In this episode, Lindsey is joined by Dr. Michael Christopher Low, Assistant Professor of History at Iowa State University, to talk about his new book, Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj (Columbia University Press, 2020). Dr. Low discusses the challenges the Ottomans faced in administering the province of Hijaz and the hajj in the rapidly transforming 19th century. He explains how steamships boosted the number of visitors to the Hijaz, carrying pilgrims, passports, contagious diseases, and even the specter of legal imperialism and colonial intervention. As those who traveled to the Hijaz by steamship were primarily from British India, administering the hajj opened up a new space of Ottoman and British Imperial competition in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea. Low casts Arabia as a semiautonomous frontier that the Ottomans struggled to modernize and defend against the encroachment of non-Muslim colonial powers. Conversely, from the 1850s through World War I, British India feared the hajj as a vector of anticolonial subversion. Together, these gave way to an increasingly sophisticated administrative, legal, and medical protectorate over the steamship hajj, threatening to eclipse the Ottoman state’s prized legitimizing claim as protector of Islam's most holy places. ...
In this episode, Rustin is joined by Kevan Harris, Assistant Professor of Sociology at The University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of[ A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran (University of California Press, 2017)](https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520280823). Kevan challenges commonly-held notions about the ideological rigidity of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He charts the development of social programs during the Pahlavi period, their continuation throughout the 1979 Revolution, and expansion during the Iran-Iraq War and Reconstruction Era. Additionally, Dr. Harris talks about the current challenges facing healthcare, social security, and other aid programs since 2009, from bureaucratic fragmentation and parallelism, austerity and sanctions, to a lack of a democratic structure for coherent policy making. Rustin closes out the episode with "Dummy Honar," a track from Kamyar's very own music project, [Yavaran](https://soundcloud.com/yavaran). ...
In this episode, Kamyar and Rustin welcome back Dr. Stefan Williamson Fa to talk about the extraordinary life and music of Sufi-Flamenco star, Aziz Balouch. Stefan has re-issued Balouch's EP, *Sufi Hispano-Pakastani*, originally produced in 1962, with [Death is Not the End Records ](https://deathisnot.bandcamp.com/album/sufi-hispano-pakistani) in 2020. Dr. Williamson Fa traces Aziz's biography, from a young boy born in Baluchistan in 1910, to studying in Sindh at a sufi shrine, before making his way to Gibraltar and falling in love with Flamenco music. Balouch became a student of legendary Flamenco master, Pepe Marchena, and spent the rest of his life exploring the deep connections between Andalusian music and mystical Islam. To learn more about Dr. Willamson Fa's research on Aziz Balouch and to listen to his songs in their entirety, visit the accompanying article, "[From Sindh to Andalusia: The Life and Times of Sufi-Flamenco Star Aziz Balouch](https://ajammc.com/2021/01/11/sufi-flamenco-aziz-balouch/)" on the Ajam Media Collective website. ...
