Bøger udgivet af The American University in Cairo Press

Directed to learners of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic who have previously studied Modern Standard Arabic, this is the first textbook to handle the different levels and the variety of contexts of Egyptian Colloquial: both the everyday and the educated forms. It is also the first to introduce the language through multimedia, addressing recent and compelling topics of interest to learners of both language and culture, and focusing on pronunciation as a skill.Each of the ten lessons is structured around a video series, Abdalla's Journey, which covers a range of topics in the everyday language, and video interviews with scholars discussing the same topics in the educated variety. Vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation in both language levels are the focus of drills and exercises, and the phonetic and syntactic differences between the two forms are highlighted.

Galal Amin once again turns his attention to the shaping of Egyptian society and the Egyptian state in the half-century and more that has elapsed since the Nasserite revolution, this time focusing on the era of President Mubarak. He looks at corruption, poverty, the plight of the middle class, and of course, the economy, and directs his penetrating gaze toward the Mubarak regime's uneasy relationship with the relatively free press it encouraged, the vexing issue of presidential succession, and Egypt's relations with the Arab world and the United States. Addressing such themes from the perspective of an active participant in Egyptian intellectual life throughout the era, Galal Amin portrays the Mubarak regime's stance in the domestic and international arenas as very much a product of history, which, while not exonerating the regime, certainly helps to explain it.

Riyadh is a city of masks, a city "e;like a pressure cooker that's about to explode,"e; a city that sleeps on a pile of words that no one dares utter. Saudi society has split into two camps, one adopting the slogan that God is strict in punishment, the other that God is merciful and forgiving. In the background the media trumpets that everything is perfect. Saudi writer Fahd al-Atiq explores this world through the character of Khaled, whose dysfunctional life, humdrum but rich in memories and introspection, bridges the gap between the old impoverished world of Najd and the consumerism of the years after the various oil booms, symbolized in this novel by the family's move from the lively back streets of the old city to an isolated dream villa in the new suburbs, where their dreams are never quite fulfilled and their lives remain permanently 'on hold.'

Yusuf Idris was undoubtedly one of Egypt's most talented and versatile writers in the second half of the twentieth century. The first two novellas in this volume, Madam Vienna and The Secret of His Power, come from the peak period in his career, the late 1950s and early 1960s, while New York 80 belongs to his late period, the 1980s.

The Qahtan are a Palestinian family that claims to have originated in the Arabian Peninsula, descended from the family of the Prophet Muhammad. This connection has given its members a certain ascendancy in their society, and has influenced their cultural and political choices.The true test occurs when the Qahtanis, like other Palestinians, confront two enemies after the First World War: the British Mandate and the Zionist movement. Observing the gradual and increasing illegal Jewish immigration and land appropriation, the Palestinians come to realize they have been betrayed by a power that "fulfilled their promises to the Jews and reneged on their promises to the Arabs."Sahar Khalifeh brings to the forefront the inner conflicts of Palestinian society as it struggles to affirm its cultural and national identity, save its threatened homeland, and maintain a semblance of normalcy in otherwise abnormal circumstances.

To some, al-Hakim was God incarnate, to others an infallible imam, to still others he was a capricious tyrant. This book examines myth and fact, document and opinion, to present the most complete and detailed history yet written of the life and times of one of the medieval Islamic world's most controversial figures.

In this special new and expanded edition of the bestselling book first published in 1999, photographer Britta Le Va guides us through the back streets and alleys of Naguib Mahfouz, to produce a collection of outstanding visual images of the historic city, while novelist Gamal al-Ghitani describes a walking tour with the great man around the streets of Gamaliya.

Despite the prominence of ancient temples in the landscape of Egypt, books about them are surprisingly rare; this new publication from a prominent Czech scholar answers the need for a study that goes beyond temple architecture to examine the spiritual, economic and political aspects of these specific institutions and the dominant roles they played.

"e;The millennial generation's most celebrated literary achievement."e;-Al-Ahram Weekly"e;The first glimmer of hope for a true fictional renaissance-an instantly rewarding read embraced by an unprecedented range of literary figures"e;-The Daily Star What is madness?"e; asks the narrator of Ahmed Alaidy's jittery, funny, and angry novel. Assuring readers that they are about to find out, the narrator takes us on a journey through the insanity of present-day Cairo-in and out of minibuses, malls, and crash pads, navigating the city's pinball machine of social life with tolerable efficiency. But lurking under the rocks in his grouchy, chain-smoking, pharmaceutically-oriented, twenty-something life are characters like his elusive psychiatrist uncle with a disturbing interest in phobias. And then there's Abbas, the narrator's best friend who surfaces at critical moments to drive our hero into uncontrollably multiplying difficulties. For instance, there's the ticklish situation with the simultaneous blind-dates Abbas has set up for him on different levels of a coffee-shop in a Cairo mall with two girls both called Hind. With friends like Abbas, what paranoiac needs enemies?

This cross-disciplinary, ethnographic, contextualized, and empirical volume explores the meaning and significance of urban space, and maps the spatial inscription of power on the mega-city of Cairo. Suspicious of collective life and averse to power-sharing, Egyptian governance structures weaken but do not stop the public's role in the remaking of their city. What happens to a city where neo-liberalism has scaled back public services and encouraged the privatization of public goods, while the vast majority cannot afford the effects of such policies? Who wins and loses in the "march to the modern and the global" as the government transforms urban spaces and markets in the name of growth, security, tourism, and modernity? How do Cairenes struggle with an ambiguous and vulnerable legal and bureaucratic environment when legality is a privilege affordable only to the few or the connected? This companion volume to Cairo Cosmopolitan (2006) further develops the central insights of the Cairo School of Urban Studies.Contributors: Khaled Adham, Jennifer Bell, Agnès Deboulet, Taline Djerdjerian, W.J. Dorman, Bénédicte Florin, Jörg Gertel, Katarzyna Grabska, Patrick Haenni, Kareem Ibrahim, Samia Mehrez, Sarah Ben Néfissa, Agnieszka Paczynska, Samuli Schielke, Mulki Al-Sharmani, Diane Singerman, Hania Sobhy, Malika Zeghal.

An unknown observer is watching the residents of a small, closely-knit neighborhood in Cairo's old city, making notes. The college graduate, the street vendors, the political prisoner, the cafe owner, the taxi driver, the beautiful green-eyed young wife with the troll of a husband all are subjects of surveillance. The watcher's reports flow seamlessly into a narrative about Zafarani Alley, a village tucked into a corner of the city, where intrigue is the main entertainment, and everyone has a secret. Suspicion, superstition, and a wicked humor prevail in this darkly comedic novel. Drawing upon the experience of his own childhood growing up in al-Hussein, where the fictional Zafarani Alley is located, Gamal al-Ghitani has created a world richly populated with characters and situations that possess authenticity behind their veils of satire.

This book moves beyond superficial generalizations about Cairo as a chaotic metropolis in the developing world into an analysis of the ways the city's eighteen million inhabitants have, in the face of a largely neglectful government, built and shaped their own city. A new post-revolution Afterword is included.

This book demonstrates that many domestic and regional sociopolitical and cultural changes credited to the 1952 revolutionaries began decades before the July coup. Arguing against the view of the pre-revolutionary era in Egypt as one of decay, the volume considers the 1919-1952 years as integral to nation-state formation and social transformation.

Introducing the Uktub al-'arabiya series with the Advanced level volume, the authors of this new textbook aim to develop the writing skills of students learning Modern Standard Arabic, enabling them to move from forming correct words, phrases, sentences, and simple texts, to writing simple paragraphs and ultimately producing texts with the competency of a native speaker. These books, with the beginner and intermediate level volumes forthcoming, can accompany any other Arabic textbooks. The Advanced level volume introduces students to authentic Arabic written texts; strengthens and enhances their grammar; includes more sophisticated key words, collocations, expressions, and idioms; reinforces linguistic accuracy; and trains them to use handwriting script. Practical skills such as how to write letters are included.Developed and piloted in the classrooms of the Arabic Language Institute at the American University in Cairo, this series has benefited from the expertise and knowledge of leading teachers of Arabic.

This study critically analyzes the paradigms and practices of planning in Egypt since 1952. Based on primary and secondary data, the study argues that under Nasser, plans often diverged from their blueprints and revealed the myth of 'technical objectivity' that underpinned the planning industry. Under Sadat, the systematic exclusion of planners from decision-making apparatuses accompanied 'profit-opportunism' in favor of private interests. The study then demonstrates the decline of planning under Mubarak and its emergence into a 'special purpose vehicle' in service of real estate developments skewed toward resource and privilege concentration in the hands of a few thus further exacerbating uneven spatial morphologies.

During the half-millennium from the eleventh through the sixth centuries BC, the power and the glory of the imperial pharaohs of the New Kingdom crumbled in the face of internal crises and external pressures, ultimately reversed by invaders from Nubia and consolidated by natives of the Nile Delta following a series of Assyrian invasions. Much of this era remains obscure, with little consensus among Egyptologists. Against this background, Aidan Dodson reconsiders the evidence and proposes a number of new solutions to the problems of the period. He also considers the art, architecture, and archaeology of the period, including the royal tombs of Tanis, one of which yielded the intact burials of no fewer than five pharaohs. The book is extensively illustrated with images of this material, much of which is little known to non-specialists of the period. By the author of the bestselling Amarna Sunset and Poisoned Legacy.

This book examines the historic process traditionally referred to as the fall of Rome and rise of Islam from the perspective of the Red Sea, a strategic waterway linking the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and a distinct region incorporating Africa with Arabia. The transition from Byzantium to the Caliphate is contextualized in the contestation of regional hegemony between Aksumite Ethiopia, Sasanian Iran, and the Islamic Hijaz. The economic stimulus associated with Arab colonization is then considered, including the foundation of ports and roads linking new metropolises and facilitating commercial expansion, particularly gold mining and the slave trade. Finally, the economic inheritance of the Fatimids and the formation of the commercial networks glimpsed in the Cairo Geniza is contextualized in the diffusion of the Abbasid 'bourgeois revolution' and resumption of the 'India trade' under the Tulunids and Ziyadids. Timothy Power's careful analysis reveals the complex cultural and economic factors that provided a fertile ground for the origins of the Islamic civilization to take root in the Red Sea region, offering a new perspective on a vital period of history.

Irregular or illegal housing constitutes the ordinary condition of popular urban housing in the Middle East. Considering the conditions of daily practices related to land and tenure mobilization and of housing, neighborhood shaping, transactions, and conflict resolution, this book offers a new reading of government action in the cities of Amman, Beirut, Damascus, Istanbul, and Cairo, focussing on the participation of ordinary citizens and their interactions with state apparatus specifically located within the urban space. The book adopts a praxeological approach to law that describes how inhabitants define and exercise their legality in practice and daily routines. The ambition of the volume is to restore the continuum in the consolidation, building after building, of the popular neighborhoods of the cities under study, while demonstrating the closely-knit social relationships and other forms of community bonding.

This grammar book is intended for intermediate learners of Modern Standard Arabic. It covers the main points that they need to master at this level to prepare them for the next level of proficiency. Each lesson in the book begins with a brief statement and explanation of a grammar rule followed by different types of exercises.The exercise section of the lessons begins with mechanical drills (some of which have illustrations) for practice of the grammar point of the lesson. At the end, there are writing exercises that enable learners to produce the language freely while still requiring them to use the lesson's grammar.The book is accompanied by a CD with PowerPoint presentations illustrating the grammar rules explained in the lessons, and interactive drills. This very practical textbook provides a fine, flexible tool for a grammar-based approach to teaching MSA.

This unique interdisciplinary collective project is the culmination of research and translation work conducted by AUC students of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds who continue to witness Egypt's ongoing revolution. This historic event has produced an unprecedented proliferation of political and cultural documents and materials, whether written, oral, or visual. Given their range, different linguistic registers, and referential worlds, these documents present a great challenge to any translator.The contributors to this volume have selectively translated chants, banners, jokes, poems, interviews, as well as presidential speeches and military communiqués. Their practical translation work is informed by the cultural turn in translation studies and the nuanced role of the translator as negotiator between texts and cultures. The chapters focus on the relationship between translation and semiotics, issues of fidelity and equivalence, creative transformation and rewriting, and the issue of target readership. This mature collective project is in many ways a reenactment of the new infectious revolutionary spirit in Egypt today.

The Middle Eastern bazaar is much more than a context for commerce: the studies in this book illustrate that markets, regardless of their location, scale, and permanency, have also played important cultural roles within their societies, reflecting historical evolution, industrial development, social and political conditions, urban morphology, and architectural functions. This interdisciplinary volume explores the dynamics of the bazaar with a number of case studies from Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, Nablus, Bursa, Istanbul, Sana'a, Kabul, Tehran, and Yazd.

The small sabil-kuttab (a charitable foundation particular to Cairo that combines a public water dispensary with a Quranic school) built in 1760 opposite the venerated Sayyida Zeinab Mosque is almost unique in Cairo: it is one of only two dedicated by a reigning Ottoman sultan, and-astonishingly-it is decorated inside with blue-and-white tiles from Amsterdam depicting happy scenes from the Dutch countryside. Why did the sultan, Mustafa III, cloistered in his Istanbul palace, decide to build a sabil in Cairo? Why did he choose this site for it? How did it come to be adorned with Dutch tiles? What were the connections between Cairo, Istanbul, and Amsterdam in the middle of the eighteenth century? The authors answer these questions and many more in this entertaining and beautifully illustrated history of an extraordinary building, describing also the recent conservation efforts to preserve it for posterity.

In the era of globalization, change is the order of the day, but the conventional view of the Arab Middle East is that of a rigid and even stagnant region. This book counters the static perception and focuses instead on regional dynamics. The international team of contributors evaluate the development of Arab civil society; examine the opportunities and challenges facing the Arab media; link the debates concerning Arab political thought to the evolving regional and international context; look at the transformation of armed Islamist movements into deradicalized factions; assess how and to what extent women's empowerment is breaking down patriarchy; and analyze the rise of non-state actors such as Hizbollah and Hamas that rival central political authority.

In a collection of articles originally published between 1995 and 2011, Egyptian journalist Hani Shukrallah examines his own culture and society during what he terms "a tempestuous period of history for the region and for its relations with the rest of the world." He makes unflinching observations and asks difficult questions in his attempts to reveal underlying truths about democracy, human development, regional power relations, and the demonization of Arabs and Muslims in the west.While most of the articles in this collection were written in what Shukrallah describes as the Arabs' "age of ugly choices," it ends on a high note: the Egyptian Revolution and the promise of a long-awaited Arab spring. In a 7000-word introduction, Shukrallah reexamines the period in question from the perspective of the Revolution, which he admits took him completely by surprise. An epilog includes a collection of articles written on the very eve of the Revolution and as it was taking place.