Out of Time: Erasing Modernity in an Antique City

Considerations of the socio-politics of archaeology mark the contributions of H. Martin Wobst across studies of many different epochs. Socio-politics open avenues for archaeology to contribute to social justice, especially in places whose histories are fiercely contested, such as in the Middle East. In 1909, a clock tower was built on top of the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem??s walled city; as a material intervention, it was noticeable and noticed. Early in the British Mandate, the clock tower was removed. While there have been many critiques of Israeli erasures of the Palestinian landscape, the antiquing of Jerusalem deserves critical attention. Invoking the dismantling of the clock tower reveals an important aspect of the transformation of the city.     

The Russian Military Mission and the Birth of the Persian Cossack Brigade: 1879–1894

Throughout the nineteenth century, the Qajar dynasty (1797–1925) of Iran engaged in a continuous process to build a regular army under the leadership and tutelage of professional European military missions. These continuous attempts at military reform and Europeanization reached a peak with the creation of the Persian Cossack Brigade (1879–1921) by the Russian military mission. This article focuses on the genesis of the Brigade and the Russian military mission, which followed some of the previously unsuccessful European military missions. The scholarly literature has paid little attention to the fitful beginnings of the Brigade. This article, however, deals with the early challenges faced by the Brigade during the period between 1879 and 1894, at the end of which it was on the verge of dissolution. The article tackles formative issues raised in under-explored Russian archival material and supplemented by Russian-language primary sources, as well as other relevant sources. It attempts to re-evaluate the origins of the Persian Cossack Brigade and provide a well-balanced portrait of the Brigade in light of the changing regional politics of the period.     

Herlihy's thesis revisited: some notes on investment in children in Medieval Muslim societies

David Herlihy proposed "that we seek to evaluate, and on occasion even to measure, the psychological and economic investment which families and societies in the past were willing to make in their children" and suggested an alternative to both the "theory of discovered childhood [in Europe]," as introduced by Philippe Ariès and the notion of Lloyd DeMause that the historical evolution of child-parent relations in general formed a continuous and irreversible process of progress. This article shows that although we lack some of the archival sources that are essential for reconstructing the real lives of children in the premodern Mediterranean Muslim world, we are still able, with the "investment" criterion in mind, to assess attitudes toward children, at least in some defined periods of time and geographical regions.