The Middle East : a political history from 395 to the present /
Jean-Pierre Filiu ; translated by Andrew Brown
- Cambridge, UK : Polity Press, 2023
- viii, 392 pages, 20 unnumbered pages of plates : color maps ; 24 cm
Originally published in French by Éditions du Seuil, 2021
Introduction: A secular history Byzantines, Sassanids, and Arabs (395-661) From the Umayyads to the Abbasids (661-945) The era of the two caliphates (945-1193) Sultans and invaders (1193-1501) Ottomans and Safavids (1501-1798) Colonial expansion (1798-1912) Reforms, renaissance, and revolutions (1798-1914) The time of mandates (1914-1949) The Cold War and the Arab-Israeli conflict (1949-1990) The life and death of the American Middle East (1990-2020) Conclusion: The cradle of crises
Professor Jean-Pierre Filiu presents a history of the Middle East that looks beyond religion and focuses attention on the processes by which powers and their areas of domination were established over time. His starting point is 395, the year when the Roman Empire was divided into eastern and western halves: at that point, the Middle East emerged as a specific entity, freed from external domination, and a Christianity of the East asserted itself, turned towards Byzantium rather than towards Rome. From this point on, Filiu follows a strictly Middle Eastern dynamic, tracing the rise and fall of powers linked to the three principal centers of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq and recounting the procession of empires, invasions, and assertions of imperialist ambition that have characterized the region since then. The book closes in 2022, when the men and women of the Middle East were still struggling for the right to define their destiny by telling their stories in their own voices