Book
Middle Eastern Confessional Communities: The Agenda of Social Boundaries Based on Historical Examples
Москва, 2025, 368 p.
Middle Eastern religious communities are considered as separate confessionally marked groups of the population, which have demonstrated their characteristic properties throughout history. Manifestations of these properties and features are studied using specific historical examples from the modern history of Syria and Lebanon, in particular, during a number of acute conflicts, the events preceding them and historical consequences.
From the vast range of problems of the history of confessional communities, the author focuses on a range of issues related to social boundaries – internal and external – in the dynamics of their shifts in specific historical conditions. The author’s focus at this stage (still the initial one in historical science in terms of studying the social boundaries of confessional groups) was on the Druze and Maronite communities, as well as individual episodes in the history of the Orthodox of the Antiochian Patriarchate, although similar issues of other communities in the Middle East, such as Sunnis, Shiites, etc., are also touched upon.
In the course of studying the religious situation in the Middle East, the life of confessional communities and their relationships with each other – in a close connection between history and modernity – there was a need to revise approaches to the characteristics of societies at different stages of modern history in a systemic key. To move forward in order to form a correct impression of these social systems, of confessional communities as elements of systems, of their properties, interactions and of their internal structure were among the author’s tasks.
The topic is developed within the general framework of a systemic approach and with the involvement of social psychology tools – on extensive documentary material, with the involvement of a large set of historical sources, domestic and foreign literature. The continuity of the study of the history of religious communities of the Middle East within the framework of the Russian oriental studies tradition is emphasized. Particular emphasis is placed on the continuity of the study of the history of religious communities in the Middle East within the Russian oriental studies tradition, but with progressive development and expansion of the scope of approaches and methods.