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This book provides a comprehensive overview of the last 100 years in the Middle East from the perspective of social history. It is apt to date the beginning of the modern Middle East to the industrialization era, while it extends its reach into the present. Taking its lead from modernization theory, this book illustrates past expectations of the present and helps to understand everyday occurrences rather than sensational events. It adopts a multi-disciplinary perspective and concentrates on t.

This article addresses the issues of intercultural contacts and presents historical experiences that relate to contemporary phenomena of the increased flow of migration. The relationship between acculturation and naturalisation and the concepts of integration of colonial peoples with France during the Third French Republic and the colonial empire have been examined. These concepts assumed integration through acculturation and assimilation, and the instrument conducive to this process was to be naturalisation. The article refers to archival material and explores individual cases of naturalisation in Tunisia during the period of the French protectorate. The documents prove that the act of naturalisation itself did not lead to greater acculturation. The main obstacle to acculturation expected by the French authorities was the constant identification of naturalised indigènes with native culture through socialization with the native environment.

This article addresses the issues of intercultural contacts and presents historical experiences that relate to contemporary phenomena of the increased flow of migration. The relationship between acculturation and naturalisation and the concepts of integration of colonial peoples with France during the Third French Republic and the colonial empire have been examined. These concepts assumed integration through acculturation and assimilation, and the instrument conducive to this process was to be naturalisation. The article refers to archival material and explores individual cases of naturalisation in Tunisia during the period of the French protectorate. The documents prove that the act of naturalisation itself did not lead to greater acculturation. The main obstacle to acculturation expected by the French authorities was the constant identification of naturalised indigenes with native culture through socialization with the native environment.

Professor Anna Mrozek-Dumanowska was a philosopher and orientalist (Arabic studies) by education. She studied both faculties at the University of Warsaw. She researched the field of sociology and religious studies. The Professor’s scientific achievements include monographs, editorial teams, articles, book chapters, papers at national and international conferences, research projects, reviews of dissertations and publications, and editorial issues of our journals. Her many-sided interests were particularly worthy of attention: initially, they included Arab philosophy, relations between Islam and Christianity, and nation-building processes in Africa; later contemporary Islam and its social functions, and subsequently phenomena on the border of religion and magic and movements of religious renewal.

Abolitionism as a humanitarian trend at the height of the colonial period was a great intellectual achievement by the European civilization. But the process of making Asian and African people and the right to manumit slaves exercised by Europeans also was a part of complex colonial policy and combined moral assumptions with political and economic interests. This article aims to show how the right to manumit became an important issue in British Imperial policy. It proves that for the British, with the on-going process of self-determination of people in Arabia and Persia, it became more and more difficult to exercise the right to manumit slaves and that in some cases a humanitarian approach was sacrificed for political interests and for imperial strategy.

At the turn of the twentieth century, American Protestant churches' interest in foreign missions increased dramatically. In 1886, at a summer Bible conference for leaders of the collegiate Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), one hundred young men decided to become foreign missionaries. This was the beginning of the widespread student enthusiasm for missions, with its watchword \"the evangelisation of the world in this generation,\" as the archetypal symbol of the American missionary movement. Within thirty years of the YMCA conference, the United States displaced the United Kingdom as the leader in missionary work. This article traces the roots of the modern American Protestant missionary movement at the turn of the 20th century and the reasons for the unprecedented growth of enthusiasm for preaching the gospel to non-Christians. It has been stressed that several factors determined the concept of the mission at that time and that the tradition of revivalist movements was the most critical.

The article is on slavery in the Persian Gulf, as documented in the official reports of British officials and the slaves' statements made at the British Agencies in the Gulf. Between 1921 and 1946 around 950 slaves applied for manumission. There were almost 280 women among the applicants and data from their statements refer to the position of slave women in the local societies during the critical time of a socio-economic crisis in the 1930s. Who were female-applicants and why were they running away from their masters? In what terms were they describing their status as slaves and moreover, what was it that slavery meant for them?

Islamic Modernism represents a complex phenomenon and combines various trends focused on multitude of goals and methods starting from education and missionary work to reinforce the concept of Tawhid and the rejection of any religious innovation (bid'ah). In the legal matters, these trends can be divided into two groups: those who opt for independent legal judgement (ijtihad), and those who oppose using rational disputation (kalam). Founded and developed in Egypt, Islamic Modernism as an idea of religious and legal reform is widespread and can be traced in various Islamic countries such as Turkey, Pakistan, Sudan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran, or Saudi Arabia. This article refers to the tendency of reforming the religious sphere and political relations in Oman and to the question of how the Ibadis look at the reform. The article also exposes Abu Mu?ammad ?Abd Allah b. Humayd b. Sullum al-Salimi, who is generally known in the West as an Omani historian but who played a leading role in the Iba?i Imamat restoration movement in 1913. He put a lot of efforts in the field of education and the reconstruction of modern Omani identity but he was also a jurist and his works refer to the Islamic law and jurisprudence. This preliminary study introduced al-Salimi as a thinker who developed usul al-fikh and furu? al-fikh.

Between 1906 and 1949, more than 950 slaves reported at the British agencies in Bahrain, Kuwait, Muscat, and Sharjah and asked for manumission. Their written statements prove that slavery was an important part of the local socio-economic system and that many slaves had for generations been bound with the same families of owners. The manumission movement was caused mainly by the collapse of the pearl industry in the Gulf in the 1920s and 1930s, but it was the psychological factor rather than the economic one which played the decisive role in slaves coming to a decision to run away from their master.

At the turn of 2011, turbulent events occurred in the Middle East. Initially, these protests were a form of civil disobedience, but the situation later developed in several directions. In Tunisia and Egypt, the authorities finally gave in to the growing protests. In Jordan, Algeria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Mauritania, Sudan and Oman, the authorities managed to convince the public that they would meet their needs. The authorities in Syria, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain took the harshest positions. In Tunisia and Egypt free elections were conducted, and these countries have started to build a democratic system. This experiment, however, was interrupted in Egypt on July 3, 2013 by the intervention of the army. Can one assume that the Arab Spring is now a closed chapter in the history of the Middle East? This article refers to the sources of the 'Arab Spring' and demonstrates its importance for the future of the region. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]