Annals of Japan Association for Middle East Studies
Online ISSN : 2433-1872
Print ISSN : 0913-7858
Volume 29, Issue 2
Displaying 1-9 of 9 articles from this issue
  • Khalil DAHBI
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 29 Issue 2 Pages 1-36
    Published: January 15, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This article investigates the case of the 20th February Movement in Morocco and tries to provide an explanatory account for its evolution and its inability to achieve its stated goals. Emerging in the wake of the so-called “Arab Spring,” the movement was able to mobilize large numbers of people from all ideological shades around a set of mainly political demands. Yet, it was not able to achieve its goals, and through a combination of external and internal factors, lost much of its mobilization capabilities. The article starts with a review of the movement’s evolution and its interactions with the state from 2011 to 2012. This review is followed by an analysis aimed at specifying the mechanisms and processes at play in the episode by investigating both the meso and macro-levels interactions. The resulting account clarifies the intricacies of the case, and underlines the significance of some key elements that shaped the trajectories of the movement as well as the state-movement interactions. Finally, this article provides a relational account of the movement’s evolution, highlighting how its puzzling failure to achieve its goals can be better explained by examining both the movement’s external interactions as well as the internal dynamics occurring within itself.
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  • Lisa IINO
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 29 Issue 2 Pages 37-65
    Published: January 15, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This article deals with a socio-cultural structure of singing tradition in the historic city of Aleppo with a specific focus on singer-notable relations in the old city. This study explores the background for the continuity of this tradition by shedding light on two socio-cultural aspects; first the positioning of this tradition and singers in society and second their relations with the elite. In the Mashriq region, Cairo saw the rise of secular and new musical scenes in the 20th century, while in this tradition of Aleppo religious singers, munshid in Arabic, still played an important role. Firstly their quality of being religious singers gave them more freedom for activities in Muslim society, where the centrality of religion was highly respected. And the social norms put more emphasis not on music itself but on conditions such as time, place, and companion when listening to music. In this context talented singers used to sing at courtyard house of the elite in the old city and were able to identify themselves as companion to the elite due to their art as well as to their religious quality. All these factors helped them shape their distinct identity and create group cohesiveness to preserve the repertoire as well as musical knowledge, which have been passed down to date.
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  • M. Akiko SUMI
    Article type: Special Feature
    2013 Volume 29 Issue 2 Pages 67-70
    Published: January 15, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • M. Akiko SUMI
    Article type: Special Feature
    2013 Volume 29 Issue 2 Pages 71-106
    Published: January 15, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Al-Muraqqish al-Aṣghar (the Younger) was a pre-Islamic poet, active in the sixth century C.E. This study deals with one of his poems and its associated khabar, or anecdote. The poem is the Mīmiyyah (poem with the rhyme-consonant mīm), which opens with “A-lā ya-slamī (Be safe)” in Al-Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, the well-known anthology of ancient Arabic poetry compiled by al-Mufaḍḍal al-Ḍabbī (d. ca.786 C.E.). The poem expresses the poet’s ardent love for a woman named Fāṭimah and his sorrow at losing her. The main goal of this paper is to explore the relationship between the poem and its anecdote to determine the function of the anecdote regarding the interpretation of the poem. The anecdote provides the poet’s biographical information and the occasion for which the poem was composed, and it is inserted before the poem. Using mainly the performance theory of Richard Bauman and reader-response criticism, I examine why the anecdote was included, why it was done in this way, and how its presence has affected interpretations of the poem. I argue that the poem may stand by itself to demonstrate its own inherent literary and aesthetic qualities, and may have been intended to do so. Thus, the anecdote can be taken as an imposed influence that tends to direct interpretation in only one way, while al-Muraqqish al-Aṣghar may have wished to allow wider possibilities.
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  • Suzanne Pinckney STETKEVYCH
    Article type: Special Feature
    2013 Volume 29 Issue 2 Pages 107-144
    Published: January 15, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Throughout the centuries, the Rā’iyyah (poem rhymed in rā’) has been the most celebrated poem of the warrior-prince Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī (320/932–357/968). A cousin of the Ḥamdānid emir of Aleppo, Sayf al-Dawlah, Abū Firās was captured by the Byzantines in 351/962 and languished in captivity for four years until the general exchange of prisoners in 355/966, all the while producing poetic pleas to Sayf al-Dawlah, directly or through others, to pay the ransom to secure his release. Abū Firās’s poetic renown rests primarily on poems of this period, termed al-Rūmiyyāt (Byzantine poems), among them the Rā’iyyah. This study offers a first expository reading of the Rā’iyyah, and then a second interpretative re-reading, not according to the Romanticist evaluation based on the apparent emotional spontaneity and sincerity of its erotic prelude (nasīb) and boast (fakhr), but rather from a performative perspective that interprets the poem as a finely rhetorically crafted speech act, characterized by indirection and ambiguity and aimed at securing the prisoner’s ransom and release.
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  • Jaroslav STETKEVYCH
    Article type: Special Feature
    2013 Volume 29 Issue 2 Pages 145-169
    Published: January 15, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This study examines two Modernist Arabic poems, both entitled Ṭardiyyah (hunt poem), by two pioneering Arab free-verse poets, the Iraqi ‘Abd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī (1926-1999) and the Egyptian Aḥmad ‘Abd al-Mu‘ṭī Ḥijāzī (1935-). In naming their poems Ṭardiyyah, both poets invoke the classical Arabic poetic genre of that name, together with its literary constraints and formal and thematic expectations. Part I: Introduction, provides the background of the hunt-theme, from the early (6th-7th Century CE) classical Arabic ode (qaṣīdah) to the short lyric genre of the hunt poem (ṭardiyyah) that first appeared toward the end of the Umayyad period (early 8th century CE) and reached its formal and aesthetic apogee in the High ‘Abbāsid period (9th-10th centuries CE). After several centuries of neglect, the hunt poem was revived precisely by the two Modernists Arabic free-verse poets, al-Bayātī and Ḥijāzī. Part II opens with the text and translation of the poem Ṭardiyyah from al-Bayātī’s 1966 collection Allādhī Ya’tī wa lā Ya’tī (He Who Comes and Does Not Come). It argues that the poet transforms the genre- and form-bound classically rhymed and metered lyric of the classical tradition into a formally free exploration of the dramatic and tragic image of the hunted hare as a metaphor for the political and cultural predicament of modern man. In Part III, the study turns to Ḥijāzī’s Ṭardiyyah, composed in 1979 during his self-imposed exile in Paris and included in his 1989 collection Ashjār al-Ismant (Cement Trees). Beginning with the text and translation of the poem, the study demonstrates how the poet transforms the poignant lyricism of the traditional hunt poem into an expression of his personal experience of political exile and poetic inspiration.
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  • Hiroyuki SUZUKI
    Article type: Research Note
    2013 Volume 29 Issue 2 Pages 171-197
    Published: January 15, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This article aims to answer the question why the Palestinian Intifada (the huge uprising of 1987) lasted so long by analyzing three aspects: the historical background of Palestinian political activities inside the territories, the political situation just before the Intifada, and the function of the leadership. After the 1978 Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel, the National Guidance Committee (NGC), which was opposed to this agreement, was established. Although this organization was led by nationalist mayors, it included members of trade unions, women’s organizations, and student unions. These political activities maintained their support of the PLO and did not create an alternative decision-making leadership inside the territories. When the iron fist policy of Israeli authority began, the nature of political activities inside the territories changed to leaderless uprisings. There were several uprisings, but there was no coordination of the action. The main obstacle to forming a united leadership was factional conflict in the PLO. However, the 18th Palestinian National Council (PNC) realized factional reconciliation, after which the political situation changed somewhat. After several uprisings, the Intifada followed in December 1987, only this uprising involved the participation of the United National Leadership (UNL). The leadership coordinated the action and sustained the popular uprising for a long time. They maintained the attitude toward the PLO of “the PLO is our only and legitimate representative,” which generated popular support of the leadership and secured its legitimacy.
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  • Kensuke YAMAMOTO
    Article type: Book Review
    2013 Volume 29 Issue 2 Pages 199-203
    Published: January 15, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • AJAMES Editorial Committee
    Article type: Middle East Studies in Japan
    2013 Volume 29 Issue 2 Pages 205-217
    Published: January 15, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (1440K)
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