Muḥammad Jamīl Bayhum and the Woman Question

This article sheds light on Muḥammad Jamīl Bayhum’s (1887–1978) activities and vision, and his historiographical writings on women which have received little scholarly attention. In this respect it is not a comparative study of Bayhum’s interpretations or the historical reality of women’s lives but rather a re-assessment of Bayhum’s historical oeuvres, and his synthesis of women’s history. The article examines the ways in which Bayhum’s historical writings, which were part of his political and national vision, contributed to constructing a local Muslim and Arab historiography of women during the 20th century. It presents Bayhum as an advocate of women’s social and political rights, who favored the recognition of women as citizens (or their counterpart in modern Lebanese and Arab societies), both during the period of French colonialism and in the post-colonial era.

Class, Community, and Arab Historiography in the Early Nineteenth Century—The Dawn of a New Era

The aim of the present essay is to explore some of the relations between the socioeconomic and political transformation which occurred in Syria during the eighteenth century and the development of a new view of the world and the self as it came to be expressed in the writings of several Arab historians at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Of particular interest in this context is the question of whether and when a clear departure from traditional patterns of society and thought can be discerned.

The Social Uses of the Past: Recent Arab Historiography of Ottoman Rule

This study examines the structures of thought behind a representative selection of recent Arab historical and social scientific works on the Ottoman era of Arab history to elicit their historically bound social uses.