Water on Sand: Environmental Histories Of The Middle East And North Africa - Softcover

Much of the material the collection presents is interesting, and its range is impressive, from considerations of the environment's effect on the longevity of empires to estimates of the size of the typical daily catch enjoyed by fishermen in medieval Istanbul. (Foreign Affairs)

Well-sourced, well-written, well-argued, and often quite interesting. The scholars, editor, and publishers are to be commended. (Middle East Media and Book Reviews)

A readable and widely sourced text that can be used with confidence by anyone eager to teach the subject at the high school or college level. The overall standard is so high, so thought provoking and drawn so much from recent research as to resist most of the usual types of criticism directed towards edited works. (Roger Owen, International Journal of Turkish Studies)

In many ways the book provides a refreshing look from a rather new vantage point at a topic that this reviewer had thought was fairly well known and understood. The histories of many of the areas or countries within MENA have clearly been shaped through the power and control of their environmental histories and these studies will open up many new avenues of academic research which have been neglected in the past or even hidden from view altogether. (Stephen Upex, Landscape History)

Water on Sand, edited by Alan Mikhail, is a diverse and engaging collection of works that bring environmental history to the forefront of the study of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in a compelling way. The essays that compose the book cover a significant swath of time-from the twelfth to the twentieth centuries-as well as a vast geographic space, and they deliver a persuasive call to utilize environmental history as a tool to understand the history of this region better. (Teaching History)

From Morocco to Iran and the Black Sea to the Red, Water on Sand rewrites the history of the Middle East and North Africa from the Little Ice Age to the Cold War era. As the first holistic environmental history of the region, it shows the intimate connections between peoples and environments and how these relationships shaped political, economic, and social history in startling and unforeseen ways. Nearly all political powers in the region based their rule on the management and control of natural resources, and nearly all individuals were in constant communion with the natural world. To grasp how these multiple histories were central to the pasts of the Middle East and North Africa, the chapters in this book evidence the power of environmental history to open up new avenues of scholarly inquiry.