Covering a period from the late eighteenth century to today, this volume explores the phenomenon of urban violence in order to unveil general developments and historical specificities in a variety of Middle Eastern contexts. By situating incidents in particular processes and conflicts, the case studies seek to counter notions of a violent Middle East in order to foster a new understanding of violence beyond that of a meaningless and destructive social and political act. Contributions explore processes sparked by the transition from empires - Ottoman and Qajar, but also European - to the formation of nation states, and the resulting changes in cityscapes throughout the region.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Urban Violence in the Middle East: Changing Cityscapes in the Transition from Empire to Nation State
Claudia Ghrawi, Fatemeh Masjedi, Nelida Fuccaro, Ulrike Freitag

Part I: Managing and Employing Violence

Chapter 1. Mapping and Scaling Urban Violence: The 1800 Insurrection in Cairo
Nora Lafi

Chapter 2. A Capital Challenge: Managing Violence and Disorders in Late Ottoman Istanbul
Noémi Lévy-Aksu

Chapter 3. Gendered Obscenity: Women's Tongues, Men's Phalluses and the State's Fist in the Making of Urban Norm in Interwar Egypt
Hanan Hammad

Part II: Symbolic Politics of Violence

Chapter 4. Urban Violence, the Muharram Processions and the Transformation of Iranian Urban Society: The Case of Dezful
Reza Masoudi Nejad

Chapter 5. Symbolic Politics and Urban Violence in Late Ottoman Jeddah
Ulrike Freitag

Part III: Communal Violence and its Discontents

Chapter 6. The 1850 Uprising in Aleppo: Reconsidering the Explanatory Power of Sectarian Argumentations
Feras Krimsti

Chapter 7. The City as a Stage for a Violent Spectacle: The Massacres of Armenians in Istanbul in 1895-96
Florian Riedler

Chapter 8. Transforming the Holy City: From Communal Clashes to Urban Violence, the Nebi Musa Riots in 1920
Roberto Mazza

Part IV: Oil Cities: Spatiality and Violence

Chapter 9. On Lines and Fences: Labour, Community and Violence in an Oil City
Rasmus Christian Elling

Chapter 10. Reading Oil as Urban Violence: Kirkuk and its Oil Conurbation, 1927-1958
Nelida Fuccaro

Chapter 11. Structural and Physical Violence in Saudi Arabian Oil Towns, 1953-1956
Claudia Ghrawi

Afterword: Urban Injustice, Urban Violence and the Revolution: Reflections on Cairo
Khaled Adham

Notes on Contributors
Bibliography

Ulrike Freitag is a historian of the Modern Middle East with a special interest in urban history and the Arabian Peninsula in its global context. She directs Zentrum Moderner Orient and teaches at the Freie Universität. She is author of A History of Jeddah: The Gate to Mecca in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (CUP, 2020) and co-editor (with André Chappatte and Nora Lafi) of Understanding the City through its Margins (Routledge 2018).