Late Ottoman Syria and Mandate Lebanon were characterized by an exceptionally dense concentration of diverse educational institutions. Research on education in Bilad al-Sham during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has until now focused on individual institutions or movements. The latest publication in the Orient-Institut Beirut’s Beiruter Texte und Studien series, published by the Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB), Entangled Education: Foreign and Local Schools in Ottoman Syria and Mandate Lebanon (19-20th Centuries), sheds new light on the established narrative part of the by presenting twelve innovative studies of local and foreign schools.

Co-edited by Julia Hauser, Christine B. Lindner and Esther Möller and resulting from an international workshop held at the Orient-Institut Beirut in April 2012, this volume shows the entanglements of individuals, concepts and practices. Situated within the field of transnational history, the chapters of this volume illuminate the manifold conversations that entwined students, teachers and the public in debates over how to create a modern Arab society and the role of education within.   

Julia Hauser is an assistant professor of global history and the history of globalization processes at the University of Kassel, Germany. Her research interests include the history of travel, gender, religion, food, and social movements. She is the author of German Religious Women in Late Ottoman Beirut. Competing Missions (Leiden: Brill 2015).

Christine B. Lindner is a historian of the gender and the Protestant community of Ottoman Syria. She served as the inaugural director of the Preserving Protestant Heritage in the Middle East Project (PPHME) at the Near East School of Theology (NEST) and is assistant professor for Cultural Studies at the University of Balamand.

Esther Möller is a research associate at the Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte (IEG) in Mainz, Germany. Her research focuses on the history of the interconnections between Europe and the Arab world in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the field of education and humanitarian aid. She is the author of Orte der Zivilisierungsmission. Französische Schulen im Libanon 1909-1943 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht 2013).

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