Usman Butt
Middle East Monitor
United Kingdom
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Past articles by Usman:
Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People's Republic
In 2020, with the full extent of the coronavirus outbreak still unknown, Chris Buckley of the New York Times received a phone call from a woman at the Wuhan Foreign Affairs Office in the People's Re... → Read More
Discover the Great Mosque of Xi'an, China
Located in the central Chinese province of Shaanxi and in the same city as the terra-cotta army, the Great Mosque of Xi'an is believed to have been built in 742 during the Tang dynasty... → Read More
Inventing Laziness: The Culture of Productivity in Late Ottoman Society
Locals and foreigners alike often ask why people in the Middle East are 'so lazy'. While such a view held by people from outside the region has its roots in racist stereotypes, many within the reg... → Read More
Discover Tabriz, Iran
Today Tabriz is the capital of the Iranian province of East Azerbaijan and boasts a population of 1.7 million.... → Read More
Markets of Civilisation: A Review
Muriam Haleh Davis's new book Markets of Civilization: Islam and Racial Capitalism in Algeria explores the colonial roots of Algeria's transition into a modern capitalist economy. But it is more t... → Read More
The Lebanon Uprising of 2019: Voices from the Revolution
This new book edited by Jeffrey G. Karam and Rima Majed seeks to make sense of the October 2019 uprising that shook Lebanon. The Lebanon Uprising of 2019: Voices from the Revolution pulls together exp... → Read More
Putin's War in Syria: Russian Foreign Policy and the Price of America's Absence
'It turned out that Syria is our sacred land,' wrote a Russian blogger sarcastically in 2016 following attempts by some public figures to recast Syria as part of Russia following Moscow's milita... → Read More
Fixing Stories
Arjomand takes us into the critical and largely invisible work of the media fixer. Defining what fixers do is difficult as their role can be quite fluid but, essentially, the general idea is when a ... → Read More
In the Labyrinth of the KGB: Ukraine's Intelligentsia in the 1960s-1970s
A popular Russian-speaking Jewish satirist from Kharkiv, Leonid Osmolovskyi, had become a shadow of his former self by the 1980s. Once famed for his witty essays and part of a generation of radical th... → Read More
"Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world."
Many regimes across the Middle East and North Africa are looking towards Beijing for their political future, as one UAE based-academic told the UK's Financial Times, 'the trend is more China, less America on all fronts.'... → Read More
Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt
In his new book Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture In Modern Egypt, Andrew Simon recounts how, on 12 June, 1974, US President Richard Nixon landed in Cairo for a 'tour of peace' in the Middle E... → Read More
Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and the Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire
'From a deep history perspective, Ottoman rule in Iraq — the land of ancient Babylonia — was a political oddity,' writes Faisal Husain in Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates In the ... → Read More
The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier
How does history look at non-urban, rural populations who lived through the last century of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of the Turkish republic? Chris Gratien's The Unsettled Plain: An Environme... → Read More
The Nazarbayev Generation: Youth in Kazakhstan
In January 2022, Kazakhstan made international headlines when it was hit by waves of popular protests which were suppressed by the authorities in the Central Asian state. What began as protests agains... → Read More
Book Review: Genetic Crossroads
Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity by Elise Burton, is a sweeping history of ‘genetic nationalism' in the 20th century covering Iran, Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, Eg... → Read More
Book Review: Leaving Iberia: Islamic Law and Christian Conquest in North West Africa
Jocelyn Hendrickson takes us on a historical and legal tour exploring Islamic responses to Christian conquests in Spain and North West Africa in her book Leaving Iberia: Islamic Law and Christian Conq... → Read More
The Nature of Tyranny and the Devastating Results of Oppression
'Tyranny is the origin of every perversity,' claims the author of The Nature of Tyranny and the Devastating Results of Oppression. 'Tyranny corrupts the mind by restrictions, and degrades religi... → Read More
‘We had a choice – war or diplomacy’ – MEMO speaks to Emad Kiyaei –
On Monday, 29 November, 2021, delegates and diplomats from the US, China, the UK, France, Russia, Germany and Iran restarted negotiations on Tehran's nuclear programme in Vienna, Austria. The talks ... → Read More
The Socotra Archipelago: A Battle for an Ancient Land –
Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us. → Read More
Moral Crisis in the Ottoman Empire: Society, Politics and Gender during WW1 –
This new book by Cigdem Oguz, who teaches history at Bologna University, reveals the growing concern in Ottoman society during the First World War about the decline in public morality. From the late 1... → Read More