Topic description and stories

The toilet seat from the estate at Armon ha-Natziv. The site, excavated in 2019, probably dates from the days of King Manasseh, a client king for the Assyrians who ruled for fifty years in the mid-7th century.

Early toilets reveal dysentery in Old Testament Jerusalem

26 May 2023

Study of 2,500-year-old latrines from the biblical Kingdom of Judah shows the ancient faeces within contain Giardia – a parasite that can cause...

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Military spending did not 'crowd out' welfare in Middle East prior to Arab Spring

24 Jul 2018

Findings dispute 'guns versus butter' narrative as a major factor behind the Arab Spring. Researchers caution against uncritically applying lessons...

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Genetic study suggests present-day Lebanese descend from biblical Canaanites

27 Jul 2017

Researchers analysed DNA extracted from 4,000-year-old human remains to reveal that more than 90% of Lebanese ancestry is from ancient Canaanite...

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Syrian refugee in a hospital in Lebanon

Targeting of Syrian healthcare as ‘weapon of war’ sets dangerous precedent, say researchers

15 Mar 2017

As new estimates of death toll for health workers are published, experts say the deliberate and systematic attacks on the healthcare infrastructure...

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Engraving of threshing near Ogosta, Bulgaria, second half of the 19th century

Beyond the harem: ways to be a woman during the Ottoman Empire

12 Aug 2016

A new volume of essays looks afresh at women’s lives during the 600 years of the Ottoman empire. The book challenges the stereotypes of female lives...

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Deliberations among a Local Women's Council in Qamişlo, Rojava

Can the Revolution in Kurdish Syria succeed?

02 Feb 2015

We can but hope, argue sociologist Dr Jeff Miley and Gates Scholar Johanna Riha, who here summarise some of their observations following a recent...

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Smoke rises after an Israel air strike in Gaza Strip December 28, 2008.

‘Next time we will win!’: Gaza’s cycles of violence

28 Jul 2014

In this article – originally published on CRIAViews, the blog of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs – Lucy Thirkell explores some of the...

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Why the Middle East is fertile ground for business

16 May 2014

Peter Hiscocks is CEO of Cambridge Judge Business School Executive Education and teaches innovation management and entrepreneurship, and says...

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Baghdad, Iraq as seen from a US Army Blackhawk helicopter

Post-Saddam Iraq: The first ten years

17 Oct 2013

It is almost ten years since Saddam Hussein was captured by US forces at a farmhouse outside Tikrit, following the swift collapse of his Ba’athist...

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Jordanian women in Amman.

Belief that honour killings are ‘justified’ still prevalent among Jordan’s next generation, study shows

20 Jun 2013

New research into attitudes of 15-year-olds in Middle Eastern nation shows that the practice of brutal vigilante justice, predominantly against young...

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American University of Sharjah

Cambridge in Sharjah: Building the foundations of research

10 Mar 2013

Parody as resistance, religious broadcasting in the Arab world and China’s relationship with the Gulf will all come under scrutiny as academics from...

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tahrir

Old suspicions remain after the Arab Spring

15 Oct 2012

A debate at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas asks What next for the Arab Spring?

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