Annals of Japan Association for Middle East Studies
Online ISSN : 2433-1872
Print ISSN : 0913-7858
Volume 3, Issue 1
Displaying 1-9 of 9 articles from this issue
  • Hidemitsu KUROKI
    Article type: Article
    1988 Volume 3 Issue 1 Pages 1-59
    Published: March 31, 1988
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    The purpose of this thesis is to criticize the theory of the "Mosaic Society" in the field of Middle Eastern area studies through analyzing the process of a disturbance that occurred in Aleppo in the early nineteenth century. Many Orientalists have observed the Middle Eastern society as divided into various religious sects, linguistic groups, quarters, guilds and so on, and they have concluded that there was no unity among them. Sometimes, the antagonism among the population, especially between the religious sects, has been premised in the study of the modern history of the Middle East. Aleppo was the third largest city in the Ottoman Empire at that time, and its population was composed of not only Muslims, but also Christians of various sects and Jews. Turkish, Armenian, Kurdish, and Syriac as well as Arabic were spoken in Aleppo. It is natural that the Orientalists would recognize the city as a typical "Mosaic Society." In order to examine this theory, we employ an urban disturbance as a test. It is not an everyday happening and the social relations that cannot be observed in the description of daily events can be found in the document of the disturbance. In this thesis, a disturbance that continued from October, 1819, to February, 1820, is studied. The date is before the Egyptian occupation of Syria in the 1830's and the Ottoman Tanzimat period. Therefore, the reality of the urban society before the modernization will be described. From the 18th century to the period studied here, there were two strong political factions in Aleppo. One was the Janissaries, the local para-military group, with its followers, and the other was the Ashraf, the people who asserted themselves as the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, with their followers. The factions opposed each other, competing for political, economic, and social resources, and sometimes struggled violently. However, they did not injure the common people. In the disturbance, which started in the evening of 23 October, 1819, the two factions joined in unity and revolted against the Ottoman governor because of his and his agent's evil policy, heavy taxes and his forces' violence in the city. The rebels attacked the forces' barracks in the city, killed some soldiers and forced the rest to retreat to a monastery that was north of the city where the governor stayed. The a'yan were also expelled or ran away to the same place. The leaders of the two factions assembled, proclaimed the cause of the revolt, and presented their demands to the governor. Here, they shared a common identity, ahl al-balad: people of the town. They organized the people to battle against the governor's forces, and controlled foods and ammunitions in the city. It was besieged by the forces and the supplies were cut. After fierce battles and frequent exchanges of messengers during two months, the division between the factions of Janissaries and Ashraf became clear. However, they did not fight each other and continued battling the forces for a month more. The governor, with reinforcements from many districts, began to destroy houses in the northern suburbs. Finally, the European consuls in the city played the role of mediators and all of the gates of the city were opened on 3 February, 1820. The governor executed and exiled the leaders of the rebels, mainly from the Janissary faction. However, on 2 June, the poor women from the eastern and southern suburb quarters, where most of the Janissary faction lived, rushed to the court of Islamic law and appealed to the judge for help, protesting against the governor's oppressing policy. The judge went to the governor's office and discussed the matter. After that, the heavy extra taxes were abolished and the price of the grain was reduced. After analyzing the process of this disturbance, it becomes clear that not only the two factions but also other people

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  • Ruşen Keleş
    Article type: Article
    1988 Volume 3 Issue 1 Pages 60-101
    Published: 1988
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • OSAMU MIYATA
    Article type: Article
    1988 Volume 3 Issue 1 Pages 102-152
    Published: March 31, 1988
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
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  • Fukuzo Amabe
    Article type: Article
    1988 Volume 3 Issue 1 Pages 153-174
    Published: March 31, 1988
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The Qarmatian movement was probably first organized by Muhammad b. Isma'il or his sons in the middle of the ninth century in order to seize the caliphate from the 'Abbasids, after the "historical compromise" through which al-Ma'mun dared to attempt to conciliate the 'Alids, ended in failure. Ibn Rizam's story that 'Abdullah b. Maymun initiated the movement and his sons continued to hold the leadership is certainly forged. This movement seems to have soon been divided into many independent regional factions each of which had their own candidates for the imamate. The 'Iraqi faction began to propagate their cause in the villages of Sawad al-Kufa at the end of the ninth century. Their first recognizable leader was Zakrawayh, while the alleged founders, Hamdan Qarmat and 'Abdan, cannot be testified to be real persons in the sources. They did not propagate the tenets which contradicted Islam, though it is possible that they organized their followers into the community of wealth. But they failed to attract peasants as many as to challenge the 'Abbasid army and consequently were easily crushed. Then they turned to the Arab nomads living in the steppe near the Euphrates. Only the tribes that carried the merchandise through the Syrian desert, the 'Ulays and the Asbagh, both sub-tribes of Kalb, responded to their appeal and recognized the leadership of Sahib al-naqa and Sahib al-shama successively. Maybe both Sahib al-naqa and Sahib al-shama were really Muhammad b. Isma'il's grandsons. At least the 'Ulays and the Asbagh sincerely believed so. The Qarmatians, mainly composed of the 'Ulays and the Asbagh tribesmen, attacked the cities in Syria and on the Euphrates under the command of their tribal leaders. To their dissapointment, the urban poor did not join their army but cooperated with the government army everywhere and fought them vehemently. Even most of the 'Alids including Muhammad b. Isma'il's descendants opposed the Qarmatians. Then they constituted the Twelve-Imam Party, the opposition party within the 'Abbasid Establishment, and deffered the political activity to the unknown future by setting up the hidden imam. The urban poor and the peasants did not support the Qarmatians, partly because the anti-Qarmatian propaganda of the Establishment including the moderate Shi'ites that they were an anti-Islamic movement having nothing to do with 'Alids permeated the people, but chiefly because the allegiance of the people to the 'Abbasid caliphs was beyond the Qarmatian shaking off.
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  • Kunihiro SHIDARA
    Article type: Article
    1988 Volume 3 Issue 1 Pages 175-194
    Published: March 31, 1988
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    This paper intends to investigate the power structure of the late Ottoman Empire by focusing on the autocracy of Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876-1909), which is characterized by a dual ruling mechanism; that is, while building up a strong ruling mechanism by strengthening the Sultan's Palace treasury (Hazine-i Hassa) from State Treasury appropriations, his autocratic regime also preserved a ruling system regulated under the First Constitution. Sultan Abdulhamid II is known for his autocratic regime (istibdad). His autocracy, which terminated the short-lived First Constitutional regime that began with the enactment of a Western-influenced Constitution, continued from 1878 to 1908, a period of confrontation with the imperialistic European Powers. However, the Sultan did not go as far as to negate completely the First Constitutional system. Indeed this dual nature of the regime enabled the ruling body to respond to the Young Turks Revolution of 1908, which brought forth the Second Constitutional regime, to keep the government internal disorder to minimum, and to transfer smoothly to a new system. Also the Committee of Union and Progress, though it was a revolutionary force under the Second Constitutional regime, utilized this dual ruling structure to strengthen its insufficient political power and exert influence on the government. The autocracy of Abdulhamid II differs substantively from his predecessor, Sultan Abdulaziz (1861-76). The regime of Abdulaziz rested upon the traditional ruling system of the Ottoman Empire which excluded factors limiting the Sultan's power---for example, legal enforcement under the Constitution. In this traditional autocracy the Grand Vezir controlled the whole administration and the military on behalf of the Sultan; in other words, it was the autocracy which was based on the absolutism of the Ottoman Sultanate. On the other hand, Abdulhamid II, who recognized the fact that the decline of the Ottoman Empire resulted mainly from its unlawful and chaotic autocratic government, agreed personally with the enactment of the Constitution and contributed to the establishment of the First Constitutional regime. In this sense, Abdulhamid II by no means intended to negate totally the Constitutional system. It is true that during his autocratic period Abdulhamid II suspended the Constitution, but he kept declaring that the Constitution was only temporarily suspended and was not to be abolished. Under the Constitutional system, however, various local disputes, especially over economic problems, were brought into the central Parliament which functioned as the representative voice of the people. The bankrupcy of the national purse caused by the accumulated foreign debt pressured local economies and brought about increasing local dissatisfaction. On the strength of this discontent, the Parliament strongly attacked the Sultan's economic policy. Abdulhamid II, though he managed to get by the First Session of the Parliament, had to close the Second Session which assembled in 1878, in order to weaken the local power groups lodged there. This shows how influential the local power groups actually were. Even though the Parliament as the foundation of the Constitutional regime was closed, the nominal continuation of law and order in the name of the Constitution was possible since other state ruling mechanisms were left untouched. Yet, the closing of the Parliament was undoubtedly the negation of the spirit of the Constituion, and many citizen rights, which had been guaranteed by the Constituiton, became bereft of substance. After that, Sultan Abdulhamid II founded an office to supervise the administraion in the Parliament and also to act as the supreme state ruling structure so that the policy of the Sultan would be enacted at once. These positions were filled with Palace officers who belonged to the Sultan's private entourage. The Mabeyn (Sultan's

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  • Koji MUTO
    Article type: Article
    1988 Volume 3 Issue 1 Pages 195-226
    Published: March 31, 1988
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Six Gulf nations reaped an average 40% increase in exports annually throughout the 1970s, exceeding substantially the world average 20.9% and the developing countries' 27.5% thanks much to a high demand for crude oil. Increased oil revenue stimulated domestic economies, and those six countries imported a large amount of capital and consumer goods from the developed nations. As a result of higher dependance upon crude oil exports and accelerated imports of consumer goods, the typical vertical trading was practised between the Gulf and oil-import countries. Unlike the industrial countries maintaining high productivity, the Gulf oil-exporting countries were only "transforming their natural assets to financial assets by means of trading" in the 70s, and the diversification of domestic industries became a top priority for healthier economies in those countries. Much was made of the development of oil-related industries in Saudi Arabia, which foresaw high economic growth in national industrialisation, while the Kuwaiti Government invested its large oil revenue on offshore manufacturing of oil products. Nevertheless, these Arab oil countries in general adopted similar development strategies for their common problems, such as manpower shortage, limited local markets, or the lack of natural resources excluding crude oil, only to worsen competition among themselves. To promote mutual prosperity by relaxing competition, the Gulf Coorperation Council was formed by the six Arab oil-exporting nations, and it has been seven years since its establishment. The past seven years saw several environmental changes, such as the outbreak of the Iran-Iraqi War, and a steep decline in oil prices, and now GCC is about to enter a new phase to achieve their goal of economic integration. Despite its basic objective, however, the regional trade among the GCC countries still remains limited because of the countries' vertical economic structure linked with the developed nations. The import tax reduction in the region also appears to have failed to promote an increase in the local trade on the ground that the import tax of the Gulf nations was not effective to reduce imports due to their substantial financial resources. Yet, the tax reduction may put pressure on Kuwait or U.A.E., which have been enjoying favourable trading business in the region owing thier lower import tax than the other Gulf countres. Moreover, historically established trade linkage between GCC and surrounding countries, Iran, Iraq, or India, for example, may be affected by the promotion of local trade. Statistics tell the trade interdependance between U.A.E. and Iran, and Iraq and Kuwait also maintain a close relationship. Imports and exports with surrounding large countries have been supporting the local economies of minor GCC countries. Considering the greater Gulf economies, and the economic development among the GCC countries, intersupport of industries in the region has to be achieved in accordance with mutually negotiated industrialisation policies of the members. The GCC countries are developing both the oil and non-oil industries, but currently, these two sectors are not so closely linked as to meet domestic demands. Therefore, domestic industries, especially the petro-chemical industry, have to be diversified to stimulate the local economies. To realise mutual prosperity, the GCC will need to establish its sovereignty for decision-making over each member country. The GCC, as a regional organization, will be able to adjust their development planning and adopt a unified policy in the future under such circumstances.
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  • Katsuhiko Ishikawa
    Article type: Book Review
    1988 Volume 3 Issue 1 Pages 227-246
    Published: March 31, 1988
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
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  • Kazuo Miyaji
    Article type: Article
    1988 Volume 3 Issue 1 Pages 247-274
    Published: March 31, 1988
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
  • Hironao Matsutani
    Article type: Book Review
    1988 Volume 3 Issue 1 Pages 275-279
    Published: March 31, 1988
    Released on J-STAGE: March 30, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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