Syria

One highly prominent aspect of ISIS’s program of destruction in Syria and Iraq that has come to the media attention recently is their program of cultural heritage destruction that took the form of smashing artifacts in archaeological museums, iconoclastic breaking and bulldozing of archaeological sites, dynamiting of shrines, tombs, and other holy sites of local communities, and burning of libraries and archives. In this paper, I focus on ISIS’s destruction of archaeological heritage. I argue that this destruction can be seen as a form of place-based violence that aims to annihilate the local sense of belonging, and the collective sense of memory among local communities to whom the heritage belongs. Therefore, heritage destruction can be seen as part and parcel of this scorched-earth strategy described above. I also argue that the Islamic State coordinates and choreographs these destructions as mediatic spectacles of violence aimed at objects and sites of heritage, and these spectacles take place as re-enactments or historical performances that are continuously and carefully communicated to us through ISIS’s own image-making and dissemination apparatus that increasingly utilizes the most advanced technologies of visualization and communication. I will also pose questions about the relatively weak responses from the archaeological community around the world that rarely went beyond the stereotypical expression of “dismay” to ISIS’s heritage destruction. At the same time, I will try to answer the why and how of ISIS’s dislike of archaeological heritage in the context of late capitalism.

There is the verbal paradigm and there is the nonverbal unseen spiritual paradigm. This paper advocates a spiritual view. Sacred scripture tells us we can only please God if we try very hard (diligently) to seek Him. If you believe God is present here and now and surrounds you with Himself, you can pray that what you ask will be granted "only if it serves your purpose and brings you glory, in Jesus's name."  When you read sacred scripture, you are struck in every verse by the writers' constant awareness of God. This is in stark contrast with the secular life in which one merely seeks the good life in harmony with one’s neighbour but without any awareness of God. When a child is very young she is aware of God, then from pre-school to university, the secular worldview is taught, and the secular media and the secular workplace prohibit God, or place faith in a negative light.

With the deadly ISIS advance, the sudden rousing of Shia militias and the threat of Kurdish secession, Iraq faces a host of deep-seated and intractable problems. Together, these events raise a number of serious questions, not just for Iraq and its future but also for the broader
Middle East, the United States and its Coalition partners and the international community. While these challenges and questions will drive much academic debate, political analysis and media discussion in the months and years ahead, they are not the central purpose of this chapter. While there is always a risk in commenting on unfolding events, including the potential to overstate their significance and likely long-term impact, it is difficult to ignore the significance of the deadly ISIS advance and all that has happened since. This chapter argues that key to understanding these events is coming to terms with the three varied and complex legacies of the 2003 Iraq War. The first central legacy of the Iraq War is the ongoing consequences of several critical mistakes made by the US-led Coalition before, during and immediately after the 2003 intervention. The second legacy addressed here is the fact that the 2003 war shattered – perhaps irreversibly - Iraqis fragile cultural mosaic and its rich and complex history of overlapping and intersecting communities, ideologies and narratives. The third and final legacy of the 2003 Iraq War detailed in this chapter is its significant regional and global consequences – from spiralling sectarianism across the Middle East to a profound challenge to America’s status as the last remaining superpower and its use of military power for ‘humanitarian’ ends. The argument here is that these three important legacies set in train a sequence of events that have served as the collective catalyst for the expansion of the ‘Islamic State’ from mid-2014.

Haj Asaad, A., Saadé-Sbeih, M., Chamali O., Al Dbyat, M.,

Water is a strategic vector in the Syrian crisis in terms of resilience during conflict and post-conflict recovery and reconciliation. Access to drinking and irrigation water is a critical issue in Syria and the situation is often deteriorating even in areas of relative stability. Water management is a complex issue that combines many physical and human variables. However, investigations carried out using the application of a Geographical Information System (GIS) show that it is possible in the current situation to rehabilitate the irrigations schemes in certain areas, such as Ar Ruj, Azmarin and Ad Doyasat, and to restore drinking water supply networks crossed by demarcation lines and/or sectarian territorial limits rehabilitation and joint management Issues can be resolved through mediation.

In the mid-90s, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and the Iranian Ayatollah Khamene’i both banned bloody forms of self-flagellation such as tatbir (cutting the forehead with a sword), calling them backward and un-Islamic. They argued that Shi‘a Muslims ought to imitate Husayn by actively fighting against oppressors rather than passively mourning Husayn’s martyrdom. This prohibition has not been unanimously applied in all Muslim
countries, including Syria, where such practices persisted until the Arab Spring (when virtually all Shi‘a Muslims left the shrine-town where these practices were performed). By closely reading the linguistic, conceptual, and juridical discourses that circulated in Syria in order to justify this position, the paper shows that the performers of tatbir conceived of these rituals in revolutionary, rather than reactionary, terms. By examining the performance and reception of flagellation processions in terms of differing modalities of affect, the paper opens up spaces for rethinking ‘revolution’ and ‘redemption’ in contemporary Twelver Shi‘ism.

""This book investigates the founding and building of cities in the ancient Near East. The creation of new cities was imagined as an ideological project or a divine intervention in the political narratives and mythologies of Near Eastern cultures, often masking the complex processes behind the social production of urban space. During the Early Iron Age (ca. 1200–850 BCE), Assyrian and Syro-Hittite rulers developed a highly performative official discourse that revolved around constructing cities, cultivating landscapes, building watercourses, erecting monuments, and initiating public festivals. This volume combs through archaeological, epigraphic, visual, architectural, and environmental evidence to tell the story of a region from the perspective of its spatial practices, landscape history, and architectural technologies. It argues that the cultural processes of the making of urban spaces shape collective memory and identity as well as sites of political performance and state spectacle.

Excerpt
http://www.cambridge.org/servlet/file/store6/item7256988/version1/9781107027947_excerpt.pdf""

“Carnivalesque” is perhaps the best, if not the only way to describe what was going on at the Bab al-Saghir Cemetery that hot summer afternoon in 2008.  In front of the graves of the Prophet’s wives, Shi‘i pilgrims could buy Viagra, sex-enhancement creams, and massage oils.  Sexual mores were normally strictly guarded in Syria and medicines were usually available only at pharmacies.  Yet, there in one of the most historically and religiously significant cemeteries in Damascus, makeshift vendors sold an array of sex-related items.  In order to analyze this phenomenon, this article draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the “carnivalesque.”  First, it provides a short background of Twelver Shi‘ism in Syria and explains how Shi‘i religious tourism encouraged the development of black markets.  Then, it examines how Shi‘i pilgrimage, which occurred all year around, but peaked during Muharram, fostered an attitude that liberated Shi‘is from prevalent social norms and emphasized “grotesque” imagery and practices, including blood, death, and sex.  In short, it follows Michael Taussig’s call for anthropologists to attend to the transgressive aspects of religious ritual.

The Syrian conflict is as a multi-layered struggle involving many actors and interests. Structural factors present within the country created tensions when the revolutionary wave of the Arab Spring invested the frustrations of many segments of the Syrian society. The brutal repression perpetuated by the regime sparked widespread violence, dissolving the delicate previous order.
In a troublesome area such as the Middle East, with regional and international actors sharing various interests, this instability created the conditions for external meddling, as external state and non-state actors have seen in Syria the ground for their proxy wars, ranging from sectarian rifts to strategic considerations.
The deadly stalemate created by these dynamics make the solution of the Syrian crisis very unlikely in the short run, with the population suffering the hardest consequences.

This article examines the openly adversarial neoconservative foundation under George Bush to the supposedly more ‘engaged’ diplomatic interaction under Barack Obama. What will be exposed is a fairly uninspired and non-innovative American policy that not only fails to consider Russian initiatives from Russia’s own national security perspectives, but aims to contain it within a continued Cold War box that not only sours opportunities for collaboration but guarantees the absence of partnership in areas of global security. This piece examines the consequences of imagining Russia only as nemesis.

During the onslaught of the Islamic caliphate on Kobanî, Syria, media outlets across the globe broadcast pictures of brave and often unveiled Kurdish women fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), a quintessentially male force of destruction. The images of women fighting Islamist male aggressors aroused outrage, admiration, and pity among observers. But had all Kurdish fighters been male or had women fought for ISIS, viewers might have reacted differently. To examine some of the most widely disseminated gendered pictures and videos of the Syrian uprising in the media, this article draws on Mohja Kahf’s three categories, which typify how Muslim women, Arab women, or both are perceived by the Anglophone reading and viewing public: the first is victims; the second, escapees; and the third, pawns of patriarchy and male power. While this typology helps in examining gendered images of the Syrian uprising, it also obscures the socioeconomic realities on the ground.

From an historical perspective, one can view the Islamic State as a
product of the region’s chronic structural instability. Over the last century,
the Middle East experienced four major upheavals, each of which led to
the formation of a political structure at odds with the social framework
that was based primarily on ethnic, tribal, or religious affiliations. This
incompatibility inevitably eroded the legitimacy of the various regimes and
heightened the potential for opposition and subversion. In most cases, the
nation-state model survived, thanks to an authoritarian rule dependent on
effective security and intelligence services.

The current article deals with Achaemenid imperial policy in fourth century BCE southern Levant, as is evident by the historical sources and the archaeological data. It is suggested that following the Egyptian rebellion of 404–400 BCE, southern Palestine underwent major transformation as a result of becoming the southwestern frontier of the Persian Empire. An attempt to reconstruct the political history and its social and economical manifestation is been offered, while focusing on the inland regions of Judah and Edom. One of the major consequences of this new geo-political reality has resulted
in the canonization of the Torah. Thus, its inception should no longer be viewed as an outcome of inner-societal compromises between different Judahite groups, but rather as a conscious response of Jerusalem’s priestly circles to early fourth century BCE Zeitgeist of the southern Levant, when Egypt was no longer a part of the Persian Empire.

This article combines historical analysis with international-relations theory to contend that geopolitical developments around the Eastern Mediterranean in the middle third century BCE were indirectly responsible for the emergence of the Parthian state and a new international system of states in the ancient East. Since the death of Alexander the Great, the Seleucid Empire had ruled over much of the East; however, disastrous military conflicts at home and abroad in the West caused a sudden decline of Seleucid power in the 240s-
230s BCE. The troubles of the Seleucid state caused what political scientists call a power-transition crisis that damaged Seleucid hegemony over the East when the Seleucid satraps of Parthia and Bactria declared their independence. Moreover, the deleterious civil wars between Seleucid dynasts in the West and the rebellions of eastern satraps encouraged the nomadic Parni tribe from the Central Asian steppe (later known as the Parthians), who had been seeking a new homeland for decades, to invade northeastern Iran and establish a new kingdom. With the Parni’s successful conquest of Parthia and its immediate consequences, a new interstate system of tripolarity between the Seleucid Empire, Bactrian Kingdom, and the newly formed Parthian state emerged in the ancient East.

Syria's sectarian fragmentation was not created when the war began in 2011; it had its genesis in an inherited Ottoman millet system whose traits were accentuated by the "divide to reign" policies of Hafiz al-Assad. The war has compelled Syrians to cling to their sectarian identities more tightly, whether out of socioeconomic self-interest or simply to survive. Examining these identities is therefore crucial to answering the most fundamental questions about the ongoing upheaval. In many ways, the Syrian conflict has been taken out of the hands of Syrians themselves, becoming a proxy war between regional and international forces that often exploit the country's divided society for their own benefit.

In this exchange in International Security, I contest Barbara Walter's thesis that groups like ISIS benefit from being super extreme. I argue that extremism is counterproductive -- a point developed in far greater detail in my book, Rules for Rebels, which comes out in fall 2018.

This study analyzes the political reasons that allowed the Islamic State to expand successfully in Syria and Iraq, by enabling to ‘franchise’ worldwide, and the role of the regional governments in this issue. The essay provides a different explanation from the classic approach of the “clash of civilizations” theorized by Samuel P. Huntington, ascribing responsibility for the growth and expansion of the Islamic State to the complex framework of geopolitical alliances within the Muslim civilization and the Arab world. The paper highlights the attempt by Turkey to establish itself as a regional power and guidance of the Islamic world, by resurrecting the Caliphate, and, based on this, explains the contrast with the Islamic State, which goal is the foundation of a globalized Caliphate. The plans of the Turkish President Erdoğan for a Great Turkey, allied with Egypt, have foundered with the coup that ousted the Muslim Brotherhood from power. The study relates the connection of Ankara with the Kurds, regarding the management of the crisis in Syria and Iraq, and the Turkish liaison with regional powers (Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel) and other powers (Russia, Cina and USA).

Western analysis perceives Russian approaches to issues of humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as running counter to western-inspired international norms. This debate has surfaced with some vigour over Russia's policy in the Syria conflict where, in order to protect its strategic interests in Syria, an obstructionist Moscow has been accused of ignoring humanitarian considerations and allowing time for the Assad regime to crush the opposition by vetoing a resolution threatening to impose sanctions. While Russian approaches are undoubtedly explained by a desire to maximize its growing political influence and trade advantages to serve its legitimate foreign policy interests, and while Moscow's attitudes to intervention and R2P exhibit important differences from those of the major western liberal democracies, its arguments are in fact framed within a largely rational argument rooted in ‘traditional’ state-centred international law. This article first highlights key arguments in the scholarly literature on intervention and R2P before going on to examine the evolution of Russian views on these issues. The analysis then focuses on the extent to which Moscow's arguments impact on international legal debates on the Libya and Syria conflicts. The article then seeks to explore how Russian approaches to intervention/R2P reflect fundamental trends in its foreign policy thinking and its quest for legitimacy in a negotiated international order. Finally, it attempts to raise some important questions regarding Russia's role in the future direction of the intervention/R2P debates.

The Islamization of Syria, a multi-faceted social and cultural process not limited to demography, was slow and highly variable across different locales. This article analyzes geographical works—ten in Arabic, one in Persian, and one in Hebrew—as well as the earliest Ottoman defters of the province to outline the process of Islamization in Syria from the Islamic conquest in the seventh century to the Ottoman conquest in the sixteenth. Geographical texts cannot be mined as databases, but when interpreted as literature they provide often detailed information regarding the foundation of mosques, the slow conversion of multi-religious shrines, and areas within Syria known for particular religious affiliations.

Devotion to the goddess Tanit/Tinnit, a permutation of Astarte, took place in Mediterranean cave sanctuaries and on Phoenician ships. Employing both material and textual evidence, it is argued that her worship at sea and at port required a degree of religious competency of seamen that served as crew and combatants on trading vessels and military vessels, respectively. With the Phoenician priesthood centered in cities, coastal inhabitants would have depended on part-time officiants to supervise and perform certain rites. Reasons for the lack of mention in the literature of this non-elite class are proposed.

Zum Geleit (Preface to Wd0 43/2)
Die Herausgeber der „Welt des Orients“ freuen sich, dass mit dem vorliegenden Faszikel über „Permutations of Astarte“ nach WdO 40/2 (2010) bereits das zweite Themenheft der WdO erscheinen kann. Anders als das Themenheft von 2010 (Excavations at Qubur al-Walaydah, 2007–2009) ist das vorliegende Heft religionsgeschichtlich ausgerichtet. Unser Dank gilt
den Herausgebern des Themenheftes Prof. Dr. Mark Christian (Nashville) und Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Schmitt (Münster) für die Zusammenarbeit sowie dem Verlag, vertreten durch seinen LektorHerrn Jörg Persch und Frau Friederike Lonz, für die Unterstützung bei der Realisierung des Heftes.

Mainz, Heidelberg, Berlin undWürzburg am 1. Oktober 2013
Sebastian Grätz, Joachim Friedrich Quack, Bernd U. Schipper
und Daniel Schwemer
DieWelt des Orients, 43. Jahrgang, S. 149, ISSN 0043-2547
© 2013 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen
"""

In the following article we will examine at length some of the dynamics by which R. Yosef Hayyim of Baghdad—the renowned Ben Ish Hai (1834–1909) - integrated Kabbalah into daily life, and the complex way that he combined the teachings of the Rashash with simplified, esoteric practices meant for the general public. Needless to say, the relationship between the Kabbalists of Jerusalem and R. Yosef Hayyim illuminates a fascinating chapter in the history of Kabbalah in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century.

http://mj.oxfordjournals.org/content/33/2/148.short?rss=1

The paper discusses 57 relics from the Holy Land in the Roman Sancta Sanctorum Chapel, collected by the Popes from ca. 600 to 900 A. D. Using statistical analysis it is designed to answer the following questions: (1) What information does the Lateran treasure provide concerning the way relics were acquired in early Islamic Palestine and the practices of post-antique pilgrimage? (2) What conclusions regarding their agents and bearers can be drawn from the quality, accessibility, and topographical distribution of these relics? (3) Through what ways and political channels did the relics come to Rome and to the papal court? (4) What were the prevailing political, social, and economic conditions that allowed for the high mobility of relics between Jerusalem and Rome in the early Middle Ages?

The civil war in Syria has international repercussions due to the ongoing multi-sided character of the sectarian conflict and the involvement of all major global and regional powers. Despite the unending violence and the perpetuation of the Syrian inferno, little scholarly attention has been given to the intervention of the international community to mediate the war. The basic goal of this ebook is to fill this gap, at least partially, by examining the involvement of major international and regional actors in the Syrian crisis. Toward this end, the strategies and interventions of five states are examined: United States of America, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Lebanon.

Landis examines the Syrian uprising of 2011 and predicts Assad's regime's prolonged survival despite its growing isolation and struggling economy.

One cannot envision the Asad family retaining power in the long run; all the same, predictions of its rapid demise may be wishful thinking.

Four elements are important in assessing the regime's chances of surviving to 2013: its own strengths, the opposition's weaknesses, the chances of foreign intervention, and the impact of sanctions and economic decline.

This article aims to explore emerging trends for the Sunni religious elite and the Islamic legal tradition in the new context of the Arab Uprisings by focusing on Yusuf al-Qaradawi, arguably the most prominent of these ʿulamāʾ alive today. The article will follow al-Qaradawi’s articulation, transmission and reconstruction of the Islamic legal tradition in his own discourse as he has attempted to negotiate the politically fraught contexts of the Arab Uprisings while also maintaining his horizontal commitments to a diverse base of supporters be they the wider Arab Muslim public, the Muslim Brotherhood or indeed the Qatari royal family. The article will focus on al-Qaradawi’s highly publicised interventions and fatwas in relation to Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Syria from the perspective of Islamic studies, and also draw on personal interviews with al-Qaradawi, his personal staff, as well as supplementary media. In so doing, the article will elucidate al-Qaradawi and his colleagues’ attempts, ranging from the highly creative to the markedly conservative, to respond to unfolding events through the legal tradition and play an increasingly active role in the public sphere while their own status simultaneously becomes ever more vulnerable and unstable.

"This paper proposes three new (and tentatively, another two) identifications of sundials in Middle Eastern mosaics of the 5th – 8th century. The author discusses a vignette from the Holy Martyrs’ Church at Tayibat al-Imâm, central Syria, a mosaic panel from the tomb of Georgia and Theodosia in Jerusalem, two
vignettes of Sebastis and Kastron Mefaa from the St. Stephan’s Church at Umm al-Rasas, and a vignette of Jerusalem from the St. George’s Church at Madaba. These mosaics date, respectively, to 442, to the reign of Justinian (527 –565), and to the Byzantine Umayyad era (718). According to the author, these are probably the latest representations of sundials known to date from the Late Antiquity. Until this study, only six representations of sundials on mosaics from the Roman period were known. This paper adds three new items and two hypothetical ones from Byzantine times. It also offers an interpretation of the function of the famous column in Jerusalem, shown on the map of Madaba and the mega-vignette of the Holy City.
Key words: Sundials, Sonnenhuhren, Meridiane, Cadrans solaires, Relojes de sol."

Russia’s political, diplomatic, military and economic footprint in the Middle East and North Africa has expanded visibly over the last decade.

This Chaillot Paper provides a detailed account of Russia’s spectacular return to the region. The paper depicts how major regional players have adjusted to the new reality but also addresses the question of whether Russia will be able to sustain its geopolitical ambitions in the Middle East.

With the deadly ISIS advance, the sudden rousing of Shia militias and the threat of Kurdish secession, Iraq faces a host of deep-seated and intractable problems. Together, these events raise a number of serious questions, not just for Iraq and its future but also for the broader Middle East, the United States and its Coalition partners and the international community. While these challenges and questions will drive much academic debate, political analysis and media discussion in the months and years ahead, they are not the central purpose of this chapter. While there is always a risk in commenting on unfolding events, including the potential to overstate their significance and likely long-term impact, it is difficult to ignore the significance of the deadly ISIS advance and all that has happened since. This chapter argues that key to understanding these events is coming to terms with the three varied and complex legacies of the 2003 Iraq War. The first central legacy of the Iraq War is the ongoing consequences of several critical mistakes made by the US-led Coalition before, during and immediately after the 2003 intervention. The second legacy addressed here is the fact that the 2003 war shattered – perhaps irreversibly - Iraqis fragile cultural mosaic and its rich and complex history of overlapping and intersecting communities, ideologies and narratives. The third and final legacy of the 2003 Iraq War detailed in this chapter is its significant regional and global consequences – from spiralling sectarianism across the Middle East to a profound challenge to America’s status as the last remaining superpower and its use of military power for ‘humanitarian’ ends. The argument here is that these three important legacies set in train a sequence of events that have served as the collective catalyst for the expansion of the ‘Islamic State’ from mid-2014.

Little of the discussion of foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq is informed by primary data derived from talking with the foreign fighters. This article reports some initial findings from interviews with twenty foreign fighters in Syria. The findings are compared with three other recent studies of European foreign fighters, and aspiring fighters, based on some primary data. While those studies emphasize the role of low social and economic prospects in motivating the choice to go, this study found little evidence of such factors, and alternatively argues more attention should be given to existential concerns and the role of religiosity. Consideration is also given to the methodological challenges posed by using of terrorists' accounts of their motivations.

On first entering Syria, the observant traveler will probably be startled to go through passport control and notice a military map of Syria on the wall, for this map contains several anomalies. It shows the Golan Heights under Syrian control, though they have been occupied by Israel since 1967. Syria's boundaries with Lebanon and Jordan appear not as international borders but as something called "regional" borders. Israel does not even exist; instead, there is a state called Palestine. And Palestine is separated from Syria by a line designated a "temporary" border. Finally, the province of Hatay, a part of Turkey since 1939, appears to be included in Syria; only on close inspection can one see the "temporary" border between it and Syria...