In this issue, we are proud to publish, “One Year Into the Genocide,” a collection of essays on an unfathomable year of genocide in Palestine, guest edited by Nour Joudah. The past year has prompted an entire spectrum of emotion, reflection, and analysis from a world coming apart at the seams. This genocide has left Palestinians reeling in new ways, grasping for expression, and treading in constant mourning at depths previously unknown.  

We are proud to publish this special issue as an intervention into the urgent and ongoing multidisciplinary conversation on questions of nature in the Middle East. Coordinated by guest editors Katharina Lange and Juliane Schumacher, the issue significantly expands this conversation’s regional and thematic focuses. Florian Zemmin introduces Islamic modernist conceptions of nature as an integral part of the history of global environmental thought. His article explores how Rashid Rida (1865–1935) and his intellectual circle constructed an environmental ethics within the normative matrix of the shari‘a. Thomas Kuehn calls our attention to the little-studied Province of Yemen as a critical site for the development of Ottoman environmental management. Military and technical struggles to dominate Yemeni nature were foundational to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Ottoman governance in the province, and ultimately made possible the post-Ottoman Yemeni state. Emily O’Dell further expands our geographic focus to the equally understudied context of Oman. Her article explores how modern Omani poets have employed natural imagery and evocations of landscape as a means to negotiate their experience of repression and exile. Finally, Katharina Lenner and Sylvie Janssens contribute a powerful interdisciplinary interrogation of the development of environmental conservation practices in Jordan. Their analysis reveals how local and international NGOs advanced competing and intersecting conceptions of conservation, and how Jordanian communities have negotiated, resisted, and/or profited from related interventions. Separate from this special issue, our reviews section features insightful perspectives on major recent works in Ottoman and post-Ottoman history. 

This is the Editor's Note and Table of Context for the Arab Studies Journal Fall 2023 issue, which is now available for purchase. Click here to subscribe to Arab Studies Journal.