Within a matter of decades, Gulf port cities have rapidly evolved from regional centers of cultural and economic exchange to globalizing cities deeply embedded within the global economy. Explicitly evident features of Gulf ...

This CIRS research initiative on weak states in the Middle East begins with a critical analysis of current definitions and terminology of weak and fragile states, scrutinizing the political implications of the prevailing ...

Rentier state theory (RST), which seeks to explain the impacts of external payments - or rents - on state-society relations and governance, has been in wide usage for over two decades, and is still routinely cited by ...

The Iranian Revolution was one of the most important events to take place in the Middle East within the past fifty years. The revolution completely transformed one of the region’s largest and most influential countries, ...

Throughout history, Muslim communities have always been attached, in one form or another, to the mosque or the masjid as it is known in Arabic. The masjid was not restricted to being a place of worship, a location for ...