DGLnotes: Studies on history, culture, and identity

D Gershon Lewental, DGLnotes
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Ruins from the Crusader fortress of Apollonia overlooking the Mediterranean Sea from atop the Calcarenite (kurkar) cliffs of central Israel. Source: D Gershon Lewental (DGLnotes).
Ruins from the Crusader fortress of Apollonia overlooking the Mediterranean Sea from atop the Calcarenite (kurkar) cliffs of central Israel. [Source: D Gershon Lewental (DGLnotes)]

This website is currently under construction.

Welcome to DGLnotes! On this website, I aim to host an ongoing discussion of various aspects of scholarship on the Middle East, focusing mainly on matters of identity and memory. I am currently the Schusterman visiting professor of Israel studies at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma. My primary academic background lies in the history of Iran and in early Islamic history and I completed my doctorate on the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah, during the Arab-Muslim conquest of Iran, and its changing perceptions through time.

An examination of the interplay of history and memory, national identity, and religion in the modern Middle East guides my research. As an historian, I seek to examine modern identities within their historical contexts and to reveal the shared heritage of their roots. My areas of my interest are broad and varied; they include the Constitutional period in Iran, early Islamic history, the Bahāʾī faith, Israeli history and society, and Iraq under the Baʿth.

Site contents

Upcoming talks and lectures

Please note that not all of these events are open to the general audience; please check with the organisers to confirm.
  • 07 January 2013, 18.30—‘The Rise of Jewish national identity in the modern world’ (Israel Cornell Club): Khan Museum of Ḥaderah, ha-Gibborim 74, Ḥaderah, Israel.
  • 18 January 2013, 12.00—‘An Israeli elections primer: Understanding and interpreting the 22 January 2013 elections’ (Department of International & Area Studies, University of Oklahoma): Hester Hall, Norman, Oklahoma.
  • 01 February 2013, 20.30—‘History of the Baháʾí community in the Holy Land, 1917 to the present’ (Moore Baháʾí Cultural Event): 1516 SW 38th Street, Moore, Oklahoma.

    • Click to view past events

    Notes and studies

  • A Brief analysis of ‘Ṣaddām’s Qādisiyyah’, 19 July 2012.
    A Baghdād mural depicting Ṣaddām Ḥusayn surveying both the Seventh-Century and the ‘modern’ Battles of al-Qādisiyyah.
    The choice by Ṣaddām Ḥusayn (Saddam Hussein) to call his eight-year war with Iran ‘Ṣaddām’s Qādisiyyah’ was a deliberate effort to hearken back to the Seventh-Century Battle of al-Qādisiyyah during the Arab-Muslim conquest of Iran. This short study examines Ṣaddām’s manipulation of the memory of al-Qādisiyyah and how this discourse reflected an ‘Arab-Islamist’ idiom that allowed him and his régime to fuse religious and nationalist sentiment into one ideological discourse.
  • Rasmī or aslī?: Arabic and its impact on modern Israeli Hebrew, 27 January 2012.
    Artistic rendering of the Hebrew and Arabic words for ‘peace’, shālōm and salām, respectively, in a style demonstrating their graphic resemblance, against the backdrop of the Old City of Yāfō (Jaffa).
    The revival of Hebrew in recent times provides an interest case study of one language’s influence upon another. There are many similarities between Israeli Hebrew, on the one hand, and Modern Standard Arabic and Levantine Arabic, on the other. What are these similarities and what conclusions can we draw from them about the extent and manner of Arabic’s impact on Hebrew?
  • Primary sources on the Bajīlah’s ‘fourth’, 27 November 2011.
    al-Baṭḥā, a contemporary settlement in the Sawād, on the banks of the Euphrates River.
    During the Arab-Muslim conquest, numerous tribesman from Arabia settled the fertile land of central Iraq. A collection of reports regarding the specific case of the tribe of Bajīlah provide an opportunity for studying the narrative development of Islamic historiographical literature. This article presents primary source literature relating to the Bajīlah’s land claims.
  • Qādisiyyah in modern Middle Eastern discourse, 21 November 2005.
    Depiction of the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah from a manuscript of the Persian epic Shāh-nāmeh.
    The Battle of al-Qādisiyyah during the Arab-Muslim conquest of Iran in the 630s has since taken on a reputation of legendary proportions and its image today highlights the function of history and memory in the modern Middle East. From Ṣaddām Ḥusayn (Saddam Hussein) to al-Qāʿidah, Qādisiyyah is exploited for political uses, and the frequency of its nomenclature throughout the Muslim world exemplifies its continuing emotive power.
  • Morgan Shuster and the roots of Iran-US relations, forthcoming.
  • Ben-Yehūdāh’s ‘Sources to fill the lacunæ in our language’, forthcoming.

    • Bahāʾī studies section
    The Shrine of the Bāb in Ḥaifa, Israel.
    The Shrine of the Bāb in Ḥaifa, Israel. [Source: D Gershon Lewental (DGLnotes)]
    The Bahāʾī faith emerged in Iran during the mid-Nineteenth Century as a new religion within the Abrahamic monotheistic faith tradition, focusing on human unity and equality. Although the faith and its prophet-founder, Bahāʾ-Ollāh (also Baháʾuʾlláh, born Mīrzā Ḥusayn-ʿAlī Nūrī, 1817–1892) came from Iran, persecution brought them to ʿAkko (Acre) and Ḥaifa (Haifa) in Ottoman Palestine, where the leadership of the faith has remained ever since. For nearly a century, the families and descendants of Bahāʾ-Ollāh and many of his early followers continued to live and thrive in the land, as it passed from the Ottomans to the British to the Israelis. I have conducted extensive research on the relations between the Bahāʾī community and British, Jewish, and Israeli authorities at the Israel State Archives and present general information on the Bahāʾī faith, original studies, and primary sources and other resource materials here.

    Current projects

  • ‘The People have multiplied’, the narrative has multiplied: An Matn-cum-isnād analysis of the Bajīlah’s ‘fourth’.
  • The Non-Muslim sources and the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah.
  • The Death of Rostam b. Farrokh-Hormozd: History, memory, and literary narrative in Islamic historiography.
  • ‘Ṣaddām’s Qādisiyyah’: An Arab-Islamist discourse.
  • Iranian merchants in Istanbul, the ʿulamāʾ of the ʿAtabāt, and their impact on the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1911.
  • The Development of the Bahāʾī faith in Israel and its relations with British and Israeli authorities, 1917–present.
  • The Death of the ‘beloved son’: Mīrzā Mehdī and Abrahamic themes in Bahāʾī religious history.
  • Nineteenth-Century European historiography and the shaping of Iranian national history.