Letter (July-September 1984) Christopher Hitchens’ article “Uncorking the Genie: The Cyprus Question and Turkey’s Military Rule” (MERIP Reports 122) must be commended for approaching the complex issue of Cyprus from the vantage point of regional politics, rather than the more usual and not very enlightening arguments involving (Author not identified) • 3 min read
Koff, Occupied Palestine David Koff, Occupied Palestine (E Cinema Six Productions, 1981). David Koff and his team have made a complex, sensitive and brutally authentic movie. Occupied Palestine delivers its message with unnerving sharpness and accuracy. For these very reasons it may strike those who are not intimately fami Joel Beinin • 3 min read
Books on Syria John F. Devlin, Syria: Modern State in an Ancient Land (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983). Robert Olson, The Baath and Syria, 1947-1982 (Princeton, NJ: The Kingston Press, 1982). Umar F. Abd-Allah, The Islamic Struggle in Syria (Berkeley, CA: Mizan Press, 1983). Fred H. Lawson • 5 min read
Scholch, Palestinians Over the Green Line Alexander Schölch, ed., Palestinians Over the Green Line (London: Ithaca Press, 1983). Penny Johnson • 3 min read
Orientalism in Color Mary Anne Stevens, ed., The Orientalists: Delacroix to Matisse -- The Allure of North Africa and the Near East (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, in association with Weidenfield and Nicolson, London, 1984). Sarah J Graham-Brown • 9 min read
Keddie, Religion and Politics in Iran Nikki Keddie, Religion and Politics in Iran: Shiism from Quietism to Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983). Eric Hooglund • 1 min read
Gabbay, Communism and Agrarian Reform in Iraq Rony Gabbay, Communism and Agrarian Reform in Iraq (London: Croom Helm, 1978). Modern Iraqi history suffers from a lack of monographs and case studies on subjects such as rural affairs. Rony Gabbay’s research helps to fill this vacuum, at least in the area of social and political developments in th Tom Nieuwenhuis • 2 min read
Two Books on the Iran-Iraq War Shirin Tahir-Kheli and Shaheen Ayubi, The Iran-Iraq War: New Weapons, Old Conflicts (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1983). Tareq Y. Ismael, Iraq and Iran: Roots of Conflict (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1982). Much of the growing literature on the Iran-Iraq war is devoted to how the conflic Mansour Farhang • 1 min read
El-Azhary, The Iran-Iraq War M. S. el-Azhary, ed., The Iran-Iraq War (London and New York: Croom Helm and St. Martin’s Press, 1984). This volume comprises papers presented at a conference organized by the Universities of Exeter and Basra, at Exeter in July 1982, together with an introduction and conclusion written in the sprin Peter Sluglett • 3 min read
Nieuwenhuis, Politics and Society in Early Modern Iraq Tom Nieuwenhuis, Politics and Society in Early Modern Iraq: Mamluk Pashas, Tribal Shaykhs and Local Rule Between 1802 and 1831 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1981). This is a reasoned and illuminating analysis, by a young Dutch scholar, of Iraq in the three closing decades of the Mamluk e Hanna Batatu • 3 min read
Al-Khafaji, al-Dawla wal-Tatawwur al-Rasmali fil-Iraq Isam al-Khafaji, al-Dawla wal-Tatawwur al-Ra’smali fil-‘Iraq, 1968-1979 (Cairo, 1984). Isam al-Khafaji is a distinguished Iraqi economist who studied at Baghdad University under Muhammad Salman Hasan in the early 1970s. After leaving Iraq in 1978, he studied for a year in Paris before settling in B Marion Farouk-Sluglett • 5 min read
Rafsanjani Discusses Timing of Next Iranian Offensive Excerpts from the Friday prayer speech of Hojjat-ol-Islam Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the Imam’s representative to the Supreme Defense Council, and Speaker of the Majles, broadcast on Tehran radio, July 6, 1984. (Author not identified) • 5 min read
