Middle East

B

Hellenistic and Roman Times

Alexander's conquest started a millennium in which the Middle East was part of the Hellenistic (culturally Greek) world. Greek culture was mixed with local ways, as Alexander borrowed ideas and customs, as well as clerks and soldiers, from the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Persians. Egypt’s port, Alexandria, became a centre of trade and culture, a lasting monument to the conqueror who founded it and after whom it was named. As Macedonian power waned, the Romans conquered most of the Middle East, but Persia remained independent under two ruling dynasties: the Parthians (248 bc-ad 226) and the Sasanians (ad 226-641). Roman rule brought uniform laws, good roads, and trade to Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. Several Middle Eastern religions—Judaism, then Christianity, and the cult of Mithraism—competed for adherents throughout the Roman Empire. Christianity prevailed in the early 4th century ad. Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, stressed the empire’s Eastern ties by moving his capital to Byzantium, a port on the Bosporus. Renamed Constantinople, it became a great city and was the capital of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire for more than a thousand years.

IV

Islamic Period

Early in the 7th century, Muhammad, a charismatic religious leader, proclaimed himself a prophet of God to the nomadic peoples of the Arabian Peninsula. He founded a community of believers who called themselves Muslims (“those who submit or surrender” to God's will) and their faith Islam (“submission” or “surrender”). By the time of the Prophet’s death (632), his doctrines, based on Judaeo-Christian and Arabian traditions, had been widely accepted among the Arabs.

A

Arab Dominion

Muhammad’s successors, called caliphs, led the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula in a series of thrusts into Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Egypt, expanding greatly the realm of Islam. These Arab conquests were aided by the anger of many Middle Eastern Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians at the persecution they had suffered under the Byzantine Empire (which lost much of its territory) or Sasanian Persia (which was totally absorbed by the Arabs). The early caliphs tolerated non-Muslims, as long as they paid taxes and did not rebel. Few of the conquered peoples converted to Islam at once, but centuries of intermarriage and conversion eventually made the area predominantly Muslim.

The Caliphate was controlled by two successive dynasties: the Umayyads (661-750), who governed from Damascus, and the Abbasids (750-1258), who usually ruled in Baghdad. With help from the peninsular Arab peoples, the Umayyads conquered North Africa, Spain, and Central Asia. The Abbasids promoted commerce and culture, giving non-Arab converts equal status with Arab Muslims, but they lost control of the outlying areas. New dynasties arose. By 945 the Abbasids no longer controlled even their own capital. Iranians and Turks took over, as the Arabs returned to the desert. Despite political division, however, manufacturing and trade flourished, along with scholarship, the sciences, and the arts.

B

Turkish and Iranian Hegemony

Beginning in the 10th century, the Middle East was invaded by Turks from Central Asia. They adopted the faith, laws, and culture of local Muslims and soon governed most of their lands. One dynasty, the Ghaznavids (962-1186), spread Islam throughout India. Another, the Seljuks (1040-1302), took Asia Minor from the Byzantines in 1071. The Turkish invasion helped spark the Crusades, bringing European forces to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and to Jerusalem to fight and pillage in the name of Christianity. More harmful to Islam was the 13th-century Mongol invasion, which destroyed much of Iraq and Iran. A group of slave-soldiers of Turkish and Circasian origin, the Mamelukes of Egypt, stopped the Mongol advance in 1260.

Although the Mamelukes and various Mongol groups formed powerful states in the following centuries, the greatest and longest lasting was the Ottoman Empire. Starting in the western hills of Asia Minor, Turkish peoples led by Osman and his sons raided and seized Byzantine lands, first in Asia, then in south-eastern Europe. In 1453 they took Constantinople. Renamed İstanbul, it became the capital for the descendants of Osman, or Ottomans. Their conquests continued until their empire stretched from Hungary in the north to Yemen in the south, and from Algeria in the west to the Iranian border in the east. They tried to conquer Iran as well, but were repelled by that country's Safavid dynasty (1502-1736).

C

European Domination

After the 16th century, the great Muslim empires began to decline. The Ottomans lost European lands to Austria and Russia; the Safavids lost their entire country. Iran’s revival in the 18th century under Nadir Shah was followed by years of troubles. The Ottoman Empire endured partly because Russia and the other European powers could not agree on how to divide it. With some success, 19th-century Ottoman rulers tried to modernize their army and administration, and their legal and educational systems. Many Muslims, suspicious of innovations, resisted the changes. Other Muslims were influenced by the nationalistic and democratic doctrines of the Europeans.

The Ottoman province in which modernization went furthest, initially, was Egypt. Muhammad Ali, who ruled the country as viceroy from 1805 to 1849, introduced a programme of military modernization and revolutionized Egypt’s economy, introducing such crops as sugar and cotton, installing mills and factories, building roads and canals, and importing Western technicians, teachers, and soldiers. Cotton cultivation remained the mainspring of Egypt’s new economy but military modernization was halted after 1841. Under Muhammad Ali’s successors Egypt borrowed extensively in Europe, became unable to pay the interest on the debt, and eventually lost control of its own affairs. In 1882 Egypt fell under British control.

Iran lagged behind in military and economic modernization. The struggle by Britain and Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to control Iran, or, more accurately, to prevent the country falling entirely under the control of the other, resulted in the country being divided into spheres of influence. Iranian nationalists and other critics, angered at foreign intervention and at the corruption of Iran’s weak Qajar rulers, in 1906 forced the reigning Shah to establish a national assembly which drew up a semi-liberal constitution, although this was soon overthrown.

During the 19th century the interests of European powers in the Middle East changed. The Eastern Question of the 18th century had been concerned with the efforts of Austria and Russia to extend their territories at the expense of the Ottoman lands in Europe. However, the invasion of Egypt by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798 and Russia’s annexation of Georgia in 1800 drew attention to the fate of the Asian lands and these became of increasing importance during the 19th century. The main focus of the Eastern Question continued to be the fate of the Balkans and control of the Straits of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. A new factor was British concern for the security of the routes to India and its other possessions east of Suez. This concern contributed to Britain’s interest in the Suez Canal after 1869 and the security of that canal became, with the Straits, one of the two main strategic problems of the Middle East. Two other major Middle Eastern assets were the Ottoman debt, in which France was deeply concerned, and oil, which was developed in Russian territory at Baku and in south-western Iran, an enterprise in which Britain became especially interested.

D

The 20th Century