TOPICS IN MIDDLE EAST HISTORY

Theo Pavlidis ©2009, 2010

Contents

Scope

An often forgotten fact about the Middle East is that the region experienced neither the Industrial Revolution nor the Renaissance and at the end of World War I it was still stuck in the Middle Ages. In early 2009 there was a news time about a member of the Jordanian Royal family who said that the region was still Byzantine and added that Western leaders ignored that reality. A modern historian (Warren Treadgold) states in the preface of his book on Byzantium [WT97] that "in its politics Byzantium often resembled a Middle Eastern dictatorship". Thus it is important to go back to ancient times to understand the region because, compared to Western Europe, little has changed over the centuries.

The region has been ruled by several powers: the Persian Empire, the Hellenistic Kingdoms, the pagan Roman Empire, the Christian Roman Empire (known as the Byzantine Empire), the Arab Caliphate, and, finally, the Ottoman Empire. However, each new ruling power kept intact much of the governing structure of the previous ruler. Most changes tended to be in the direction of consolidating the ruler’s power. The more things changed the more they remained the same.

OLLI Worskhop

The material posted here is used for an OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) worskhop at Stony Brook University. The following link points to an index page that has furthers links to handouts for each meeting.

Resources

There have been numerous books on the subject (some are listed in the bibliography) and the purpose of these notes is to focus on those times and events that shaped the region. In several places I have inserted links to Wikipedia entries, but only after I read such entries and found them to be reasonably accurate. One of my sources is the classic work of Edward Gibbon "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" [EG]. Sometimes people ask whether this work has not been superceded by the results of scholarly research in the 230 years since it was published. My answer is that this has happened only in a few cases. Gibbon had relied on ancient authors and, with one exception, no major collection of ancient writings has been discovered in those years. The one exception is the collection of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Besides the general bibliography, there are sources listed within individual chapters. References to them have no hyperlink while references to the general bibliography have a hyperlink.

A particularly valuable resource is the web site of Professor Howard M. Wiseman of Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. The following links are to his home page, his main history page, and his main Roman Empire page. The pages include numerous maps that show the ups and downs of the extent of the Roman and the competing empires. Readers may get a bird's-eye view of the world by visiting the Three Perspective Maps page. References to the maps in these essays are indicated by links labeled "Wiseman".

Contents

Bibliography

Chapter 1. The Persian Empire

  A Discussion on How to Stay in Power

Chapter 2. The Hellenistic Era

Chapter 3. The Rise of Christianity

Chapter 4. The Byzantine Empire from the 400 to 650

Chapter 5. The Rise of Islam and the Arab Caliphate

Chapter 6. The Byzantine Empire from the 650 to 1050

Chapter 7. The Decline of the Byzantine Empire (1050-1350)

Chapter 8. Turks, Crusaders, and Mongols

Chapter 9. The Rise of the Ottoman Empire

ADDITIONAL TOPICS

Ottoman Efforts to Reform and Their Failure

The Decline of the Ottoman Empire and its End in 1920

First Posted: December 14, 2009. Latest Revision: April 16, 2010.