MESA book awards

The Albert Hourani Book Award is an award honoring scholarly non-fiction books, given by the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) to "recognize outstanding publishing in Middle East studies" and to honor work "that exemplifies scholarly excellence and clarity of presentation in the tradition of Albert Hourani", the distinguished scholar of Arab and Islamic history. On occasion two authors have shared the year's award; in some years, the society has given honorable mention distinctions. MESA first gave the award in 1991.

Award winners

• 1991: Abraham Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century (Columbia University Press); Honorable Mention: Steven Caton, "Peaks of Yemen I Summon": Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemeni Tribe (University of California Press)
• 1993: Brinkley Messick, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society (University of California Press); Honorable Mentions: Sabra J. Webber, Romancing the Real: Folklore and Ethnographic Representation in North Africa (University of Pennsylvania Press); R.D. McChesney, Waqf in Central Asia: Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim Shrine (Princeton University Press); and Kenneth Cuno, The Pasha's Peasants: Land, Society, and Economy in Lower Egypt, 1740-1858 (Cambridge University Press)
• 1994: Co-Winners: Chibli Mallat, The Renewal of Islamic Law (Cambridge University Press) and Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760 (University of California Press); Honorable Mention: Tarif Khalidi, Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period (Cambridge University Press)
• 1995: Devin DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tukles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (Penn State Press); Honorable Mention: Julia Clancy Smith, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800-1904) (University of California Press)
• 1996: Gülru Necipoğlu, The Topkapi Scroll—Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities); Honorable Mention: Michael Gilsenan, Lords of the Lebanese Marches: Violence and Narrative in Arab Society (I.B. Tauris)
• 1997: Co-Winners: Andrew Shryock, Nationalism and Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan (University of California Press) and Rashid I. Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (Columbia University Press)
• 1998: Marsha Pripstein Posusney, Labor and the State in Egypt:Workers, Unions, and Economic Restructuring (Columbia University Press)
• 1998: Co-Winners: Kiren Aziz Chaudhry, The Price of Wealth: Economies and Institutions in the Middle East (Cornell University Press) and Marsha Pripstein Posusney, Labor and the State in Egypt: Workers, Unions, and Economic Restructuring (Columbia University Press); Honorable Mention: Marianna Shreve Simpson, Sultan Ibrahim Mirza's Haft Awrang: A Princely Manuscript from Sixteenth-Century Iran (Yale University Press)
• 1999: Susan Slyomovics, The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village (University of Pennsylvania Press); Honorable Mention: Mohammed A. Bamyeh, The Social Origins of Islam: Mind, Economy, Discourse (University of Minnesota Press)
• 2000: Eugene Rogan, Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850–1921 (Cambridge University Press); Honorable Mentions: Tayeb El-Hibri, Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography: Harun al-Rashid and the Narrative of the Abbasid Caliphate (Cambridge University Press); Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh University Press); Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948 (University of California Press)
• 2001: Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge University Press)
• 2002: Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled, Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship (Cambridge University Press)
• 2002: Co-Winners: Nadia Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (University of Chicago Press) and Gershon Shafir & Yoav Peleg, Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship (Cambridge University Press); Honorable Mention: Jonathan Bloom, Paper before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (Yale University Press)
• 2003: Jonathan P. Berkey, The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600-1800 (Cambridge University Press); Honorable Mentions: Heather J. Sharkey, Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (University of California Press) and Farha Ghannam, Remaking the Modern: Space, Relocation, and the Politics of Identity in a Global Cairo (University of California Press)
• 2004: Leslie Peirce, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab (University of California Press), Honorable Mentions: Maya Rosenfeld, Confronting the Occupation: Work, Education, & Political Activism of Palestinian Families in a Refugee Camp (Stanford University Press) and Rashid I. Khalidi, Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (Beacon Press)
• 2005: Robert R. Bianchi, Guests of God: Pilgrimage and Politics in the Islamic World (Oxford University Press); Honorable Mention, Gülru Necipoglu, The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton University Press); and Honorable Mention, Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton University Press)
• 2006: Rudi Matthee, The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500-1900 (Princeton University Press)
• 2007: Jessica Winegar, Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt (Stanford University Press)
• 2007: Leor Halevi, Muhammad's Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society (Columbia University Press)
• 2008: Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Cornell University Press)
• 2008: Marc David Baer, Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe (Oxford University Press)
• 2009: Sophia Vasalou, Moral Agents and Their Deserts: The Character of Mu'tazilite Ethics (Princeton University Press)
• 2010: Benjamin Claude Brower, A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France's Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844-1902 (Columbia University Press)
• 2011: Co-winners: Nile Green, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840-1915 (Cambridge University Press) and Rochelle Davis, Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced (Stanford University Press)
• 2012: Sam White, The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge University Press)
• 2013 Co-winners: Patricia Crone, Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism (Cambridge University Press) and Taner Akçam, The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton University Press)
• 2014: Brian Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c. 1050-1614 (Cambridge University Press)
• 2015: Kenneth M. Cuno, Modernizing Marriage: Family, Ideology and Law in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Egypt (Syracuse University Press)
• 2016: Nükhet Varlık, Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347-1600 (Cambridge University Press); Honorable Mention, Seema Alavi, Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire (Harvard University Press)
• 2017: Noah Salomon, For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan's Islamic State (Princeton University Press)
• 2018: Alireza Doostdar, The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny (Princeton University Press); Honorable Mention, J.R. Osborn, Letters of Light: Arabic Script in Calligraphy, Print, and Digital Design (Harvard University Press)

Sources

• [1] Homepage of the award