Syria's monuments : their survival and destruction /
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Syria's Monuments: their Survival and Destruction examines the fate of the various monuments in Syria (including present-day Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine/Israel) from Late Antiquity to the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century. It examines travellers' accounts, mainly from the 17th to 19th centuries, which describe religious buildings and housing in numbers and quality unknown elsewhere. The book charts the reasons why monuments lived or died, varying from earthquakes and desertification to neglect and re-use, and sets the political and social context for the Empire's transformation toward a modern state, provoked by Western trade and example. An epilogue assesses the impact of the recent civil war on the state of the monuments, and strategies for their resurrection, with plentiful references and web links.
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1 online resource. :
9789004334601 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Liberal thought in the Eastern Mediterranean : late 19th century until the 1960s /
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This volume analyzes liberal thought in the Eastern Mediterranean since the late nineteenth century, highlighting its long-term and ongoing influence, and challenging the conventional wisdom that liberalism has no legitimate place in the region's intellectual discourse. By investigating the activities of diverse institutions, media, and personalities, the authors in this volume examine the liberal ideas and values that emerged during eras of both peace and political turmoil, while recognizing the factors contributing to their decline. Seen from these many perspectives, liberal thought developed not merely from "Westernization," but from the interaction between indigenous intellectual critique and political ideology, political experiences and literary imagination, and a mixture of admiration for and resistance to European ideas and political domination.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047442240 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.