Böcker av Eileen Kane

When the Cold War ended, the long history of Russian and then Soviet engagement with Arab countries was largely forgotten, so the dominant role of Vladimir Putin's Russia in the region appeared to come out of nowhere. The thirty-four expertly introduced primary sources in this book recover a complex history of Russian-Arab ties and illuminate some of its most fascinating aspects: Russian Orthodox missionaries in Palestine, Arab communists traveling to the USSR, and, more surprising, Arabic legal documents written by Russian Muslims, Russian Jewish migrants to Palestine decades before Zionism, and 1940s Armenians "repatriated" from Arab countries to the USSR.

The first book in any language on the hajj under tsarist and Soviet rule, Russian Hajj tells the story of how tsarist officials struggled to control and co-opt Russia's mass hajj traffic, seeing it not only as a liability, but also an...

"A real page turner. Kane has turned her first fieldwork experience into an engaging 'Margaret Mead meets Tony Hillerman' narrative, with vivid characters, many tricksters, and even a mysterious death." - Louise Lamphere, University of New Mexico