Introduction: Middle East environmental history: the fallow between two fields / Alan Mikhail -- The eccentricity of the Middle East and North Africa's environmental history / J.R. McNeill -- History and animal energy in the arid zone / Richard W. Bulliet -- The Little Ice Age crisis of the Ottoman Empire: a conjuncture in Middle East environmental history / Sam White -- Fish and fishermen in Ottoman Istanbul / Suraiya Faroqhi -- Plague and environment in Late Ottoman Egypt / Alan Mikhail -- Through an ocean of sand: pastoralism and the equestrian culture of the Eurasian Steppe / Arash Khazeni -- Enclosing nature in North Africa: national parks and the politics of environmental history / Diana K. Davis -- Building the past: rockscapes and the Aswan High Dam in Egypt / Nancy Y. Reynolds -- The rise and decline of environmentalism in Lebanon / Karim Makdisi -- State of nature: the politics of water in the making of Saudi Arabia / Toby C. Jones -- Expanding the Nile's watershed: the science and politics of land reclamation in Egypt / Jessica Barnes.