M. Fischbach – Biographical Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa

Автор: M. Fischbach
Название книги: Biographical Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa
Формат: PDF
Жанр: История Азии и Африки
Страницы: 480+469
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

The first decade of the twenty-first century has witnessed an astronomical rise in public
demand for information about the Islamic regions of the Middle East, North Africa, and
western Asia, especially in the United States. The 9/11 attacks, and the subsequent
American invasions of Afghanistan in October 2001 and Iraq inMarch 2003, were largely
responsible for this increased desire for information about a part of the world that many in
the United States view with great curiosity, yet also with great fear and distrust. Not
surprisingly, many of the books, television programs, films, and websites that have
emerged in recent years reflect these feelings, and often even cater to them. Many have
focused exclusively on Islam, or political topics related to it, in their purported effort to
explain the region to the public. Books with derogatory titles like The Politically Incorrect
View of Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World’s
Most Intolerant Religion even have made it to The New York Times bestseller list (it is
doubtful that similar books about Judaism or Christianity ever would be published, let
alone make the bestseller list).
Yet books such as these, that focus exclusively on Middle Eastern politics, religion, and
violence, do little to shed light on how the hundreds of millions of ordinary people of the
Middle East and North Africa live their lives on a daily basis. The various peoples inhabiting
this region in fact possess rich, varied, and, by Western standards, often quite normal lives,
hopes, and experiences that are far removed from the disturbing images presented by books
lining the shelves of major bookstores on this side of the Atlantic. If only the public could
read more about this reality in the Middle East and North Africa, to balance the portrayal of
warriors, politicians, clerics, and extremists so typically presented to it.
TYPE OF COVERAGE
This encyclopedia was designed as a step in the direction of filling this information gap. In it,
the reader will find entries on the lives of more than three hundred contemporary individuals
from modern North Africa and the Middle East, including Afghanistan, who are making
their marks on all walks of life. A central purpose of this work is to show this broad region as a
vibrant, diverse part of the globe, full of people doing things with their lives that are not all
that different from what Westerners do with theirs.
Some of the people spotlighted in these biographies will be familiar, but most probably
will not be. For example, the reader will encounter in these pages Nobel Prize laureates, hiphop
singers, Olympic ice skaters and runners, Hollywood stars, architects, writers, academics race car drivers, human rights advocates, journalists, heart surgeons, fashion designers,
businessmen and businesswomen, kings and queens, as well as the politicians, militants,
and clerics (from several different religions) that one might expect to see in an encyclopedia
dealing with this region. All are significant in their fields and to their wider societies in one
way or another that merits them being featured in this encyclopedia. Taken together, these
biographical entries help showcase the region in the broad range of its diversity.
Those responsible for creating this encyclopedia established several overarching principles
to guide their work. First, how to choose more than three hundred people to
highlight a region of hundreds of millions of people presented quite a challenge. In the
first instance, we included biographical entries from every country stretching from
Mauritania, in the west, to Afghanistan in the east. In the middle were the Maghrib states
of North Africa; Egypt, Libya, and Sudan; Turkey and Cyprus; Israel and the Palestinian
Authority; the Fertile Crescent countries; the states of the Arabian Peninsula; and Iran.
The encyclopedia also features persons from ethnic or national groups within these states
such as Kurds, Palestinians, southern Sudanese, Armenians, Assyrians, and Berbers, as well
as from political entities like the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the Saharawi
Arab Democratic Republic that are not universally recognized by the world community.
Larger countries like Iran and Egypt, and even smaller ones that have generated considerable
public interest (such as Israel), have a larger number of entries in the encyclopedia
than smaller countries.
Second, we established several categories of persons that we wanted to cover for each
country. These included academics, economists, and scientists; architects and urban planners;
artists and musicians; militants and politicians; activists; writers; religious leaders;
athletes; and so forth. This was consistent with our mission to provide as wide-ranging a
picture of the region as possible. Beyond that, we strove to make the encyclopedia as topical
as possible. This is largely not an historical bibliographical encyclopedia. More than threequarters
of the entries represent living people, and these, moreover, are people we feel are
likely to be around and active in their fields in five years’ time. Those who are deceased were
included because their influence is still being felt today. Beyond that, we worked hard to
make sure that we maintained a balance between men and women.
Finally, each entry contains a bibliography (including websites) so that readers can find
more information about that person. Many entries also contain a ‘‘contemporaries’’ section
highlighting other persons who were contemporaries of the main subject, as well as sections
containing quotations and other primary source excerpts.Various ‘‘exploring’’ sections throughout
the encyclopedia invite the reader to think and study further about certain topics relating to
the entries.
NON-PARTISANSHIP
The authors who wrote these entries are as varied as the biographies themselves. Mostly (but
not exclusively) academics, they come from a number of backgrounds and countries
throughout the world: North Americans, Europeans, Turks, Iranians, Arabs, Israelis, and
others. While each one followed a standard format when writing the biographical entries—
the subject’s personal history, contributions, legacy, and so forth—each author approached
the task of writing the biographies from her/his own perspective, background, and expertise.
Throughout, however, we strove to ensure that the entries discussed various aspects of the
subjects’ lives, including controversial matters, in as scholarly and dispassionately a manner
as possible.
This attempt to be as non-polemical and non-partisan as possible also led us to avoid
certain terms and language that implies partisanship. Arabs and Israelis usually refer to the
wars fought between and among them in different fashion. For example, the October 1973
war is usually called ‘‘The Yom Kippur War’’ by Israelis, while Arabs generally employ the
expressions ‘‘The Ramadan War’’ or ‘‘The October War.’’ For the sake of neutrality, we
simply call it the ‘‘1973 Arab-Israeli war.’’ Similarly, Iranians refer to the body of water separating Iran from Saudi Arabia and the smaller Arab oil shaykhdoms as the ‘‘Persian
Gulf,’’ while Arab countries call it the ‘‘Arabian Gulf.’’ We diplomatically used the term
‘‘Arabian/Persian Gulf.’’
Persons’ identities and nationalities also proved tricky sometimes. One of the sections in
each biographical entry is ‘‘nationality.’’ Sometimes identity and nationality are complicated,
even contested issues, particularly for minority groups. The reader, therefore, will find
various descriptions of persons’ identity and nationality, descriptions that some people
might find objectionable, but that try to reflect what the person him/herself—and/or the
world community—might use. Kurds from Iraq, Turkey, and Iran, for example, usually are
listed as ‘‘Kurd from Turkey’’ or ‘‘Iraqi Kurdish,’’ just as Palestinians from Israel generally are
referred to as ‘‘Palestinian citizens of Israel,’’ and so forth.