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University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The Transformation of the Middle East, 1566-1914 (HIST 335): Course Readings

A LibGuide for Professor Cuno's HIST 335 course on the Ottoman Empire and Middle East.

Required Texts

Where to Order/Request Required Texts

A History of the Modern Middle East - William L. Cleveland & Martin Bunton (5th ed., 2013)

Making Big Money in 1600: The Life and Times of Ismail Abu Taqiyya, Egyptian Merchant -  Nelly Hanna (1998)

Harem Years: Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist - Huda Shaarawi (1986)

Course Readings

Week 1

A. Introduction to the course, the Middle East, and Islam.

Week 1, Aug. 22-26:

course introduction; peoples and cultures of the Middle East, present and past. (Three lectures this week; Friday discussion sections begin in week 2.)

Required reading: None. Start reading for next week and familiarize yourself with the course website.

Week 2, Aug. 29-Sept. 2:

The “classical” Ottoman state and its transformation. Map quiz on Friday.

Required reading: Cleveland, History, introduction to Part One and chaps. 1-3; also in e-reserves & the course pack: Douglas A. Howard, “Ottoman Historiography and the Literature of ‘Decline’ of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Journal of Asian History, 22, 1 (1988), pp. 52-77, and Jane Hathaway, “The Military Households in Ottoman Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 27 (1995), pp. 39-52. [92]

B. Decline vs. transformation: The Ottoman Empire, 16th – 18th centuries.

Week 3, Labor Day holiday; Sept. 7 & 9:

Islam, the basics; Introduction to the Middle East & North African library collection by Dr. Laila Moustafa, MENA librarian.

Week 3, Labor Day holiday; Sept. 7 & 9: Islam, the basics; Introduction to the Middle East & North African library collection by Dr. Laila Moustafa, MENA librarian.

Required reading: explore the MENA collection website http://www.library.illinois.edu/ias/middleeasterncollection/index.html and read, in e-reserves & the course pack: Ian R. Manners and Barbara McKean Parmenter, “The Middle East: A Geographic Preface,” in Deborah J. Gerner and Jillian Schwedler, Understanding the Contemporary Middle East (2004), 5-32. [27]

Week 4, Sept. 12-16:

State and society in the Ottoman Empire, 16th-18th c. Submit preliminary paper proposal in Compass before noon on Monday 

         Required reading: Hanna, Making Big Money, all. [185]

Week 5, Sept. 19-23:

Outside the Ottoman sphere: Iran and Arabia. Sign up for meetings next week.

           Required reading: in e-reserves & the course pack: John Voll, “The Foundations of the Modern Experience: Revival and Reform in the Eighteenth Century,” pp. 24-83 in Islam: Continuity and Change in the Modern World. Skim but do not ignore the sections dealing with regions outside the Middle East. [60]

C. The reform era, late 18th through 19th century.

Week 6, Sept 26-30:

18th century autonomous provincial regimes; the Nizam-i Jadid of Sultan Selim III. Submit revised paper proposal in Compass before noon on Sunday Oct 2.

           Required reading: Cleveland, History, introduction to part 2 and chap. 4; also in e-reserves & the course pack: Albert Hourani, "Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables," in W. Polk, ed., Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East (1968), 41-68; James Gelvin, “The ‘Politics of Notables’ Forty Years After,” Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 40, 1 (2006), 19-29; Uriel Heyd, "The Ottoman Ulema and Westernization in the Time of Selim III and Mahmud II," in U. Heyd, ed., Studies in Islamic History and Civilization (1961), 63-96; and Donald Quataert, “Clothing Laws, State, and Society in the Ottoman Empire, 1720-1829,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 29, 3 (1997), 403-25. [118]

Week 7, Oct. 3-7:

Muhammad Ali’s reforms in Egypt; later reforms in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. Take-home midterm assigned on Wednesday. (Three lectures this week.)

              Required reading: Cleveland, History, chap. 5. [20]

D. The advance of European domination.

Week 8, Oct. 10-14:

European spheres of interest and commercial hegemony; midterm due in class on Wednesday.

            Required reading: Cleveland, History, chap. 6; also in e-reserves & the course pack: Richard Horowitz, “International Law and State Transformation in China, Siam, and the Ottoman Empire during the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of World History, 14, 4 (2005), 445-86; Sarah Shields, “Interdependent Spaces: Relations between the City and the Countryside in the Nineteenth Century,” in P. Sluglett, ed., The Urban Social History of the Middle East 1750-1950 (2008), 43-66; and André Raymond, "Cairo," in A. Hourani, et al., eds., The Modern Middle East (2004), 310-37. [129]

 

Week 9, Oct. 17-21: Further changes in economic and social life; the Ottoman and Egyptian bankruptcies of 1875-76.

             Required reading: in e-reserves & the course pack: Kenneth M. Cuno, “Joint Family Households and Rural Notables in Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 27, 4 (1995), 485-502; Donald Quataert, "Ottoman Women, Households, and Textile Manufacturing, 1800-1914, in N. Keddie and B. Baron, ed., Women in Middle Eastern History (1991), 161-76; Paul Dumont, "Said Bey -- The Everyday Life of an Istanbul Townsman," in H.G. Majer, ed., Osmanistische Studien zur Wirtshafts und Sozialgeschichte (1986), 1-16; and Ehud Toledano, “Shemsigul: a Circassian Slave in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Cairo, in E. Burke ed., Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East (1993), 59-74. [66]

Week 10, Oct. 24-28:

The construction of an autonomous Lebanon; Syria and Palestine in the mid 19th century.

             Required reading: in e-reserves & the course pack: Beshara Doumani, “The Political Economy of Population Counts in Ottoman Palestine: Nablus, circa 1850,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 26 (1994), 1-17; Elizabeth Thompson, “Ottoman Poliltical Reform in the Provinces: The Damascus Advisory Council in 1844-45,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 25, 3 (1993), 457-75; and Ussama Makdisi, “After 1860: Debating Religion, Reform and Nationalism in the Ottoman Empire,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 34, 4 (2002), 601-17. [53]

E. Colonial modernity.

Week 11, Oct. 31-Nov. 4:

Anti-imperialism and liberal constitutionalism.

               Required reading: Cleveland, History, chap. 8; and in e-reserves & the course pack: Feroz Ahmad, “War and Society under the Young Turks, 1908-1918,” Review, 11, 2 (1988), 265-86; and Ervand Abrahamian, "The Crowd in the Persian Revolution," Iranian Studies, 2, 4 (1969), 128-50. [61]

Week 12, Nov. 7-11:

Islamic Modernism & Pan-Islamism.

               Required reading: Cleveland, History, chap. 7; and in e-reserves & the course pack: Indira Falk Gesink, “‘Chaos on the Earth’: Subjective Truths versus Communal Unity in Islamic Law and the Rise of Militant Islam,” American Historical Review, 108, 3 (2003), 710-33; and Selim Deringil, “The Invention of Tradition as Public Image in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1808 to 1908,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 35, 1 (1993), 3-29. [65]

 

Week 13, Nov. 14-18:

Nationalism before the First World War. Term paper due Monday.

                Required reading: Cleveland, History, chap. 9; also in e-reserves & the course pack: Rashid Khalidi, “Ottoman Notables in Jerusalem: Nationalism and Other Options,” The Muslim World, 84, 1-2 (1994), 1-18; and Beth Baron, “Mothers, Morality, and Nationalism in Pre-1919 Egypt,” in R. Khalidi, et al., ed., The Origins of Arab Nationalism (1991), 271-88. [58]

 

Thanksgiving holiday.

Week 14, Nov. 28-Dec. 2:

Women’s “Emancipation” and the New Family Ideal

Required reading: Shaarawi, Harem Years, all. [152]

 

Week 15, Dec. 5 & 7:

              Summing up. Discussion of final exam & ICES forms on the last day of class.