The music of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf flourishes predominantly within its own regional boundaries, a function of both the fragmented music distribution channels in the Middle East and the deep imprint that local traditional cultures have left on it. While the music’s popularity is strictly regional, it is full of vitality, supporting an array of male and female song stars whose audiences eagerly await performances and recordings.

The distinct sound of Gulf music echoes the internal and external historic influences on the region, interwoven with the highly syncopated rhythms and the stark unaccompanied songs of the Bedouin. Pilgrims brought foreign music influences to Mecca and Medina and left their mark on the musical ensembles of the Arabian cities in rhythms and maqāmāt. The trading and pearling towns on the coasts and in the Peninsula’s interior also saw foreigners come and go, who left their music and songs behind. As a result, a rich and varied yet distinctly Arabian/Khalījī sound developed, echoing the voices and instrumental music of East Africa and the Indian subcontinent.

Modern Art in the Arab World is a collection of approximately 125 primary documents dealing with the debates around modernism in the Arab world dating between 1882 to 1987. This essay responds to the book from two perspectives: first, as an academic researching modernism in Morocco, and second, as a Qatar-based professor that teaches undergraduate courses about modern and contemporary Arab art. The book highlights a broadly defined and heterogeneous Arab world that extends from Morocco to the Gulf, and the selected texts create new conversations between these varied movements. It is evidence of the changing nature of this field of study. As a tool for teaching, the book offers signposts about what the editors consider to be the most significant debates and events in a given place while also creating the possibility for reading these movements transnationally.

The anthology of primary sources presented in Modern Art in the Arab World reveals a wealth of ideas, attitudes, hopes, fears, and concerns surrounding the many facets of modernism and art. The essays therein provide first-hand accounts of developing art scenes from across the Arab world and their relationships to their audiences on local, national, transnational, and global scales. These documents, many of which have been translated from Arabic or French into English for the first time, offer individual, in situ insights into a broad range of issues pertaining to art in the twentieth century while furnishing readers with numerous threads that connect these geographies with changes through time. Four matters in particular – the centrality of translation, print media, art, and image management to modernization – permeate this anthology's content and will be explored further in the following essay.

Many works on Transjordan during the Mandate period are based almost exclusively upon British, American and Israeli archival material, as well as reports published by the Mandatory government, such as those sent annually to the League of Nations from 1921 to 1938. These records are important; however, they should not be used in isolation from indigenous Jordanian records. Such records do exist, are accessible, and are absolutely essential for a thorough study of the country. We herewith offer details of two relatively unknown and under-utilized bodies of Jordanian documents from the Mandate period, the records of the central office of the Jordanian Department of Lands and Survey and those of the Amman Chamber of Commerce, as examples of the types of indigenous sources which are available in Jordan today.

Pluralism is deployed to govern migration across the Global North and Global South in contradictory ways. Fearing the arrival of migrants on its own shores – a threat to its biopolitical constitution – Europe deploys discourses of pluralism in the Global South to encourage migrants en route to Europe to sedentarize in “transit” countries like Sudan. Neoliberal development projects propagate the virtues of pluralism to host communities in Sudan, who are exhorted to view migrants as potential economic assets. Yet, in the context of Europe those same migrants continue to be seen as an economic and racial threat. While a lack of skills and entrepreneurialism are framed as the “root cause” of migration to Europe, migrants are paradoxically presented as trainable and therefore economically productive in the Global South. This article offers a critical examination of consolidating migration management practices in Sudan, their imbrication with development projects, and the racial anxieties they evoke in both Europe and in “transit” countries. It homes in on not only populations headed towards Europe, but those intending to remain in Sudan, notably Syrians, and explores the lessons and aporias of Sudan's hitherto open-door policy towards the latter.