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Hasan Kawun Kakar

An authoritative study of the administrative, social, and economic structure of Afghanistan at the beginning of the twentieth century.
 
Government and Society in Afghanistan covers a decisive stage in the country’s history. The period covered—the reign of the “Iron” Amir Rahman Khan—was in many ways the beginning of modern Afghanistan as a cohesive nation. It was under the Amir that its borders were established, its internal unification completed, and the modern concept of nationhood implanted.
 
 Hsan Kawun Kakar considers both the internal and the external forces that influenced Afghanistan’s development. Thus, modernization, centralization, and nationalization are seen as both defensive reactions to European imperialism and a necessary step toward capital formation and industrialization.
 
 The first part of the book covers the government of the Amir, from the personality of the ruler to a comprehensive overview of taxation and local government. The second part views these economic and social institutions from the perspective of the major segments of the populace—including nomads, townsmen, tribes, women, slaves, landowners, mullahs, merchants, and others.

University of Texas Press

CMES Modern Middle East Series

Government and Society in Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir 'Abd al-Rahman Khan

Farhang Rajaee

An Iranian scholar and political scientist examines the role of religion in Iranian culture and politics through the twentieth century and beyond.
 
Islamism and Modernism captures the metamorphosis of the Islamic movement in Iran leading up to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, as well as its changing influence in the country today. Its analysis ranges from encounters with Great Britain and the United States in the 1920s to today’s struggles between reformers and hardliners. Capturing the views of four generations of Muslim activists, Farhang Rajaee describes how the extremism of the 1960s gave confidence to Islam-minded Iranians and radicalized the Muslim world.
 
 Presenting thought-provoking discussions of religious thinkers such as Ha’eri, Burujerdi, Bazargan, and Shari‘ati, along with contemporaries such as Kadivar, Soroush, and Shabestari, Rajaee sheds light on contemporary Islamic thinking in Iran. A comprehensive study of politics, religion, society, and identity, Islamism and Modernism offers crucial new insight into the aftermath of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution—and its ramifications— for the newest generation of Iranians to face the crossroads of modernity and Islamic discourse.

Islamism and Modernism: The Changing Discourse in Iran

Michael Provence

A historical study of the 1925 revolt against French rule in Syria, and how it established a new popular nationalism that helped shape the Middle East.

The Great Syrian Revolt of 1925 was the first mass movement against colonial rule in the Middle East. Mobilizing peasants, workers, and army veterans, it was also the region’s largest and longest-lasting anti-colonial insurgency during the inter-war period. Though the revolt failed to liberate Syria from French occupation, it provided a model of popular nationalism and resistance that remains potent in the Middle East today. Each subsequent Arab uprising against foreign rule has repeated the language and tactics of the Great Syrian Revolt.
 In this work, Michael Provence uses newly released secret colonial intelligence sources, neglected memoirs, and popular memory to tell the story of the revolt from the perspective of its participants. He shows how Ottoman-subsidized military education created a generation of leaders who rebelled against both the French Mandate rulers of Syria and the Syrian elite who helped the colonial regime. This new popular nationalism was unprecedented in the Arab world. Provence shows compellingly that the Great Syrian Revolt was a formative event in shaping the modern Middle East.

The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism