Posted by 
By Mehran Kamrava
From the autumn of the Ottoman Empire in the course of the Arab Spring, this thoroughly revised and up to date version of Mehran Kamrava’s vintage treatise at the making of the modern center East is still crucial interpreting for college students and basic readers who are looking to achieve a greater knowing of this assorted area.
Read Online or Download The Modern Middle East: A Political History Since the First World War (3rd Edition) PDF
Best middle east books
City of Oranges: Arabs and Jews in Jaffa
Jaffa - famed for its orange groves - was once for hundreds of years a urban of investors, retailers, lecturers and directors, domestic to Muslims, Christians and Jews alike. that's, until eventually the founding of the kingdom of Israel, which was once concurrently a second of jubilation for the Jews and a catastrophe - the Naqba - for the 100,000 Arabs who fled Jaffa in 1948.
Post-Colonial Syria and Lebanon: The Decline of Arab Nationalism and the Triumph of the State
The advanced dating among Syria and Lebanon is the political fulcrum of the center East, and has ruled headlines because the withdrawal of French colonial forces from the Levant in 1943. one of many nice paradoxes of this courting is how such very various political structures emerged in what many Syrian and Lebanese humans see as one society.
A History of the Arabian Peninsula
The significance of this assortment lies in its origins: for the 1st time, prime Saudi Arabian historians have created a background of the Arabian Peninsula which analyzes that historical past from an inner Arabian standpoint. The booklet explores the unique Bedouin cost of the quarter, the advance of the foremost city components of Arabia throughout the Umayyad interval, the socio-political and fiscal advancements within the Hijad and Najd as much as the eighteenth century into the trendy period and the increase and improvement of the Saudi kingdom.
Commanding Syria: Bashar al-Asad and the First Years in Power
This is often the 1st significant paintings on Bashar al-Asad. It assesses the sturdiness of his father, Hafiz's legacy together with the continual impression of the previous power-brokers, the effectiveness of Bashar's makes an attempt to maneuver clear of his father's shadow, and the clients for reform. certainly, it evaluates Bashar's carrying on with carry on energy following Syria's humiliating retreat from Lebanon in Spring 2005 and the competitive American force to impose democracy within the heart East.
Additional resources for The Modern Middle East: A Political History Since the First World War (3rd Edition)
Sample text
18 Donner, ‘Centralized Authority’, 347. Donner, ‘The Growth of Military Institutions in the Early Caliphate and their Relation to Civilian Authority’, Al-Qantara, xiv (1991), 311–26. 20 For military equipment, see pp. 173–8. E. Yapp (eds), War, Technology, and Society in the Middle East (Oxford, 1975), 32–43 which, despite the author’s somewhat cavalier attitude to the sources, makes some interesting observations. 22 For further discussion, see Morony, Iraq after the Muslim Conquest (Princeton, 1984), 197–8; the traditions about these troops have been collected and discussed in I.
61 The khandaq described here was obviously a well-defended quadrilateral enclosure. 62 Some khandaqs were clearly quite substantial structures. 64 ‘Abd al-Hamīd al-Kātib, writing at the end of the Umayyad period, gives instructions for the construction of a khandaq. After the baggage has been set down and the army has been assigned its places to stay, before any tents are set up. Each officer (qā’id) should be assigned a section of ground which he is to dig a trench (khandaq). It should be defended by hasak (either thorns or artificial caltrops).
The problem is rather that the figures often contradict each other and many seem to be formulaic round numbers rather than real assessments. Nor is there a clear relationship between the overall figures for men and their families enrolled in the dīwāns, and the numbers who could actually be recruited for military action. As a rule of thumb, I would like to suggest that the figures given in the sources may well be out by a factor of two, but unlikely to be out by a factor of 10: that is, a figure of 40000 may represent 20000 or 60000 but is unlikely to represent 4000 or 400000.