bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Facile synthesis of novel nonpeptide angiotensin II receptor antagonists
Authors: Yang Ling‐Chun , Zhang Guan‐Xin , Zou Nan‐Zhi , Qi Chuan‐Min
Published: April 2009

A series of Losartan analogues 1‐12 with different functional groups were synthesized and characterized. In comparison with the previous reports, the synthetic procedures described in this paper have been optimized as follows below: 1) preparation of aromatic amine 15 and 18 through hydrogenation by employing Raney Ni and hydrazine as catalysts in place of palladium; 2) preparation of nitro‐compound 17 by using pure fuming nitric acid at ‐20 ‐ ‐15 °C; 3) alkylation of 21 with 22 or 23 in the presence of sodium hydride in place of potassium tert‐butylate; 4) preparation of carboxylic acid 4 by ester cleavage rather than hydrolysis of cyano group.
A TDMA MAC protocol for multiservice wirelessad hocnetworks
Authors: Gállego José Ramón , Canales María , Hernández‐Solana Ángela , Valdovinos Antonio
Published: April 2009

Quality of Service (QoS) provision in wirelessad hocnetworks requires the support of efficient MAC protocols and Radio Resource Management strategies to efficiently handle the access process and to achieve a high resource reuse. In this context, we present in this paper a MAC proposal capable of providing resource reservation and service differentiation in the medium access level as a basis for guaranteeing end‐to‐end QoS support in higher levels. We propose a TDMA MAC structure based on a frame subdivision consisting of a broadcast control phase and a data phase. We have designed an adaptive strategy to share the resources between both control and data services and a resource reservation strategy for data services that solves the problems stemmed from the contention for the medium, also adding a service differentiation mechanism based on priorities. In addition, we evaluate the impact of a realistic propagation channel considering multipath fading and users interference on the performance of this scheme. In this scenario, we propose modifications to guarantee the reliability and efficiency of both broadcast control and data services, including power control techniques. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Swarm intelligence‐based anycast routing protocol in ubiquitous networks
Authors: Hwang Ren‐Hung , Hoh Cheng‐Chang , Wang Chiung‐Ying
Published: April 2009

As digital devices with communication capability become more pervasive, we are entering the era of ubiquitous computing, as predicted by Mark Weiser. In ubiquitous environments, distributed context management servers are deployed everywhere to provide information and computing resources for users anytime and anywhere. Smart handheld computing devices with context‐aware applications may retrieve context information from the nearest server. This study investigates the problem of routing packets to the nearest server in a ubiquitous environment. An anycast routing protocol based on swarm intelligence, referred to as ARPSI, is proposed to route packets dynamically to a nearby server in a mobile,ad hoc, wireless network. Based on swarm intelligence, ARPSI is able to find a short path to a neighboring server efficiently and quickly. Simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of ARPSI and our simulation results show that ARPSI achieves a higher packet delivery ratio, shorter routing path to anycast servers, and lower control packet overhead than the AODV‐based anycast protocol (A‐AODV) protocol. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Theorising Interventions as Events in Systems
Authors: Hawe Penelope , Shiell Alan , Riley Therese
Published: April 2009

Conventional thinking about preventive interventions focuses over simplistically on the “package” of activities and/or their educational messages. An alternative is to focus on the dynamic properties of the context into which the intervention is introduced. Schools, communities and worksites can be thought of as complex ecological systems. They can be theorised on three dimensions: (1) their constituent activity settings (e.g., clubs, festivals, assemblies, classrooms); (2) the social networks that connect the people and the settings; and (3) time. An intervention may then be seen as a critical event in the history of a system, leading to the evolution of new structures of interaction and new shared meanings. Interventions impact on evolving networks of person‐time‐place interaction, changing relationships, displacing existing activities and redistributing and transforming resources. This alternative view has significant implications for how interventions should be evaluated and how they could be made more effective. We explore this idea, drawing on social network analysis and complex systems theory.
Lipid Components of North American Wild Rice (Zizania palustris)
Authors: Przybylski R. , Klensporf‐Pawlik D. , Anwar F. , Rudzinska M.
Published: April 2009

The content and composition of fatty acids, sterols, tocopherols, and γ‐oryzanol in wild rice (Zizania palustris) grown in North America were compared with those in regular brown rice (Oryza sativa L.). The lipid content of wild rice ranged from 0.7 to 1.1%, compared with 2.7% in regular brown rice. The lipids of wild rice comprised mainly linoleic (35–37%) and linolenic (20–31%) acids. Other fatty acids included palmitic (14.1–18.4%), stearic (1.1–1.3%), and oleic (12.8–16.2%). Wild rice lipids contained very large amounts of sterols, ranging from 70 g/kg for a Saskatchewan sample to 145 g/kg for Minnesota Naturally Grown Lake and River Rice. The main sterols found in an unsaponified fraction were: campesterol (14–52%), β‐sitosterol (19–33%), Δ5‐avenasterol (5–12%), and cycloartenol (5–12%). Some of sterols, γ‐oryzanols, were present as the phenolic acid esters; the amount ranged from 459 to 730 mg/kg in wild rice lipids. The largest amounts of tocopherols and tocotrienols, 3682 and 9378 mg/kg, were observed in North Western Ontario wild rice samples, whereas the lowest were 251 mg/kg in an Athabasca Alberta sample and 224 mg/kg in regular long‐grain brown rice. The α isomer was the most abundant among tocopherols and tocotrienols. The results of this study showed that wild rice lipids contain large amounts of nutraceuticals with proven positive health effects.
Characterizing DNA methylation patterns in pancreatic cancer genome
Authors: Tan Aik Choon , Jimeno Antonio , Lin Steven H. , Wheelhouse Jenna , Chan Fonda , Solomon Anna , Rajeshkumar N.V. , Rubio-Viqueira Belen , Hidalgo Manuel
Published: April 2009

We performed a global methylation profiling assay on 1505 CpG sites across 807 genes to characterize DNA methylation patterns in pancreatic cancer genome. We found 289 CpG sites that were differentially methylated in normal pancreas, pancreatic tumors and cancer cell lines. We identified 23 and 35 candidate genes that are regulated by hypermethylation and hypomethylation in pancreatic cancer, respectively. We also identified candidate methylation markers that alter the expression of genes critical to gemcitabine susceptibility in pancreatic cancer. These results indicate that aberrant DNA methylation is a frequent epigenetic event in pancreatic cancer; and by using global methylation profiling assay, it is possible to identify these markers for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes in this disease.
Article Commentary: Penalties for health care fraud and abuse: January 2007‐March 2008
Authors: Shah Udayan K. , Johnston Douglas R. , Smith Gina Maisto , Ziv Barbara E. , Reilly James S.
Published: April 2009

This commentary details the providers, penalties, and affected regions resulting from US health care fraud and abuse prosecutions from January 2007 to March 2008. Database review found that over $3 billion in fines as well as incarceration in some cases were ordered for 21 convicted providers, 68 percent of whom were physicians, and to 41 nonproviders, most of whom were vendors of durable medical goods (36%), individual citizens (18%) and health care corporations (17%). Fewer claims were found against pharmaceutical firms (7%) and medical equipment manufacturers (4%). Most verdicts were in the state of Florida. False claims accounted for most of the violations for both providers and nonproviders. These severe repercussions of malfeasance should promote careful consideration and construction of the terms of engagement between health care providers, corporations, and payers.
Reduction in surgical innovation, 1988 to 2006
Authors: Rosow David E. , Likhterov Ilya , Stewart Michael G. , April Max M.
Published: April 2009

Objective

We hypothesize that increasing regulation of human subject research has reduced the number of published reports of surgical innovation in otolaryngology.

Study Design

A systematic review of a predetermined subset of otolaryngology literature.

Methods

We randomly selected half of the articles published in 1988 and 2006 in three prominent journals. After identifying information was concealed, abstracts were classified independently by two authors into three groups: innovation, modification, or neither. Disagreements were resolved by a third author who read the entire article. Proportions were compared with χ2 analysis.

Results

The proportion of articles classified as innovation or modification decreased significantly from 67 of 367 (18.3%) in 1988 to 59 of 548 (10.8%) in 2006 (P = 0.001). The elimination of radiology and pathology quiz cases yielded similar results: 11.1 percent vs 18.9 percent, P = 0.001. Innovation or modification in animal model research also decreased (0.9% vs 3.8%, P = 0.003). Overall, only 4 articles were actually classified as true innovation.

Conclusions

The frequency of true innovation was low in both years, but articles that described surgical modifications decreased significantly over this 18‐year period. One reason may be increased administrative barriers for clinical research approval. Although our analysis cannot determine cause and effect, it is an important finding that deserves further study.
Randomized trial of tissue adhesive vs staples in thyroidectomy integrating patient satisfaction and Manchester score
Authors: Amin Mohamed , Glynn Fergal , Timon Conrad
Published: April 2009

Objective

Closure of skin incision of minimally invasive thyroidectomy with tissue adhesive is compared with surgical staples for 1) cosmetic appearance, 2) patient pain score, and 3) patient satisfaction score.

Study Design

Prospective single‐blinded randomized study.

Subjects and Methods

Seventy‐two patients undergoing minimally invasive thyroid surgery using video‐assisted thyroidectomy (VAT) and minimal incision thyroidectomy (MIT) techniques were randomized for skin closure into two groups, one using staples and the other using tissue adhesive. Patients evaluated their pain on the first and tenth postoperative days. Scars were assessed using the Manchester scar assessment tool, and patients completed a satisfaction assessment form.

Results

Sixty out of the 72 patients were followed up for three months postoperatively. Assessment of wound cosmesis revealed no statistical difference; however, there was a statistical difference in ability to shower and overall satisfaction in the tissue adhesive group (P = 0.017).

Conclusion

Tissue adhesive is an excellent alternative for skin incision closure, having the added advantage of ability to shower on the same day, avoidance of the anxiety associated with staple removal, and no General Practitioner (GP) visit required for wound care. The use of tissue adhesive achieves higher patient satisfaction levels and enhances the perception of minimally invasive thyroid surgery (MITS) techniques among patients and surgeons alike.
Surgical debridement and adjunctive hyperbaric oxygen in cervical necrotizing fasciitis
Authors: Flanagan Carrie E. , Daramola Opeyemi O. , Maisel Robert H. , Adkinson Cher , Odland Rick M.
Published: April 2009

Objective

To review our management of cervical necrotizing fasciitis (CNF) with the use of adjunctive hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO).

Study Design

Case series with chart review.

Subjects and Methods

Evaluation of ten patients with CNF between 2001 to 2006.

Results

There were five male and six female patients. Mean age was 43 ± 11 years. Eight cases resulted from an odontogenic source. Comorbidities included diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and substance abuse. All patients had computed tomography scans performed, received intravenous antibiotics, and underwent surgical debridement. Eight patients underwent surgery within 24 hours. The average number of debridements was 2.2 ± 0.8. Hospitalization was twice as long for diabetic patients (15.5 ± 8.16 days) compared with nondiabetic patients (7.5 ± 1.6 days, P = 0.029). Nine patients had HBO therapy. Combined data revealed a possible decrease in length of hospitalization with HBO therapy (P < 0.001). No mortality was documented.

Conclusion

In addition to early and aggressive medical management and surgical debridement, this study suggests that HBO therapy is a beneficial adjunct by potentially decreasing length of hospitalization. Randomized trials are still needed to demonstrate its efficacy.
Die Bewertung der Kosteneffektivität von Impfungen unter Berücksichtigung von Public Health Aspekten
Authors: Siebert Uwe
Published: April 2009

Einleitung

Zunehmend werden Impfungen mittels Health Technology Assessment (HTA) systematisch und kritisch im Hinblick auf Nutzen, Risiko, Kosten und ethische/soziale Aspekte untersucht. Dieser Artikel gibt eine Übersicht zur aktuellen Evidenzlage sowie zu methodischen Aspekten und zukünftigen Entwicklungen.
Late Quaternary vegetation dynamics in a biodiversity hotspot, the Uluguru Mountains of Tanzania
Authors: Finch Jemma , Leng Melanie J. , Marchant Rob
Published: April 2009

Late Quaternary vegetation history and environmental changes in a biodiverse tropical ecosystem are inferred from pollen, charcoal and carbon isotope evidence derived from a ∼ 48,000-yr sedimentary record from the Uluguru Mountains, a component of the Eastern Arc Mountains of Kenya and Tanzania. Results indicate that Eastern Arc forest composition has remained relatively stable during the past ∼ 48,000 yr. Long-term environmental stability of the Eastern Arc forests has been proposed as a mechanism for the accumulation and persistence of species during glacial periods, thus resulting in the diverse forests observed today. The pollen and isotope data presented here indicate some marked changes in abundance but no significant loss in moist forest taxa through the last glacial maximum, thereby providing support for the long-term environmental stability of the Eastern Arc. Anthropogenic activities, including burning and forest clearance, were found to play a moderate role in shaping the mosaic of forest patches and high-altitude grasslands that characterise the site today; however, this influence was tempered by the inaccessibility of the mountain.
Ḥaqq Akhu Manshad: Major and Minor Wrongs and Specialized Judges Among the Negev Bedouin
Authors: Kressel Gideon M.
Published: April 2009

In several Middle Eastern countries, bedouin law, which exists only in an oral tradition, is today applied alongsidethe increasingly used shariʿa and civil law. Jurisdiction among these three judicial systems is compartmentalized, but sometimes categorizing of individual cases is difficult. Bedouin law also differs considerably from one region to another. The bedouin in this study belong to the ʿArab alʿAzazme, the tribe that inhabits the area stretching from Beer-Sheba (Israel) southward. My acquaintance with the southern tribes in the Sde Boqer vicinity dates from 1980. I recorded the first case in 1982, and the second, which helped me substantiate the first, in autumn 1987.
Ottoman Political Writing, 1768–1808
Authors: Aksan Virginia H.
Published: April 2009

The Ottomans, after a long period of peace that began in 1740, declared war on Russia in 1768, disputing territory essential to the continued existence of the empire: Moldavia, Wallachia, the Crimea, and Georgia. The war lasted until 1774, during which time the Ottomans proved that they no longer posed a military threat to Europe. The signing of the Küçük Kaynarca treaty of 1774, which granted Tatar independence in the Crimea, was the first instance of an Ottoman cession of a predominantly Muslim territory to a European power, and it provoked an internal crisis and long debate over the future of the empire. The Ottoman administration, especially the scribal bureaucracy, contributed a number of political advice manuals to the debate, which form the core of the following discussion. Four examples have been selected with the purpose of extending the analysis of Ottoman advice literature into the 18th century and testing the assumption of Ottoman inability to accommodate changing political realities.
Islam and the Gendered Discourses of Death
Authors: Abu-Lughod Lila
Published: April 2009

On a bright day in January 1987, my host in the Awlad ʿAli bedouin community in Egypt in which I had been doing research invited me to accompany him on a con dolence call. He knew how enthusiastic I was about visiting people who stillcamped in traditional tents in the desert, and this set of families, he assured me, lived in a beautiful area. The group's patriarch had died twenty days ago, but my host had been too busy to go so only his younger brothers had paid their respects. He had just heard, though, that the bereaved family was upset he had not come himself. So we drove off in his car, with his two cowives in the back seat, stop ping at the market town nearby to buy a fat sheep to take with us. As they loaded the beast into his car, my host complained about how expensive sheep had be come. The sound of its bleating in the trunk reminded me of trips to weddings, when sheep are also obligatory gifts.
The Role of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr in Shiʿi Political Activism in Iraq from 1958 to 1980
Authors: Aziz T. M.
Published: April 2009

On 8 April 1980, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr was executed. His execution arousedno criticism from the West against the Iraqi regime, however, because Sadr had openly supported the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime in Iran and because the West was distracted by the turbulence in Iran that followed the revolution. Governments both in the West and in the region were concerned that the Iranian revolution would be “exported,” and they set about eliminating that threat. When Ayatollah Khomeini called upon Muslims in Iraq to follow the example of the Iranian people and rise up against the corrupt secular Baʿthist socialist regime, they interpreted it as the first step in the spread of Islamic radicalism that would eventually lead to the destablization of the whole region.
The ArabicBildungsroman: A Generic Appraisal
Authors: Al-Mousa Nedal M.
Published: April 2009

“Does the Arabic novel exist?” With this provocative question, Hilary Kilpatrick begins an article entitled “The Arabic Novel—A Single Tradition?,” in which she makes clear that her question has been inspired both by the established regional approach most critical studies use in dealing with the Arabic novel, and by the absence of a continuous tradition of the novel as a genre in the Arab world. But, while underscoring variety in form, style, and subject, Kilpatrick, keen to provide an answer to her question, concludes in unequivocal terms that the Arabic novel as a single tradition does certainly exist: “It is written in one language, and [has] a shared cultural heritage and recent historical experience common to the whole area [which] providef[s] novelists in different countries with similar material. In this respect the Arabic novel is distinct in its subject matter from the African or German novel, for instance.” Although the conclusion is valid, it is based on his- torical and cultural generalizations rather than on a thorough study of novels from the Arab world. Nor does the platitudinous remark with which the quotation con- cludes help Kilpatrick make her case in a particularly convincing manner. The distinct nature of the Arabic novel, as this study will demonstrate, is best exemplified in what might be called the ArabicBildungsroman. Its definitive, culturally determined themes and structure, distinctive basic tension, and established literary conventions to my mind suggest the presence in the Arab world of at least this kind of novel.
The Swing of the Pendulum: The Israeli Labor Alignment, 1988
Authors: Mendilow Jonathan
Published: April 2009

Any exploration of the wider implications of the 1988 electoral campaign for the Israeli Knesset invites two questions: first, were the surprising conduct and results aberrations? Or were they the effects of underlying forces slowly changing the patterns of Israeli politics? If the latter, then, second, to what extent are such forces controllable by party leaders and at what cost? My contention is that what happened in 1988 did, in fact, herald changes that were not ephemeral but indi cated the beginnings of a shift in the entire Israeli party system.
The Kaʿba, Gender, and the Rites of Pilgrimage
Authors: Young William C.
Published: April 2009

This article examines the role gender plays in the pilgrimage rites in Mecca at the turn of this century. I argue, as a student of local cultures rather than a scholar of universalistic Islamic beliefs, that portions of the hajj at that time had a special significance for Arab Muslims in and near the Hijaz. Arab pilgrims served, ad dressed, and even dressed the Kaʿba like a bride. By ascribing feminine charac teristics to the Kaʿba, they temporarily transformed human gender roles and constructed an alternative model of gender that could be utilized when negotiating and renegotiating gender roles in everyday life.
The Role of the Professional Middle Class in the Mobilization of Palestinian Society: The Medical and Agricultural Committees
Authors: Robinson Glenn E.
Published: April 2009

The political mobilization of Palestinians in the occupied territories in the 1980s was closely tied to the rise of a new elite and the marginalization of the traditional notable leadership. Such mobilization was necessary in order to overcome, at least in part, the class, kin, and regional cleavages that had long fragmented Palestinian society and that had been used by occupying powers to undermine collective national action. The mobilization of Palestinian society by a new elite was made possible by structural changes that had led to the peripheralization of the traditional elite. The three most important structural changes were the dramaticrise of wage labor after 1967, which transfigured a basically peasant society, extensive land confiscations, and the widespread availability of university education after 1972. Each of these developments helped to break traditional patron–client relations that had been the social base of the old elite and paved the way for the rise of a more extensive, better educated, more rural, and nonlanded elite which had gained cohesion in thePalestinian universities. In addition, these developments, and in particular the diminution of the Palestinian peasantry, meant that large segments of the population had, in effect, been cleaved from their social moorings and were, thus, more open for recruitment into new forms of social relations and organizations. It is to refer to these structural changes in Palestinian society that I use the term “social mobilization.”
Economic Policy in Egypt: A Breakdown in Reform Resistance?
Authors: Löfgren Hans
Published: April 2009

In the first half of the 1970s, Egypt turned away from the Soviet Union and initiated an economic open-door policy. Since then, the United States, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank have encouraged comprehensive reforms that would make Egypt an outward-looking market-oriented capitalist economy in which the private sector plays a dominant role. While the Egyptian economy had gone in that direction between 1974 and 1990, it had fallen far short of what they were looking for. In lengthy negotiations with the IMF, Egypt had, in spite of strong pressure, remained unwilling to implement many elements in this orthodox reform package. At the same time, most observers agreed that the government's own policies were not successful: living standards declined while the foreign debt grew rapidly, undermining the country's political independence. Analysts attributed this resistance to reform in the face of foreign pressure to a mix of domestic and foreign factors.
Kuwaiti Women at a Crossroads: Privileged Development and the Constraints of Ethnic Stratification
Authors: Longva Anh Nga
Published: April 2009

As elsewhere in the developing world, the Arabian peninsula has undergone sweeping changes since World War II, with the important difference that the process here has been blessed with unprecedented prosperity and not marred by economic difficulties. To say that the effects of modernization upon the local societies differ as a result from what can be observed in other countries would be to state the obvious. Yet, when it comes to understanding the position and status of contemporary women in the Arabian oil producing countries, prosperity and the particular circumstances around it are rarely considered as crucial variables. The women's situation often is evaluated, mainly if not exclusively, in light of the religious injunctions and traditional norms that govern the female condition in a Middle East that, by the same token, appears curiously monolithic and timeless. There seems to be an assumption that Arabian women are not part of the societies in which they live, and that, by virtue of some unique cultural principle, their condition remains unaffected by the vectors of change that have turned upside down all the other areas of life around them. Hence the general tendency to assess women's opportunities and constraints in terms of what the Qurʾan and Islamic tradition dictate, not in terms of secular and more immediate concerns they may share with the rest of the society. Aside from assuming a spurious dichotomy between the women and their societies, such an approach disregards the historical and material specificity of particular areas in the Muslim world. It also arbitrarily and a priori defines the character of the meeting between “Islamic tradition” and “modernity,” instead of leaving it open to empirical investigation.
The Historians of the Constitutional Movement and the making of the Iranian Populist Tradition
Authors: Afshari M. Reza
Published: April 2009

An Iranian born in 1906, when the constitution was granted, would have had to wait until he was thirty-four to find a history of what was happening at the time of his birth. Kasravi's first volume appeared in 1940 and Malikzada's in 1948. Censorship was not the cause of this strange delay. Could it be that disillusion with the outcome of the movement ran so deep in the minds of intellectuals that no one wished to relive the story by writing it? The newly established Pahlavi state tried to glorify the ancient heritage of Persia and to shift the historical landscape from the immediacy of the constitutional era to the politically irrelevant past of pre-Islamic Iran. It is somehow peculiar—and perhaps a measure of the time—that an author of the Iranian constitution, the Mushir al-Daula (Hasan Pirniya) undertook, when in political retirement, to write not a history of the constitutional movement but a monumental work on ancient Iran. Kasravi speculated about the reasons for the nonexistence of a reliable history. The opportunist elitist reformers (“carpetbaggers”) who shifted sides during the movement “were reluctant to see the history of that movement truthfully written.” The Mushir al-Daula was one of them. Kasravi complained that when he began publishing his history, the sons, relatives, and followers of these men objected to his critical historical evaluation.
The Iranian Left and the “Woman Question” in the Revolution of 1978–79
Authors: Shahidian Hammed
Published: April 2009

The relationship between feminism and socialism in both the theoretical and practical realms has been marked with difficulty and “unhappiness.” Feminists have criticized leftists for their lack of attention to sexual domination, and many socialists, in turn, have looked at women's liberation movements as a bourgeois deviation or, worse yet, a conspiracy against the workers' struggle. In 19th-century social democratic movements in Europe, conflicts between feminist-socialist advocates of women's rights such as Clara Zetkin and “proletarian anti-feminism” among workers and communists were constant. Eventually, guided by the theoretical insights of a number of socialist leaders such as Bebel, Engels, and Zetkin, socialist parties of the First and Second Internationals came to realize that the cause of the women's movement was just and to accept autonomous women's organizations. The Third International, or Comintern, although it initially claimed to liberate women “not only on paper, but in reality, in actual fact,” treated the inequality of women as a secondary consideration. Focusing on production and labor conflict, the Comintern paid attention only to women's exploitation by capital to the extent that “by the end of the 1920s, any special emphasis on women's social subordination in communist propaganda or campaigning came to be regarded as a capitulation to bourgeois feminism.” Leftist women activists lost their organizational autonomy and had to work under the supervision of their national communist party.
The Social Origins of Popular Nationalism in Syria: Evidence for a New Framework
Authors: Gelvin James L.
Published: April 2009

In hisInterpreting the French Revolution, François Furet defines political sociability as the “specific mode of organizing the relations between citizens (or subjects) and power, as well as among citizens (or subjects) themselves in relation to power.” According to Furet, shifts from one form of political sociability to another can and do take place, particularly during periods of comprehensive economic, political, and social change. One such period preceded the events of 1789 when, as an unintended consequence of state building and economic development under the ancien régime, a democratic/horizontal political sociability increasingly replaced the hierarchic/ vertical political sociability that had previously ordered French society.
Sino–Middle Eastern Perspectives and Relations since the Gulf War: Views from Below
Authors: Gladney Dru C.
Published: April 2009

China is now becoming recognized as a nation with a significant Muslim population. With nearly 18 million Muslims (the recent 1990 census reported 17.9 million, with many Muslims still unaccounted for or refusing to register as members of the primarily Muslim nationalities), China ranks among the most populous Muslim nations. And, although its Muslim population is miniscule when compared with its total population (Muslims account for less than 2% of China's 1.1 billion), or insignificant when one looks at the vast Muslim populations in other Asian nations, such as Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, nevertheless, this article argues that the Muslims of China play an important role disproportionate to their numbers in influencing China's domestic and international politics.
Conjuring Pakistan: History as Official Imagining
Authors: Jalal Ayesha
Published: April 2009

Even before an anthropologist‧s tour de force underlined the power of imagination as creation in narrative constructions of the “nation,” memory, myth, and might had been triumphantly parading the realm of historical scholarship. The torch of objectivity did not have to go cold for the heat of subjectivity to captivate and command audiences through print and signs, visual or aural. It is simply that the cornmodification of the past by the marketplace and the expansive imaginings of power have combined to reduce the once revered craft of the historian to a battlefield where mired imaginings posture as interpretations in a contest in which there are no umpires, only partisans. So it is not necessary to claim objective ground when presumably no such domain exists or even to spin yarns about “authenticity” and “falsification.” But it is possible to make an analytical distinction between the past as invention and the past as inspiration without denying the role of creativity or power in either conception.
Women in 17th-Century Jerusalem: Western and Indigenous Perspectives
Authors: Ze'evi Dror
Published: April 2009

In writing the history of the Middle East there is one aspect that deserves special attention: the influence of the choice of source material on the writer's point of view. Does the choice of different types of sources—in our case Western as opposed to local sources—really dictate an altogether different view of the matter under discussion? Are all sources of equal value, or should we accord each of them a different place on the scale? In this article an attempt will be made to address this question through an examination of one particular topic—the history of women in 17th-century Jerusalem.
Islamization of Economics in Iranian Universities
Authors: Behdad Sohrab
Published: April 2009

The revolutionary “spring of freedom” did not last long in the Iranian universities. The revolutionary movement had turned the universities into centers of political activity, where crowds gathered and rival political groups clashed. Control over the Tehran University soccer field for mass rallies became a sign of a political organization's power. On 11 February 1979, the first tank liberated from the Shah's army was driven to the campus of Tehran University; the Organization of the People's Mujahedin set up its headquarters in the Faculty of Sciences, and the Organization of People's Fadaʾian Guerrillas in the Faculty of Engineering. Between them, the university mosque became the headquarters for an “Imam's committee,” where fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds stored weapons captured from the Shah's artillery. When the universities reopened shortly after the February insurrection, similar divides were made within academic buildings of all universities. Various groups partitioned public areas, claimed various rooms, and even parceled out the walls for poster space. Life was as chaotic in the universities as it was outside. However, the difference was that while the Islamic Republic was gaining political hegemony in Iranian society, it was losing the ideological battle in the universities, where radical groups were recruiting and training student activists, many of whom were political organizers in factories, farms, and neighborhoods. The students and faculty who supported the Islamic regime constituted only a small minority.
Mahdism and Islamism in Sudan
Authors: Warburg Gabriel
Published: April 2009

On 30 June 1989, a military coup overthrew the democratically elected government of al-Sadiq al-Mahdi in Sudan and replaced it with a fundamentalist Muslim dictatorship headed by Colonel ʿUmar Hasan al-Bashir and adhering to the radical Islamic ideology of the National Islamic Front (NIF), under the leadership of Dr. Hasan al-Turabi. Since June 1881 when Muhammad Ahmad ibn ʿAbdallah declared that he was the expected mahdī, the religious-political scene of Sudan had been largely dominated by Mahdists and Khatmiyya adherents. Even under colonial rule, in the years 1899–1955, Mahdism continued to flourish despite the fact that the British rulers treated it with suspicion and preferred Sayyid ʿAli al-Mirghani, leader of the more docile Khatmiyya Sufi order. The defeat of the Mahdist Umma Party in the first general elections in 1953, by a coalition of secularists and Khatmiyya supporters was only a temporary setback. After Sudan became independent, in 1956, Mahdist supremacy was challenged both by the Khatmiyya and other groups, but its mass support among the Ansar, a political Islamic movement, enabled them to gain control, except during brief periods when so-called secularists governed independent Sudan. This happened in 1953–56 when the Khatmiyya joined forces with the intelligentsia, and again between October 1964 and March 1965 when the country was governed by a secular, transitional, nonelected government that was ousted from power as soon as the sects regained control. Secularism also thrived briefly under the military dictatorship of Jaʿfar al-Numayri between 1969 and 1977.
Elections and the Electoral Process in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1919
Authors: Kayali Hasan
Published: April 2009

The 1876 constitution and its reinstitution in 1908 have been acknowledged as landmarks in the historiography of the late Ottoman Empire. The promulgation of a constitution signified a critical political transformation despite the brevity of the First Constitutional Period (1876–78). During the next three decades of Sultan Abdülhamid's autocratic rule, the ultimately successful struggle to restore the constitution against the Sultan's relentless resistance became central to the political life of the empire. In 1908, the Young Turk Revolution inaugurated a decade of social and political change, the Second Constitutional Period.
The Debate about 1948
Authors: Shlaim Avi
Published: April 2009

“Conquerors, my son, consider as true history only what they themselves have fabricated.” Thus remarked the old Arab headmaster to young Saeed on his return to Haifa in the summer of 1948 in Emile Habiby's tragicomic novelThe Secret Life of Saʿid, the Ill-Fated Pessoptimist. The headmaster spoke about the Israelis more in sorrow than in anger: “It is true they did demolish those villages … and did evict their inhabitants. But, my son, they are far more merciful than the conquerors our forefathers had years before”.
Dogs, Women, Cholera, and Other Menaces in the Streets: Cartoon Satire in the Ottoman Revolutionary Press, 1908–11
Authors: Brummett Palmira
Published: April 2009

History is enamored of revolutions. This essay takes as its subject a revolution—the Young Turk Revolution of 1908—which overthrew one of the most enduring autocracies of early modern times. It concerns itself, however, with revolution of a specific kind, cartoon revolution: where images could take precedence over words; where the past, present, and future were created and imagined; where the celebration of new freedoms brought citizens into contact with menaces in the streets.
Cultural Pluralism and the Israeli Nation-Building Ideology
Authors: Cohen-Almagor Raphael
Published: April 2009

Know from where you come and where you are going. (Akavya Ben-Mahalalel, Avot, 3)

It has been argued that the difference between liberal democracies and theocratic, communist, or fascist states is not that liberal states promote different ideals of the good, but that they promote none. Whereas illiberal states regard it as a primary function of the state to prescribe the moral character of society, liberal states shun such attempts and allow freedom to citizens to develop their own conceptions. Liberals hold that governments cannot use as their justification for any action the fact that one person's plan of life is more or less worthy than that of another. Since many people believe in more than one objective “correct” set of values, every person should enjoy the freedom to arrive at her own conception of the good. By “conception of the good” is meant a more or less determinate scheme of ends that the doer aspires to carry out for their own sake as well as of attachments to other individuals and loyalties to various groups and associations. It involves a mixture of moral, philosophical, ideological, and religious notions, together with personal values that contain some picture of a worthy life.
Maghāzīand theMuḥaddithūn: Reconsidering the Treatment of “Historical” Materials in Early Collections of Hadith
Authors: Zaman Muhammad Qasim
Published: April 2009

Islamicists have long been interested in the historiography of thesīraandmaghāzīliterature. Ibn Ishaq'sSīrahas been fruitfully compared with al-Waqidi'sMaghāzī, and both have been compared with sections in al-Bukhari'sṢaḥīḥor with other collections of hadith. It has often been observed that the materials constituting theSīraof Ibn Ishaq or theMaghāzīof al-Waqidi—works which may for convenience, but only with reservations, be designated “historical”—are often the same as those preserved in collections of hadith such as al-Bukhari's. It has also been observed that what distinguish these materials from one another are essentially the former's narrative and chronological structures and the motives and methods governing these structures. John Wansbrough, who has compared these texts, postulates as well a “development from loosely structured narrative to conciseexemplum& [which] illustrates perfectly the stylistic difference betweenSīraandsunna, between the mythic and normative preoccupations (Geistesbeschäftigungen) of early Muslim literature.”
Muhammad Saʿid al-ʿAshmawi and the Application of the Shariʿa in Egypt
Authors: Shepard William E.
Published: April 2009

The rise of a vigorous and sometimes violent Islamist movement in Egypt over the last quarter century has attracted considerable attention from the media and scholars, as have the efforts to control it at the political and police level. Less attention has been given to those who have responded to this challenge at the level of ideological debate and in their writings sought to defend the essentials of the existing system on Islamic grounds. One of these is a prominent judge, Muhammad Saʿid al-ʿAshmawi. The purpose of this article is to present and examine some of his views and arguments.
Israel's Road to the 1956 War
Authors: Tal David
Published: April 2009

On 29 October 1956 Israeli paratroopers landed deep inside the Sinai Desert, launching the second Arab-Israeli war and adding another level to the bloody edifice of Israel's relations with its neighbors. The Israeli leadership justified its decision to go to war by pointing to “the mini-war which the Arab rulers have waged against us for eight years.” Many scholars have accepted that version of the events, which seeks to connect the multitude of border incidents from 1949 to 1956 with the war in the latter year. Indeed, a central approach in the study of the period viewed the Sinai campaign as the inevitable consequence of the succession of violent events which occurred between Israel and its neighbors, Egypt in particular, beginning shortly after the 1948 war. Benny Morris, in fact, describes Israel's participation in the 1956 war as the direct continuation of the border clashes with Egypt, finding no regional connection in Israel's involvement. Similarly, Nadav Safran, Mordechai Bar-On, and Michael Oren have argued that the border clashes, the infiltrations, and the Israeli reprisals followed one another in a relentless sequence until the final explosion in October 1956. This approach draws a connection between two “types of security” which are a permanent component of the Israeli defense doctrine: “basic security” and “day-to-day security.” The latter incorporates operational activity, unrelated to preparations for war, which the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) constantly engages in during peacetime; whereas the former refers to a situation of total war for which the IDF has prepared itself. Conventionally, events falling within the domain of day-to-day security are considered the cause of the aggravation in relations between Israel and Egypt during the early 1950s; the Sinai campaign thus becomes the inevitable end of a process of deterioration engendered by the border clashes and incidents of the preceding eight years.
Aşiret Mektebi: Abdülhamid II's School for Tribes (1892–1907)
Authors: Rogan Eugene L.
Published: April 2009

By order of Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909) a new school was opened in Istanbul in October 1892 to provide an Ottoman education for the sons of leading tribal notables. The Aşiret Mekteb-i Hümayun, or Imperial School for Tribes, was a five-year boarding school that admitted boys between twelve and sixteen years old. The school has been rightly interpreted as part of a broader policy pursued by Abdülhamid II of integrating the Arab provinces more closely to the Imperial center. However, the school, which reached beyond the Arab provinces to recruit eastern Anatolian Kurds, was essentially an experiment in social engineering which sought to foster an allegiance to the Ottoman state within one of the most alienated segments of its society: the empire's tribes. On the precedent of urban notables whose sons were educated in Istanbul, obtained government offices, and became Ottoman loyalists, Abdülhamid II and his advisers aimed to create a similar body of intermediaries between the state and its tribes. The experiment ran for fifteen years before the Aşiret Mektebi was closed in 1907; yet in that time the school sent waves of graduates on to higher education in special sections of the civil and military academies and thence to government office in the provinces. In all, the tribal education system represents one of the more ambitious Ottoman initiatives to integrate its tribal communities into the political life of the state.
Elias Khoury'sThe Journey of Little Gandhi: Fiction and Ideology
Authors: Aghacy Samira
Published: April 2009

Commenting on his novelRiḥlat Gandhī al-Ṣaghīr(The Journey of Little Gandhi), Elias Khoury has made two conflicting assertions. At a gathering held to discuss the book shortly after it was published, Khoury reaffirmed his political and ideological stance in relation to the war in Lebanon. While acknowledging that Gandhi, the protagonist, is a victim of violence and poverty, Khoury said that he regards war as a necessity, a passage to a higher and nobler aim:

I am not one of those who preach against violence, nor do I claim that I am against the war.

I have participated in the war, and I remain true to my original choice, and loyal to my comrades who died the death of martyrs. I refuse to go along with the popular “anti-war” fad. At the same time, I remain faithful to the truth and the goal for which we started the war: the creation of another more just and democratic society⃜ [U]nfortunately, we have not succeeded, but at least, it is our duty to tell the truth and… what actually happened.
Style as Politics in the Poems and Novels of Rashīd al-Ḍaʿīf
Authors: Amyuni Mona Takieddine
Published: April 2009

The Lebanese war revealed man to me. It revealed to me that there was no end to evil. Man's capacity to suffer and cause suffering is endless too. War is the cloth which weaves relationships amongst men and nations. When I write, “From your absence comes the evening,” I express the anguish of losing my beloved. This anguish is similar to that caused by war. Fear and anguish provoked by war have also at their root jealousy, desire, ambition, money, success. What is specific about war is that it strips down man and shows him in his absolute nakedness.

When Rashīd al-Daʿīf (henceforth, plain text) expressed himself in this fashion in an interview in 1989, several of his novels and poems had already appeared in Beirut. His original voice had started to spread in the intellectual circles of Lebanon and abroad. Al-Daʿif's originality lies precisely in this stripping of human beings, feelings, and things down to absolute nakedness in the midst of a war that tore apart the artist'snation. He expresses himself in a language stripped to its bare essentials, as well, breaking away from the traditional Arabic mode, in which rhetoric and lyricism dominated.
A Sufi Response to Political Islamism: Al-Aḥbāsh of Lebanon
Authors: Hamzeh A. Nizar , Dekmejian R. Hrair
Published: April 2009

The rise and spread of Islamist political movements have been topics of focal concern for scholars and analysts in recent decades. Since Richard Mitchell's seminal work on the Muslim Brotherhood, a plethora of writers have analyzed the attributes of both Sunni and Shiʿa revivalist movements and the policies of Arab regimes and the West toward the Islamist phenomenon. Yet scant attention has been paid to the reactions generated within the larger Islamic community toward the Islamist groups and their militant offshoots. One such unnoticed source of reaction to political Islamism is the nebulous confraternity of Sufi orders (ṭuruq) whose mysticism and esoteric beliefs and practices have set them apart from the exoteric revivalism and political activism of the Islamist societies, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and its many affiliates.