MID E 6550 - The Urban Social History of the Arab Middle East: ca. 1750-1939

Meets with HIST 4500 and MID E 4550. Additional work required of graduate students. Surveys various aspects of socio-economic and political life in the major cities of the Arab Middle East, with special (but not exclusive) reference to Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo. Topics will include sources for urban social history and the kinds of use that can be made of them; urban institutions; family histories; the growth of extra-urban land-holding; demographic and social change. A general familiarity with the history of the area in the 18th-20th centuries will be assumed.