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.
Industry Reviews
"[M]uch 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
"[W]ell-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
"A welcome contribution to the field Water on Sand breaks new ground by introducing MENA into the global field of environmental history...The ten essays that are largely based on primary research cover much new ground, literally and metaphorically speaking. Some of the authors are rooted in environmental history, while others reread their research in social, economic, or cultural history and relate it to environmental issues. The result is a rich
composition of studies."--Gunnel Cederlöf, American Historical Review
"Clear and engaging...This fascinating volume provides an excellent overview of how environmental perspectives can enrich Middle East studies, thanks to contributions from leading scholars in the fields of global environmental and Middle East history...This collection is richly rewarding for students, specialists and general readers interested in understanding the Middle East and North Africa in comparative and historical perspective."--Middle East Reseach
and Information Project
"A major contribution to world environmental history. Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty."--CHOICE
"The significance of a MENA environmental history is both local and global...[T]hus the significance of this book. The story of MENA remains incomplete without a MENA's environmental history, and the global story of the environment, and by implication the global historical narrative, remains similarly incomplete without a MENA's environmental history."--Arab Studies Quarterly
"Well-sourced, well-written, well-argued, and often quite interesting...A valuable addition to the library of any scholar of the MENA interested in how environmental studies might pertain to their particular subfield...in addition to providing a great deal of material to reflect upon for scholars of other disciplines within MENA studies."--Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online
"One of the oldest cradles of human civilization, and now the site of fierce conflicts over land, water, and oil, the Middle East and North Africa region have much to tell us about the long-term relation between humans and nature. In these diverse, intelligent essays that relation defines the region in a compelling new light and gives it a global significance."--Donald Worster, University of Kansas and Renmin University of China
"Prefaced by a thoughtful, carefully annotated essay, Water on Sand offers stimulating insights by a group of distinguished scholars into the neglected subject of Middle Eastern environmental history. The book contains both wide-ranging thematic essays and focused research reports on environmental subjects ranging from North Africa and Turkey to the Arab World and Central Asia. It represents, as its title suggests, a renewed and important catalyst for
environmental studies in a region historically known for its two great river systems and fragile ecology and more recently for population pressures on and political conflicts over scarce resources."--Stephen F.
Dale, author of The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals
