In the wake of 11 September 2001, there has been much talk about the inevitable clash between "East" and "West." This book presents an alternative approach to understanding the genealogy of contemporary events. By taking students and the general reader on a guided tour of the past five hundred years of Middle Eastern history, this book examines how the very forces associated with global "modernity" have shaped social, economic, cultural, and political life in the region.
Introduction: 9/11 in Historical Perspective
Chapter 1. From Late Antiquity to the Dawn of a New Age
Chapter 3. The Middle East and the Modern World System
Chapter 4. War, Diplomacy, and the New Global Balance of Power
Evliya Chelebi: Seyahatanamé (1)
Evliya Chelebi: Seyahatanamé (2)
Draft Treaty of Amity & Commerce between the Ottoman Empire and France, February 1535
The Travels of Sir John Chardin into Persia and the East-Indies
Chapter 5. Defensive Developmentalism
Chapter 7. Wasif Jawhariyyeh and the Great Nineteenth-Century Transformation
Chapter 8. The Life of the Mind
Chapter 9. Secularism and Modernity
Commercial Convention (Balta Liman): Britain and the Ottoman Empire
Huda Shaarawi: A New Mentor and Her Salon for Women
Rifa‘a Rati' al-Tahtawi: The Extraction of Gold or an Overview of Paris
Muhammad ‘Abduh: The Theology of Unity
Namik Kemal: Extract from the Journal Hürriyet
The Supplementary Fundamental Law of 7 October 1907
Chapter 11. State-Building by Decree
Chapter 12. State-Building by Revolution and Conquest
Chapter 13. The Introduction and Spread of Nationalism
Chapter 14. The Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Dispute
Resolution of the Syrian General Congress at Damascus, 2 July 1919
Theodor Herzl: A Solution of the Jewish Question
The Balfour Declaration, 2 November 1917
Mahmud Darwish: Eleven Planets in the Last Andalusian Sky
Chapter 15. State and Society in the Contemporary Middle East: An Old/New Relationship
Chapter 17. The United States and the Middle East
Chapter 18. Israel, the Arab States, and the Palestinians
Chapter 19. The Iranian Revolution
Conclusion: The Middle East in the “Age of Globalization'
Zakaria Tamer: Tigers on the Tenth Day
U.N. Security Council Resolution 242
‘Ali Shari‘ati: The Philosophy of History: The Story of Cain and Abel
Ayatollah Khomeini: Islamic Government