This syllabus for the proposed course, Economics 322 (Economic.doc

This syllabus for the proposed course, Economics 322 (Economic History and Modernization of the Middle East), is based on a course with the same title, taught at Stanford last year. The course attracted 140 students, mostly undergraduates but also Ph.D. students, and there were also many auditors at each lecture. If the course is approved, the syllabus will of course be updated and expanded. ECONOMIC HISTORY AND MODERNIZATION OF THE MIDDLE EAST Economics 322 Fall 200_ Timur Kuran Class hours:_____________ Office: KAP 324C Office hours:_____ and by appointment Electronic mail: kuran@ ? Campus telephone: 0-2102 Web page: /~kuran/ Objectives This course offers an introduction to the economic history of the Middle East from the rise of Islam fourteen centuries ago to the present. It has four main objectives. First of all, it will familiarize you with the institutions that have governed the pace and characteristics of economic development in the region. Second, it will examine particular transformations and selected cases of inertia to derive lessons about the mechanisms that govern economic development and modernization in general; it will provide insights applicable to other regions of the world, in both the past and present. Third, the course will investigate how religion shaped the region’s economic transformation; in particular, it will identify the mechanisms through which Islam may have contributed to specific historical patterns, including periods of economic dynamism and the region’s slip, around the 18th century, into a state of economic “underdevelopment” from which it has yet to recover. Fourth, the course will identify the social forces driving the contemporary rediscovery and reinterpretation of Islam, partly under the rubric of Islamism, also known as Islamic fundamentalism. The course is organized around topics that present intellectual puzzles, including ones that have preoccupied scholars for generations. Within each topic th