Russian-Arab Worlds

This volume is a milestone in global and transregional history. It challenges the view of empires and regions as enclosed or competing. Instead, it reveals a wide range of exchanges and entanglements. From migration and travel to diplomacy and translation, each essay is original, riveting, and brings to life a vast array of actors that connected Russian and Arab worlds from the eighteenth century to the aftermath of the Cold War. This volume is a model for scholars beyond the Russian and Arab worlds. * Jeremy I. Adelman, Henry Charles Lea Professor of History, Princeton University *
This expertly curated collection of texts and commentaries on Russia's long entanglement with the Middle East is a revelation. * Robert Vitalis, Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania *
Russian-Arab Worlds is a remarkable multi-perspectival collection of newly translated documents and writings that opens up fresh scholarly vistas on connections between Russia and the Middle East. The two-way approach dissolves boundaries, recalibrates trajectories, and centers the multi-dimensional factors and forces (commercial, political, social, cultural, religious) that continue to generate trans-regional integration. This volume operates at multiple analytical levels and affirms the shared history of ideas and populations on the move between Russia and the Middle East in the modern period. * Andrew Robarts, author of Migration and Disease in the Black Sea Region: Ottoman-Russian Relations in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries *
One of the best books published in 2023 on Russia's relations with the Middle East is one that policy-oriented audiences are likely to miss but really shouldn't: Russian-Arab Worlds: A Documentary History. [...] Several of these documents show that the Middle East has not been a passive arena in which Russian governments have acted. Instead, various Middle Easterners have actively sought to interact with Russia. Other documents describe how the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, in particular, fostered Russian popular interest in Palestine and an affinity for Russia in the Levant. Above all, this collection of documents provides a sense of the deep roots of Russian soft power in the Middle East. This is something Western foreign policymakers need to understand. * Dr. Mark N. Katz, Nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Middle East Programs *
Russian-Arab Worlds, is an anthology of texts appearing in English translation for the first time, spanning 1773 to 2019. The editors focus on cross-cultural encounters, making their book an engrossing as well as informative and valuable contribution. * Dr Gabriel Polley, Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies *
Russian-Arab Worlds represents a major contribution to research on Russia's myriad encounters with the Islamic world-not surprising, since the scholars behind it have written some of the most innovative research in that subfield. Most university teachers of Russian history or Middle Eastern history have some awareness of Russia's ties with the Arab world, but primary sources in English on the subject have been scant. * Timothy Nunan, The Russian Review *