Nora Lafi is a French historian of Algerian origin born in 1965 with Istres, in the Rhone delta. It is specialist in the history of the Ottoman Empire and particularly of the cities of the Arab world (the Maghreb and the Middle East) for the Othoman period.

It is currently enquiring in Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) of Berlin. She before taught the history in the universities of Aix-en-Provence and Tours. She was also allocatee of research to IRMC Tunis and to the CNRS (UMR Telemme) and boarder of the program devoted to Islam and modernity in Wissenschaftskolleg of Berlin. She was the pupil during her course of doctoral studies (1994-1999) of the professor Robert Ilbert, French specialist in the urban questions in the Eastern Mediterranean and founder of the Mediterranean Maison of the social sciences. One of the characteristics of the course of Nora Lafi is to have combined a formation of historian (Université Aix-Marseilles I) to a training of linguist (Arab language, Othoman language), received in particular with the University D ´ Aix-en-Provence, the Université of Cairo and within the framework of the DEAC in Cairo. Its research is primarily founded on the reading of documents of the central files of the Ottoman Empire with Istanbul and of Arab chronicles available in the large libraries of the Mediterranean world or of Europe.

Nora Lafi directs with Ulrike Freitag a research program in Wissenschaftskolleg of Berlin (EUME) on the cosmopolitanism in the towns of the Mediterranean. It created in Berlin, with U. Freitag, the seminar specialized in the Othoman urban studies (Othoman Urban Studies Seminar). It is moreover with Denis Bocquet founder, in 2001, and director of the publication of H-Mediterranean (H-Net, Michigan State University).

The principal thesis that it defends in its publications and its teaching is that the Arab cities were managed for the period that it qualifies old emanating mode by authorities of the commercial elite and the corporations, and that it is this configuration which is reformed with more or less success for the period of the Tanzimat, the Othoman reforms of second half of the XIXe century, in the context of a competition between European powers for the conquest of the Othoman possessions.

Nora Lafi thus raises the question of l´impact ambiguous of modernity with the Arab urban companies, but also of the place of the religion in traditional civic morals or of the composition of the categories of notable in the Othoman world.

Works

• '' a city of the Maghreb between old mode and Othoman reforms. Tripoli de Barbarie, 1795-1911 '', Paris, Harmattan, 2002

• '' Mediterranean Municipalités. Othoman urban reforms with the mirror d´une compared history. Southernmost Europe, the Maghreb, the Middle East '' (to dir.), Berlin, K. Schwarz, 2005

• Réédition criticizes Annales tripolitaines of Charles Féraud, Saint-Denis, Bouchène, 2005

It is also l autor many scientific articles.

External bonds

• personal Page with the ZMO Berlin

• personal Page near H-Net (Michigan State University)

• H-Mediterranean Site, whose Nora Lafi is publication director ('' Editor '')