Wedded to Mubarak: The Second Careers and Financial Rewards of Egypt's Military Elite, 1981–2011

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Islamic scholars of Bukhara during the long nineteenth century. Islamic scholars were among the most influential individuals in their society, and that power rested on their mastery of diverse forms of knowledge rather than birthright. Instead of imagining those varied competencies and practices as embodied by separate professions, this book conceptualizes them as distinct practices and disciplines mastered by a single milieu. Instead of imagining stratified castes of “ulama” as against “sufis” as against “poets,” there is a unified social group of multitalented polymaths selectively performing sharia, asceticism, and poetry as circumstances dictated. These polymaths of Islam were the custodians of the only form of institutionalized high culture on offer in Central Asia. Their authoritative command over many different forms of knowledge — from medicine to law to epistolography and beyond — allowed them to accumulate substantial power and to establish enduring family dynasties. The Turkic military elite relied on these scholars to administer the state, but the ulama possessed an independent source of authority rooted in learning, which created tension between these two elite groups with profound ramifications for the region's history.

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“We Do Not Exclude a Constitutional Monarch Under the Present Dynasty”

Unconditional ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190091101.003.0003 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 38-70

Author(s):

Marc Gallicchio

Keyword(s):

Military Elite ◽

The U.S

The second chapter picks up in Okinawa, where the last chapter ended, in June 1945, when Japanese forces began an orderly retreat from the Shuri line to the Kiyan Peninsula, located at the southernmost part of Okinawa. Thereafter began a plan within the Japanese political and military elite to end the war. The initial hope was for Japan’s withdrawal from the European colonies it had conquered, providing they were granted their independence. Japan would also disarm itself and accept limits imposed on its defense establishment. There would be no occupation of the homeland. The chapter argues that this was a daring plan. The chapter presents the U.S. reaction to this in terms of how those in power wanted the Japanese surrender to be shaped.

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