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By Dawn Chatty

Book cover plus quote “A very timely and insightful book. Tracing the arc of migration in and out of Syria in the last 150 years, Dawn Chatty offers a layered portrait of a modern nation whose cultural hybridity was until recently the source of its openness.”  Nasser Rabat, Aga Khan Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

About the book

Syria: The Making and Unmaking of a Refuge State is a clear exposition of how and why Syria embraced millions of Muslims and Christians from the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, and of how and why they have recently received hospitality in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. It is written in a jargon-free fashion, and each chapter opens with a personal vignette by the author as she starts to understand the local cosmopolitanism and conviviality that characterizes Syria’s peoples. It is part recent history but also modern ethnography as the author gives voice to the oldest surviving generation of Circassians, Armenians, Kurds, Palestinians, and Iraqis to make Syria home. And it concludes with interviews of Syrians who have found refuge in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon

Hurst Publishers, January 2018