There was a time when basic science research projects took years to prepare for, even more years to undertake, and with high risks of injury of death. "Arabia Felix: The Danish Expedition of 1761-1767" by Thorkild Hansen (1962 Danish, 1964 English) documents one such journey, apparently Europe's first to the south of Arabia. The journey was driven by, amongst other interests, an interest to find empirical data regarding the Bible. The book itself is a detailed history, the author went through immense efforts to document this journey – for example, there are 57 pages on the events that preceded the departure (e.g., this is a detailed historical account). Largely a book about those who undertook the journey, I found the notes about the people and places they went to of greater interest (although the author seems to have the opposite aim, to bring forth the history of these men and their journey). Notes:

On Yemen: "this country was something unusual. Nowhere else on their long journey had they met goodwill to compare with it. Every single one of the expedition's members, as they sat outside in the little courtyard in the mild winter evening which was warmer than the Scandinavian summer, could quote new examples of the kindness and helpfulness of the natives." (p. 220)

I discovered "God's Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Middle Period 1200-1550" (2006) by Ahmet Karamustafa largely by accident (it was a footnote in another book I had read). The title got me, but it sat on the shelf for a while until I got to it. The book itself is quite short, the text is 102 pages, followed by notes and bibliography. Although (according to the author) little else has been written on the topic, this is a very brief study / introduction. What does the author mean by these deviant dervishes? One lengthy quote:

"Deviant dervishes were thoroughly antinomian in appearance and behavior. They violated all social norms with equal ease and indifference and deliberately embraced a variety of unconventional and socially liminal practices. Perhaps the most potent antinomian feature of new renunciation, certainly the most often cited and criticized, was open disregard for prescribed Islamic ritual practices. The extent to which different groups at different times neglected to fulfill their ritual obligations is impossible to ascertain. Nevertheless, there is little reason to question the accuracy of the reports contained in many sources, hostile and friendly, to the effect that deviant dervishes neither prayed nor fasted. In this context, silence on this issue in sympathetic texts is particularly telling. In Jamal al-Din's sacred biography, for instance, there are only two casual references to ritual prayer, while the hagiography of Otman Baba fares only slightly better in this respect. For its part, the report that Barak Baba's disciples were required to perform prescribed religious practices on pain of forty blows of the bastinado itself reveals the difficulty of enforcing these practices on the dervishes. Moreover, it appears that at least some groups replaced ritual prayer in particular with utterance of simple formulaic expressions. Such was the case with the Qalandars and Abdals of Rum, among whom the utterance of the formula "God is the Greatest" (takbir) clearly had a ritual function and may have come to replace the daily ritual prayer." (p. 17-18) 

I have covered many critical assessments of development on this blog. However, comparatively few have covered the Middle East and North Africa region. Was pleased to come across "Arab Development Denied: Dynamics of Accumulation by Wars of Encroachment" by Ali Kadri (2015). The region has had diverse historical and contemporary experiences and I found several parts of the book generalized experiences to the "Arab World", which are questionable when one looks into the specifics of countries. The book could have better engaged the heterogeneity of the region. Similarly, the book could have been more empirically grounded, particularly claims of the more recent years for which there is a lot of data. Nonetheless, this is an interesting read, a few notes:

"De-development should not be confused with relative underdevelopment vis-à-vis Western formations or with a delinking of developing formations from the global accumulation process. De-development is the purposeful deconstruction of developing entities. Primarily, it involves stripping by force the working classes in those entities of the right to own and control their resources and use them for their own benefit." (p. 2-3)

"Ever since the rise in oil prices in 2002, all Arab countries, of which the majority are oil producing, have registered steadily positive growth rates of around five percent. However, this 'growth' was hollow and degenerative, like the swelling in the bellies of malnourished people. In point of fact, the uprisings erupted when Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya and Egypt were enjoying record real-growth rates. The chapter criticises existing policies and concludes that in the AW, the resource curse is the curse of the imperialist assault sustained by the Arab working classes, and that an examination into the re-empowerment of the working class within the political process is required." (p. 19)

"For the time being, it appears structurally prohibitive to abandon oil dependency—to 'kick the oil habit'. Persistent dependence on oil is not haphazard; it is defined and reproduced by a consortium of Arab ruling classes and US-headed imperial powers. Assuming that development were to occur, the effects of Arab development on the sway of forces that thrive on accumulation by encroachment and militarism would be significant. This is a war region, in which the state of conflict itself is an input into global accumulation and that the world has come to internalise as a necessity." (p 31)

"The usual sermon-like policy of the WB/IMF is to liberalise, increase the effectiveness of labour, and improve technology… Given such unrealistic assumptions, these formulaic policy measures are tantamount to obfuscation." (p. 43)

"When so many resources escape and imports represent on average around 50 per cent of GDP (2011 figures), the multiplier theory, according to which one dollar multiplies several-fold in the economy, founders. Capital inflows are channelled into raising consumption, especially on the luxury goods of the merchant class as it emulates its foreign counterpart either directly or indirectly by shifting resources away from investment." (p. 43)

"Poor performance associated with imperialist assault is not related to Arab oil perse; it is a much broader social phenomenon prevailing wherever imperialism strives for primary-product control by aggressive means. To resolve the debacle, socially, politically and historically specific mediations between capital and labour need to be assessed. WB/IMF policy has (deliberately) overlooked the obvious, which is the ties of Arab merchant classes to US-led imperialism and the war context." (p. 46) 

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