To promote and highlight excellence in research and scholarship, the Syrian Studies Association awards annual prizes for the best scholarly writing on the region known as Bilad al-Sham until 1918 and Syria since then.
2024 Prize Announcements:
The 2024 prizes were awarded for he following pieces published between July 1, 2023, and July 1, 2024.
BEST BOOK: Elizabeth Williams, States of Cultivation: Imperial Transition and Scientific Agriculture in the Eastern Mediterranean
BOOK - HONORABLE MENTION: Tylor Brand, Famine Worlds: Life at the Edge of Suffering in Lebanon's Great War.
BEST ARTICLE: Spenser Rapone, "The Metaphysical Universe of Michel ʿAflaq and His Party: A Reappraisal of the Baʿth," in Modern Intellectual History.
Our prize committee is composed of Michael Provence, Dawn Chatty, and James Reilly. About the winning entries, they write:
"This year we were lucky to consider five wonderful books. Each was outstanding in its own way, and it was agonizingly difficult to choose among them.
“In the end, we found Elizabeth R. Williams' States of Cultivation to be a work of historical scholarship that will be a fundamental source on Syrian history for a long time to come - comparable in its likely longevity to Philip Khoury’s study of Syrian politics.
“The book uncovers the story of the political economy of Syrian agricultural land in ways never before achieved. It shows continuities of issues and of local/homegrown technocrats’ visions between the Ottoman and Mandate periods, and emphasizes the sophistication and awareness of Syria/Ottoman technocrats’ awareness of agriculture, science and law.
“The book explains how and why French priorities and policies had such a deleterious effect in Syria, and it offers an important rural component to predominantly urban-based narratives of Syria, including explaining the National Bloc’s engagement with rural issues and populations.
“Williams’ work shows how the historiographical challenges of writing about the Ottoman and Syrian countryside can be overcome by asking the right questions and by carefully reading and comparing Ottoman, French, and Arabic archival and published sources.
“We awarded an honorable mention to Tylor Brand, for Famine Worlds.
“We found it an excellent contribution to the social history of the world war and famine in Syria and Lebanon.
“The book shows how people living in the lands of Lebanon (locals and foreigners alike) dealt with the famine. It emphasizes qualitative historical narratives rather than drier discussions of causes and statistics.
“Brand allows readers to imagine what the famine meant to people of various stations.
“Brand’s narrative restores agency to people who might otherwise be depicted mostly or only as passive victims.
“For articles we considered three different entrants, and agreed on Spenser Rapone, ‘The Metaphysical Universe of Michel ʿAflaq and His Party: A Reappraisal of the Baʿth,’ published in the journal Modern Intellectual History. We found Rapone's article an ambitious and successful effort to understand the thought and work of ʿAflaq on its own terms. Rapone’s deep investigation of the metaphysical dimensions of ‘Aflaq’s thought attempts to put the Baath party founder in a wider Arab and anti-colonial context. We believe the article will be widely read and long consulted by other scholars with comparable interests."