Subalterns and Social Protest: History from Below in the Middle East and North Africa

The articles in this collection, by the intensity of their focus on the oppressed and the excluded, offer a challenge to the elitist nature of the history and historiography of the Middle East and North Africa.
The collection is unique in its historical depth, ranging from the medieval period to the present, and its geographical reach, including Iran, the Ottoman Empire/Turkey, the Balkans, the Arab Middle East and North Africa. It is the first to encompass both major social classes and sectors, the working class, the peasantry, the urban poor, women, and marginal groups such as gypsies and slaves, and their differing strategies: of survival, of negotiation, and of protest and resistance.
Based on perspectives drawn from the work of the great European social historians, and especially inspired by Antonio Gramsci, the collection seeks to restore a sense of historical agency to subaltern classes in the region.