Syria and Bilad Al-Sham Under Ottoman Rule

This volume honours the work of Abdul-Karim Rafeq, the foremost historian of Ottoman Syria. Rafeq's principal contribution to the study of the social history of Syria between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries lies in his pioneering use of the resources of the Islalmic court records, the sijillat in the mahkama alshar'iyya, for the writing of social and economic history. Rafeq has been the guide and mentor of many of his own contemporaries, as well as of younger scholars in the Arab world, Europe and North America. The volume attmepts to follow and complement the major themes in the socio-economic history of Bilad al-Sham which have animated Rafeq's scholarship since the 1960's.

Peter Sluglett, D. Phil (1973) in History, St Anthony's College Oxford, is Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. He has published extensively on the modern history of Iraq. His most recent publication is an edited collection on the urban social history of the Middle East between 1750 and 1950.

Stefan Weber, D. Phil (2001) is Islamwissenschaft (Middle Eastern Studies), Free University Berlin, is Director of the Museum of Islamic Art at the Pergamon Museum, Berlin. He was Assistant Professor of Material Culture at Aga Khan University in London from 2006 to 2008. He has published widely on cultural heritage in the Middle East. Dr. Weber is a member of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and several other relevant organisations.