On 26 April 1920, three days after the opening of the Grand National Assembly in Angora (Ankara), Mustafa Kemal addressed his first officially confirmed message to the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) of Russia. Shortly thereafter, Bekir Sami Bey (Kundah), Turkish foreign minister, departed for negotiations in Mosocow.A draft treaty was initialed in August and delivered to Angora in September, and in March 1921 the governments of the Turkish Grand National Assembly and of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic established formal bonds by concluding the Treaty of Moscow. During the few intervening months the small Caucasian Armenian republic, which had been created in May of 1918 and which had become the fulcrum of Armenian aspirations for an independent state encompassing both the Russian Armenian provinces and the contiguous Turkish Armenian provinces of eastern Anatolia, was crushed by the invasion of General Kazim Karabekir's XV Army Corps. The offensive, begun after attainment of a vague Soviet-Turkish understanding, not only overturned the Allied-imposed Treaty of Sévres, which had awarded to the Armenian republic much of the four eastern vilayets of Van, Bitlis, Diyarbakir, and Erzurum, but also restored to Turkish dominion the sanjaks of Kars and Ardahan, since 1878 parts of Russian or Eastern Armenia. What was more, Nationalist Turkey annexed the Surmalu district, embracing Mount Ararat, the historic symbol of the Armenian people.

One of the primary reasons for Lebanon's political viability over nearly three decades of independence in a volatile political environment has been the relative success of well-organized, intensely nationalistic Lebanese groups in mobilizing effective support for the system. The most significant such organization is the Lebanese Katâ'ib Party (LKP), which has exceeded others in its membership support, structural stability, ideological commitment, and coercive powers to influence government policy.

The question of change in religion in Middle Eastern communities has been recently studied by several researchers. A review of these studies reveals three main approaches to the problem. The first approach, used principally by orientalists, treats the problem in terms of either history or theology. Among the most significant of these studies are those of H. A. R. Gibb (1938) and Bernard Lewis (1964), who hold that contact between the secular world of the West and the Muslim sacred way of life has brought elements of secularism into the Islamic religion.

Abû al-Qâsim al-Shâbbî is one of the most attractive literary figures of twentieth- century North Africa, and probably the only Maghribi author of the modern period so far to attain the stature of greatness in the Arab world. His talent was first appreciated in Cairo in the thirties by the editors of Apollo magazine, and today literary men in all Arabic-speaking lands admire his verse.At the 1966 festival held in his memory in Tunis, critics and litterateurs from Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria and Iraq read papers and recited poems expressing their appreciation of this treasured child of the Tunisian desert.

The period between the early 1930s and 1946 witnessed in Iran an intellectual phenomenon unique in the recent, history of that country. This phenomenon was embodied in the person of Ahmad Kasravî (1890–1946), one of the illustrious figures of Iran in the realms of scholarship and social reforms. Kasravî was a man of considerable and varied intellectual talents and great courage. His activities were spread over a very wide range.He became the center of many controversies, not the least important and widespread of which was that concerning classical Persian poetry. It is with this aspect of his work that the present series of papers is concerned.

Research on the social strata that made up Ottoman society is still very much in its beginnings; extensive studies on the peasantry, the bureaucracy, the ‘ulemâ and others will have to be undertaken before any far-reaching conclusions can be drawn. This study focuses on the 'ulemâ of the late sixteenth century, their social composition and mobility within the hierarchy. Materials dealing with the 'ulemâ are more easily accessible than those dealing with other segments of the grup that governed the Ottoman empire, because, as in most other Islamic cultures, there was a great deal of contemporary interest in the lives of poets and learned men.

As indicated in the title, this study will deal with Jewish sects in Israel, not with Moslem or Christian ones. The restriction is not altogether arbitrary, for while one could beneficially explore other religious sects in modern Israel, both for their own sake and in order to analyse their position in the predominantly Jewish society, it is the exploration of the Jewish sects which, besides dealing with a matter of intrinsic interest, may provide a peculiar insight into the meaning of Jewishness in Israel.