Transforming Damascus: Space and Modernity in an Islamic City (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781845115791)

In 1860, Damascus was a sleepy provincial capital of the weakening Ottoman Empire, a city defined in terms of its relationship to the holy places of Islam in the Arabian Hijaz and its legacy of Islamic knowledge. Yet by 1918 Damascus had become a seat of Arab nationalism and a would-be modern state capital. How can this metamorphosis be explained? Here Leila Hudson describes the transformation of Damascus. Within a couple of generations the city changed from little more than a way-station on the Islamic pilgrimage routes that had defined the city's place for over a millennium. Its citizens and notables now seized the opportunities made available through transport technology on the eastern Mediterranean coast and in the European economy. Shifts in marriage patterns, class, education and power ensued. But just when the city's destiny seemed irrevocably linked to the Mediterranean world and economy, World War I literally starved the urban centre of Damascus and empowered its Bedouin hinterland. The consequences shaped Syria for the rest of the twentieth century and beyond.

Author: Leila Hudson
ISBN-10: 1845115791
ISBN-13: 9781845115791
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Language: English
Published: 07/30/2008
Pages: 200
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.60w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Chronicle of Higher Education 10/24/2008 pg. 20