the city changed from little more than a way-station on the Islamic pilgrimage routes that had defined the city's place for over a millennium. Its citizens and notables now seized the opportunities made available through transport technology on the eastern Mediterranean coast and in the European economy. Shifts in marriage patterns, class, education and power ensued. But just when the city's destiny seemed irrevocably linked to the Mediterranean world and economy, World War I literally starved the urban centre of Damascus and empowered its Bedouin hinterland. The consequences shaped Syria for the rest of the twentieth century and beyond.

Dynamism in the Urban Society of Damascus

Dynamism in the Urban Society of Damascus PDF

Author: Toru Miura

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-11-16

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 9004304436

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In Dynamism in the Urban Society of Damascus, Toru Miura presents a detailed history of the Ṣāliḥiyya quarter in Damascus from the 12th to the 20th century, presenting a new perspective on Islamic urban society: a dynamism of social networking and justice.

Sufism in Ottoman Damascus

Sufism in Ottoman Damascus PDF

Author: Nikola Pantić

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-09-29

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 100096261X

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Sufism in Ottoman Damascus analyzes thaumaturgical beliefs and practices prevalent among Muslims in eighteenth-century Ottoman Syria. The study focuses on historical beliefs in baraka, which religious authorities often interpreted as Allah's grace, and the alleged Sufi-ulamaic role in distributing it to Ottoman subjects. This book highlights considerable overlaps between Sufis and ʿulamāʾ with state appointments in early modern Province of Damascus, arguing for the possibility of sociologically defining a Muslim priestly sodality, a group of religious authorities and wonder-workers responsible for Sunni orthodoxy in the Ottoman Empire. The Sufi-ʿulamāʾ were integral to Ottoman networks of the holy, networks of grace that comprised of hallowed individuals, places, and natural objects. Sufism in Ottoman Damascus sheds new light on the appropriate scholarly approach to historical studies of Sufism in the Ottoman Empire, revising its position in official early modern versions of Ottoman Sunnism. This book further re-approaches early modern Sunni beliefs in wonders and wonder-working, as well as the relationship between religion, thaumaturgy, and magic in Ottoman Sunni Islam, historical themes comparable to other religions and other parts of the world.

Damascus

Damascus PDF

Author: Joshua Mohr

Publisher: Two Dollar Radio

Published: 2011-10-18

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 0983247137

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"Damascus succeeds in conveying a big-hearted vision." —The Wall Street Journal "At once gripping, lucid and fierce, Damascus is the mature effort of an artist devoted to personal growth and as such contains the glints of real gold." -San Francisco Chronicle It's 2003 and the country is divided evenly for and against the Iraq War. Damascus, a dive bar in San Francisco's Mission District, becomes the unlikely setting for a showdown between the opposing sides. Tensions come to a boil when Owen, the bar's proprietor who has recently taken to wearing a Santa suit full-time, agrees to host the joint's first (and only) art show by Sylvia Suture, an ambitious young artist who longs to take her act to the dramatic precipice of the high-wire by nailing live fish to the walls as a political statement. An incredibly creative and fully rendered cast of characters orbit the bar. There's No Eyebrows, a cancer patient who has come to the Mission to die anonymously; Shambles, the patron saint of the hand job; Revv, a lead singer who acts too much like a lead singer; and Owen, donning his Santa costume to mask the most unfortunate birthmark imaginable. Damascus is the place where confusion and frustration run out of room to hide. By gracefully tackling such complicated topics as cancer, Iraq, and issues of self-esteem, Joshua Mohr has painted his most accomplished novel yet. Joshua Mohr is the San Francisco Chronicle best-selling author of Some Things That Meant the World to Me and Termite Parade, a New York Times Book Review editors' choice selection.

The Damascus Seat of Power

The Damascus Seat of Power PDF

Author: Sami Moubayed

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-10-19

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0755649214

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While recent scholarship has focused on wartime Syria, this book is dedicated to heads of state in the immediate post-Ottoman era until the end of the French Mandate in 1946. Here, renowned Syrian historian, Sami Moubayed, examines Syria's first eleven heads of state who led the country between 1918 and 1946. With a chapter dedicated to each leader, Moubayed sheds light on the political culture of the time and traces the trajectory of how Syria was governed through colonialism, monarchism and federalism and republicanism. The study draws on numerous archives, political memoirs and first-hand interviews with key figures who were active between the 1930's and 1950's, providing a rich picture of Syrian political culture during this forgotten period.

Preserving the Old City of Damascus

Preserving the Old City of Damascus PDF

Author: Faedah M. Totah

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2014-05-28

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 0815652623

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In Preserving the Old City of Damascus, Totah examines the recent gentrification of the historic urban core of the Syrian capital and the ways in which urban space becomes the site for negotiating new economic and social realities. The book illustrates how long-term inhabitants of the historic quarter, developers, and government officials offer at times competing interpretations of urban space and its use as they vie for control over the representation of the historic neighborhoods. Based on over two years of ethnographic and archival research, this book expands our understanding of neoliberal urbanism in non-western cities.

A Disappearance in Damascus

A Disappearance in Damascus PDF

Author: Deborah Campbell

Publisher: Picador

Published: 2017-09-05

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1250147891

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Winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction Winner of the Freedom to Read Award Winner of the Hubert Evans Prize In the midst of an unfolding international crisis, renowned journalist Deborah Campbell finds herself swept up in the mysterious disappearance of Ahlam, her guide and friend. Campbell’s frank, personal account of a journey through fear and the triumph of friendship and courage is as riveting as it is illuminating. The story begins in 2007, when Deborah Campbell travels undercover to Damascus to report on the exodus of Iraqis into Syria, following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. There she meets and hires Ahlam, a refugee working as a “fixer”—providing Western media with trustworthy information and contacts to help get the news out. Ahlam has fled her home in Iraq after being kidnapped while running a humanitarian center. She supports her husband and two children while working to set up a makeshift school for displaced girls. Strong and charismatic, she has become an unofficial leader of the refugee community. Campbell is inspired by Ahlam’s determination to create something good amid so much suffering, and the two women become close friends. But one morning, Ahlam is seized from her home in front of Campbell’s eyes. Haunted by the prospect that their work together has led to her friend’s arrest, Campbell spends the months that follow desperately trying to find Ahlam—all the while fearing she could be next. The compelling story of two women caught up in the shadowy politics behind today’s most searing conflict, A Disappearance in Damascus reminds us of the courage of those who risk their lives to bring us the world’s news.

Majd al-Dīn al-Fīrūzābādī (1329-1415)

Majd al-Dīn al-Fīrūzābādī (1329-1415) PDF

Author: Vivian Strotmann

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-10-14

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 9004305408

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In Majd al-Dīn al-Fīrūzābādī (1329-1415): A Polymath on the Eve of the Early Modern Period, Vivian Strotmann provides a detailed reconstruction of the famous lexicographer’s and travelling scholar’s life and works. The ‘author of the Qāmūs al-muḥīṭ’ is widely known for his Arabic lexicon, which overshadows the astounding breadth of his writing. This polymathic aspect is elucidated through detailed reconstruction of al-Fīrūzābādī’s corpus, including examination of works that were considered lost and misapprehensions concerning ascriptions of authorship. Through minute analysis of biographical sources, the book shows al-Fīrūzābādī’s development as a scholar, his central role in the defence of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s teachings and thereby his importance as a powerful intellectual in Timurid times and for developments during the Early Modern Period.

Prophet of Reason

Prophet of Reason PDF

Author: Peter Hill

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2024-05-02

Total Pages: 490

ISBN-13: 0861547373

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'An outstanding intellectual biography.' Eugene Rogan In 1813, high in the Lebanese mountains, a thirteen-year-old boy watches a solar eclipse. Will it foretell a war, a plague, the death of a prince? Mikha’il Mishaqa’s lifelong search for truth starts here. Soon he’s reading Newtonian science and the radical ideas of Voltaire and Volney: he loses his religion, turning away from the Catholic Church. Thirty years later, as civil war rages in Syria, he finds a new faith – Evangelical Protestantism. His obstinate polemics scandalise his community. Then, in 1860, Mishaqa barely escapes death in the most notorious event in Damascus: a massacre of several thousand Christians. We are presented with a paradox: rational secularism and violent religious sectarianism grew up together. By tracing Mishaqa’s life through this tumultuous era, when empires jostled for control, Peter Hill answers the question: What did people in the Middle East actually believe? It’s a world where one man could be a Jew, an Orthodox Christian and a Sunni Muslim in turn, and a German missionary might walk naked in the streets of Valletta.