[...]... (from Jordan) at Kalamazoo College, Yasmeen Hanoosh (from Iraq) and Marwan Gammash (from Saudi Arabia) at the University of Michigan, Ali Fadhel (from United Arab Emirates) at Western Michigan University, Hala Mahmoud in Cairo, and Laila Rabi a in Rabat Also to my Kalamazoo College students Shadi Houshyar, Natasha Ghazi, Maya Farhat, and Anna Maxbauer for bibliographic and library help, and for insightful... and Pyramids, Abdelwaheb Bouhdiba’s Sexuality in Islam,9 Hamed Ammar’s Fi bina’ al-bashar (On the Building of Persons), Ali Zayour’s Altahlil al-nafsi li-al-dhat al-’arabiyyah (Psychological Analysis of the Arab Self) and Mustafa Hijazi’s Al-takhaluf al-ijtima’i (Societal Underdevelopment), are works of social criticism by MENA scholars which also examine the “Arab mentality.” In addition, few MENA... which draw on their own traditions Ahmed and Gielen call for this kind of “indigenization,” for which the works of the Lebanese psychiatrist Mohammed Nablusi (Nahu saykulujiya ‘arabiah [Toward an Arab Psychology] ) and the Egyptian psychologist Fuad Abu Hateb (Mushkilat ‘ilm 8 Introduction al-nafs fi al-’alam al-thaleth hala al-watan al-‘arabi [Problems of Psychology in the Third World and the Arab Countries])... Coker at the American University in Cairo Thanks also to Professor Mohammed Ezroura for welcoming me to Mohammed V University in Rabat, and to Dr Mehdi Paes and Dr Jamal Toufiq at the Ar-Razi Hospital in Sale (Rabat) for guidance early in my work there Great thanks to the Arabic tutors and research assistants who worked with me over the last three years: Laila al-Duwaisin (from Kuwait) and Faisal Shurdom... appear in three subregions (the Persian Gulf, the Nile, and North Africa) and among individual nations And throughout the Middle East, urban, rural, and Bedouin styles of life have created additional variation.6 I have no doubt that the “culture area” concept brings a danger of oversimplification, and as Khalifa and Radwan point out, recent decades of population growth and economic change are probably... regard as “their” culture, and to synthesize them in creative and idiosyncratic ways There remains the difficult problem of what to call this culture area Only parts of it are “Arab”; it is only a part of the “Muslim” world; and Middle East usually refers to the countries of the eastern Mediterranean and Persian Gulf In the book’s first draft I used Middle East as the best of these inappropriate... Antoine Gallard as a diversion, based loosely on oral tales that circulated throughout the Middle East and India Published in the first decade of the eighteenth century, the Arabian Nights immediately became popular and spread the image of the seraglio, or royal harem, as a place of unleashed sensuality and violence In the “frame story” that sets the tales in motion, the King Shahrayar finds his wife... people: The audience viewed the Pyramids from the air, saw massed bodies of cavalry and were introduced to Allenby’s crusaders and The Army of Allah.” They were given aerial tours of contemporary and Biblical battlefields, where the Scots defeated the Turks, and David slew Goliath, and they saw twentieth century crusaders on the march, along the same roads where the armies of Godfrey de Bouillion and... and Richard Coeur de Lion camped eight centuries ago [In part 2] they were introduced to Shereef Lawrence, the uncrowned King of Arabia, and his Arabian Knights, and to Auda Abu Tayi, a Bedouin Robin Hood The performance ended with a description of the capture of Aleppo and the downfall of the Ottoman Empire—Mesopotamia, Syria, Arabia and the Holy Land at last freed after four hundred years of... was a mixture of new delights: the pomp of pageant, the smell of perfume and incense, the luxurious brocades that shimmered in the sun, and most notably, the woman herself—queen, love-object, mistress and despot—was the East, the Orient created for the Western gaze.41 For many Europeans, the East arrived in the Arabian Nights, a work first written by a French Arabic scholar named Antoine Gallard as . me over the last three years: Laila al-Duwaisin (from Kuwait) and Faisal Shurdom (from Jordan) at Kalamazoo College, Yasmeen Hanoosh (from Iraq) and Marwan Gammash (from Saudi Arabia) at the University. Michi- gan, Ali Fadhel (from United Arab Emirates) at Western Michigan University, Hala Mahmoud in Cairo, and Laila Rabi a in Rabat. Also to my Kalamazoo College students Shadi Houshyar, Natasha Ghazi,. Persons), Ali Zayour’s Al- tahlil al-nafsi li-al-dhat al-’arabiyyah (Psychological Analysis of the Arab Self) and Mustafa Hijazi’s Al-takhaluf al-ijtima’i (Societal Underdevelopment), are works