Middle Eastern studies

Abstract: Preface ix PART I Introduction Chapter 1: The Puzzle of the Middle East's Economic Underdevelopment 3 Chapter 2: Analyzing the Economic Role of Islam 25 PART II Organizational Stagnation Chapter 3: Commercial Life under Islamic Rule 45 Chapter 4: The Persistent Simplicity of Islamic Partnerships 63 Chapter 5: Drawbacks of the Islamic Inheritance System 78 Chapter 6: The Absence of the Corporation in Islamic Law 97 Chapter 7: Barriers to the Emergence of a Middle Eastern Business Corporation 117 Chapter 8: Credit Markets without Banks 143 PART III The Makings of Underdevelopment Chapter 9: The Islamization of Non-Muslim Economic Life 169 Chapter 10: The Ascent of the Middle East's Religious Minorities 189 Chapter 11: Origins and Fiscal Impact of the Capitulations 209 Chapter 12: Foreign Privileges as Facilitators of Impersonal Exchange 228 Chapter 13: The Absence of Middle Eastern Consuls 254 PART IV Conclusions Chapter 14: Did Islam Inhibit Economic Development? 279 Notes 303 References 349 Index 393

Abstract: The recent revival of interest in "the state" in American political science and sociology has not yet been widely reflected in Middle Eastern studies in the United States.' Compared with European or Latin American studies, Middle Eastern studies have contributed relatively little to the development of analytical approaches in political science and have been slow to incorporate new theoretical perspectives. Description has prevailed over analysis, and efforts to understand and interpret political life have as often emphasized the uniqueness of the region as they have illuminated avenues of comparison with other parts of the world.2 Insofar as Middle Eastern studies have shared the theoretical preoccupations of political science, the region has been the subject of what Skocpol has called the "society-centered" approaches which have dominated study of other regions since the second world war.3 Indeed, the Middle East has seemed to be a particularly appropriate focus for such a perspective. The roles of tribalism, sectarianism, regionalism, primordial sentiments, and ascriptive identities in Middle Eastern politics contributed to the view that the state is little more than an arena of socially engendered conflict or an instrument of family, sect, or class domination.

Abstract: In the year 1000, the economy of the Middle East was at least as advanced as that of Europe But by 1800, the region had fallen dramatically behind--in living standards, technology, and economic institutions In short, the Middle East had failed to modernize economically as the West surged ahead What caused this long divergence? And why does the Middle East remain drastically underdeveloped compared to the West? In The Long Divergence, one of the world's leading experts on Islamic economic institutions and the economy of the Middle East provides a new answer to these long-debated questions Timur Kuran argues that what slowed the economic development of the Middle East was not colonialism or geography, still less Muslim attitudes or some incompatibility between Islam and capitalism Rather, starting around the tenth century, Islamic legal institutions, which had benefitted the Middle Eastern economy in the early centuries of Islam, began to act as a drag on development by slowing or blocking the emergence of central features of modern economic life--including private capital accumulation, corporations, large-scale production, and impersonal exchange By the nineteenth century, modern economic institutions began to be transplanted to the Middle East, but its economy has not caught up And there is no quick fix today Low trust, rampant corruption, and weak civil societies--all characteristic of the region's economies today and all legacies of its economic history--will take generations to overcome The Long Divergence opens up a frank and honest debate on a crucial issue that even some of the most ardent secularists in the Muslim world have hesitated to discuss

Abstract: Hailed in The New York Times Book Review as "the doyen of Middle Eastern studies," Bernard Lewis has been for half a century one of the West's foremost scholars of Islamic history and culture, the author of over two dozen books, most notably The Arabs in History, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, The Political Language of Islam, and The Muslim Discovery of Europe Eminent French historian Robert Mantran has written of Lewis's work: "How could one resist being attracted to the books of an author who opens for you the doors of an unknown or misunderstood universe, who leads you within to its innermost domains: religion, ways of thinking, conceptions of power, culture-an author who upsets notions too often fixed, fallacious, or partisan" In Islam and the West, Bernard Lewis brings together in one volume eleven essays that indeed open doors to the innermost domains of Islam Lewis ranges far and wide in these essays He includes long pieces, such as his capsule history of the interaction-in war and peace, in commerce and culture-between Europe and its Islamic neighbors, and shorter ones, such as his deft study of the Arabic word watan and what its linguistic history reveals about the introduction of the idea of patriotism from the West Lewis offers a revealing look at Edward Gibbon's portrait of Muhammad in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (unlike previous writers, Gibbon saw the rise of Islam not as something separate and isolated, nor as a regrettable aberration from the onward march of the church, but simply as a part of human history); he offers a devastating critique of Edward Said's controversial book, Orientalism; and he gives an account of the impediments to translating from classic Arabic to other languages (the old dictionaries, for one, are packed with scribal errors, misreadings, false analogies, and etymological deductions that pay little attention to the evolution of the language) And he concludes with an astute commentary on the Islamic world today, examining revivalism, fundamentalism, the role of the Shi'a, and the larger question of religious co-existence between Muslims, Christians, and Jews A matchless guide to the background of Middle East conflicts today, Islam and the West presents the seasoned reflections of an eminent authority on one of the most intriguing and little understood regions in the world