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Muslim-Christian relations in Damascus amid the 1860 riot
On 9 July 1860 CE, an outbreak of violence in the inner-city Christian quarter of Damascus created shock waves locally and internationally. This book provides a step-by-step presentation of events and issues to assess the true role of all the players and shapers of events. It critically examines the internal and external politico-socio-economic factors involved and argues that economic interests rather than religious fanaticism were the main causes for the riot of 1860. Furthermore, it argues that the riot was not a sudden eruption but rather a planned and organised affair.
eBook
A new old Damascus : authenticity and distinction in urban Syria
[F]illed with rare encounters with Syria's oldest, most elite
families. Critics of anthropology's taste for exoticism and marginality will savor
this study of upper-class Damascus, a world that is urbane and cosmopolitan, yet in
many ways as remote as the settings in which the best ethnography has traditionally
been done... [Written] with a nuanced appreciation of the cultural forms in
question and how Damascenes themselves think, talk about, and create them. --
Andrew Shryock In contemporary urban Syria, debates about the
representation, preservation, and restoration of the Old City of Damascus have
become part of status competition and identity construction among the city's elite.
In theme restaurants and nightclubs that play on images of Syrian tradition, in
television programs, nostalgic literature, and visual art, and in the rhetoric of
historic preservation groups, the idea of the Old City has become a commodity for
the consumption of tourists and, most important, of new and old segments of the
Syrian upper class. In this lively ethnographic study, Christa Salamandra argues
that in deploying and debating such representations, Syrians dispute the past and
criticize the present. Indiana Series in Middle East Studies --
Mark Tessler, general editor
eBook
Everyday Life and Consumer Culture in Eighteenth-Century Damascus
Damascus was for centuries a center of learning and commerce. Drawing on the city's dazzling literary tradition-a rich collection of poetry, chronicles, travel accounts, and biographical dictionaries-as well as on Islamic court records, James Grehan explores the material culture of premodern Damascus, reconstructing the economic infrastructure, social customs, and private consumer habits that dominated this cosmopolitan hub in the 1700s. He sketches a lively history of diet, furniture, fashion, and other aspects of daily life, providing an unusual and intimate account of the choices, constraints, and compromises that defined consumer behavior.
Coffee, tobacco, and light firearms had arisen as new luxury items in preceding centuries, and Grehan traces the usage of such goods in order to get a picture of the overall standard of living in the premodern Middle East. He looks particularly at how wealth and poverty were defined and how consumption patterns expressed notions of taste, class, and power, illuminating the prominent role played by Damascus in shaping the economy and culture of the Middle East.
In assessing the magnitude of social change in modern times, we have few benchmarks from the period preceding the onset of modernity in the nineteenth century. This informative study will make possible more precise cultural and economic comparisons between different parts of the world as it stood on the brink of a radically new economic and political order. The book's focus on a little-examined period and region will appeal to scholars and students of urban social history and Arab popular culture.
eBook
High-strength Damascus steel by additive manufacturing
Laser additive manufacturing is attractive for the production of complex, three-dimensional parts from metallic powder using a computer-aided design model
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. The approach enables the digital control of the processing parameters and thus the resulting alloy’s microstructure, for example, by using high cooling rates and cyclic re-heating
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. We recently showed that this cyclic re-heating, the so-called intrinsic heat treatment, can trigger nickel-aluminium precipitation in an iron–nickel–aluminium alloy in situ during laser additive manufacturing
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. Here we report a Fe19Ni5Ti (weight per cent) steel tailor-designed for laser additive manufacturing. This steel is hardened in situ by nickel-titanium nanoprecipitation, and martensite is also formed in situ, starting at a readily accessible temperature of 200 degrees Celsius. Local control of both the nanoprecipitation and the martensitic transformation during the fabrication leads to complex microstructure hierarchies across multiple length scales, from approximately 100-micrometre-thick layers down to nanoscale precipitates. Inspired by ancient Damascus steels
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—which have hard and soft layers, originally introduced via the folding and forging techniques of skilled blacksmiths—we produced a material consisting of alternating soft and hard layers. Our material has a tensile strength of 1,300 megapascals and 10 per cent elongation, showing superior mechanical properties to those of ancient Damascus steel
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. The principles of in situ precipitation strengthening and local microstructure control used here can be applied to a wide range of precipitation-hardened alloys and different additive manufacturing processes.
A Damascus-like steel consisting of alternating hard and soft layers is created by using a laser additive manufacturing technique and digital control of the processing parameters.
Journal Article
Damascus: From the Fall of Persia to the Roman Conquest
Abstract
This contribution aims to provide an outline of the political dynamics, cultural developments, and, ultimately, historical semantics of the city of Damascus for the circle(s) of its eponymous Document.
Journal Article