The state and the subaltern
Touraj Atabaki
I.B. Tauris Publishers
Compared to other trends in historiography, the social history of the Middle East is a terrain that still lacks many explorers. As was the case with European historiography, up to the twentieth century the historiography of the Middle East was dominated by political, dynastical and genealogical historiography as well as narratives of the life and times of individual elites. Nevertheless, by ‘the remarkable and worldwide growth of sociology as an academic subject and fashion’ 1 especially during the last 50 years, the social history of Middle Eastern societies was gradually acknowledged as a legitimate academic field by many historians. Albert Hourani’s work on the history of the Arab peoples,2 Halil Inalcik’s volume on the social history of the Ottoman Empire3 and Abdulhussein Zarinkoub’s accounts of the Iranians’ early reaction to the Arab invasion of the seventh century4 are among the most renowned examples of Middle Eastern social historiography. It was indeed ... | 
