Imperial reorderings of land and belonging in Bilad al-Sham: on the disruption of an indigenous ontology of dwelling

This thesis examines how the intertwined processes of colonialism and capitalism in twentieth-century Bilad al-Sham reconfigured Indigenous understandings of land, and how contemporary imperial and neoliberal orders continue to reshape people’s relationships to place. Using my hometown, al-Fuheis, as a case study, I trace how an ontology once marked by fluid, relational, land-based lifeways was transformed through Ottoman reforms, European interventions, and later state and capitalist projects. I argue that these disruptions reoriented people’s perceptions of space, narrowed forms of belonging, and gradually produced spatial anxieties around territory and identity. Today, ongoing imperial influence in the region continues to exacerbate tensions around religious and communal difference, deepening the inscription of such differences onto space and intensifying spatial anxiety. Through multiple feminist and decolonial methodologies—such as poetry and Cuerpo Territorio—alongside historical and conceptual analysis, this thesis contends with these transformations and meditates on the lost ontology of dwelling with the land.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Architectural Studies

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Aranki, Asalah Jeries Saleem

Contributors dc:contributor

• Isern, David
• Fairchild Ruggles, D.

• Arab Christians
• Bilad al-Sham
• Capitalism
• Colonialism
• Feminist methodologies
• Imperialism
• Indigenous epistemologies
• Indigenous ontology
• Land
• Land tenure
• Orientalism
• Oral histories
• Ottoman Tanzimat reforms
• Religious minorities
• Seasonal mobility
• Subsistence practices
• Territoriality
• Dwelling.

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 Asalah Jeries Saleem Aranki

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132599

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/132599