Every year more than a million animals are shipped to Mecca from all over the world to be slaughtered during the Muslim Hajj. Islam is the only biblical religion that still practices animal sacrifice, a practice that began with the prophet Muhammad sacrificing 100 camels just before his death. A series of camel burials dated sometime between the fourth century BCE and early Islam show that camel sacrifice in Arabia pre-dates Islam. Why did these burials appear (and then disappear) only during this time and in this particular region? Using a "big history" approach, this paper proposes to investigate the potential correlation between climate change and religious practices in ancient Arabia: Were these camel burials, and the origins of Islam, linked to changes in the physical environment? To map climate changes, this study utilizes data from geological (palynological examination of fossil pollen), tree-ring sampling, the analysis of marine microfauana through deep-sea core samples, and literary sources to indicate temperature levels, droughts and monsoon circulation, and tectonic and volcanic activities. Evidence of camel Burials is derived primarily from archaeological discoveries (and zoo-archaeological analyses of animal skeletons) in the Ḥaḍramawt, interior of the Oman peninsula, the ʿAsir region, through middle Arabia (Qaryat al-Faw, al-Rabadha, Biʾr Himā, Jidd Hafs, Wadi Ramm, Merzuʿah and Maysar, Baynumah, Bat, ʿAlī, and Dhahran), and isolated examples from Palestine and Syria. This research anticipates a broader and more inclusive approach to explaining the origins of camel sacrifice in Islam. Preliminary investigation suggests that historical environmental and climate data can provide new insights into the occurrence of these camel sacrifices—Was the increased desertification of the Arabian peninsula during late antiquity responsible for the development of saddle and bit technology that enabled the cultural dominance of certain camel-mounted Arab pastoralists? Was camel burial a way to commemorate the role of this technology and its use by the warrior class in securing prosperity for society through the conquest and protection of territory?

In 1844, Sayyid ‘Ali Muhammad, the Bab, established the Babi faith in Iran. Having a messianic revolutionary message and claiming to be the twelfth hidden Imam of Shi‘ism, the Bab was arrested and imprisoned several times, and eventually executed in Tabriz, Azerbaijan, in 1850. In 1848, when the Bab was imprisoned, his followers decided to liberate him. Heading from Khorasan, they arrived at Barfurush, in the North of Iran, in September 1848. After some confrontations with the locals, the Babis took refuge in the Shrine of Shaykh Tabarsi, at the border of the Caspian forests. They fought with the government troops for about eight months before the governors convincing them to leave the fortress and killing almost all (Zarandi, 381-396). Employing an array of primary and secondary sources, this paper revisits the unrest at economic, demographic, and environmental levels. Barfurush was a trade center in the north via the Caspian Sea to the Caucasus and Russia (Issawi, 278). It was also a relatively diverse city, housing some European merchants, about 350 Jews, and some Muslim Sufis. The town was divided along Muslim sectarian lines of Haydari-Ni‘mati (later Shaykhi-Usuli) divisions. This paper argues that the tension and conflict in the region had already existed but reached its peak with the Tabarsi Unrest (Amanat, 186). The resistance took place in a shrine, an inappropriate location for fortification. However, the government troops had difficulties getting to the shrine because of the swamps, marshes, quicksand, reed fields, bramble, high mountains with snow, heavy rain, and floods (Rabino, 4). The Babis faced the same difficulties. Nevertheless, dense trees served well for camouflage and forest resources, vegetation, and animals would provide food, shelter, and clothing. They received supplies from the locals who supported the rebels. The Babis did not surrender until they were disconnected from the outside and run out of food and supplies. Temperate Caspian forests have been a convenient spot for militant encampments throughout modern history. The Tabarsi event, however, was one of the first national unrests in Iran’s Modern History. Employing theories such as Hobsbawm's “Primitive Rebels” and Scott’s “ungoverned periphery,” this paper argues the Babis could fight against the national troops for eight months because of the environmental condition of the region.

As a semi-avid birder, I believe that birds can bring people together across lines of political contestation. This paper uses combination of personal experience and research from a variety of documents, books, and newspapers to examine how even a seemingly apolitical endeavor is shaped by the ongoing political conflict in between Israelis and Palestinians. Like so many other efforts in the region, people of goodwill insist that their efforts build bridges between the peoples and political factions of the region. But for the last century or more, the politics of birding belies a simple ornithological assessment. In this paper I examine a variety of stories about birds and their political implications. One is the debate the raged in Israel in 2008 about which species to choose for the national bird. Should they pick the Palestine Sunbird, a creature which embodies the name of the people with whom they have an ongoing land dispute? Or the Hoopoe, which is one of few birds deemed non-Kosher in the Torah? Or should it be a local nightingale called the Bulbul, whose name doubles as slang for male genitalia? While the 150,000 Israelis who voted ultimately chose the hoopoe, angering the Hasidic community, I dig beyond this contemporary story to examine the politics of naming birds, including efforts to rename the Palestine Sunbird. While living in Jerusalem I visited both the Israeli Jerusalem Bird Observatory and the Palestinian Wildlife Society, organizations that claim to work together at times, but whose relationship is clearly defined by their national conflict as well. The funding, prestige, and opportunities at each are also determined by funding differentials. I also assess more recent stories about migratory hawks shot down by Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon who were convinced that the Israelis were using the birds to spy on their locations. At other times birds, especially those fitted for scientific purposes with trackers, are simply mistaken for the very real drones used for such purposes. Shaul Cohen argues in “Environmentalism Deferred” (2011) that “environmentalism in Palestine/Israel operates within a context that is bounded by existential concerns, and, as such, it is subsumed by a metanarrative that makes it marginal in impact and, in many respects, irrelevant in the context of discourses of land, resources, and power.” What’s true for environmentalism is equally true for its parts, of which bird conservation and ornithological concerns are an important one in the region.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Ottoman Empire’s centralization project was in full swing in the provinces of Greater Syria. While voluminous scholarship exists on the political, social, and economic reforms of the era, much less has been written about the widespread infrastructure modernization projects, and most of that discussion focuses on the construction of the Hejaz Railway. One of the major commitments of the Ottoman state in this era, however, was to improve the public health and sanitation of the region. From the late 19th century, the Ottoman Empire dispatched physicians and veterinarians that had the authority to impose sanitary cordons and other intrusive movement restrictions in case of cholera, cattle plague, or other epidemic diseases; built water-treatment systems to improve the public health of Damascus; built numerous quarantine stations first along the Hajj route and then along the Hejaz Railway; and even went so far as to propose building a microbial research institution in Damascus before settling on building a medical college instead. In fact, Ottoman attempts to dispatch personnel and build infrastructure to control the spread and impact of microbial populations constituted one of the most lasting legacies in the region. The level of state surveillance and control involved in controlling epidemic disease was unprecedented and challenged in many quarters, from newly settled Caucasian refugee populations, semi-autonomous Druze communities, and Bedouin tribes in the desert. Instead of considering public health a one-way system imposed from Istanbul, Ottoman efforts at controlling the spread of epidemic disease in Syria at the turn of the twentieth century are best understood as a complex interplay of imperial, provincial, and local contestations and negotiations which produced a dynamic understanding of the role of state and citizen in the late imperial period. My research draws on Ottoman and British archival resources to demonstrate how Ottoman infrastructure projects were just as important as capitalist penetration of the region or the development of imperial political institutions in contributing to new understandings of the role of citizen and state in Ottoman Syria.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Ottoman government devoted considerable resources to expanding irrigation networks and improving flood control in the southern portions of the Tigris-Euphrates valley as part of a broader attempt to exert government authority and improve agricultural productivity. In pursuit of those goals, Ottoman authorities frequently invoked narratives of ecological decline that blamed the Mongol invasions and Arab tribal groups for widespread aridity and disastrous flooding in the region. Such narratives constitute an "environmental imaginary" of Iraq. Scholars have examined how such narratives served European interests in Iraq both during and after the Ottoman period. Yet, Ottoman environmental imaginings of their own territory have not been adequately explored with regards to the ways in which they served Ottoman interests in Iraq during the late Ottoman period. Nor have such narratives been explored for the ways in which they aligned with actual environmental challenges specific to the Iraq region. By focusing on these narratives during the Tanzimat, Hamidian, and Young Turk periods, this paper highlights important continuities and changes in the ways in which Ottoman authorities used narratives of ecological decline in pursuit of their administrative goals in Iraq.