Iran in Late Antiquity

Part of it was a smaller average room size, I know, but I still got the feeling that at this year's MESA the panels I attended drew larger crowds than anything I was at last year except for the panel on modern Wahhabism chaired by Marc Lynch. Even here, however, two stood out, with not only the standing room only crowds I became used to, but people standing outside the door straining to here what was going on. One of these was this panel on authority and leadership in Shi'ism, which I'm not going to try blogging about, as I spent most of it scrunched up in tight seating by an annoying curtain before moving to the floor near the door both to ease my exit after the discussant spoke (I had to meet someone) and because most of the people standing looked like they could use a seat more than I could. I will, however, mention the importance of views of political authority in modern Shi'ism described primarily by Michaelle Browers of Wake Forest University, who highlighted the doctrine of the "guardianship of the righteous community" as an important alternative to Ayatollah Khomeini's "guardianship of the jurisprudent," as well as the discussion of Usuli democracy in the thought of Ayatollah Montazeri by Babak Rahimi of the University of California - San Diego.

The other, at the end of the day on Monday, was the fourth in a series on Iran in late antiquity sponsored by the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies and organized primarily by Ohio State's Parvaneh Pourshariati. Much as happened in early Islamic history during the 1990's, the 2000's have seen exciting new developments in the study of the Sasanian Empire, and to a lesser extent that of the Arsacids. In fact, Hugh Kennedy of the University of London's School for Oriental and African Studies, who began the session with a remembrance of Tel Aviv University's Ze'ev Rubin, one of the field's leading lights who recently passed away, declared his opinion that we were entering a "New Era" in the history of late antique Iran two key catalysts of which were the use of seals to reconstruct administrative history and the use of Syriac hagiographies for social history.

As almost all scholars today see the early Islamic world as representing continuity with rather than a sharp break with late antiquity, this renaissance has implications for the study of the development of Islam, as well. Kennedy's own paper, "Early Islamic Iraq and the Heritage of Late Sasanian Administrative Practice," was within this genre as he focused on the ways in which particular Sasanian practices of revenue generation, such as the head tax on those who did not practice the state's official religion, clearly entered wholesale into the financial administration of the caliphate, but the ends to which they were put, such as supporting the Muslim garrison towns of Basra and Kufa, were completely new.

The other two papers included one by Khodadad Rezakhani seeking to break down the generalizations of prosperity or decline when applied to all territories notionally under the rule of an empire by highlighting the different conditions which existed in micro-regions. My own paper at last year's MESA, "Eastern Arabia in the Sasanian Period: New Perspectives," was similar in that it reconsidered the evidence from written Arabic sources in light of the archaeological argument that the region saw a significant decline on the eve of Islam, rather than being at the height of its prosperity as had been put forward by J.C. Wilkinson during the 1970's and largely accepted since then. He was followed by Richard Bulliet, who presented the outline of his typically stimulating and provocative argument from his new book Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran. I won't go into all of it, which makes it even more a summary than the presentation itself was, but a key point is the fact that during the 11th century, lots of disasters were happening throughout the Middle East. Bulliet links this to climate, noting that much of Eurasia was going through an exceptionally cold period during that time, seen in tree ring evidence from Siberia and supported by accounts in the Arabic and Persian sources which tell, for example, of almost two feet of snow falling in a single blizzard in Baghdad and not melting for three weeks. The effects of this were amplified by an agricultural change in Iran which saw the introduction of cotton as a new and highly profitable cash crop by Arabs after the conquests. Because cotton is a summer crop, food crops were primarily grown during the winter, and the loss of the winter growing season thus led to starvation since the wealthy landowners weren't inclined to give up the cotton gravy train while it was still running.

The discussant, UCLA's Michael Morony, spent most of his time amiably cutting into Bulliet's argument, which he saw as "plausible" but troubled by a number of unaddressed points and unanswered questions regarding different types of cotton and soil management and various other points. It didn't have that much to do with Iran in late antiquity, but it did make me want to get a copy of the book, preferably with a good critical review alongside it.

Xunantunich

After leaving Boston, I went to Belize. This picture shows the "El Castillo" temple in the background of a dividing structure amidst the Maya ruins at Xunantunich, near the Guatemalan border.

History of the Caliphates

Several years ago, I heard a senior historian of the modern Middle East express surprise that there were still topics left unstudied in the history of what, borrowing a European term but changing its meaning, we call the medieval period. Far from it - in fact, I'd say we're just getting started approaching the era at the level that other fields of history with similar issues take for granted. This year's MESA offered a wealth of riches on the caliphal period, featuring senior scholars not only from North America, but Europe and the Middle East, as well.

The first panel I attended, although I was late and missed a lot of it, was on "Ibn Asakir in Medieval Arabic Historiography." Presenting on the panel were Steven Judd of Southern Connecticut State University, Zayde Antrim of Trinity College, Nancy Khalek of Brown University, and Suleiman Mourad of Smith College, with the University of Chicago's Fred Donner as discussant and the University of Washington's Jere Bacharach as chair. One major development in the field it represented is the use of previously neglected sources providing a different view of history than that offered by the standard narrative drawn from al-Tabari's History of Caliphs and Kings. Of course "neglected" might be too harsh with Ibn 'Asakir's History of the City of Damascus," as a complete edited scholarly edition of this work appeared only recently. Before then, anyone using it had to consult manuscript versions. As the edited version extends to 80 volumes, you can see how that might be unwieldy.

Donner, however, noted something else: That all the papers focused largely on Ibn Asakir's agenda, which almost certainly had something to do with promoting the glory of the Bilad al-Sham, what is now Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories, during the period of the early Crusades. I wish I had made more of the papers, but can report on Judd's. The work is primarily a biographical dictionary of everyone in some manner attached to Damascus, and Judd highlighted the differences between Ibn 'Asakir's biography of that Umayyad-period figure Khalid al-Qasri and the account of his deeds in Tabari. One implication of this, spelled out fully in the discussion, is the acknowledgment that there were multiple versions of key historical developments floating around, at the very least in different regions, and perhaps representing different social and political trends, as well, as with the more basic contradictory Sunni and Shi'ite accounts of some aspects of the pre-Umayyad period. What one questioner called "the canonization of Tabari" probably took place unevenly, and may not have been full across the Islamic world's historical core until centuries after his death.

A key aspect of the historical project, then is to increase our understanding of the sources themselves by examining the information we have about their authors and the contents of the texts themselves, especially in comparison with other texts and the way they chose to include or leave out aspects of sources we know they consulted and, frankly, as much of the history of the transmission of the information as we can recover. The same issues were at play in two papers in the session I chaired, that by Bilal Orfali from the American University of Beirut and the University of Wisconsin's Scott Savran.

An 8 a.m. session this morning, however, moved past that level to focus on "Umayyad Practices of Power." One paper was an iconoclastic argument by DePaul University's Khaled Keshk that the Umayyad caliph Mu'awiya may not have been the one to appoint Yazid as his successor, and if he did, it was done in the interests of the Syrian nobility rather than dynasticism. The University of Maryland's Antoine Borrut placed the Umayyads in the framework of itinerant kingship known from many other societies. Chicago's Mark Luce examined how Asad b. Abdullah al-Qasri (brother of Khalid) implemented Umayyad strategies for ruling Khurasan, while Abdulhadi Alajmi of Kuwait University suggested that the rhetoric of al-Walid II, who reigned from 743-4, which is often taken as representative of the Umayyads' general presentation of their right to rule, actually represented a break from a different tradition of Umayyad self-presentation of which he was unable to take advantage. Finally Donner himself gave a paper entitled "Qur'anicization of Religio-Political Discourse in the Umayyad Period," working out the implications for the Umayyad period of the frequent understanding that Islam began as a religious movement centered on a return to monotheistic purity centered around the God of Abraham.

The discussant, Oxford University's Chase Robinson, made insightful comments on all these papers, but what stands out as most bloggable is his laying out of five key developments in Umayyad history over the past 20-25 years. The first of these is a focus on "the character of Umayyad statecraft" and "modalities of Umayyad legitimacy," the thrust of which is in part the working out of the implications of the book God's Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam by Patricia Crone and Martin Hinds. Probably linked to this is the second focus, on Umayyad visual culture and the cultivation of an imperial image. It is, after all, through monumental building and coinage that authorities in societies with low literacy rates sought to convey their political messages. (See the link for a summary of the argument in God's Caliph. It is a much sounder work than Hagarism, which was also co-written by Crone, though it still has detractors.)

Robinson's third key focus is an interest in settlement and urbanization, particularly with the aid of archaeology from the Bilad al-Sham region and the topographical discussions in Ibn 'Asakir. Yet another focus is administration and finance, with the fifth, and really one of the oldest, going way back to Julius Wellhausen's work 100 years ago, being factionalism and the regime's political fragility which ultimately segues into the reasons for its collapse in the face of the Abbasid Revolution.

Do I need a concluding comment? If so, it would be a return to the theme of my first paragraph. Hold on tight - this ride is just getting started, but is moving full speed ahead.

Gulf Political Change

My last post mentioned one of the papers in the panel "Dynamics of Political Change in the Gulf: Implications of Electoral Politics in Iran and Kuwait," organized by Bjorn Olav Utvik of the University of Oslo's Gulf Research Unit. I would be remiss, however, in not mentioning the other four papers. Two University of Oslo scholars presented material related to Iran's 2009 Presidential election, with Kjetil Selvik suggesting that reformist leaders have gone from seeing themselves as representing the people to identifying with them and Yadullah Shahibzadeh arguing that reformists have supported an active local political because of its empowering effects.

Jon Nordenson's focus was not on the Green movement, however, but the Orange in Kuwait in 2006. His argument was that the internet provided a new public space which was important in the creation of a public sphere enabling the mass movement in favor of election law reform. Listening to it, though, I felt almost like he was moving past his major points, focusing on the potential role of technology in political change. I was excited by his continually referring to the internet as a space, which is something I suggested in this article. He also clearly understood that it's not just the uncensored technology that matters, but the way in which its specific properties shape the manner and possibilities of communication, which is really one of the key contributions of Elizabeth Eisenstein's work on print in early modern Europe. The discussant, Georgia State University's Michael Herb, added a mention of the importance of Kuwaiti newspapers as an open forum for communication aside from the internet. It's a little off topic, but I was intrigued to learn that part of the negotiations which led to the deposition of Emir Saad in January 2006 involved his wife's demands for material goods; this was covered at the time in Kuwaiti press, though perhaps with the support of factions within the Al Sabah.

James Redman, a graduate student at the University of Utah, gave a paper proposing a theory on why Kuwaiti diwaniyyah's not only continue to exist, but are multiplying when similar institutions elsewhere have died out when mass education and a commercial economy led to a shift in the social practices of clientage which sustained them. I was disappointed there wasn't more, or really any, discussion of this paper, as I've wondered the same thing. Redman's answer was that the diwaniyyah served as a site of brokerage between agents of the state, the cliques which in some Arab countries would be called shillas, and society, which are necessary because the state controls so much of life for Kuwaiti citizens and need the forms of brokerage such traditional institutions provide.

I found this paper important in part because in the past I've usually seen the diwaniyyahs portrayed as a sort of Kuwaiti shilla. By focusing on the concrete aspects of practice, however, Redman portrayed them in a way that is much more fluid than the factionalism which the latter term evokes, at least for me. (I'm only working with undergraduate knowledge on that point.) Individuals, for example, patronize multiple diwaniyyahs as their needs and interests change. However, I'm not certain Redman's paper gets to the root of things. Are there comparable institutions and practices in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates? If so, they're not nearly as remarked upon, and if not, then I'm not sure Redman's explanation for Kuwait allows for what happened to the comparable institutions in those societies. I suspect that to the power of the Kuwaiti distributive state, we need to add the existence of political actors independent of the ruling family with whom people would have a reason to network.

Islamist Politics at MESA

Greetings from the 2009 annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, where I've had the pleasure of attending four panels so far, all of which were interesting. One which probably has some interest for readers was Islamist Parties and the Political Process, which examined Islamist political movements in Morocco, Libya, and Algeria with eyes on inclusion in the formal political process, trends toward moderation, and competition among movements for members.

I write this based on my notes and the abstracts on the panel web site, but warn anyone who clicks through that ideas can shift between the submission of the abstract and the actual paper, and I think something like that happened with the paper "Public Religion, Democracy and Islam: Examining the Moderation Thesis in Algeria" by the University of Notre Dame's Michael Driessen. At the very least, while I guess some of what's in the abstract makes sense given the paper, my own notes picked up on different themes, perhaps because history is a less theory-driven field than political science and the abstract couched its topic in terms of theory. That said, he talked about the nationalization of religion which has taken place during the past decade or so as a means of co-opting Islamists and government attempts to manage religion, but also notes that, once the religious ideas are floating around, ideas, attitudes, and behaviors develop independent of both government and opposition Islamist influences, which he called an "individualization" of Islamist ideas. (Or was the government competing with the Islamists? The abstract suggests the former, but my memory the latter.)

The well-known Algerian Civil War of the 1990's was an influence seen in the paper of Noureddine Jebnoun of the University of Montana, which was called "The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG): From Armed Confrontation to Ideological Reversal." That conflict led the Libyan government to perceive and sell the perception of Islamist forces in their own country as a major threat, and quelling that threat was one of the objectives behind the Qadhafi regime's reconciliation with the United States. Since then the LIFG has come to seek its own reconciliation with the Libyan regime, renouncing both violence and the practice of takfir, or rejecting another's claim to me Muslim, in what Jabnoun sees as a sincere change of attitude.

The other two papers (a fifth presenter was unable to attend) dealt with Morocco, and were focused to some extent on the Justice and Development Party's position in Moroccan politics and society. The government has legalized its political participation, and today it is the largest opposition party in parliament. However, St. John's University's Azzedine Layachi argues in "Official and Popular Islam: The PJD and the Struggle for Legitimacy," this cannot be seen as a successful co-option of Islamism into the Moroccan regime as the PJD does not represent the bulk of Moroccan Islamists. Layachi put forward the idea that it might ultimately be on the same path as socialism in North Africa, gradually losing contact with its grassroots in gaining inclusion without being able to act on any of its agenda.

The University of Texas's Avi Spiegel focused exactly on those grassroots supporters with his study of the political attitudes of youth in Rabat, Casablanca, and the belt along the train tracks between them. In addition to the PJD, he looked at the JSO, or Justice and Spirituality Organization, an illegal rival of the PJD, as a means of conceptualizing not the relationship of an Islamist movement to the state, but the relationship of Islamist movements with each other. In this case, the two organizations acted as rivals competing for supporters and therefore resources. Spiegel portrayed a fluid world, but argued for a broader trend in which, instead of disillusioned youth pushing seasoned movement leaders to take more radical stances, movements' desire to broaden their base among youth led to an increasing moderation of an initially highly conservative religious message. I forget if this was addressed by Speigel, Layachi, or both, but in entering parliament, the PJD has added to its traditional focus on public morals and family law one on political reform which it uses to compete for public support.

Similar ideas came up later in the day in a panel on political change in Iran and Kuwait in a paper by the University of Oslo's Bjorn Olav Utvik called "Electoral Religion: Salafis and Muslim Brothers Competing for Votes in Kuwait." One of his points was that due to Kuwait's somewhat open political system, one gains relevance in that country through election to parliament, and therefore in order to compete with the Muslim Brotherhood in the country, the Salafis had to enter the political fray. Since doing so, however, the Salafis have drifted well away from the common image of Salafism: The slogan of the most prominent hadhar Salafi MP is "Shari'a, stability, development," and all have taken on broader social and economic causes. In response to a question, Utvik, who was also at the morning session on North Africa, thought the idea of parties moderating to successfully compete for influence among the broader public made sense.

This has been a long post, so I won't say much about my own thoughts stimulated by all this, but I did think of Hamas, which has entered politics but focused on aspects of government other than moral reform, even in Gaza which it now dominates. The group has thus in a sense "moderated," but one side effect is that hardline elements then form their own groups, such as the al-Qaeda-like one from a few months ago. This, I think, represents a response both to Hamas's moderation and its inability to achieve much through its chosen strategy. The base unit of politics is not the autonomous organization, but the individual, and when individuals are free to choose whether or not to join organizations, those organizations will permutate based on their view of the benefits of recruiting new members and the strategies they employ to do so.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)

Comment

Maybe one day, I'll have time to post again.

West Bank Hamas

Omran Risheq addresses and important question: what is Hamas up to in the West Bank?

"Sources inside Hamas say that the movement has frozen its activities, in line with a 1989 strategy delineating how the movement should handle crises. Hamas followed this course in 1992, for example, when Israel exiled 416 activists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad to southern Lebanon following the kidnapping and murder of Israeli border patrol soldier Nassim Tolidano. Hamas is not ready, according to one of its leaders, to mobilize supporters behind a coherent course of action for fear of exposing them to arrest by the PA or Israel. Hamas also is reluctant to cause its followers to lose their jobs, given that 1200 of them have already been laid off from government jobs in the West Bank.

"This damage control strategy is due partly to Hamas’s belief that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas—unlike his predecessor Yasser Arafat--would not hesitate to destroy the group if it became too much of a nuisance to him. Arafat, on the other hand, was more careful in his dealings with Hamas for two reasons: he feared being seen as an agent of the Israeli occupation if he confronted Hamas forcefully; and he used Hamas as a card to boost his negotiating position with Israel, portraying himself as the only one capable of containing the group.

"Hamas has also gone to ground on the West Bank because it is convinced that the current situation will eventually redound to its benefit, especially given Abbas's inability to begin serious peace talks with Israel. U.S. President Barack Obama's failure to exercise pressure on Israel to stop building settlements in the West Bank has left Abbas in despair, leading him to announce that he will not run for reelection in the upcoming presidential elections."

Brotherhood Watching

Ibrahim al-Houdaiby's excellent overview of the challenges facing the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood reminds me of this session at this month's MESA meeting:

"It has been forty years since the publication of Richard P. Mitchell’s The Society of the Muslim Brothers, the seminal study of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and a groundbreaking work on modern Islamic movements. While commenting on Mitchell’s contributions to the field, this panel will also explore more recent studies of the Muslim Brotherhood. Panelists will pick up where Mitchell’s study leaves off, examining the movement from the 1950s to the present. Though Mitchell concludes with what appears to be the final blow to the organization in post-revolutionary Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood survived the period of repression in Gamal Abdel Nasser’s prisons. The first paper will describe the means by which the group’s leadership were not only able to communicate within the confines of prison networks, but also refine their message in keeping with the intellectual developments of the 1950s and 1960s. Influenced by the ideas of figures such as Sayyed Qutb and Hasan al-Hudaybi, the Muslim Brotherhood transformed its discourse in the face of new challenges. The second paper will explore the framing mechanisms employed in the Muslim Brotherhood’s literature following their release from prison and reconstitution in the 1970s. This period saw a reimagining of the recent past and a fresh outlook toward the future of Islamic activism. The third paper will focus on the concepts of 'auto-critique' and 'auto-reform' within the Muslim Brotherhood, dating back to the mid-1990s. Among the many questions to which these practices relate is the contemporary understanding of the early Muslim Brotherhood and the legacy of its founder, Hasan al-Banna. An interesting contrast emerges between Mitchell’s documentation of this figure and recent framings by the organization’s leaders. Finally, the fourth paper will examine the Muslim Brotherhood’s participation in the 2005 parliamentary elections, where it made surprising gains and its subsequent release of a party platform, sparking widespread debates over the future of the movement. From the organization examined by Mitchell, which attempted to negotiate a prominent role for itself in the age of liberal Egyptian politics, to the most recent election of the largest Brotherhood contingent in the movement’s history, the discussion comes full circle. In addition to owing much of their insights to Mitchell’s contribution four decades earlier, all of these papers have advanced the study of the Islamic movements generally and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in particular."

The presenters of the papers, in order, are Barbara H.E. Zollner, Abdullah al-Arian, and Carrie Rosefsky Wickham. Unfortunately the fourth paper, on the 2005 elections, seems to have been withdrawn. This session is high on the list of those I'm interested in attending, as the lack of a current history of the Arab world's most influential Islamist organization is a travesty.

Watching Yemen

I feel like I should be trying to learn more about this:

"Lambasting the dubious role being played by Iran in the stand-off between government forces and Al Houthi rebels in Yemen, Saudi analysts accused Iran of breeding ‘Al Houthi Hezbollah' in order to create a security headache for the kingdom.

"Dr Ali Al Atiyyah, a political analyst, said Al Houthi rebels are simply tools in the hands of a big player."

In the Christian Science Monitor, Laura Kasinof reports on another angle:

"While domestic insurgencies chip away at the control of Yemen's central government and an Al Qaeda branch gains strength in regions beyond the government's reach, another crisis — one that affects Yemen's entire population — has the potential to contribute to the country's instability and potential trajectory toward failure.

"Yemen is running out of water – fast.

"But the water crisis and the rise of militancy are not unrelated perils said Abdulrahman Al Eryani, Yemen's minister of Water and Environment, in an interview. Much of the country's rising militancy, he argues, is a conflict over resources.

"'They manifest themselves in very different ways: tribal conflicts, sectarian conflicts, political conflicts. Really they are all about sharing and participating in the resources of the country, either oil, or water and land,' said Minister Eryani. 'Some researchers from Sanaa University had very alarming figures. They said that between 70-80 percent of all rural conflicts in Yemen are related to water.'

"Khalid Al-Thour, a geology professor at Sanaa University, adds that recent reports have indicated that Sanaa's wells will run dry by 2015 at current water-usage rates."

Tenured Radical's Academic Job Search Advice

Last year, Tenured Radical did a series of posts on the academic job search. I've referred people to these, and been asked where they are, but putting them all together is a pain, and the relevant tag is slowly getting dated, so I've decided to do so just once in a post here which can then be forwarded to people. Without further ado:

Another Year, Another Job Market: When Not Perfecting Your Tan This Summer, How Can You Prepare?

What Do You Do, Dear? The Radical Announces a Series of Posts on the Upcoming Job Season (The real beginning of the series, with advice for search chairs)

Tell Me What You Want -- What You Really, Really, Want: Writing and Placing the Job Advertisement

Dream A Little Dream Of Me: Six Easy Steps to Writing a Great Job Letter

Jumping the Tracks: Applying for a Job When You Already Have One

Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe*: Or, How to Evaluate the Candidate Pool

Receiving the Call: What To Do When Scheduling A Conference Interview

How To Succeed At Your AHA Interview Without Really Trying: Looking Smart

Grand Hotel: The AHA Conference Interview Redux

Advanced Interviewing; or, My Favorite Martian

If At First You Don't Succeed: Getting A Visiting or Adjunct Teaching Gig -- And Do You Really Want One? (Not part of the series, but it seems to fit here)

More advice is, of course, being posted across the academic blogosphere all the time.

Egyptian Fish Farms

Inter Press Service reports on the growth of fish farming in Egypt:

"Egypt has built the largest aquaculture industry in Africa, accounting for four out of every five fish farmed on the continent. Egyptian fish farms produced over 650,000 tons of finfish last year, or about 60 percent of the country's total freshwater and marine fish production, providing a cheap source of protein for the country's 80 million people...

"Commercial fish farming in Egypt began in the 1960s with mullet-rearing pens in coastal lakes and lagoons. The industry has witnessed explosive growth over the past decade. Total aquaculture production has grown by 500 percent since 1998 due to a shift to intensive rearing methods and faster growing species such as tilapia...

"Integrated aquaculture currently accounts for a small fraction of Egypt's total fish farm production, but its share is expected to grow quickly. Fathy sees enormous potential for the technique to increase the food productivity of vast tracts of reclaimed desert land."

Egypt has been pushing fishing for awhile, and it is the largest fish producer in the Middle East as well as Africa. The biggest fish stock is actually found, not near the Mediterranean, but in Lake Nasser.