Modern Arab Kingship

In this groundbreaking book, Adam Mestyan argues that post-Ottoman Arab political orders were not, as many historians believe, products of European colonialism but of the process of "recycling empire." Mestyan shows that in the post–World War I Middle East, Allied Powers officials and ex-Ottoman patricians collaborated to remake imperial institutions, recycling earlier Ottoman uses of genealogy and religion in the creation of new polities, with the exception of colonized Palestine.

Drawing on previously unused Ottoman, French, Syrian, and Saudi archival sources, Mestyan explores ideas and practices of creating composite polities in the interwar Middle East, shedding light on local agency in the making of the forgotten Kingdom of the Hijaz, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, the first Muslim republic.

Available in hardcover from Princeton University Press and Amazon, and as an e-book from Kindle, Google Play, and other vendors.

"In this deeply researched and conceptually rich history of the Arab monarchies that succeeded the Ottoman Empire, Adam Mestyan explores the recycling and transformation of imperial ideas and practices." · "The approach is unconventional, compelling, and filled with intellectual surprises."

Primordial History, Print Capitalism, and Egyptology in Nineteenth-Century Cairo

How old is the world? This question was a central problem for Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the face of the new scientific discoveries in the nineteenth century. This book introduces the answer from a Muslim point of view, outside of official institutions. The extended introduction — a microhistory in the Middle East — explores the life and œuvre of a forgotten Egyptian intellectual and poet, Muṣṭafā Salāma al-Naǧǧārī (d. 1870).

Mestyan provides the English translation and Arabic transcription of the surviving fragments of al-Naǧǧārī's manuscript, The Garden of Ismail's Praise, a universal history of Egypt written while the Suez Canal was under construction, praising the governor Khedive Ismail (r. 1863–1879).

Available in hardcover from Ifao and Amazon, and as an e-book from Ifao and Google Play.

Arab Patriotism

Adam Mestyan's first monograph, Arab Patriotism: The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt, challenges the received narrative that Arabism in general and Egyptian territorial nationalism in particular emerged in opposition to the Ottoman and British Empires and primarily from below.

The author argues instead that early Arabic nationalist culture was produced in dialogue with localized Ottoman power by educated Arabs who integrated Muslim and European cultural forms in their search for political inclusion and patronage. Based on archival research in Egypt, Turkey, France, the UK, and the USA, the book offers the first scholarly investigation of the Egyptian khedivate between the 1860s and the 1890s.

"A superb scholarly achievement." · "Mestyan paints a detailed and animated picture of a rich cultural landscape."