The writings of Jurjî Zaidân constitute an important contribution to the secular intellectual awakening of the Arabs in the nineteenth century. The trend toward non-traditional thought had been initiated by the confrontation with the overpowering Western civilization, which threatened the established socio-political order and questioned the validity of the traditional identity and cultural values. To an increasing degree intellectual discussion in the Arab World — as in many other parts of the world — concentrated upon the concept of nationalism. It is in this context that we shall have to discuss the thought of Jurjî Zaidân. Nationalism appeared to be the most efficient means to establish an identity that could resist the Western impact:

The Middle East was overwhelmed by Europe; self-affirmation in nationalistic terms was part of its defense. Backwardness could be overcome by assimilation, but assimilation would obliterate identity. Nationalism would provide the incentive to progress and at the same time a barrier to self-obliteration.

The new states of Africa encounter particularly difficult problems of reconciling pressures for rapid socio-economic change with the orderly transfer of power to new leadership. A number of recent commentaries on the discontinuities and crisis of developing countries have challenged the notion, in large part derived from Western political experience, that some sort of incremental reconciliation between the social effects of development and the political restructuring of society will steadily occur. The models used in comparative politics admit conflict, but they do not go very far in telling us how these forces interact in the policy machinery of a developing country. Moreover, while the primacy of politics continues, it is doubtful if new social and economic forces in the society are welcomed, and sometimes even recognized, by the existing élite.

Although every study of Arab society agrees on the central importance of the family to the organization of society, there has been relatively little discussion of the honor of the family, ‘ird. In the descriptions that exist, this honor is characterized as preoccupation with sexual purity and chastity, or as a cause of suspicion and jealousy between men and women. The distinctive characteristics of honor have never been spelled out; it is usually referred to briefly and then discarded in favor of such topics as the authority structure, the preference for marriage with the father's brother's daughter, and the seclusion of women.

Throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries major changes in the relations between great states once again highlighted the importance of a land whose history marks all ages — Egypt. Students of Western naval explorations are familiar with the significant place of Egypt in the imperial plans of the Portuguese during their expansion into the Indian Ocean after 1488. But while the Portuguese attempt to control the Red Sea and Persian Gulf trading routes brought Egyptian history solidly within the periphery of European scholarly interest, the almost simultaneous conquest of the Mamluk empire by the Ottomans (1517) makes no such impact on the historiography of the Western world. Yet the seizure of Syria, Egypt, and Arabia not only catapulted the Ottomans into a position of leadership within the vast Muslim community, but it also gave the Istanbul regime resources sufficient to project its power north to the gates of Vienna and west to the Strait of Gibraltar. Could this ‘distant’ conquest have played a more active role in the history of Europe than hitherto imagined? Clearly the answer to this question involves a comparison between the imperial histories of Europe and the Middle East during the age of the Renaissance. Once the first steps are taken to break the artificial historical divisions preventing such a comparison, there is little doubt that Selim the Grim's victory over the Mamluk empire was a major event in both European and Middle Eastern history.

Since the Second World War, United States currency has been accepted in almost every country in the world, and in many locations the ‘George Washington’ dollar has been in greater demand than local monies. In ancient, medieval and modern times, other currencies have had a similar success. Examples of this phenomenon are the ancient Athenian silver ‘owl’, the Byzantine gold solidus, the Florentine gold florin, and the Maria Theresa silver taler. In the late fourteenth century A.D. the florin was replaced by the gold coin of Venice, the ducat, as the ‘dollar of the Middle Ages’; that is, the international currency par excellence. The position of the ducat was associated with the international trading position of Venice as well as the fact that ‘the Venetian ducato, which was first coined in 1284, kept both its weight and fineness remarkably intact up to the end of the Venetian Republic’. The ducat's domination of the Eastern Mediterranean money market led to the appearance of a series of imitations, including Islamic imitations which were produced in response to the introduction of ducats into the internal economy of Mamluk Egypt. All the accounts based on Arabic sources date the domination of the ducat in the Mamluk market from a.h. 801/a.d. 1399. These same sources describe the various attempts by Mamluk sultans to meet the challenge of the ducat by coining imitations. Their efforts culminated in the ashrafî, first issued in 829/1425, which successfully replaced the ducat as the principal gold currency of the Mamluk Empire until the Ottoman conquest of 922/1517.

The Islamic poetic tradition as it came to the Turks through Persian is characterized by a rather limited catalog of basic themes expressed by an equally limited number of standard tropes. The basic themes are usually quite easily recognizable (e.g. the sâkî theme, the bahâr theme, etc.), even though more than one basic theme may be included in a single poem. The standard tropes — for example, the moon for the face of the beloved, rubies for wine, drunkenness for mystical love — are also used over and over again without any serious attempt to freshen poetic expression by discarding them for new metaphores. Nevertheless, within this atmosphere of apparent similarity, contemporary critics placed high value on creativity, uniqueness, and the invention of ‘new’ fancies. Modern scholarship has, in most cases, attempted to resolve this paradox by stating that ‘creativity’ for the Ottoman poet consisted of rearranging and recombining traditional themes and tropes to create new patterns and, thereby, a subtle and precious uniqueness. Moreover, any internal cohesion or organization other than that provided by rhyme and meter is generally seen as fortuitous and unrelated to any conscious effort to present a unified poetic message. The result of this view is the rather pervasive conclusion that the Ottoman poet is no more creative than the child is ‘creative’ who operates a kaleidoscope which produces infinitely varied patterns, even though the mirrors (themes?) and colored bits of glass (tropes?) remain ever the same.