A New Old Damascus

Author : Christa Salamandra
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2004-12-10
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0253110416

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A New Old Damascus by Christa Salamandra Pdf

"[F]illed with rare encounters with Syria's oldest, most elite families. Critics of anthropology's taste for exoticism and marginality will savor this study of upper-class Damascus, a world that is urbane and cosmopolitan, yet in many ways as remote as the settings in which the best ethnography has traditionally been done.... [Written] with a nuanced appreciation of the cultural forms in question and how Damascenes themselves think, talk about, and create them." -- Andrew Shryock In contemporary urban Syria, debates about the representation, preservation, and restoration of the Old City of Damascus have become part of status competition and identity construction among the city's elite. In theme restaurants and nightclubs that play on images of Syrian tradition, in television programs, nostalgic literature, and visual art, and in the rhetoric of historic preservation groups, the idea of the Old City has become a commodity for the consumption of tourists and, most important, of new and old segments of the Syrian upper class. In this lively ethnographic study, Christa Salamandra argues that in deploying and debating such representations, Syrians dispute the past and criticize the present. Indiana Series in Middle East Studies -- Mark Tessler, general editor

Author : Vinayak Bharne
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2012-11-12
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9781136208515

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The Emerging Asian City by Vinayak Bharne Pdf

The Asian urban landscape contains nearly half of the planet’s inhabitants and more than half of its slum population living in some of its oldest and densest cities. It encompasses some of the world’s oldest civilizations and colonizations, and today contains some of the world’s fastest growing cities and economies. As such Asian cities create concomitant imagery – polarizations of poverty and wealth, blurred lines between formality and informality, and stark juxtapositions of ancient historic places with shimmering new skylines. This book embraces the complexity and ambiguity of the Asian urban landscape, and surveys its bewildering array of multifarious urbanities and urbanisms. Twenty-four essays offer scholarly reflections and positions on the complex forces and issues shaping Asian cities today, looking at why Asian cities are different from the West and whether they are treading a different path to their futures. Their combined narrative – spanning from Turkey to Japan and Mongolia to Indonesia - is framed around three sections: Traditions reflects on indigenous urbanisms and historic places, Tensions reflects on the legacies of Asia’s East–West dialectic through both colonialism and modernism and Transformations examines Asia’s new emerging utopias and urban aspirations. The book claims that the histories and destinies of cities across various parts of Asia are far too enmeshed to unpack or oversimplify. Avoiding the categorization of Asian cities exclusively by geographic location (south-east, Middle East), or the convenient tagging of the term Asian on selective regional parts of the continent, it takes a broad intellectual view of the Asian urban landscape as a 'both...and' phenomenon; as a series of diverse confluences – geographic, historic and political – extending from the deserts of the Persian Gulf region to the Pearl River Delta. Arguing for Asian cities to be taken seriously on their own terms, this book represents Asia – as a fount of extraordinary knowledge that can challenge our fundamental preconceptions of what cities are and ought to be.

Author : Faedah M. Totah
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2014-05-28
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780815652625

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Preserving the Old City of Damascus by Faedah M. Totah Pdf

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.

Author : Brigid Keenan,Tim Beddow
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : Travel
ISBN : 0500282994

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Damascus by Brigid Keenan,Tim Beddow Pdf

Damascus, reputed to be the worldʹs oldest continually inhabited city, has enjoyed a history of immense grandeur, enormous political and mercantile power, and great cultural and artistic achievement. In addition to some of Islamʹs most magnificent architecture, such as the Umayyad Mosque, the city boasts a heritage of fairy-tale palaces and sumptuous private houses. Sadly, many of them are in urgent need of restoration. Brigid Keenan and Tim Beddow were given unprecedented access to the inner, "hidden" city, which has resulted in a book that is of immense importance to all concerned with the heritage of architecture in the Islamic world. The superb photographs include façades, courtyards, alleyways and fountains, and the breathtaking interiors that often lie behind the unassuming walls of the old town, with exquisite details in stone, wood, paint, marble, plaster, glass and mother-of-pearl. The whole, published with the generous support of Wafic Rida Said, forms a convincing and elegiac plea for the preservation of the heart of this historic ancient capital. -- Jacket.

Author : Leila Hudson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 201 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2008-07-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780857717467

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Transforming Damascus by Leila Hudson Pdf

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.

Author : Paul Haupt,Horace Howard Furness
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 1898
Category : Bible
ISBN : UOM:39015073335476

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The Sacred Books of the Old and New Testaments by Paul Haupt,Horace Howard Furness Pdf

Author : Leah Cheung Ah Li
Publisher : LIT Verlag Münster
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2018-09
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9783643908872

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Where the Past meets the Future by Leah Cheung Ah Li Pdf

Xi'an, the former Chang'an - home to the terracotta army and capital to 13 dynasties of Chinese emperors - experienced World Heritage fame in 1987 when the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor was listed. In 2014, five more heritage sites in Xi'an were listed as part of the Silk Roads World Heritage nomination. The ancient capital represents glorious moments of Chinese history and local citizens are proud of Xi'an's archaeological and historical status. However, the modern cityscape is as much shaped by high rises as by historical buildings and heritage policies intersect with demands for urbanization, modernization, and economic growth. This book seeks to understand how modernity, history, and heritage are reconciled in this city where the past meets the future.

Author : Diana Darke
Publisher : Haus Publishing
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2014-08-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781908323651

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My House in Damascus by Diana Darke Pdf

The ongoing conflict in Syria has made clear just how limited the general knowledge of Syrian society and history is in the West. For those watching the headlines and wondering what led the nation to this point, and what might come next, this book is a perfect place to start developing a deeper understanding. Based on decades of living and working in Syria, My House in Damascus offers an inside view of Syria’s cultural and complex religious and ethnic communities. Diana Darke, a fluent Arabic speaker who moved to Damascus in 2004 after decades of regular visits, details the ways that the Assad regime, and its relationship to the people, differs from the regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya—and why it was thus always less likely to collapse quickly, even in the face of widespread unrest and violence. Through the author’s firsthand experiences of buying and restoring a house in the old city of Damascus, which she later offered as a sanctuary to friends, Darke presents a clear picture of the realities of life on the ground and what hope there is for Syria’s future.

Author : Ross Burns
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 409 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2007-06-11
Category : Education
ISBN : 9781134488506

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Damascus by Ross Burns Pdf

Lavishly illustrated with beautiful photographs and original plans, traces the story of this colourful, significant and complex place through its physical development and provides, for the first time in English, a compelling and unique exploration of a.

Author : Hazem Fadel
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 140 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2016-02-08
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781443888530

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From Damascus to Beirut by Hazem Fadel Pdf

Notably, studies on the Arabic novel tend to focus on canonical writers, like the Egyptian novelist and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006), and leave out or just mention en passant the work of others. This book is not concerned with the ways in which the Arabic novel breaks away from or reproduces Mahfouz’s approach and techniques, but focuses instead on the way in which the authors in question engage with the phenomena of nationalism, feminism, post- and neo-colonialism, civil war, and social change in the Arab world using an urban scenario as their privileged point of observation. The Arabic city is privileged as a focal point because it is the space where the struggles over issues of nation-building, gender, religion, and class, as well as the patriarchal, colonialist, Zionist, and sectarian violence linked to these issues, manifest themselves most evidently. To this end, From Damascus to Beirut: Contested Cities in Arab Writing brings together four novels published between 1969 and 1989, which have never been approached from this perspective nor put in this kind of dialogue before. Ulfat Idilbi’s Damascus, Ghassan Kanafani’s Haifa, Ahlam Mosteghanemi’s Constantine, and Elias Khoury’s Beirut are social and historical products, and, as such, as Henri Lefebvre maintains, are deeply rooted in politics and affected by ideology. The cities discussed here, in fact, display the ebbs and flows of political and social life in their respective countries and in the Arab world in general. Each city stands at a crucial point in the history of the Arab world, and the way in which they are represented by their respective authors sets the stage for, and sometimes even foreshadows, an upcoming defeat or disappointment. Albeit for different reasons, Damascus, Haifa, Constantine and Beirut are all expressions of failures either on national, political, social, or economic levels. Paradoxically, however, they are also the repositories of their people’s hopes and aspirations, as well as of their disappointments. Analysing these novels as such, this book will be of particular interest to postcolonial readers and, more importantly, to English-speaking readers who are interested in the study of modern Arabic literature. Its close textual analysis offers the reader new tools not only for understanding themes and narrative techniques pertaining to the Arabic novel, but also the contemporary political, cultural and social issues that produced them.

Author : Max Weiss
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 536 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2022-06-28
Category : History
ISBN : 9781503631960

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Revolutions Aesthetic by Max Weiss Pdf

The November 1970 coup that brought Hafiz al-Asad to power fundamentally transformed cultural production in Syria. A comprehensive intellectual, ideological, and political project—a Ba'thist cultural revolution—sought to align artistic endeavors with the ideological interests of the regime. The ensuing agonistic struggle pitted official aesthetics of power against alternative modes of creative expression that could evade or ignore the effects of the state. With this book, Max Weiss offers the first cultural and intellectual history of Ba'thist Syria, from the coming to power of Hafiz al-Asad, through the transitional period under Bashar al-Asad, and continuing up through the Syria War. Revolutions Aesthetic reconceptualizes contemporary Syrian politics, authoritarianism, and cultural life. Engaging rich original sources—novels, films, and cultural periodicals—Weiss highlights themes crucial to the making of contemporary Syria: heroism and leadership, gender and power, comedy and ideology, surveillance and the senses, witnessing and temporality, and death and the imagination. Revolutions Aesthetic places front and center the struggle around aesthetic ideology that has been key to the constitution of state, society, and culture in Syria over the course of the past fifty years.

Author : Uri M. Kupferschmidt
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 307 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2023-10-02
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9783110777307

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The Diffusion of “Small” Western Technologies in the Middle East by Uri M. Kupferschmidt Pdf

In recent years we have become interested in the diffusion of “small” Western technologies in the countries of the Middle East during the 19th and 20th centuries, the era of Imperialism and first globalization. We postulated a contrast between “small” and “big” technologies. Under the latter category we may understand railway systems, electricity grids, telegraph networks, and steam navigation, imposed by foreign powers or installed by connected local entrepreneurs. But many “small” Western technologies, such as sewing machines, typewriters, pianos, eyeglasses, and similar consumer goods, which had been developed and manufactured in Europe and America, were wanted, and willingly acquired by the agency of individual users elsewhere. In a few cases, however, the inventions had to be adapted, or were overstepped, and even delayed. Some were adopted as social markers or status symbols only by elites who could afford them. Processes of adoption and diffusion therefore differed according to cultural settings, preferences, and needs. Social and cultural historians, and social scientists, not only of the Middle East, will find in this collection of essays a new approach to the impact of Western technological inventions on the Middle East.

Author : Steven Heydemann,Reinoud Leenders
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2013-01-09
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780804784351

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Middle East Authoritarianisms by Steven Heydemann,Reinoud Leenders Pdf

The developments of early 2011 changes the political landscape of the Middle East. But even as urgent struggles continue, it remains clear that authoritarianism will survive this transformational moment. The study of authoritarian governance, therefore, remains essential for our understanding of the political dynamics and inner workings of regimes across the region. This volume considers the Syrian and Iranian regimes—what they share in common and what distinguishes them. Too frequently, authoritarianism has been assumed to be a generic descriptor of the region and differences among regimes have been overlooked. But as the political trajectories of Middle Eastern states diverge in years ahead, with some perhaps consolidating democratic gains while others remaining under distinct and resilient forms of authoritarian rule, understanding variations in modes of authoritarian governance and the attributes that promote regime resilience becomes an increasingly urgent priority.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 1124 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 1894
Category : Christianity
ISBN : NYPL:33433003055872

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Christian Work by Anonim Pdf

Author : Vivian Strotmann
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2015-10-14
Category : History
ISBN : 9789004305403

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Majd al-Dīn al-Fīrūzābādī (1329-1415) by Vivian Strotmann Pdf

In Majd al-Dīn al-Fīrūzābādī (1329-1415): A Polymath on the Eve of the Early Modern Period, Vivian Strotmann examines the scholar’s life and works, his importance for the defence of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s teachings and for developments during the Early Modern Period.