MER Article Editor's Picks (Spring 2010) Baer, Marc David. Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Baer, Marc David. The Dönme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries and Secular Turks (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009). Bayat, Asef. Life as Poli The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Mohamed el-Sayed Said Mohamed el-Sayed Said, a long-time contributing editor of this publication, died at the age of 59 on October 10, 2009. He was buried in his native Port Said. The intellectual elite of Egypt attended his funeral. Jason Brownlee, Joshua Stacher • 2 min read
MER Article Peleg, Israeli Culture Between the Two Intifadas Yaron Peleg, Israeli Culture Between the Two Intifadas: A Brief Romance (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2008). Rebecca L. Stein • 4 min read
MER Article Pitching the Princes Robert Lacey, Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia (Viking, 2009). Robert Vitalis • 8 min read
MER Article What Does the Gama`a Islamiyya Want Now? In the early 1990s, the security forces of Egypt were embroiled in a low-grade civil war with the Gama‘a Islamiyya (Islamic Group), an uncompromising outfit committed to the violent overthrow of the government. The Gama‘a, like the even more radical Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al-Takfir wa al-Hijra, Ewan Stein • 14 min read
MER Article The Politics of Subsidy Reform in Iran Although most Iranians forget it today, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005 on a platform of technocratic competence. The clique surrounding his rise to mayor of Tehran and beyond once called themselves Abadgaran, “the Developers.” In a column four months after Ahmadinejad’s election to the Iranian presidency, commentator Saeed Kevan Harris • 14 min read
MER Article Turkey's Rivers of Dispute In the waning years of the twentieth century, it was common to hear predictions that water would be the oil of the twenty-first. A report prepared for the center-right Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, forecast that water, not oil, would be the dominant sourc Hilal Elver • 13 min read
MER Article Water Conflict and Cooperation in Yemen Yemen is one of the oldest irrigation civilizations in the world. For millennia, farmers have practiced sustainable agriculture using available water and land. Through a myriad of mountain terraces, elaborate water harvesting techniques and community-managed flood and spring irrigation systems, the Gerhard Lichtenthaeler • 11 min read
MER Article Saudi Alchemy The abundance of oil in Saudi Arabia is staggering. With more than 250 billion barrels, the kingdom possesses one-fifth of the world’s oil reserves, affording it considerable influence Toby Jones • 14 min read
MER Article Iraq's Water Woes The eastern cusp of the Fertile Crescent is turning barren. Statistically one of the water-richest states in the Middle East, Iraq is nonetheless losing arable land as rainfall lessens, the level of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers drops and saline water creeps northward into the Shatt al-‘Arab, the great Chris Toensing • 8 min read
MER Article Waking the Red-Dead “Look at that!” said Muhammad ‘Asfour, an environmentalist and avid nature photographer, pointing to a picture of a boat and wooden staircase perched well above the Jordanian shore of the Dead Sea. “Do you see how far they are from the waterline?” Lizabeth Zack • 6 min read
MER Article Speaking of Water “Life After People,” the History Channel’s plangently alarmist imagined documentary series on the vestiges of civilization after an unspecified catastrophe, forecasts an end for Dubai’s infamous Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world at 2,625 feet. The desert location of Dubai, coupled with the persistent engineering George R. Trumbull • 11 min read
