This paper examines how Spanish-nation building activities in the twentieth century led to the occlusion of Islamic art and architecture from Spanish heritage sites, particularly in the modern Autonomous Community of Castilla-La Mancha. Toponymic, historical, and archaeological research confirm that the region of the Southern Meseta in Castilla-La Mancha was a space of North African colonization. However, this area has long been ignored in historical studies, marginalized in tenth and eleventh-century Arabic chronicles as well as on modern historiography. This paper seeks to answer why this occurred, especially when such physically impressive and imposing architecture, including the castle-fortresses of Zorita, Atienza, and Uclés constructed during the reign of Muhammad I (852-886 CE), dominate the landscape of the region, offering visual evidence of North African contributions to Umayyad al-Andalus. This discussion focuses on the ways in which Spanish national interest and the lack of investment in Andalusi sites created a cultural memory of an Arab al-Andalus in the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula, rather than a North African al-Andalus established in its center. This paper specifically looks at the castle-fortress of Zorita located in Castilla-La Mancha, initially reviewing its historic context and then looking at the ways in which twentieth-century politics affected the investment, preservation, and display of the site. This paper analyzes how Spanish cultural policy in the twentieth century resulted in the exclusion of North African history from regional cultural memory, revealing how the identification and funding of heritage sites as defined by the Decree of the Ministry of Public Instruction of Fine Arts on June 4, 1931 under the Second Republic, effaced the historic colonization of Islamic and North African societies from Castilla-La Mancha. While this paper does not contest the understandings of a Córdoban-centered al-Andalus, it argues that further research in areas located outside of the heavily studied regions of Andalucía, Murcia, and Valencia yield exciting possibilities for understanding the North African peoples that first colonized the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century as well as their contributions to al-Andalus. Both architecture and artifacts testifying to the importance of North Africans in the history of Castilla-La Mancha exist and it is time we use this evidence to re-curate the history of the Southern Meseta to represent the peoples who fell by the wayside as part of the Spanish national project in the twentieth century.

This research analyzes the intellectual history and the legacy of Turkey’s progressive politics from 1960 to 1971. After the military intervention against the autocratic DP government in 1960 and the introduction of the Constitution of 1961, Turkey’s progressive intellectuals found new grounds for organizing and agitation. Drawing on the political and social theories of Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, and Şerif Mardin, I argue that Turkey’s progressive intellectuals waged a dual hegemonic struggle, targeting both the state elites and civil society. I further argue that this effective dual struggle was made possible due to an intellectual merge between two progressive trends of earlier decades, namely Kemalist national-liberationism and Leninist socialism. Contrary to mainstream analyses of Turkey’s leftist politics that see fractions and divisions, this study emphasizes the intellectual unity of progressive vanguard intellectuals and analyzes the reasons why and how this unity did not translate into a practical alliance. I rely primarily on the works of Dogan Avcioglu, Mihri Belli, Behice Boran, Mehmet Ali Aybar, Hikmet Kivilcimli. I show that the progressive intellectuals’ hegemonic struggle targeting the state elites faced a resounding defeat in 1971’s military intervention. On the other hand, the progressives were successful in their hegemonic struggle targeting civil society. They have facilitated the making and the growth of progressive mass movements from the mid-1960s onwards. Moreover, these mass movements emerged within the social blocs that constituted the focus of progressive political agitation: workers, students, and intellectuals. Thus, progressive intellectuals in their self-proclaimed duty of ‘spreading a new political consciousness among the masses’ achieved tremendous success. As such, while they failed in their immediate aim of capturing state power, the progressive intellectuals succeeded in setting the ideological and strategic blueprints for Turkey’s progressive social movements in the 1971-1980 period. Ultimately, my research on progressive intellectuals contributes to Turkish intellectual and social histories. It challenges the dominant narrative in Turkish intellectual historiography that analyzes the 1960s as a decade of divisiveness and fraction among progressives. Furthermore, it adds to contemporary academic and public debates on the roles and purposes of intellectuals in counter-hegemonic politics and in progressive social movements.

Germany’s role in the modern Middle East, with the exception of its alliance with the Ottoman Empire, was nether particularly prominent until after World War II. Yet during the 1950s and 1960s West Germany, due to its economic strength, technical capabilities and absence of a colonial past became a much sought-after partner for the developing independent states of the region. West-German – Middle Eastern cooperation could take on an “open” as well as “clandestine” character. On the one side there was the engagement of West German companies in ambitious development projects in the region; on the other hand, German personnel, often with a military, if not Nazi background, served in the armed forces of several Arab states. During the 1960s, German technical experts became central for the development of advanced weapons (high-speed aircraft and ground-to-ground rockets). As the activities of these “unofficial” Germans abroad could be both beneficial and detrimental to West Germany’s interests in the Middle East and on a global scale, the West German Foreign Intelligence Service (BND), founded as a US-led intelligence agency under the name “Org. Gehlen” and taken over by the West German government in 1956 monitored these activities intensively. The paper argues that West Germany did indeed develop an intensive partnership with several Middle Eastern states on both sides of the Arab/ Israeli divide during the 1950s and 1960s. Several factors – West Germany’s special relationship with Israel and its consequent strains on the relations with Arab states, the contradiction of cooperation with the former colonial powers in Europe and NATO and the support for anti-colonial regimes, as well as an increasingly direct involvement of the superpowers in the Middle East Conflict without recourse to a German middleman meant that West Germany lost its prominent position after the 1960s. The paper will describe and interpret West Germany’s rise and fall as a Middle Eastern “power” in the 1950s and 1960s. It is largely based on hitherto unpublished documents from the archives of the West German Intelligence Service (BND), to which the author had access due to his membership in the officially appointed Independent Commission of Historians for the History of the BND between 2013 and 2018.

This paper surveys and analyzes two groups of memoirs to better understand mid-century Arabic radio broadcasting and its impact on the region, focusing on station employees’ and their experiences, and on audiences and their integration of radio listening into daily life. It provides insights that fit within mid-20th century Middle Eastern social history, media history, and political history. The mid 1930s were a significant era for state radio, in the Middle East and in Europe, and especially for stations influenced by the British broadcasting model. The launch of the Egyptian State Broadcasting Service in 1934 established a state-run broadcasting station with strong regional pull. The launch of the Palestine Broadcasting Service in 1936 added a second strong state-run, regionally-influential broadcasting station operating in three languages (Arabic, English, and Hebrew). The launch of the BBC’s Arabic-language radio broadcasting service in 1938 opened a new era in international broadcasting: that of large nation-states looking to influence public opinion in targeted language communities around the world. Listeners tuned in for the news, but also for the extensive musical, literary, educational, and religious broadcasts that made up most of these stations’ airtime. They also switched from station to station, depending on their understanding of each station’s political outlook, the quality of the reception, and the quality of the musical and other non-news broadcasting. While these stations and their broadcasts have attracted a growing sub-field of Middle East history and media history scholarship, scholars know relatively little about the daily experiences of broadcasters at these stations, or about how audiences integrated radio listening into their daily lives. This paper examines two groups of memoirs and presents insights drawn from a qualitative analysis of each. The first includes memoirs written by Arab and British station employees from the BBC’s Arabic service, Radio Cairo, and Radio Jerusalem. It offers insights that clarify, complicate, and enrich the understanding of station operations gleaned from station and government archives. The second includes memoirs written by Arab residents and citizens of Palestine and the region. It offers insights that situate radio listening, including news and entertainment listening and practices of cross-listening, within the political and social context as well as within other news-gathering, entertainment, and social practices.