
Water on Sand
Environmental Histories of the Middle East and North Africa
Alan Mikhail(Editor)
Oxford University Press Inc
Published on 10. January 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
352 pages
978-0-19-976866-0 (ISBN)
Description
From Morocco to Iran and the Black Sea to the Red, Water on Sand rewrites the history of the Middle East and North Africa from the Little Ice Age to the Cold War. As the first holistic environmental history of the region over the last half millennium, it shows the intimate connections between peoples and environments and how these relationships shaped political, economic, and social history in startling and unforeseen ways. Nearly all political powers in the region based their rule on the management and control of natural resources, and nearly all individuals were in constant communion with the natural world. To grasp how these multiple histories were central to the pasts of the Middle East and North Africa, the chapters in this book evidence the power of environmental history to open up new avenues of historical research and understanding.
Water on Sand furthermore traces how the Middle East and North Africa deeply affected the global histories of climate, disease, trade, energy, environmental politics, ecological manipulation, and much more. Lying at the intersection of three continents and as many seas, the Middle East has obviously been central to world history for millennia. Studying the ecological implications of these global connections, both for the region itself and for the rest of the world, helps to bring the Middle East and North Africa into global history and to show how the region must be an essential part of any understanding of the environments of Eurasia over the last five hundred years.
Deeply researched, globally comparative, and highly provocative, Water on Sand represents both a new kind of Middle Eastern history and a new kind of environmental history.
Water on Sand furthermore traces how the Middle East and North Africa deeply affected the global histories of climate, disease, trade, energy, environmental politics, ecological manipulation, and much more. Lying at the intersection of three continents and as many seas, the Middle East has obviously been central to world history for millennia. Studying the ecological implications of these global connections, both for the region itself and for the rest of the world, helps to bring the Middle East and North Africa into global history and to show how the region must be an essential part of any understanding of the environments of Eurasia over the last five hundred years.
Deeply researched, globally comparative, and highly provocative, Water on Sand represents both a new kind of Middle Eastern history and a new kind of environmental history.
Reviews / Votes
Much of the material the collection presents is interesting, and its range is impressive, from considerations of the environment's effect on the longevity of empires to estimates of the size of the typical daily catch enjoyed by fishermen in medieval Istanbul. * Foreign Affairs * Well-sourced, well-written, well-argued, and often quite interesting. The scholars, editor, and publishers are to be commended. * Middle East Media and Book Reviews * A readable and widely sourced text that can be used with confidence by anyone eager to teach the subject at the high school or college level. The overall standard is so high, so thought provoking and drawn so much from recent research as to resist most of the usual types of criticism directed towards edited works. * Roger Owen, International Journal of Turkish Studies * In many ways the book provides a refreshing look from a rather new vantage point at a topic that this reviewer had thought was fairly well known and understood. The histories of many of the areas or countries within MENA have clearly been shaped through the power and control of their environmental histories and these studies will open up many new avenues of academic research which have been neglected in the past or even hidden from view altogether. * Stephen Upex, Landscape History * Water on Sand, edited by Alan Mikhail, is a diverse and engaging collection of works that bring environmental history to the forefront of the study of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in a compelling way. The essays that compose the book cover a significant swath of time-from the twelfth to the twentieth centuries-as well as a vast geographic space, and they deliver a persuasive call to utilize environmental history as a tool to understand the history of this region better. * Teaching History *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Students and scholars of Middle Eastern and environmental history
Illustrations
13 hts
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
593 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-976866-0 (9780199768660)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
01/2013
Oxford University Press Inc
€155.60
Shipment within 15-20 days

E-Book
11/2012
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€24.49
Available for download

E-Book
11/2012
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€24.49
Available for download
Person
Alan Mikhail is Assistant Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History, which won the Roger Owen Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association and the Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication from Yale University.
Content
Contributors ; Introduction - Middle East Environmental History: The Fallow between Two Fields- Alan Mikhail ; 1. The Eccentricity of the Middle East and North Africa's Environmental History- J.R. McNeill ; 2. History and Animal Energy in the Arid Zone- Richard W. Bulliet ; 3. The Little Ice Age Crisis of the Ottoman Empire: A Conjuncture in Middle East Environmental History- Sam White ; 4. Fish and Fishermen in Ottoman Istanbul- Suraiya Faroqhi ; 5. Plague and Environment in Late Ottoman Egypt- Alan Mikhail ; 6. Through an Ocean of Sand: Pastoralism and the Equestrian Culture of the Eurasian Steppe- Arash Khazeni ; 7. Enclosing Nature in North Africa: National Parks and the Politics of Environmental History- Diana K. Davis ; 8. Building the Past: Rockscapes and the Aswan High Dam in Egypt- Nancy Reynolds ; 9. The Rise and Decline of Environmentalism in Lebanon- Karim Makdisi ; 10. State of Nature: The Politics of Water in the Making of Saudi Arabia- Toby C. Jones ; 11. Expanding the Nile's Watershed: The Science and Politics of Land Reclamation in Egypt- Jessica Barnes ; Bibliography ; Index