Introduction : Is there a Middle East? : problematizing a virtual space / Abbas Amanat -- The Eastern question and the Ottoman Empire : the genesis of the Near and Middle East in the nineteenth century / Huseyin Yilmaz -- British and U.S. use and misuse of the term 'Middle East' / Roger Adelson -- Of maps and regions : where is the geographer's Middle East? / Michael E. Bonine -- Why are there no Middle Easterners in the Maghrib? / Ramzi Rouighi -- When did the Holy Land stop being holy? : surveying the Middle East as sacred geography / Daniel Martin Varisco -- The river's edge : the steppes of the Oxus and the boundaries of the Near/Middle East and Central Asia, c.1500-1800 / Arash Khazeni -- An Islamicate Eurasia : vernacular perspectives on the early modern world / Gagan D.S. Sood -- Scorched earth : the problematic environmental history that defines the Middle East / Diana K. Davis -- American global economic policy and the civic order in the Middle East / James L. Gelvin -- The Middle East through the lens of critical geopolitics : globalization, terrorism, and the Iraq War / Waleed Hazbun -- Conclusion : There is a Middle East! / Michael Ezekiel Gasper.