The success or failure of land reform programs in the past has been, in general, evaluated on the basis of whether agricultural output increases or decreases following their adoption and the implementation of their principal provisions. Yet this approach ignores other factors, such as the effect of prices on output, making it likely that the influence of land reform is under- or over-estimated. In this paper, we suggest that it is possible to isolate the effect of price on output from those of reform programs by using the Nerlove supply model. By applying this method to periods before and after the initiation of such programs, we can identify any change in the market responsiveness of the affected cultivators. In testing this approach, the output of major crops in Egypt, Syria and Iraq—countries which have seen major land reform efforts in the post-war era—was analyzed. Post-reform responsiveness was compared with that of earlier periods and with that of cultivators in two neighboring countries—Jordan and Lebanon—which underwent little reform.

The very use of the term “Bakhtiyārī” with its implicit notion of sociopolitical unity has obscured the nature of the organization and relationships of these pastoral nomadic tribes.1 At the same time that observers of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Iran described the Bakhtiyārī as a unit, they could not explain the prevailing disunity that characterized tribal relationships. Major obstacles for analysis of this problem have been the office of the īlkhānī, paramount chief of all the Bakhtiyārī, and the domination of tribal history by the family of those eligible for this position, which has imposed a certain unity upon recent Bakhtiyārī history. The view that an īlkhānī had long ruled the Bakhtiyārī and that the tribes constituted a confederation has been accepted since the late nineteenth century. Yet the first īlkhānī, Husain Qulī Khan, was not appointed until 1867, and possibly only during his. tenure in office (d. 1882), and again during the Persian Revolution, have the Bakhtiyārī functioned as a true confederation. The significance of prevailing disunity under a temporary political and administrative unity goes beyond the history of the Bakhtiyārī and has important implications for an understanding of Iranian society and history itself.

The question whether modern or “modernizing” societies tend to become similar has been a focus of great preoccupation among scholars—historians, sociologists, or political scientists—who, since the early fifties, have been concerned with the analysis of the contemporary scene, of processes of so-called modernization and development. Most of the studies of modernization in general and of convergence of industrial societies in particular, which developed in the fifties up to the mid-sixties, have stressed that the more modern or developed different societies become, the more similar will they become in their basic, central, institutional aspects, and the less the importance of traditional elements within them.

As our main guidelines in judging the probability of success in the formation of an economic union, we have used past trade patterns to indicate complementarities between the prospective partners, oil revenue projections to estimate the degree of future expansion of both demand and supply, and the principles of mutual self-interest and universal gain to argue for the likelihood of cooperation of all members. The essential participants in a Middle East Economic Community (MEEC), on these bases, would have to include most of the countries now producing food and other commodities in sufficient quantities for export to the partners, and enough of the major oil producers to provide the capital resources the community will need to accelerate its development during the next decade. At a minimum this would involve the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. The arguments put forward to indicate the interest of the last two countries in unification apply also to the other oil producers considered here—Libya and the smaller Gulf states. The need in the Middle East for enhanced food-producing capabilities recommends inclusion of the Sudan, though the latter suffers from internal political problems that might limit its participation in an essentially Arab enterprise.

We have not considered the possible participation of other neighboring states in a Middle East Economic Community—Cyprus, Iran, Turkey, or even, after a settlement with the Palestinians, Israel—in order not to further complicate the discussion. While none of these countries might be interested in full MEEC membership in the foreseeable future, each might find considerable advantage in some sort of a link, possibly like Turkey's current associate standing in the European Community. Possible Iranian interest would have the same basis as that of the Arab oil exporters, promising investment opportunities in non-oil countries and a larger market in the long-run for new Iranian industries. On the other hand, Turkey is more like Egypt or Lebanon. It has already seen a considerable jump in its exports to the major Arab countries, from about $71 million in 1972 to $168 million, close to an eighth of all its exports, in 1975.

Although Iran's imports from the potential community members account for less than 1.5 percent of its total imports, 10 percent of the value of its non-petroleum exports are destined for these Arab States. Almost 16 percent of its food exports and over 11 percent of its manufactured exports constitute the major categories of Iran's exports to this market.

Cyprus, whose economy has suffered serious setbacks after the 1974 crisis, has, paradoxically had an extremely healthy growth of exports to these Middle Eastern states. By 1975, the total value of Cypriot exports to these countries was nearly 270 percent of its 1973 export figures to the same market. The principal factor behind this remarkable expansion of trade was due to the civil strife in Lebanon which disrupted its exports of vegetable and food products to these countries. Cyprus immediately filled the gap left by the Lebanese civil war; it remains to be seen, however, how strong and permanent the Cypriot foothold is in this market, since the end of the disturbances in Lebanon.

Turkey imports 10 percent of its total imports from these countries and exports nearly 12 percent of its total exports to them. There is, however, a great difference in the composition of imports and exports. Eighty-eight percent of Turkish exports to these countries are varied. In terms of its total exports to this market, Turkey exports 36 percent in food products, 39 percent in non-fuel crude materials, and 15 percent in basic manufactures.

The truly unique set of economic circumstances taking shape in the Middle East offer the region a chance for rapid development that could even exceed that of post-war Japan or Stalinist Russia. Such massive capital inflows that the oil-producers are now and will continue to enjoy for several years have never previously been seen in such a short period by any people. The Arabs will add this ingredient to economic structures which have already undergone considerable modernization in the past two generations. Transportation networks, educational and public health systems, and administrative bureaucracies, among other infrastructure elements, throughout the area are fairly well developed, thanks in no small part to past oil-related revenues.

These oil revenues will bring their recipients sufficient wealth to provide adequately for their descendants, economic union or not. But, the degree to which their descendants live by their own economic activities, provided for by today's investments, and the extent that oil benefits will fuel regional development depend upon whether, when, and how much economic integration occurs.

Both oil and non-oil states could reap considerable benefits from an economic union, and given their mutual needs for each other, they all would enter serious negotiations from individual positions of strength. To no small extent, the success of an Arab union may be as much dependent on the progress of an Arab-Israeli peace settlement. But, the advantages of integration to the core states of the Arab world, we maintain, are clear, and the degree to which these advantages can be realized depends upon how early in the upsurge of oil revenues economic union advances to an operative level. Some important early steps have been the Economic Unity Agreement and the establishment of the Kuwait Fund, the Arab Fund, the Abu Dhabi Fund, and the Inter-Arab Investment Guarantee Corporation. Most of these proposals have not achieved their full potential, and more genuine commitment is needed.

Stirrings of movement toward such commitment were seen at the June 1975 meeting of the Arab Economic Unity Council. Rather than issuing still another call for immediate integration with more rhetorical value than economic content, the participants pledged a five-year effort to coordinate the policies of their governments with the aim of initiating a Middle East Economic Community in 1981. Of course, progress remains to be seen, but considerable political realism appeared to be shown at the 1975 AEUC meeting, recognizing the need for a step-by-step approach to integration, not only over the first five years, but also in the twenty-year period beginning in 1981 that was seen as necessary for complete implementation of the economic community.

The challenge to integrate facing the Arabs is not as drastic as the economic equivalent of life or death, but the way in which it is met is likely to determine whether they emerge from the next quarter century as the major world economic power that their numbers, history, and fortunate endowment of natural resources seem to make possible.

In the early months of 1920 a group of leading Egyptians founded Bank Misr. Destined to be the major financial arm of an emerging Egyptian bourgeoisie and the hub of a far-flung industrial and commercial empire, Bank Misr was established amidst the revolutionary turmoil of Egypt in 1919 and 1920. It reflected the nationalist and antiforeign sentiments of these troubled years. Its architect, Tal'at Harb, epitomized many of these characteristics. An ardent Muslim and a defender of Arab-Islamic civilization against its Western and Eastern detractors, he was a dedicated nationalist and a critic of rapacious and exploitative European capitalism. Bank Misr was founded as a supremely Egyptian institution and an expression of nationalist aspirations. Its founders hoped that the Bank might facilitate the emergence of an independent Egyptian bourgeoisie. They also wanted to use its resources to establish new commercial, industrial, and financial companies separate from European capital and working exclusively for the economic well-being of Egypt. But many questions immediately emerged. Could an institution founded in the furor of the revolution and headed by an inexperienced staff even survive, let alone spearhead, far-reaching industrial and commercial changes in the Egyptian economy? What would be its relations with foreigners and especially foreign capital? What role would foreign experts play in the life of the Bank? The purpose of this essay is to investigate how the Bank dealt with these problems by looking at the evolving relationship of the Bank with foreign capital. Put simply it can be said that as the Bank evolved and matured, it began to modify many of its original nationalist, populist, and antiforeign sentiments. It was forced to form alliances with the same groups it had so vigorously denounced at its birt. A close observation of the relationship between Bank Misr and foreign capital should cast light on the effort to create an autonomous Egyptian bourgeoisie. It will show the problems inherent in this vision and the compromises that had to be made as difficulties arose. It will also demonstrate the power of European capitalism in Egypt and its capacity to come to terms with even the most vigorous nationalist organizations.

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Noting the limitations of the macroanalytic approach in the study of politics, a group of political scientists have focused their attention on individual members of the society—their systems of political belief, expectations, and aspirations. This group is concerned with the individual's “cognitive,” “affective,” and “evaluative” orientations toward the system.But unlike the United States, where numerous authoritative writings focus on the belief system of the individual, there has been only limited research investigating the belief system of Arabs in general and Kuwaiti Arabs in particular.

Anthropological interest in the concept of “class” and in the constellation of related concepts such as class consciousness and class conflict has increased in recent years as part of the upsurge of interest in ideas drawn from the Marxist tradition to analyze and interpret societies that anthropologists have conventionally been interested in. Yet much of this research and thinking has focused on the relevance of the different modes of production for an understanding of cultural history or, more recently, on analyses derived from dependency theory suggesting a global application of the notions of class and class conflict. Both these approaches neglect the usefulness of notions of class derived from the Marxist tradition for providing frameworks for the gathering of anthropological field data or for its analysis. It is true that work in cultural ecology and economic anthropology has frequently had a materialist bias, but it has rarely gone beyond an emphasis on the links of causality running from material factors to the superstructure to a test of the concepts of the Marxist tradition as a model increasing our understanding of the ebb and flow of human life. Even rarer has been the use of anthropological field data to evaluate and refine the concepts themselves.

Ten years ago dissatisfaction with the state of studying Middle East politics may well have led one to believe that to a very large extent, the shortage of scholars qualified in the esoteric languages, elaborate traditions, and long history of the area was to blame. In fact, at the time there was a good deal of justification to speak of an expected shortage of experts in Middle Eastern studies, to the point where importing such scholars from abroad was considered as an alternative. Today, the problem seems to be more to find positions for fair numbers of fresh Ph.D.s in Middle Eastern history, sociology, and politics. The dissatisfaction with the state of the field, however, remains intact.

Among recent studies of occupational stratification there appears to be a consensus that occupational categories are, with minor variations, similarly evaluated in terms of prestige by individuals of different societies.Is argued that all societies, faced with similar functional problems in the maintenance of complex social systems, find it necessary to ensure that certain types of occupational roles (e.g., political, religious, educational) are filled and their associated tasks performed. To do so, all societies allocate rewards (both material and sociopsychological) to these roles and positions within roles in the form of high prestige. Assuming that all societies have to fill the same basic set of occupational roles, it follows that all societies should exhibit generally similar prestige evaluations of these roles, as measured, for example, by the prestige attributed to the roles by individuals within the society.

In a recent book Michael Hudson referred to Lebanon as the “Precarious Republic.” The Lebanese Republic was said to be precarious because its citizens tended to identify more strongly with the ideologies of their various sects than with the state, because of the gulf separating the rich from the poor, and because of the growing restlessness of the latter. It was also said to be precarious because of growing disaffection of most segments of Lebanese society with most areas of government performance.

The Arab oil-based economies in the Middle East are experiencing a period of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity owing to the recent dramatic increases in their oil revenues. The countries, however, have started to encounter considerable difficulty in implementing their overly ambitious development plans. Their economies are exhibiting obvious signs of tension and stress with acute bottlenecks developing in many areas and sectors. These bottlenecks relate basically to their generally narrow resource base, inadequate infrastructure, profound labor shortages especially in skilled and highly trained manpower, and inefficient administrative machinery. The cumulative impact of these factors diminishes the capacity of these countries to absorb their tremendous oil revenues productively.

“Historical study,” G. R. Elton has written, “is not the study of the past but the study of present traces of the past.” Whatever man has said, whatever act he has performed in the past, is irretrievably lost unless or until some present deposit of that past has survived for the historian to examine. The traces, or evidence available to the historian when he commences his narrative, has a bearing on the nature and scope of his work. Traces overlooked, neglected or disregarded might affect the soundness of the historian's interpretation; yet, the situation can be set right once the evidence has been reexamined, once the available traces have been indicated and employed. At the very least, those traces must exist. If the case were otherwise, most history would be construed as speculation, hearsay, gossip or worse. Truth is the daughter of time, but only when sufficient evidence will permit its establishment.

In explaining the determinants of economic growth, economists have attempted to distinguish the relative contributions made by various inputs. Theodore Schultz concluded that improvements in human capital have made larger contributions to growth than increases in physical capital. E. F. Denison was even more specific in his pioneering studies of changes in real national income in the United States from 1927 to 1967, estimating that 23 percent of the growth could be explained by improvements in the educational level of the labor force and 20 percent by advances in technological and managerial knowledge. On the basis of such results, we may conclude that expenditures on education and training, public health, and general research contribute significantly to productivity in the industrialized nations by raising the quality of human capital; thus these outlays command a continuing return in the future.

The system of administered trade has been quoted in the literature as an effective mechanism to insure trade between economically unequal countries while protecting the less-developed states from any real contact with more developed areas (see Polanyi et al. 1957, esp. Arnold: 1957,154–187).

Using the example of the traditional state of Morocco, this paper seeks to demonstrate that administered trade was not an effective safeguard against commerce with technologically advanced countries, and in fact, that the system itself contained features which, rather than protecting traditional countries, actually contributed to their conquest by more technologically advanced ones.

The term “secularization” is used to qualify that manner of change which occurred in the Islamic system of civil law from 1451 to 1926. It refers to the processes that caused gradual revision and/or change in Islamic Ottoman and Turkish civil law and connotes a departure from the orthodox tenets prescribed by Islamic law. This departure is a process that may create gradual or abrupt change. Also that which in retrospect is classified as a change may not at the outset be classified as such. Specifically, this change may begin in the form of supplementation and continue in this manner without the process taking the form of major change. On the other hand there may be total change within the structure undergoing these experiences. This structure, which is the subject of discussion, is the Islamic Ottoman and Turkish civil law. The secularization process in this case represents: (1) supplementation, (2) reform (Tanzimat and the Mecelle), (3) change (abrogation of the capitulatory system), (4) complete secular change in civil law (adoption of the Swiss Civil Code).

In Turkey, foreign trade now confines its principal operations to the cities of Constantinople, Smyrna, and Alexandria … Aleppo, which was before the Middle of the last century the most considerable emporium in Turkey, is now a place of comparatively little commercial importance. The trade began to decline shortly after the above mentioned period, and in the year 1792 the Levant Company finally dissolved the respectable Establishment which they had previously supported there, the Consul in fact being then the only English resident in the city, whereas in former times there had been as many as twenty-eight British merchants attached to that factory. The towns in Syria have been of late supplied with British manufactures from the establishments at Alexandria, but the consumption dose not appear to have been sufficiently extensive to encourage any of the trading houses in that city to form branch establishments on the Syrian coasts.

In 1899 seventeen-year old Ahmad Lutfī al-Sayyid (1872–1963) nearly entered the Cairo School of Engineering instead of the School of Law.1 Had he done so, he might never have climbed to fame as a writer, educator, and cabinet minister. An occasional engineer did reach national prominence in Egypt during the first half of the twentieth century, but it was the lawyers who ran the show. Upon entering law school in the fall of 1889, Lutfī had as colleagues three future prime ministers (Ismā'īl Ṣidqī, 'Abd al-Khāliq Tharwat, and Muhammad Tawfīq Nasīm) as well as the enthusiastic nationalist Mu⋅⃛afā Kāmil.2 He had made a wise choice.

Much has been written recently about the severe domestic problems which Turkey has been experiencing since 1970. Instability in the form of worker strikes, student demonstrations, parliamentary stalemate over reform measures, and above all, urban guerrilla terrorism prompted the armed forces to intervene in March 1971 and impose a nonpartisan coalition government in order to put an end to what they deemed “anarchy, fratricide and social and economic unrest.” The following month, at the instigation of the armed forces, a state of emergency was declared and martial law was instituted in eleven of Turkey's sixty-seven provinces. Thousands of suspected “anarchists” were arrested and stood trial, with the result that an uneasy calm returned to the surface of Turkish affairs. Many civilian politicians in the Turkish Grand National Assembly (GNA) were restive under martial law, how ever, decrying their loss of independent action and demanding a loosening of the tight military control.

In the summer of 1925, a revolt erupted in the French mandated territories of Syria and Lebanon and rapidly spread throughout the area. The French army of the Levant seemed powerless to halt it. By autumn, no part of Syria or Lebanon was secure against sudden disruption of life and property. Stories of French incompetence, impotence, and arrogance were widely circulated in the Syrian and European press. The Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, in a rare exercise of its limited powers, refused to accept the French report for 1925, which covered only the comparatively calm period preceding the revolt, and demanded instead a full account of the disturbances, as well as the restoration of peace in the mandate. In October, when rebels infiltrated Damascus, the French military administration took a drastic step to end the revolt. Without warning, General Sarrail, the high commissioner, ordered the ancient city bombarded continuously for nearly twenty-four hours. When the smoke lifted, much of Damascus was in ruins; the reported loss of life and property appalled world opinion and galvanized Arab dissidents. A torrent of violent and emotional criticism was unleashed. In some quarters it was even hinted that the League of Nations would remove the mandate from French control. Yet less than a year later, the revolt had been quashed and France's hold on the mandate was so secured internationally that it survived into World War II.