In this issue, we are proud to feature a collection of innovative and rigorous contributions. Two exceptional articles tackle archives as a historical and conceptual space. In “The Moroccan Equity and Reconciliation Commission: The Promises of a Human Rights Archive,” Susan Slymovics explores how memory is instrumentalized and how victim memories revise and confront national historiography. In “The Paper Trail of a Liberation Movement,” Hana Sleiman conducts an inquiry into the curious fate of the PLO Research Center’s archive, reconstructing how the archive was lost and telling the story of why it was never repatriated.
In a third article titled “Trial of the Status Quo: The Politics of Mediated Justice in the Special Tribunal for Lebanon,” Sari Hanafi, Are Knudsen, and Robert Flahive analyzes the structure and form of differences between Lebanese newspaper in covering the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
Arab Studies Journal is pleased to feature two special sections in this issue. The first is on “The Arab Left in Egypt and Lebanon.” Sune Haugbolle and Manfred Sing provide the framework for this special section as well as the contours of new approaches to Arab left histories. In “A Tale of Two Communists: The Revolutionary Projects of the Lebanese Communists Husayn Muruwwa and Mahdi ‘Amil,” Miriam Younes explores the intellectual and social development of two prominent figures in “revolutionary times.” Hanan Hammad plots an intimate history of the Egyptian left by examining the legacy of an Egyptian Marxist in “Arwa Salih’s The Premature: Gendering the History of the Egyptian Left.” In the “Anatomy of a Crisis: On Mahdi ‘Amil’s Naqd al-Fikr al-Yawmi,” Samer Frangie provides a reading of the “crisis of Marxism” and how different critical strands of Arab leftist thought coalesced around the rejection of this ideology. Sune Haugbolle interrogates the spaces between ideological traditions by analyzing the work and significance of the Lebanese singer Ziad Rahbani in “The Leftist, the Liberal, and the Space in Between: Ziad Rahbani and Everyday Ideology.” Finally, in “Lebanon’s al-Akhbar and Radical Press Culture: Toward and Intellectual History of the Contemporary Arab Left,” Jens Hanssen and Hicham Safieddine offers an assessment of a leading leftist newspaper between its fast-paced rise after the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon and its speedy decline in 2011.
Our second special section, “New Paradigms Factory” continues Arab Studies Journal’s collaborative work with the Arab Council for Social Science and Research (ACSS) in its fostering and nurturing of scholarship on and of the Arab world. In “Inviolable Sheiks and Radical Subjects: Bahrain’s Cyclical Sovereignty Crisis” Ala’a Shehabi traces Bahrain’s history of uprising through alternative models of protest, revealing the dependent and neocolonial character of royal sovereignty. Finally, Imen Yacoubi proposes a model of women’s rights in Tunisia that transcends the law-focused state sovereignty paradigm that many gender scholars associate with state feminism in “Sovereignty from Below: State Feminism and Politics of Women against Women in Tunisia.”
Our book review section offers a rich collection of works from across disciplinary and temporal divides. These include the history of literacy in the eighteenth century Ottoman Levant; Islamic law on peasant usufruct in Ottoman Syrian in the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century; the history of the animal in Ottoman Egypt; disability in the Ottoman Arab world; and revolution in the late Ottoman Empire.
The section additionally features a review of a recent translation of the works of Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq. It also includes reviews of works on literature, gender and nationalism in nineteenth century Egypt; literary subterfuge in contemporary Persian fiction; and technology and temporality in modern Egypt.
Finally, the review section includes an engagement with scholarship on the contemporary moment including works on the politics of water in Egypt; food security in the Middle East; religion, class, and elections in Egypt; group conflict and political mobilization in Bahrain; and urbicide in Palestine; and US-PLO relations in the making of the post-Cold War order. For our table of contents, click here and the Editor’s Note, click here.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ARAB STUDIES JOURNAL
VOL. XXIV, NO. 1
Articles
The Moroccan Equity and Reconciliation Commission: The Promises of a Human Rights Archive
Susan Slyomovics
The Paper Trail of a Liberation Movement
Hana Sleiman
Trial of the Status Quo: The Politics of Mediated Justice in the Special Tribunal for Lebanon
Sari Hanafi, Are Knudsen, and Robert Flahive
Special Section: The Arab Left in Egypt and Lebanon
New Approaches to Arab Left Histories
Sune Haugbolle and Manfred Sing
A Tale of Two Communists: The Revolutionary Projects of the Lebanese Communists Husayn Muruwwa and Mahdi ‘Amil
Miriam Younes
Arwa Salih’s The Premature: Gendering the History of the Egyptian Left
Hanan Hammad
The Anatomy of a Crisis: On Mahdi ‘Amil’s Naqd al-Fikr al-Yawmi
Samer Frangie
The Leftist, the Liberal, and the Space in Between: Ziad Rahbani and Everyday Ideology
Sune Haugbolle
Lebanon’s al-Akhbar and Radical Press Culture: Toward an Intellectual History of the Contemporary Arab Lef
Jens Hanssen and Hicham Safieddine
Special Section: New Paradigms Factory
Inviolable Sheikhs and Radical Subjects: Bahrain’s Cyclical Sovereignty Crisis
Ala’a Shehabi
Sovereignty from Below: State Feminism and Politics of Women against Women in Tunisia
Imen Yacoubi
Reviews
The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant
by Dana Sajdi
Reviewed by Sara Scalenghe
Islamic Law on Peasant Usufruct in Ottoman Syria: 17th to Early 19th Century
by Sabrina Joseph
Reviewed by Steve Tamari
Leg over Leg, or The Turtle in the Tree, concerning the Fariyaq, What Manner of Creature Might He Be
by Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq
edited and translated by Humphrey Davies
Reviewed by Tarek El-Ariss
Literature, Gender, and Nation-Building in Nineteenth-Century Egypt: The Life and Works of ‘A’isha Taymur
by Mervat Hatem
Reviewed by Alya El Hosseiny
Literary Subterfuge and Contemporary Persian Fiction: Who Writes Iran?
by Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami
Reviewed by M. R. Ghanoonparvar
Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire
by Bedross Der Matossian
Reviewed by Chris Gratien
The Animal in Ottoman Egypt
by Alan Mikhail
Reviewed by Nora Barakat
Disability in the Ottoman Arab World, 1500–1800
by Sara Scalenghe
Reviewed by Beverly Tsacoyianis
Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi‘ite South Beirut
by Lara Deeb and Mona Harb
Reviewed by Ali Hamdan
On Time: Technology and Temporality in Modern Egypt
by On Barak
Reviewed by Fredrik Meiton
Cultivating the Nile: The Everyday Politics of Water in Egypt
by Jessica Barnes
Reviewed by Tamer Elshayal
Food Security in the Middle East
edited by Zahra Babar and Suzi Mirgani
Reviewed by Max Ajl
Counting Islam: Religion, Class, and Elections in Egypt
by Tarek Masoud
Reviewed by Rana B. Khoury
Group Conflict and Political Mobilization in Bahrain and the Arab Gulf: Rethinking the Rentier State
by Justin Gengler
Reviewed by Kylie Moore-Gilbert
Urbicide in Palestine: Spaces of Oppression and Resilienceby
by Nurhan Abujidi
Reviewed by Lisa Taraki
Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post–Cold War Order
by Paul Thomas Chamberlin
Reviewed by Sara Awartani