This paper considers the history of the Ibadi Muslim communities on the island of Djerba in Tunisia over a period of several centuries (with particular emphasis on the 10th-14th centuries) through the lens of ecological history. The basic argument is that the history of Djerba’s Ibadi communities are inextricably tied to the geography of the island. It presents a long-term, thematic historical description of the interaction between the geography and environment of the island and its Ibadi inhabitants. In doing so, it draws connections between certain elements of Ibadi socio-political organization and environmental and geographical actors throughout the early centuries of Islam in Djerba. The foci of inquiry include water resources, climatic factors, geographic insularity, maritime resources and technology, agricultural development and the distribution of surviving religious structures on the island. Building upon original and previous research in the fields of archaeology, history and geography, the paper attempts to synthesize the methodologies of these fields in order to work toward an historical ecology of Ibadism in Djerba.

Russo-Ottoman wars of the 18th and the 19th centuries generated a voluminous literature consisting of private memoirs and accounts of campaigns written by the Russian participants. A significant place in these accounts was devoted to the environmental peculiarities of the Danubian war theatre. This paper examines the ways in which the Russian military writers discussed the influence of the environment upon the character of the Russo-Ottoman warfare. Unlike the campaigns of the Russian army in Central, Southern or Western Europe, the wars that took place on the Danubian-Pontic frontier were seen as conditioned by adverse geographical, climatic and epidemiological conditions. Environmental factors were used to explain the military qualities of the Ottoman adversary and of the local civilian population. They also helped Russian military writers to justify certain heterodox practices of warfare as well as to challenge the applicability of the precepts of the European military science to the campaigns against the Ottoman Empire. Ultimately, the focus on environmental peculiarities contributed to the process of military “orientalization” of the Ottoman Turkey, whereby a war with it came to be seen as entirely sui generis. This Russian military Orientalism was further complicated by the emergence during the 19th century of a nationalist strain in the Russian military thought, in which the experience of the “Turkish campaigns” was seen as the root of the Russian military traditions. In conclusion, the paper examines the impact of the Europeanization of the Ottoman army upon the Russian military Orientalism in general and the discussion of the environmental factor in the Russo-Ottoman wars in particular.

How did people change nature? How did nature change people? What were the consequences of human attempts to control nature? Relying on research in the Ottoman state archives as well as newspapers, this paper will attempt to answer these questions by looking at Ottoman land management policies in greater Syria during the 1890s and 1900s. In doing so, the research will follow the pioneering environmental histories of the Middle East from Mikhail, Tabak, and White to bring several crucial yet often understudied actors - both human and nonhuman - into the historical narrative. I will follow three organisms that respectively flew and grew their way into the lives of the region’s peasants, the agricultural laborers caught precariously between land and state. The first creature, the mosquito, acted as a vector for malaria, which particularly afflicted peasants working long hours in marshy lowlands near Adana or Iskenderun. Responses to the mosquito’s impact involved swamp drainage and, later, chemical treatments, each of which had considerable ecological consequences. The second organism, the locust, decimated crops every few decades, contributing to horrific famines. The flying swarms also prompted state attempts at eradication that involved forced conscription of peasants into locust extermination gangs. The third and final organism is the pine tree, a resource whose management also involved considerable state calculation. Deforestation of the Hawran, for example, threatened to erode hills and flood agricultural lowlands. But timber might be used to build railroads that transported troops and grain alike. In sum, the Ottoman state managed public health, agricultural pest control, and forestry in ways that profoundly affected local ecologies. In addition to providing insight about the relationship between people and the land, following these organisms ought to shed light on social relations, namely those between the state and rural residents.

The famous 15th-century navigator of the Indian Ocean Ahmad ibn Majid al-Najdi was a contemporary of Vasco da Gama and a witness to the Portuguese arrival in the Indian Ocean. One of the few Arab sailors of the pre-modern era to leave written instructions for the monsoon routes of the eastern and western parts of the ocean, he composed poetry and prose and was learned in formal as well as practical aspects of navigation, astronomy, and geography. Continuing interest in Indian ocean studies brings Ahmad ibn Majid firmly within the orbit of historians of regional and indigenous geography. His writings, some of which have been translated into European languages, allow s to explore the interaction of practical, popular, and scientific knowledge of geography and nature. In the more formal of his works, Ahmad ibn Majid drew on established authorities ranging from Ptolemy to Abu’l-Fida and Ulugh-Beg. But the nautical instructions, composed in rhyme for easier memorization, highlight the practical information required for guidance to sailors needing expert advice in navigation and less familiar with the wide-ranging destinations along the numerous sailing routes of the ocean. This paper will focus on the famous “Sufaliya” poem (urjuza), so named for the city of Sofala in Mozambique and containing instructions for sailing from northwest India to southeast Africa. The long Arabic text allows for sustained narrative and contains information about a diverse and extended, yet geographically and climatically somewhat uniform coastal area. The paper will address Ibn Majid’s ideas about nature and landscape as they are present in the text and integrated into his record, consciously adapted for transmission to the next generation of learners. Examples will be drawn illustrating Ibn Majid’s use of scientific knowledge of geography and astronomy, his acceptance and promotion of the regionally-specific practice, and finally, his knowledge and opinion of the indigenous knowledge of the landmarks on the coastal route.