Souq level of municipal administration. The Muhtasib was responsible for supervising business practices and collecting taxes for a given souq while the Arif are the overseers for a specific trade. Shopping at a souq or market place is part of daily life throughout much of the Middle East. Prices are commonly set by bargaining, also known as haggling, between buyers and sellers. In the 18th and 19th centuries, as Europeans began to conquer parts of North Africa and the Levant, an interest in Middle Eastern culture and architecture began to flourish. This interest spawned a genre of literary works and paintings
American democracy promotion in the Middle East and North Africa of Americans support democracy promotion. Academic research further suggests that Americans are not persuaded to support international democracy promotion either to spread American values abroad or to promote US national interest. American foreign policy attitudes toward democracy promotion in the Middle East and North Africa have changed significantly from the twentieth to the twenty-first centuries, with the former largely dominated by nominal commitment to democratic change in the region and the latter witnessing intensified, even forceful, efforts at democratization. The notion of development emerged in the 1940s and 1950s out of the post-World War II context in which a new