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Adam Mestyan CV

Associate Professor of History
History
Dept of History, Box 90719, Durham, NC 27708
318 Classroom Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Office hours By appointment.  
CV

Selected Publications


Microhistory as Industrial History: Environment, Sugar Capitalism and Labour in Egypt, 1863–1879

Journal Article Past & Present · August 23, 2024 AbstractThis article argues that the microhistorical analysis of one specific industrial enterprise offers a useful perspective from which to study local participation in global industrialization and to unit ... Full text Cite

Modern Arab Kingship: Remaking The Ottoman Political Order in the Interwar Middle East

Book · January 1, 2023 In this groundbreaking book, Adam Mestyan argues that post-Ottoman Arab political orders were not, as many historians believe, products of European colonialism but of the process of “recycling empire.” Mestyan shows that in the post-World War I Middle East ... Cite

Fu'ad I

Other Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three · 2023 Full text Link to item Cite

The Probate Regime: Enchanted Bureaucracy, Islamic Law, and the Capital of Orphans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt

Journal Article Law and History Review · November 1, 2022 In this article, we explore the probate regime, an administrative field of government activity of legally transferring, taxing, and administering bequests. As an example, we study the changes of the Egyptian probate regime in a longue durée perspective, wi ... Full text Open Access Cite

An Egyptian Shaykh's Literary World, 1870: Digitally Reconstructing Islamic Print Culture Through Mustafa Salama al-Najjari's Books

Journal Article Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association · September 1, 2022 Cite

From administrative to political order? Global legal history, the organic law, and the constitution of mandate Syria, 1925–1930

Journal Article Journal of Global History · 2022 AbstractThis article explores the making of the State of Syria after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. I argue that an event-based approach in global legal history offers a useful perspective for studying the trans ... Full text Link to item Cite

A Muslim Dualism? Inter-Imperial History and Austria-Hungary in Ottoman Thought, 1867-1921

Journal Article Contemporary European History · November 1, 2021 Historians often look for genealogies of nationalism in Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman imperial history. In this article, I use an inter-imperial framework to argue that the formative period of contemporary Eastern Mediterranean-European regionalism was the ... Full text Cite

Primordial History, Print Capitalism, and Egyptology in Nineteenth-Century Cairo - Muṣṭafā Salāma al-Naǧǧārī's The Garden of Ismail's Praise

Scholarly Edition · 2021 This book contains the English translation and Arabic transcription of the surviving fragments of a unique manuscript, The Garden of Ismail's Praise. The author is a forgotten Egyptian intellectual and poet, Mustafa Salama al-Naggari (d. 1870). He wrote th ... Link to item Cite

Jarāʾid: A chronology of Arabic periodicals (1800-1929)

Dataset · December 28, 2020 Bibliographical data set for all periodicals published globally in Arabic (or Arabic plus additional languages) between 1800 and 1929. ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Khedive

Other Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE · 2020 Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Seeing like a khedivate: Taxing endowed agricultural land, proofs of ownership, and the land administration in Egypt, 1869

Journal Article Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient · January 1, 2020 Featured Publication Theories of state modernization rarely consider the relationship between sovereignty and government capacity. This paper focuses on the khedivate of Egypt, a semi-independent province in the Ottoman Empire. My claim is that endowed agricultural land was a ... Full text Cite

Domestic Sovereignty, A‘yan Developmentalism, and Global Microhistory in Modern Egypt

Journal Article Comparative Studies in Society and History · 2018 Open Access Cite

Arab Patriotism

Journal Article · May 9, 2017 This book presents the essential backstory to the formation of the modern nation-state and mass nationalism in the Middle East. While standard histories claim that the roots of Arab nationalism emerged in opposition to the Ottoman milieu, this book poin ... Full text Cite

Microhistory as Industrial History: Environment, Sugar Capitalism and Labour in Egypt, 1863–1879

Journal Article Past & Present · August 23, 2024 AbstractThis article argues that the microhistorical analysis of one specific industrial enterprise offers a useful perspective from which to study local participation in global industrialization and to unit ... Full text Cite

Modern Arab Kingship: Remaking The Ottoman Political Order in the Interwar Middle East

Book · January 1, 2023 In this groundbreaking book, Adam Mestyan argues that post-Ottoman Arab political orders were not, as many historians believe, products of European colonialism but of the process of “recycling empire.” Mestyan shows that in the post-World War I Middle East ... Cite

Fu'ad I

Other Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three · 2023 Full text Link to item Cite

The Probate Regime: Enchanted Bureaucracy, Islamic Law, and the Capital of Orphans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt

Journal Article Law and History Review · November 1, 2022 In this article, we explore the probate regime, an administrative field of government activity of legally transferring, taxing, and administering bequests. As an example, we study the changes of the Egyptian probate regime in a longue durée perspective, wi ... Full text Open Access Cite

An Egyptian Shaykh's Literary World, 1870: Digitally Reconstructing Islamic Print Culture Through Mustafa Salama al-Najjari's Books

Journal Article Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association · September 1, 2022 Cite

From administrative to political order? Global legal history, the organic law, and the constitution of mandate Syria, 1925–1930

Journal Article Journal of Global History · 2022 AbstractThis article explores the making of the State of Syria after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. I argue that an event-based approach in global legal history offers a useful perspective for studying the trans ... Full text Link to item Cite

A Muslim Dualism? Inter-Imperial History and Austria-Hungary in Ottoman Thought, 1867-1921

Journal Article Contemporary European History · November 1, 2021 Historians often look for genealogies of nationalism in Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman imperial history. In this article, I use an inter-imperial framework to argue that the formative period of contemporary Eastern Mediterranean-European regionalism was the ... Full text Cite

Primordial History, Print Capitalism, and Egyptology in Nineteenth-Century Cairo - Muṣṭafā Salāma al-Naǧǧārī's The Garden of Ismail's Praise

Scholarly Edition · 2021 This book contains the English translation and Arabic transcription of the surviving fragments of a unique manuscript, The Garden of Ismail's Praise. The author is a forgotten Egyptian intellectual and poet, Mustafa Salama al-Naggari (d. 1870). He wrote th ... Link to item Cite

Jarāʾid: A chronology of Arabic periodicals (1800-1929)

Dataset · December 28, 2020 Bibliographical data set for all periodicals published globally in Arabic (or Arabic plus additional languages) between 1800 and 1929. ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Khedive

Other Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE · 2020 Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Seeing like a khedivate: Taxing endowed agricultural land, proofs of ownership, and the land administration in Egypt, 1869

Journal Article Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient · January 1, 2020 Featured Publication Theories of state modernization rarely consider the relationship between sovereignty and government capacity. This paper focuses on the khedivate of Egypt, a semi-independent province in the Ottoman Empire. My claim is that endowed agricultural land was a ... Full text Cite

Domestic Sovereignty, A‘yan Developmentalism, and Global Microhistory in Modern Egypt

Journal Article Comparative Studies in Society and History · 2018 Open Access Cite

Arab Patriotism

Journal Article · May 9, 2017 This book presents the essential backstory to the formation of the modern nation-state and mass nationalism in the Middle East. While standard histories claim that the roots of Arab nationalism emerged in opposition to the Ottoman milieu, this book poin ... Full text Cite

Arab Patriotism - The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt

Book · 2017 Arab Patriotism presents the essential backstory to the formation of the modern nation-state and mass nationalism in the Middle East. While standard histories claim that the roots of Arab nationalism emerged in opposition to the Ottoman milieu, Adam Mestya ... Link to item Cite

Global Ottoman: The Cairo-Istanbul Axis

Internet Publication · 2017 What does the Ottoman framework mean for urban historians of the Arab world and in particular of Egypt? ... Open Access Link to item Cite

“I Have To Disguise Myself”: Orientalism, Gyula Germanus, and pilgrimage as cultural capital, 1935–1965

Chapter · November 2016 The present volume focuses on the political perceptions of the Hajj, its global religious appeal to Muslims, and the European struggle for influence and supremacy in the Muslim world in the age of pre-colonial and colonial empires. ... Open Access Cite

Affairisme dynastique et dandysme au Caire vers 1900

Journal Article Annales islamologiques · October 30, 2016 Full text Open Access Cite

“Muḥammad Yūsuf Najm – A Maker of the Nahḍa”

Journal Article Al-Abhath · October 1, 2016 Open Access Cite

Digital source imperialism and the Arab world

Internet Publication · 2016 The term “digital imperialism” has been commonly used to describe cases where digital products transform social customs, but I use the term “digital source imperialism” here to refer to those who seek to control or monopolize access to digital products tha ... Open Access Link to item Cite

Ignác Goldziher's report on the books brought from the orient for the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Journal Article Journal of Semitic Studies · July 1, 2015 This paper contains the English translation of Ignác Goldziher's Hungarian essay Report on the Books Brought from the Orient for the Hungarian Academy of Sciences with Regard to the Conditions of the Printing Press in the Orient (1874). The introduction pr ... Full text Open Access Cite

Materials for a history of Hungarian academic orientalism: The case of Gyula Germanus

Journal Article Welt des Islams · January 1, 2014 This article provides materials for an institutional history of academic Hungarian Orientalism through the life of Gyula Germanus (1884-1979). Using hitherto unexploited archives, this text explores his education, integration into academia, and career up t ... Full text Open Access Cite

Arabic theater in early khedivial culture, 1868-72: James Sanua revisited

Journal Article International Journal of Middle East Studies · January 1, 2014 This article revisits the official culture of the early khedivate through a microhistory of the first modern Egyptian theater in Arabic. Based on archival research, it aims at a recalibration of recent scholarship by showing khedivial culture as a complex ... Full text Open Access Cite

Project Jara'id

Internet Publication · 2012 Link to item Cite