Abstract

Should historians elevate the era of the Mandates in the Middle East to the rank of a Mandates Period, the functional equivalent of the Europeanists’ Renaissance or Reformation? And if great art and the Protestant/Catholic divide provide, respectively, the hallmarks for the latter two periods, what distinctive characteristic or characteristics might historians cite to support an affirmative answer to the first question? What chronological boundaries should they choose to frame it, and how should they go about studying it?