ABSTRACT
The articles in this collection provide an alternative view of Middle Eastern history by focusing on the oppressed and the excluded, offering a challenge to the usual elite narratives. The collection is unique in its historical depth - ranging from the medieval period to the present - and its geographical reach, including Iran, the Ottoman Empire/Turkey, the Balkans, the Arab Middle East and North Africa.
The first to focus on the oppressed and the excluded, and their differing strategies of survival, of negotiation, and of protest and resistance, the book covers:
- both major social classes and sectors
- the working class
- the peasantry
- the urban poor
- women
- marginal groups such as gypsies and slaves
Based on perspectives drawn from the work of the great European social historians, and particularly inspired by Antonio Gramsci, the collection seeks to restore a sense of historical agency to subaltern classes in the region, and to uncover ‘the politics of the people’.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |44 pages
The Urban Crowd and Popular Protest
part |71 pages
Poor People's Politics
chapter |22 pages
Transforming the City from Below
part |32 pages
Peasants and Nomads
part |39 pages
Marginals and Outcasts
chapter |10 pages
Emancipated Female Slaves in Algiers
part |49 pages
European Subalterns
chapter |24 pages
“Making it” in Pre-Colonial Tunis
part |51 pages
Subalterns and National Movements