North Africa Studies

Alamein covers the events leading up to the battle in North Africa that turned the tides of war against the Axis Powers during World War II: the Battle of Al Alamein. The first part of the book is the history of the battle. Sections include: the leaders, their weapons, the battles of Tobruk, Gazala, and finally Al Alamein. There is a section on the contribution of spies to the victory of the allies. The second half of the book is devoted to a tour of the battle sites, the memorials, and the Al Alamein Museum.
56 pages. 20 vintage black and white illustrations. 8 color illustrations. 10 maps. 6x9. All rights reserved. copyright © Cassandra Vivian 1992. ISBN: 977-5100-0\8-9.

NB: by "chicanery," I refer to Morocco's record of corruption and lack of oversight and enforcement of its laws, which could use reinforcement.

On nearly the eve of hosting the twenty second Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 22) in Marrakesh on November 7-18, 2016, the Moroccan government authorized a new group of constructions in the Bou Regreg River Valley. The constructions include a Zaha Hadid Ateliers designed theater, the Grand Théâtre de Rabat, in addition to luxury hotels, residences, a museum, and a park. The theater and park will join the Aga Khan award winning Zaha Hadid Ateliers Bridge to Salé, a city across the river and just north of the worksite. Signs around the construction state that the complex will add to the appeal of Rabat as a city of culture. The buildings are placed in what might be considered a floodplain with the same or similar characteristics of nearby Northern Moroccan Ramsar designated wetlands and classified National Parks and Reserves, some of the former of which are on the tentative list for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Status. The Zaha Hadid Ateliers construction is also placed in close proximity to sites with significant historical and cultural value recognized in the UNESCO classification documents for Rabat, among others. 

In the following paper, I present briefly the socio-environmental histories of the construction and adjacent sites in the Rabat-Salé-Zemmour-Zaër region and propose how accentuating certain aspects of the environment can be valuable additions to the contemporary Moroccan economy, specifically its two pillars of tourism and agricultural production and exports.

IASTE 2016 Online Program Poster: http://iaste.berkeley.edu/iaste/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/2016/05/IASTE2016_Poster.pdf

While NATO was created with a primary outlook to the East, its Southern rim was neglected strategically until the end of the Cold War. Since then, the Alliance has undertaken a number of efforts to build strategic relationships with the Middle East and North Africa, recognizing the region’s importance for Allied security. However, looming obstacles may well interfer with NATO's efforts to enhance relations with the region. Geostrategic realities are not in NATO’s favor: it is a region of crisis; suspicious of the West in general; riddled with internal instability; and is a difficult to build ties with. This monograph examines the existing relationships as well as the remaining obstacles, and proposes solutions to the latter.

What are the core issues behind the recent protests? How are Algeria's complex political dynamics playing out with regards to the ongoing protests? What is the significance of Algeria to the wider region? What role do regional and international players have in the most recent developments? What are the possible outcomes of the political situation leading up to and after the April presidential elections?

Pb-Zn barite, celestite, florite, celestobarite, fluorite Ore Deposits in Tunisia (North Africa) , Jurassic, Cretcaceous, Triassic Salt diapris
Jebel El Kohol, Jebel Stah, Jebel Mecella, Hammam Zriba, Jebel Guebli, Fedj el Adoum, Fej Lahdoum, Bou Jaber, Fluid inclusion stable isotopes (sulphur, carbon, oxygen) Metallogeneis

Six ans après la première édition, l'histoire de la communauté grecque de Tunisie est désormais en français.L'étude, qui présente pour la première fois l'histoire de la communauté grecque de Tunisie, est basée exclusivement sur des documents d'archives, résultat de la recherche en Grèce et Tunisie. C’est la première fois que les archives communautaires et consulaires ont été consultées.

The Tuareg inhabit the Saharan regions of North Africa - Niger, Mali, Libya, Algeria and Burkina Faso. Tuareg is an Arabic term meaning abandoned by God. Douglas Porch, in his book "The Conquest of Morocco," posits that the French described the term "tuareg" as the Arabic name given to the Berber tribes of the sub-Saharan region which, in translation, means "abandoned by God."  They call themselves Imohag, translated as free men. No one knows the true origin of the Tuareg, where they came from or when they arrived in the Sahara. Reputedly of Berber descent, the language of the Tuareg is Tamachek, with their own script known as Tifinagh, thought to have ancient Libyan roots. Their numbers are unclear, but estimates run between 300,000 and 1 million. The Tuareg were recorded by the Greek historian Herodotus in the 5th Century BC.

The most striking attribute of the Tuareg is the indigo veil, worn by the men but not the women, giving rise to the popular name the Blue Men of the Sahara, or Men of the Veil. Men begin wearing a veil at the age of 25.  One of the traditional dances of the nomadic Tuareg is the 'Tam Tam' where the men on camel circle the women while they play drums and chant. The huts of the Tuareg nomad are easily constructed, and comprised of weaved matting and tradition fabrics on a timber frame.

This article will challenge the currently accepted notions of weak British consular presence, influence and activity in the southern Mediterranean during the period 1795–1832 through a case study of the careers of three successive consuls in the Regency of Tripoli: Simon Lucas, William Wass Langford and Hanmer Warrington. Utilising the official correspondence of these agents, the extent of the consular bridgehead in the capital, Tripoli, will be investigated, and how, through these consular and diplomatic agents, it served to define imperial interests and activity at the frontiers of empire. Moreover, the overlapping personal and professional networks within which the consuls embedded themselves, the role of enterprising missions and the development of an intelligence-gathering network will be of central significance in understanding the consequent ruptures in the social and political fabric of the Regency of Tripoli. British imperial interest in North Africa during and immediately post the Napoleonic era remains under-studied and misunderstood within both British diplomatic and imperial history. This article challenges the existing literature that underestimates the diplomatic as well as consular power exercised by the British consuls to Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, as well as the importance of these three Barbary regencies to wider strategic interests in the Mediterranean.

THE RELIGION OF THE OTHER Essays in honour of Mohamed Talbi
edited by Mohamed Ben-Madani
Mohamed Talbi is a leading contemporary modernist Muslim thinker. Born in Tunis on 16 September 1921, and educated there and later in Paris, he was one of the founders of Tunis University and the Tunisian National Academy and a member of several international academies. Author of more than 20 books and over one hundred scholarly articles, Talbi’s contributions to Islamic Studies and Human Rights is immeasurable.


Maghreb Publications is an independently owned publisher, specialising in history, social sciences, women’s studies, literary studies, islamic law and philosophy, education, archaeology, religion and anthropology. It will publish works covering time periods from medieval to modern eras focused on the Maghreb, the Middle East, Africa and the global Muslim diaspora.
Maghreb Publications will only consider original manuscripts. We aim for wide accessibility, and will publish most titles in cloth and paperback editions, at a price which scholars, students and the interested public can afford.

Brief analysis of the contemporary Moroccan art exhibit of Tetouan School artists in the context of the discourses on #worldart and #contemporaryart, in general.

NOTE: updated version is posted at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/science-society-museum-inside-world-faouzi-laatiris-apelian-ph-d-?trk=mp-author-card

British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Dec. 2014

This article investigates how public employee unions mobilised to take advantage of Morocco’s Arab uprising. Leveraging their positions as operators of public institutions, these unionists exploited the unrest to strategically advance their interests. Two points emerge from this account of state—labour relations in Morocco. First, a spike in labour contestation began in early 2010, presaging the unrest that rocked Moroccan cities in 2011. Second, the unions secured their demands through traditional tactics of labour mobilisation—joining street protests, exaggerating material demands, and threatening negotiation walkouts. This strategy, however, became more efficacious during the Arab uprising. Fearing urban riots that had historically grown from labour protests since the 1980s, regime elites conceded to union demands, many of which they had previously rejected in the 2000s.



http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13530194.2015.973189

Material heritage is increasingly mobilized within development projects aimed at reducing poverty and promoting economic growth. Often these mobilizations have less to do with poverty and more to do with the creation of new arenas for competing political and economic interests that seek to appropriate economically viable heritage resources, often through the traveling formalistic rationalities of development organizations. This chapter examines how such appropriations are achieved through channels which territorialize poverty and material heritage in innovative ways: to align community responsibilities with global risk, depoliticize poverty by positioning it as a ‘local’ problem, and thereby obscure those broad structural inequalities at the global level, through which producing wealth simultaneously produces poverty. I demonstrate how, in our globalizing world, poverty is ‘placed’ with material heritage in urban rehabilitation projects in Fes (Morocco), according to a traveling expertise of transnational development plans and policies.

Catálogo de la arquitectura rifeña construida en el Marruecos Español por el interventor Emilio Blanco Izaga. En ella se mezclan los rasgos propios del Art Déco y de las arquitecturas propias del Atlas marroquí. Esta arquitectura representa una importante faceta de la actuación colonial española sobre el norte de Marruecos.

The present paper is one part of a larger research project undertaken on a group of nineteenth-century Moroccan ceramics in the collection of the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. The scholarly interest in such wares has to date been biased towards ethnographic studies and formal cataloguing of types. Such approaches have an important place in the study of visual cultures, and indeed a study of forms and decorative types represented within the RMS collection is currently being prepared by the present author. However, a purely formalistic approach reveals virtually nothing of how an object has been viewed by successive audiences, and thus ignores a huge part of its visual existence. In the study of nineteenth-century Moroccan wares there is a gift to the art historian in the sheer volume of travel literature that was written by Europeans and particularly Britons in the nineteenth century, allowing an unusually clear reconstruction of the way in which such pieces were understood by those who collected them and brought them to Britain. In the present study, the means by which the wares of nineteenth-century Morocco entered the British and European visual consciousness, and the implications of the responses they drew from British audiences as attested by the comments of nineteenth-century travel writers, are examined in detail to create a new art-historical discourse of material culture in the colonial Maghreb.

Sayahi Lotfi. Diglossia and Language Contact: Language Variation and Change in North Africa (Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. 2014. 251 pp. Hb (9780521119368) £60.00/$95.00 / eBook (9781139698368) US$76.00.

Uri Horesh
Article first published online: 20 MAR 2015

DOI: 10.1111/josl.12109

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Issue Journal of Sociolinguistics
Journal of Sociolinguistics
Volume 19, Issue 1, pages 118–121, February 2015

Ca obiectiv major mi-am propus întocmirea unor baze de date cu informații cât mai actualizate referitoare la evoluția turismului în țările nord-africane, operațiune urmată de construcția unor grafice pe baza acestor baze de date; al doilea mare obiectiv a fost realizarea unei analize cât mai complexă și completă asupra potențialului turistic din țările vizate și modul în care Primăvara Arabă a afectat acest potențial iar nu în ultimul rând obiectivul a fost să creez o lucrare cursivă, educativă și care să aducă cât mai multe lămuriri celor care se întreabă cum Primăvara Arabă a influențat turismul.

This article discusses the transformation of the Moroccan state under contemporary neoliberal globalization, and considers what this transition means for the ways in which scholars view state-society interplay in Morocco and the Arab world more generally. Specifically, it examines the protest of unemployed graduates in Morocco, suggesting that public demonstrations are not only a means to communicate and mobilize demands, but also a technology to reclaim and reproduce a particular “truth” in public. This truth does not necessarily equate with the reality of the neoliberal state as a dispersed material force. As such, by looking at the case of Morocco, we hope to instigate further debate on the nature of the state and its specific relation to phenomena as globalization, society and social protest.

Crises of Empire offers a comprehensive and uniquely comparative analysis of the history of decolonization in the British, French and Dutch empires. By comparing the processes of decolonization across three of the major modern empires, from the aftermath of the First World War to the late 20th century, the authors are able to analyse decolonization as a long-term process. They explore significant changes to the international system, shifting popular attitudes to colonialism and the economics of empire. This new edition incorporates the latest developments in the historiography, as well as:- Increased coverage of the Belgian and Portuguese empires- New introductions to each of the three main parts, offering some background and context to British, French and Dutch decolonization- More coverage of cultural aspects of decolonization, exploring empire 'from below'- A new glossary, explaining key terms This new edition of Crises of Empire is essential reading for all students of imperial history and decolonization. In particular, it will be welcomed by those who are interested in taking a comparative approach, putting the history of decolonization in a pan-European framework.

Reviews:-

'In this book, Thomas, Butler and Moore admirably accomplish the goal of combining intellectual and historiographical rigour with the breadth of discussion necessary for a textbook. As one of the few treatments of its kind, it connects the disintegration of various empires. Juxtaposing the fates of the British, French and Dutch empires, supplemented with some comparative observations about the Belgian and Portuguese experiences, the authors show that decolonization cannot be fully understood if treated within the isolation of any one of these cases. The careful balance in this volume between conceptual discussion of current historiographical debates and thorough empirical treatment of the various decolonizations makes this volume an invaluable resource for students and researchers alike.' Bart Luttikhuis, Researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, The Netherlands

'An outstanding collection of essays dealing with the decolonization of the Dutch, Belgian, and Portuguese empires as well as those of the French and British. With a range from the 1940s to the 1970s and beyond, the authors guide the reader through complex conceptual issues in a way that is consistently clear and compelling. This is a book that will be mandatory reading for students and scholars of the dissolution of the European colonial empires.' Wm. Roger Louis, Kerr Professor, University of Texas

'This second edition of Thomas's, Moore's and Butler's incisive, thought-provoking and generally deeply impressive synthesis is very welcome. Like the first edition, it is written in an engaging style by three experts in their respective decolonisation fields and it will prove a key launch pad for further research into the expansive literature and ever-evolving debates on the causes and consequences of European decolonisation. The sections relating to the different empires and case-studies of particular territories can be read alone. But the beauty of this book lies in its high level of comparative analysis, with commonalities and contrasts skilfully brought out in the masterful introduction and conclusion. The focus remains on the three largest empires of Britain, France and The Netherlands but the excellent section on the Portuguese and Belgian end-of-empire experiences has been significantly expanded. Throughout, the text has been updated to take account of new historiographical developments since the first edition's publication in 2008. It pulls no punches in its exploration of the often fraught and violent ending of the European empires, and the ongoing legacies and unresolved contestations of the decolonisation moment.'  Nick White, Professor of History at Liverpool John Moores University, UK


Table Of Contents
Preface
Introduction: Constructions of decolonization
Part I: British Decolonization
Introduction to Part I
1. The British Empire, 1918-1945: Interwar Change and Wartime Pressures
2. The First Wave of British Decolonization: Commonwealth Territories, South Asia and the Gold Coast, 1945-1951
3. British Decolonization, Insurgency and Strategic Reverse: The Middle East, Africa and Malaya, 1951-1957
4. Winds of Change: The Final Waves of British Decolonization in Africa and Asia after 1957
Part II: French Decolonization
Introduction to Part II
5. The Roots of French Decolonization: Ideas, Economics and Reform, 1900-1946
6. Decolonizing the French African Federations after 1945
7. People's War and the Collapse of French Indochina, 1945-1954
8. From French North Africa to Maghreb Independence: Decolonization in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, 1945-1956
9. Algeria's Violent Struggle for Independence
10. Territories Apart: Madagascar, the Togo Trusteeship and French Island Territories
Part III: Dutch Decolonization
Introduction to Part III
11. An 'Ethical Imperialism'? The Dutch Colonial Empire Before 1945
12. Indonesia: The Politics of Delusion, 1940-1947
13. Indonesia: The Realities of Diplomacy
14. Unfinished Business: New Guinea as a Last Outpost of Empire
15. Decolonization by Default: Dutch Disengagement in Suriname
Part IV: Contrasting Patterns of Decolonization
16. Contrasting Patterns of Decolonization: Belgian and Portuguese Africa
Conclusion: Changing Attitudes to the End of Empire
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
- See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/crises-of-empire-9781472530257/#sthash.bJ1Pq70A.dpuf

The aim of this article is not to introduce Donatism as such, or to rehearse what is known about it. Rather, the focus is on a single aspect of Donatist thought — the shaping of the idea of the separation of church and state. On the basis of Donatist martyrologies, imperial documents, Optatus of Milevis’s seven books usually known as Contra Parmenianum Donatistam, and some of Augustine’s relevant treatises and epistles, it will be shown how, in time, the Donatists’ initial collaboration with the empire turned into an eventual confrontation with the empire, and how the doctrine of the separation of church and state began to act as justification for their collective change of mind.

The phenomenon of conflict, within the international relations framework, has a set of intellectual theses that may contribute to the interpretation of the external behavior of states, within the priorities of national and international institutions in conflict resolution. Trying to simulate these theses is done to solve the conflict with the least possible losses. Therefore, we must understand the stage of severity of which this crisis has reached to tackle realities realistically, especially in the pre-armed conflict phases. In these earlier phases, the conflict management is broader particularly in adapting issues to pressures while retaining the ability to choose between alternatives that are available to each side involved directly or indirectly.

In recent decades, access to energy resources has become the most important form and cause of conflicts and wars and, in the future, conflicts will be about the world’s most expensive natural resource, water. Water is a strategic necessity for all people as it is the basis of life on Earth. It is associated with socio-economic development as well as food and energy production and is at the heart of climate change adaptation. Water has also become a rights issue as the world’s population increases. With the need to create a balance between community requirements and the available resources, the challenges involved in the following years will be even more pressing. While water covers 72% of the earth’s surface, all freshwater represents only 2.8% of the overall volume. Of this 2.45% of the freshwater is represented as ice-shaped and groundwater. Thus, humans have only 0.35% of the world’s total water supply1. And according to FAO* this will be reduced during the coming years due to climate change. In return, 17 countries in the world suffer from a severe shortage of water resources, 12 of them are located in the Middle East and North Africa2. Hence the importance of establishing the GERD subject, the main cause of the conflict over the Nile waters between Egypt and Ethiopia, because Egypt is coming to a real problem that will affect its water security and its existence as a state. To understand it and the impacts on Egypt’s water security, we must go back in history.

L’architecture judéo-chrétienne des 19ème et 20ème siècles retrace l’évolution chronologique de toute l’architecture coloniale en Algérie. Elle a également accompagné le long processus de renouveau de l’architecture locale, couronné par l’émergence du style néo-mauresque. En effet, ce style architectural fut parmi les premiers à réinvestir le répertoire architectural local avec la grande synagogue d’Alger, ou encre la basilique Saint Augustin et sa mosaïque, le sacré cœur d’Oran et ses deux tours flanquant sa façade… Ces édifices étaient les figures de proue accompagnant ce glissement sémantique vers le néo-mauresque. Le présent article met l’accent sur la résultante de ce métissage. Nous nous interrogeons essentiellement sur ce processus d’adaptation stylistique et architecturale.

This course is an undergraduate colloquium exploring the topic of women and violence in the context of the Middle East and North Africa from the rise of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula to the contemporary conflicts in Iraq and Syria. We will look at the political, economic, social, religious and ideological trends that shaped women’s experiences during various conflicts. The course will begin by looking at women in armed conflicts during the early Islamic period, with a particular emphasis on portrayals of these women in early Arab histories, popular literature (siyyar) and poetry. The course will then briefly address women who took up arms during the Middle Ages and participated in military invasions, piracy and the Crusades. Subsequently, the course will move to the modern period and evaluate women’s involvement in anti-colonial resistance, national liberation struggles, militias, state militaries, terrorism, civil wars and revolutions from the second half of the nineteenth century to the present.  Finally, the course will briefly address the lasting impact of armed conflict on women’s lives.

Name on the title page of a fundamental work on Algiers in Cervantes' day, whose authorship is disputed. The dispute is not about whether Haedo was the author; everyone agrees he was not. It is about who the real author was.

Haedo facilitó la publicación aparte de un libro, el único contemporáneo sobre el Argel en que vivió Cervantes. Literatura de testimonio, quiere documentar los horrores que ha visto. Para facilitar la conquista de la ciudad por el rey Felipe II, proporciona mucha información sobre las defensas de la ciudad.

Se disputa la autoría de la obra. Todos están conformes en que el autor no fue Haedo, benedictino que jamás visitó Argel.

Basée sur une enquête ethnographique, ma thèse étudie les pratiques prostitutionnelles à Tanger (Maroc) sous trois angles d’observation : la socio-anthropologie des émotions, en étudiant leur conceptualisation par les acteurs ; la sociologie de la jeunesse, en inscrivant ces pratiques dans une culture sexuelle juvénile plus large ; la sociologie des inégalités, en m’intéressant à l’essor des économies culturelles et du divertissement et aux ségrégations spatiales qu’elles impliquent, mais aussi en étudiant les modalités de l’application du droit pénal et les mécanismes d’une criminalisation qui mettent en lumière la prééminence de l’ordre social sur l’ordre moral.
J’interroge le travail du sexe, ou « le sortir » pour reprendre la terminologie des enquêtées, en termes d’économies intimes révélant ainsi l’entremêlement du monétaire et de l’affectif dans les échanges économico-sexuels. Sous cet angle, il m’est possible d’examiner comment les jeunes femmes urbaines issues des classes populaires utilisent cette économie comme un moyen de valorisation sociale et de transformation des statuts sociaux et des positions de genre au sein de la famille et du couple. Au-delà des définitions hégémoniques de la prostitution, qu’elles soient critiques (illicéité et immoralité) ou compassionnelles (précarité, atteinte à la dignité humaine), je m’intéresse aux rapports sociaux, aux interactions et aux modalités de formation du sujet à travers ces échanges. En m’appuyant sur la théorie de l’espace social, je montre comment l’économie intime est un ensemble de positions, hiérarchisées entre elles et qu’occupent les filles selon leur valeur personnelle (l’acquisition de capitaux culturel, économique, symbolique et social), selon la valeur accordée à leurs pratiques et selon leurs facultés à mobiliser des ressources économiques et culturelles et à subvertir les relations de pouvoir telles qu’elle s’agencent au sein des espaces prostitutionnels, de divertissement, familiaux et institutionnels (fréquentation de l’école, modalités des rapports avec la police et la justice). Enfin, j’appréhende les expériences des jeunes femmes en termes de respectabilité en les comparant à l’ensemble des expériences féminines qui informent l’actualité des féminités au Maroc.

My work deals with the sociology of underclass sexuality and intimacy, from an anthropological perspective. I employ qualitative methods, namely, ethnography. My doctoral study, based on a longitudinal immersed ethnography, explores sex work in Tangier (Morocco) from four angles of observation: the anthropology of emotions, by analysing how this activity is conceptualised by the protagonists; the sociology of youth, by relating sex work to aspects of a broader juvenile sexual culture; the sociology of inequality, by focusing on the development of neoliberal cultural and entertainment economies and the spatial segregation they involve; and the anthropology of law in action, by studying the modalities of criminal law application and observing the mechanisms of criminalization that highlight the concern to preserve the social order rather than the moral order.

This paper aims to identify the effect that the terrorist organization has had on the Nigerian government, focusing mainly on Nigeria's declaration of a state of emergency in 2011 and its establishment of the Joint Task Force shortly after. This paper takes into account the constitutional rights of Nigerian citizens, and how these rights have been largely derogated since 2011.

This course presents a broad survey of historical forces at work over the past 6,000 years, examining the manners in which human societies have organized themselves along categories of race, ethnicity, class, and gender to meet the challenges of the increasing human population and its demands on natural resources: thus, it examines continuity and change in societies over time, in different places, and among various peoples.