Richard W. Bulliet

Local politics in Eastern Iran under the Ghaznavids and Seljuks

The political history of the Ghaznavid and Seljuk dynasties, which ruled much of Iran throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries, is now fairly well known and recently has been drawn together in the excellent narrative of Professor Bosworth in the Cambridge History of Iran. It is still quite imperfectly understood, however, and will probably remain so for a good while yet to come. The old and serviceable schematization of the period based on the notion of a Sunni revival, keyed to the development of madrasa education and to the personality of Nizam al-Mulk, is still current despite increasing awkwardness in fitting the facts to it. It would be premature to attempt at this time an alternative schematization, and, indeed, such a schematization, when it eventually appears, may well be not so much an alternative to the old one as an expansion in which the main features of the old one have a prominent place. It is not too soon, however, to start clearing the way for a new interpretation of this important period of Iranian history by illuminating some of the inadequacies of the old interpretation. In this paper, the particular emphasis will be on reorienting the customary view of the power relationship between local and central or imperial political forces.

Rhetoric, Discourse, and the Future of Hope:

Misperceptions, farfetched stories about Islam, and invented connections between Muslims and terrorism have been the guiding factors in shaping the attitudes of the American establishment toward the Muslim world. This article sheds light on the post-1993 bombing of the World Trade Center when journalists and evangelicals looked for sensational and inflammatory statements about the so-called Islamic militancy toward the United States. In this process, the preachers of hatred against Islam attempted to portray the Muslim faith as monolithic, unchanging, and viciously directed against Americans. What they did not choose to highlight was the enormous diversity among Muslim cultures or the focus within many Muslim groups on building community. The article anticipates that such enduring myths about Islam could lead to the rise of a new anti-Semitism in the United States: not against Jews, but against Muslims.

First Names and Political Change in Modern Turkey

One of the few predictable opportunities for the exercise of free will that comes the way of most human beings is the bestowal of names upon their children. To be sure, local or national custom may legally restrict or otherwise limit the scope of that freedom in some cases; but by and large, there is normally some choice to be made, and the beneficiary of the choice, the child, is inevitably powerless to influence it.

Neo-Mamluk Legitimacy and the Arab Spring

[Many explanatory suppositions have been offered to account for the civil disorder that struck so many Arab countries in the first six months of 2011. The popular term for this multi-nation upheaval is the Arab Spring. Most of these theories, however, have lacked a mechanism for linking the challenges to existing governments to the specific Arab societies that experienced them. The approach that will be advanced here is that the Arab Spring represented a failure of legitimacy on the part of a particular political formation —rule by military officers and their families, which bore the brunt of the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring. Why did the legitimacy of this system of rule suffer simultaneous collapse while other Arab regimes, in particular the monarchies, did not? I term this political formation neo-Mamluk rule to connect it to precursor regimes that go back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Only by tracing the origins of neo-Mamluk rule can one discover the keys to the crisis of legitimacy that has been manifest in recent months., Many explanatory suppositions have been off ered to account for the civil disorder that struck so many Arab countries in the first six months of 2011. The popular term for this multi-nation upheaval is the Arab Spring. Most of these theories, however, have lacked a mechanism for linking the challenges to existing governments to the specific Arab societies that experienced them. The approach that will be advanced here is that the Arab Spring represented a failure of legitimacy on the part of a particular political formation —rule by military officers and their families, which bore the brunt of the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring. Why did the legitimacy of this system of rule suffer simultaneous collapse while other Arab regimes, in particular the monarchies, did not? I term this political formation neo-Mamluk rule to connect it to precursor regimes that go back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Only by tracing the origins of neo-Mamluk rule can one discover the keys to the crisis of legitimacy that has been manifest in recent months.]

City histories in medieval Iran

The object of this article is to open up to speculation a historiographical problem which the serious student of Iranian urban history necessarily encounters. This is the problem of the motivation of the authors of medieval urban histories. In studying any single work or city, it may be possible to work around the problem; but as soon as a broader approach is attempted, encompassing several cities and numerous works, it looms as a major obstacle.

Monarchs and Mamluks, or How Do You Say “Thank You” for

The causes and processes of the Arab Spring movements are less important for current political developments than the responses to those movements by states that were not directly involved. After discussing the Turkish, Israeli, Iranian, and American responses, the focus turns to the recently announced military cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Did the Saudi government conspire with the Egyptian high command to plot the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Cairo? If so, as seems likely, was the United States aware of the conspiracy? More importantly, what does the linkage between the Egyptian army and Saudi and Gulf financial support for President al-Sisis regime suggest for the future of stability and legitimate rule in the Arab world?

20 Billion

levels of society” (32). What paradigm? He wrote only that it “consequently [subsequently?] conditioned the way in which men comprehended their environment, including all levels of the settlement hierarchy, and prescribed the manner in which, within the fused framework of tribal sabiqa [?] and Islam, they attempted to order that system and the nodal centers comprising it” (32). It is difacult to make sense of this passage, but four lines are, in any case, a meager harvest. If the paradign were real, the chapter would have to be shaped as an account of its nature. Wheatley’s analytical language often verges on the unintelligible. According to the introduction, the purpose of the book is “to elicit from not always ekistically forthcoming sources the faded lineaments of thirteen settlement systems that agglomerative and accessibility factors had molded into pyramidal urban hierarchies by the tenth century” (xiii). Exactly what does he mean? According to the conclusion, “The imbricately structured layers of meaning, memory, and association evoked by these urban forms, in retrospect seemingly scaled harmoniously to the measure of humanity, can only be imagined” (337). Is this how geographers speak? The title of the book refers to a statement by Mohammed voicing fear that his people will return to the desert, “forsaking the places where men pray together” (41). That, at least is a deanition of Islamic cities that everyone can understand.

The Second Umayyad Caliphate: The Articulation of Caliphal Legitimacy in al-Andalus (review)

In all of the South Asian subcontinent, Bengal was the region most receptive to the Islamic faith. This area today is home to the worlds second-largest Muslim ethnic population. How and why did such a large Muslim population emerge there? And how does such a religious conversion take place? Richard Eaton uses archaeological evidence, monuments, narrative histories, poetry, and Mughal administrative documents to trace the long historical encounter between Islamic and Indic civilizations. Moving from the year 1204, when Persianized Turks from North India annexed the former Hindu states of the lower Ganges delta, to 1760, when the British East India Company rose to political dominance there, Eaton explores these moving frontiers, focusing especially on agrarian growth and religious change.

The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760.

Bulliet abandons the historians habit of viewing Islamic history from the center, that is, focusing on the rise and fall of imperial dynasties. Instead, he derives an understanding of how and why Islam became -- and continues to be -- so rooted in the social structure of the vast majority of people who lived far from the political locus and did not see the caliphate as essential in their lives.

Islam: The View from the Edge.

In this important study, Janet Abu-Lughod presents a groundbreaking reinterpretation of global economic evolution and provides a new paradigm for understanding the evolution of world systems by tracing the rise of a system that, at its peak in the opening decades of the fourteenth century, involved a vast region stretching between northwest Europe and China. Writing in a clear and lively style, Abu-Lughod explores the reasons for the eventual decay of this system and the rise of European hegemony. She concludes with a provocative analysis of our current world economy, suggesting that we may be moving towards a pluralistic world similar in important respects to that of the thirteenth century.