R osie B sheer . Archive Wars
The Politics of History in Saudi Arabia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9499682 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Pascal Menoret (0000-0001-7587-1159, Brandeis University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 126 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1705-1706 |
| Publication date | 2022-02-09 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The American Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-8762 • E-ISSN: 1937-5239 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ahr/rhab650 |
| OpenAlex | W4205257602 |
| Language | EN |
After he ascended the throne in 1982, King Fahd invited Egyptian architect Muhammad Kamal Ismaʿil to expand the mosques of Mecca and Medina. Ismaʿil had designed Cairo’s imposing Mugammaʿ—but in Mecca he designed for the human scale, capped building heights, and created pedestrian areas. The city he imagined was respectful of people and of history; to its inhabitants it still looked like Mecca. And then the princes changed their minds. From the mid-1990s on, they presided over the demolition of the Holy City, the removal of its hills, and the erection of gaudy skyscrapers. At least one hundred thousand inhabitants—a low estimate—lost their homes. This story of eradication, displacement, and recklessness is not exceptional, writes Rosie Bsheer: it is within the norms of late capitalism, a system where property is theft, erasure is history, and development is warfare. Bsheer reads the various Saudi archives as a covert monument and Saudi...
Ancient history · Archaeology · Capitalism · Demolition · Political science · Politics · Throne · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts
| Highly cited | No |
|---|