SOAS/Routledge Studies on the Middle East
About the Book Series
This series features the latest disciplinary approaches to Middle Eastern Studies. It covers the Social Sciences and the Humanities in both the pre-modern and modern periods of the region. While primarily interested in publishing single-authored studies, the series is also open to edited volumes on innovative topics, as well as textbooks and reference works.
Ottoman Politics and Economy: The Periphery and the Centre
1st Edition
By Dimitrios K. Lamprakis
December 31, 2025
This book examines the history of the transformation of the small town of Kozani, situated in modern Greek Macedonia, into a vibrant commercial hub and self-administering community during the period of Ottoman rule, c. 1400–1821. Beginning with a comprehensive examination of the foundation myths as...
A History of Diplomacy, Spatiality, and Islamic Ideals
1st Edition
Edited
By Malika Dekkiche
November 28, 2025
Inspired by the “spatial turn,” this volume links for the first time the study of diplomacy and spatiality in the premodern Islamicate world to understand practices and meanings ascribed to territory and realms. Debates on the nature of the sovereign state as a territorially defined political ...
Greeks in Turkey: Elite Nationalism and Minority Politics in Late Ottoman and Early Republican Istanbul
1st Edition
By Dimitris Kamouzis
January 09, 2023
This book provides a solid and critical historical examination of the endorsement, development and course of Greek nationalism among the lay/clerical leadership of the Greek Orthodox minority of Istanbul during the last phase of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the first years of the newly...
Modernization in the Late Ottoman Era: "Periphery" in the Heartlands
1st Edition
By Fatma Melek Arıkan
January 09, 2023
This volume is a local history, focusing on the experiences of people and communities as they navigated and enacted institutions and transformations associated with modernization in the late Ottoman era. Focusing on the local political arena of a relatively small, predominantly rural and ordinary ...
The Ottoman Empire in the Tanzimat Era: Provincial Perspectives from Ankara to Edirne
1st Edition
By Yonca Köksal
September 30, 2020
The Ottoman Empire in the Tanzimat Era generates a new history of the Ottoman Empire’s Tanzimat reforms in the provinces of Edirne and Ankara. It studies variation across the two provinces and the crucial role of local intermediaries such as notables, tribal leaders, and merchants. The book ...
Ottoman Notables and Participatory Politics: Tanzimat Reform in Tokat, 1839-1876
1st Edition
By John Bragg
December 12, 2019
Focussing on events in the Anatolian town of Tokat during the final two decades of the great Ottoman legal and administrative reforms known as the Tanzimat (1839-76), this book applies elements of social networking theory to analyze and assess the establishment of local governments across the ...
Syria in World War I: Politics, economy, and society
1st Edition
Edited
By M. Talha Çiçek
December 12, 2019
The First World War quickly escalated from a European war into a global conflict that would cause fundamental changes in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Americas. Its end signalled the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, which had controlled most of the Arab Middle East. Over the wartime ...
The Late Ottoman Empire and Egypt: Hybridity, Law and Gender
1st Edition
By Elizabeth Shlala
December 12, 2019
Law and identification transgressed political boundaries in the nineteenth-century Levant. Over the course of the century, Italo-Levantines- elite and common- exercised a strategy of resilient hybridity whereby an unintentional form of legal imperialism took root in Egypt. This book contributes to...
A Provincial History of the Ottoman Empire: Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean in the Nineteenth Century
1st Edition
By Marc Aymes
December 08, 2017
Provincializing the history of the Ottoman Empire, this book provides a critical approach to the projects of ‘modernity’ that took place in the Eastern Mediterranean over the past two centuries. Leaving their mark on this period are; the turmoil of insurgency in Greece and Egypt, a growing ...
Intellectuals and Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Young Turks on the Challenges of Modernity
1st Edition
By Stefano Taglia
December 04, 2017
This book uncovers Young Turk political and social ideas at the end of the nineteenth century, during the intellectual phase of the movement. Analysing the life in exile of two of the most charismatic leaders of the Young Turk movement, Ahmed Rıza and Mehmet Sabahattin, the book unravels ...
Islam and the Politics of Secularism: The Caliphate and Middle Eastern Modernization in the Early 20th Century
1st Edition
By Nurullah Ardic
June 16, 2017
This book examines the process of secularization in the Middle East in the late 19th and early 20th century through an analysis of the transformation and abolition of Islamic Caliphate. Focusing on debates in both the center of the Caliphate and its periphery, the author argues that the ...
Urban Governance Under the Ottomans: Between Cosmopolitanism and Conflict
1st Edition
Edited
By Ulrike Freitag, Nora Lafi
June 16, 2017
Urban Governance Under the Ottomans focuses on one of the most pressing topics in this field, namely the question why cities formerly known for their multiethnic and multi- religious composition became increasingly marked by conflict in the 19th century. This collection of essays represents the ...