Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture » (1st Edition)

Salim Tamari is Professor of Sociology at Birzeit University, Palestine and Director of the
Institute of Jerusalem Studies.

"Irreverent, erudite, captivating, and deeply informed, Mountain against the Sea is a must-read book by the leading essayist on the cultural history of Palestine and the Palestinians."—Beshara Doumani, author of Rediscovering Palestine

"The preeminent Palestinian historical sociologist, Salim Tamari, exhibits his masterful range and inquiring intelligence in this engrossing study of important aspects of the social, cultural, and intellectual history of Palestine and the Levant over the past century."—Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies, Columbia University

List of Illustrations

1 Introduction: Palestine's Conflictual Modernity 1

2 The Mountain against the Sea? Cultural Wars of the Eastern Mediterranean 22

3 From Emma Bovary to Hasan al-Banna: Small Towns and Social Control 36

4 Bourgeois Nostalgia and the Abandoned City 56

5 A Musician's Lot: The Jawhariyyeh Memoirs as a Key to Jerusalem's Early Modernity 71

6 Lepers, Lunatics, and Saints: The Nativist Ethnography of Tawfiq Canaan and His Circle 93

7 Sultana and Khalil: The Origins of Romantic Love in Palestine 113

8 The Last Feudal Lord 133

9 Ishaq Shami and the Predicament of the Arab Jew in Palestine 150

10 The Enigmatic Bolshevik from the Holy City 167

11 The Vagabond Cafe and Jerusalem's Prince of Idleness 176

Notes 191

Bibliography 215

Index 223