"Origins" is the first fully comprehensive study of the debt owed by modern western culture to Ancient Near Eastern civilization - a debt touched upon by standard histories of the Ancient Near East but never as systematically investigated as here by William W. Hallo. The author, who has devoted a lifetime to the study of the Ancient Near East, places the emphasis on the way the Ancient Near East continues to shape our Western world. He takes an in-depth look at the ancient origins of many institutions that are most essential to contemporary life - and most often taken for granted. In the exploration of the "first half of history," Hallo shows that modern ideas of urbanism and the formation of capital were first developed between 3000-500 BC and that aspects of 20th-century agriculture, manufacturing and trade go back to ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and Israel. Special attention is given to the role played by women, arguing that this was an often non-traditional one; for example, women are shown to have been among the first authors in history who are actually known by their names. The scope of the work is vast: Hallo methodically examines a wide range of topics, from the order of the alphabet to the coronation of kings, and from schooling to the calendar. An intriguing touch is provided by sections on games and on the world's oldest cookbooks. This ground-breaking study leaves the reader with a full appreciation of the legacy of the Ancient Near East to modern Western society, in all its aspects. It will be essential reading for researchers and general readers alike who are interested in the cultural history of the West as well as the history of the Ancient Near East.

"Full of rare and exact information…A distinguished work." —New York Review of Books The eleventh-century Muslim world was a great civilization while Europe lay slumbering in the Dark Ages. Slowly, inevitably, Europe and Islam came together, through trade and war, crusade and diplomacy. The ebb and flow between these two worlds for seven hundred years, illuminated here by a brilliant historian, is one of the great sagas of world history.

This book tells the story of the Dönme, the descendents of Jews who resided in the Ottoman Empire and converted to Islam along with their messiah, Rabbi Shabbatai Tzevi, in the seventeenth century. For two centuries following their conversion, the Dönme were accepted as Muslims, and by the end of the nineteenth century rose to the top of Salonikan society. The Dönme helped transform Salonika into a cosmopolitan city, promoting the newest innovation in trade and finance, urban reform, and modern education. They eventually became the driving force behind the 1908 revolution that led to the overthrow of the Ottoman sultan and the establishment of a secular republic. To their proponents, the Dönme are enlightened secularists and Turkish nationalists who fought against the dark forces of superstition and religious obscurantism. To their opponents, they were simply crypto-Jews engaged in a plot to dissolve the Islamic empire. Both points of view assume the Dönme were anti-religious, whether couched as critique or praise. But it is time that we take these religious people seriously on their own terms. In the Ottoman Empire, the Dönme promoted morality, ethics, spirituality, and a syncretistic religion that reflected their origins at the intersection of Jewish Kabbalah and Islamic Sufism. This is the first book to tell their story, from their origins to their near total dissolution as they became secular Turks in the mid-twentieth century.

This third, revised, and enlarged edition of Benjamin Shwadran's highly acclaimed study of Middle East oil now brings the story up to date by linking it to the energy crisis of the 1970s. Written in an absorbing narrative style tracing the course of the negotiations, maneuvers, and conflicts which have marked relations between the oil companies, the producing countries, and the Great Powers during the past seventy years, the book examines the impact of oil on the Middle East as well as its strategic and political role in the international arena and prospects for the future. Capping his penetrating analysis of the forces at play in the Middle East oil story, Shwadran presents the alternatives facing the Western consuming countries and discusses the possibility of reducing international tensions through a radical solution to the oil problem.

This exploration of slavery from the Ottoman viewpoint is based on extensive research in British and Turkish archives and offers rich, original, and important insights into Ottoman life and thought.

How did the West get Middle East Oil? The tense chronicle of the international deceit and strong-arm tactics of men, oil companies and government is laid out in a revealing minute-to-minute drama. Massive research supports this unforgettable revelation by a master of corporate investigation--author Edwin Black.

This volume explores the trade in television programme formats, which is a crucially important ingredient in the globalization of culture, in Asia. It examines how much traffic there is in programme formats, the principal direction of flow of such traffic, and the economic and cultural significance of this trade for the territories involved and for the region as a whole. It shows how new technology, deregulation, privatization and economic recession have greatly intensified competition between broadcasters in Asia, as in other parts of the world, and discusses how this in turn has multiplied the incidence of television format remakes, with some countries developing dedicated format companies and others becoming net importers and adapters of formats.

This book discusses the development of indigenous patterns of small-scale complexity during the Early Bronze I and II periods (ca. 3500-2700 BCE) in the Southern Levant. Aspects of methodology are outlined, including an assessment of archaeological surveys and their limitations. The book discusses the background to the emergence of complex societies during the fourth and third millennia BCE, suggesting that the Southern Levant was 'preadapted' to cycles of rising and collapsing complexity by mechanisms of social decomposition and reformulation. Using settlement pattern data as a focal point, the book synthesizes the available data for the emergence of Early Bronze II 'urbanism' and trade-oriented economies in the Southern Levant from Early Bronze I village-level organization, stressing the importance of intersocietal contacts, Mediterranean crop production, and highland-lowland exchange. The book is designed to synthesize the evidence for early urban development in the Southern Levant, and to situate the discussion in terms generally associated with the large 'core' civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. It therefore addresses issues of interest to scholars working in the Southern Levant as well as those seeking cross-cultural perspectives on early complex societies.

This prescient narrative reveals how crumbling Mideast relations dashed the promise of peace and fostered the terrorist movement. Norman Spector — previous Canadian ambassador to Israel — documents how the inability to gain peace in the Mideast has caused death and destruction far outside Israel and the contested Palestinian lands, with the ominous promise of more to come. Based on his firsthand experiences with the major players and events, from the Rabin assassination through 9/11 and the war on Afghanistan, Spector analyzes how the same forces and beliefs that led to the downward spiral in relations between Israelis and Palestinians spawned the bombing of the World Trade Center in Manhattan.

This volume contains Rifat Bali's study of the Jewish place in Istanbul's nineteenth-century sex trade as well as three contemporary accounts of the practice.