« Between Arabs, Turks and Iranians: The Town of Basra, 1600-1700 ». Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 69/1, 2006, pp. 53-78.

As the Persian Gulf became increasingly important in 17th century global trade dynamics, the city of Basra assumed a comparable geopolitical significance as an entrepôt linking the Persian Gulf with the Tigris-Euphrates river complex, the Hijaz, and the southern reaches of the Iranian Plateau. Moreover, this region was host to a number of local elite constituencies who vacillated between the two dominant, centralizing empires of west Asia: the Ottoman and Safavid empires. Rudi Matthee’s state..