Middle Eastern History

Volume two of the classic Islamic history of the world, now available to a new generation of readers in a fully unabridged edition. Written by the great fourteenth-century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, or "Introduction", is the earliest critical study of history. Though intended as the preface and first book of a world history, it is a wholly self-contained...

Volume three of the classic Islamic history of the world, now available to a new generation of readers in a fully unabridged edition. Written by the great fourteenth-century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, or Introduction, is the earliest critical study of history. Though intended as the preface and first book of a world history, it is a wholly self-contained...

Volume one of the classic Islamic history of the world, now available to a new generation of readers in a fully unabridged edition. Written by the great fourteenth-century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, or "Introduction," is the earliest critical study of history. Though intended as the preface and first book of a world history, it is a wholly self-contained...

This book presents a theoretical framework for understanding Iraqi foreign policy from the 1950s through the late Cold War, examining how successive regimes navigated complex international and domestic pressures. The Impact of Domestic Actors on Iraq's Foreign Policy Formulation, 1950s to 1980s by Fatih Oguzhan Ipek analyses the interplay between systemic factors—including influences from great and regional powers—and unit-level variables...

A foundational text on the early modern history of Tunis that places Tunisian history firmly within Ottoman history The Tunisian historiography of the modern era has broadly centred on a narrative of three successive powers: the pashas first, followed by the deys (the "symbolic uncles" of the Turkish militia), who were in turn deposed by the beys (native civil rulers...

The literature on Islamic political thought utilises a methodology whose typical characteristic is the arbitrary use of religious, philosophical and political perspectives, as if the differences among them have no effect. This amounts to the theologising or philosophising of works of Islamic political theory written as responses to social, economic and political dynamics, as if they were written as general...

In the wake of the 2011 uprising in Syria, a number of Syrian intellectuals were forced into exile. Many of these intellectuals played a crucial role in mobilising people in the early days of the movement, but once in exile an irreconcilable tension emerged between their revolutionary narratives and the violent reality on the ground. Zeina Al Azmeh explores this...

Muslim intellectuals who sought to establish the boundaries of modern Muslim identity Muslim modernism was a political and intellectual movement that sought to redefine the relationship between Islam and the colonial West in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Spearheaded by Muslim leaders in Asia and the Middle East, the modernist project arose from a desire to reconcile Islamic...

Insightful and important.... A readable, timely and valuable contribution to the understanding of the revolutionary forces at work in Iran.... The reader almost becomes a participant. —The New York Times Book Review In Shah of Shahs, Kapuscinski brings a mythographer's perspective and a novelist's virtuosity to bear on the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran, one of the most...

This Element presents what we know about the construction of sexuality and the sex lives of the residents of ancient Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and the Levant. After briefly introducing the regions and cultures under consideration and the sources of data, the work turns to female and male experiences of sexuality, matters of fertility and infertility, sexual orientation, and finally sex crimes....

Sacred Space and Anglo-Turkish Relations investigates how various sacred spaces in Ottoman and Republican Turkey interfaced with British foreign policy. It considers how these spaces impacted upon British prestige in the context of its dealings with Turkey chiefly, as well as with other Great Powers. The period covered is from the demise of the Levant Company in 1825, to the...

This book studies the relationship between political thought, preaching and emotions through the writings of Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1201), a celebrated hortatory preacher in late-Abbasid Baghdad. Through an intertextual analysis of Ibn al-Jawzi's works in various genres, Preaching Pious Rulership in Medieval Islam details how his ideal form of rulership reflected the emotional norms and pietistic moral virtues promoted in...

Political Undesirables considers the legal making and unmaking of citizenship in Iraq, focusing on the mass denaturalisation and deportation of Iraqi Jews in 1950–51 and Iraqis of Iranian origin in the early 1980s. Since the formation of the modern state of Iraq under British rule in 1921, practices of denaturalisation and expulsion of citizens have been mobilised by ruling elites...

The Takkiyya Mu’avin al-Mulk is a building complex in the city of Kermanshah in western Iran, dedicated to the annual commemoration of the martyrdom of Husayn ibn ‘Ali at the Battle of Karbala in 680, an event of seminal significance to Shi'i Islam. Private takkiyyas built by social elites were a phenomenon of the Qajar period, with their construction motivated...

It is widely thought that confessions from perpetrators of state violence promote accountability, reconciliation, and justice. Performing Public Confessions offers a challenge to this view through a critical examination of perpetrators' narratives, analysing them as performances that shape public perceptions of state violence and responsibility. With a focus on Turkey, this book develops new insights into the performative aspects of...

Discover how the people of the Bible really lived. Imagine being able to walk the streets of Abraham’s hometown, adjust to life in Babylonian captivity, or travel the roads of Palestine amid the latest buzz about Jesus from Nazareth. Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Manners & Customs paints an accurate and descriptive picture of ancient civilization throughout the ages. In twenty...

When the slogans are louder than the facts, evidence becomes a moral imperative. In Israel on Trial: Examining the History, the Evidence, and the Law, United States District Judge Roy K. Altman brings legal rigour to the world's most contentious debate. Applying courtroom-tested standards—burden of proof, corroboration, chain of custody—he examines claims of colonialism, apartheid, and genocide with dispassionate precision....

In the wake of the Hamas attack of October 7 and the Israeli response, historian and current affairs commentator Yakov Rabkin brings together his writings that shed light on the violence in Palestine since the creation of the State of Israel. For decades, Yakov Rabkin has drawn attention to the danger Israel has posed to both Palestinians and Jews, both...

In the aftermath of the global mass protests of the 2010s, democratic theorists have shown renewed interest in conceptualising popular mobilisation and "the people." A series of provocative works have theorised assembled crowds in the streets as sources of democratic authority, legitimacy, and sovereignty. These insightful accounts nevertheless often remain detached from the full range of the situated experiences of...

The Greek landing in Smyrna in May 1919 is widely seen as the catalyst of the Turkish national struggle, but even during the chaos between 1919-1923, the diverse peoples of Asia Minor coexisted and created astonishing, yet fragile, infra-national solutions. In sharp contrast to popular history, Ethnic Cleansing in Western Anatolia, 1912–1923 tells the often-overlooked story of cooperation and resistance...

To curb the influence of minority populations and "outside enemies," the Ottoman government implemented new and experimental Tanzimat reforms within the empire’s centre and provincial regions. By the 1860s, the city of Rusçuk in present-day Bulgaria and capital of the Ottoman Danube province became a test case for this expansive reform movement within an urbanising and contested peripheral landscape. In...

Egypt's Mediterranean explores the intersections of commerce and statecraft in the eighteenth-century Ottoman Empire through the lives of overlooked intermediaries who lived and worked on Egypt's Mediterranean coast. Egypt's port cities mediated the geographic distance and economic scales between the province's agricultural landscape, its Red Sea connections, its hegemonic capital city, and its position within the wider Ottoman realm. Meanwhile,...

Egypt's Mediterranean explores the intersections of commerce and statecraft in the eighteenth-century Ottoman Empire through the lives of overlooked intermediaries who lived and worked on Egypt's Mediterranean coast. Egypt's port cities mediated the geographic distance and economic scales between the province's agricultural landscape, its Red Sea connections, its hegemonic capital city, and its position within the wider Ottoman realm. At...

Alongside the diplomatic struggles of the early Cold War, European politicians worked to shape emotions about the postwar order—advocating fear of communism and hope for postwar recovery. In this context, the French Empire in North Africa emerged as one important emotional battleground, where Algerian nationalists and anti-colonial campaigners challenged French narratives about imperial pride and native hysteria. During the Algerian...

This is a festschrift in honour of Arnoud Vrolijk, the emeritus curator of Oriental manuscripts and rare books at Leiden University Libraries. His title of Interpres Legati Warneriani refers to the role of keeper of the manuscripts bequeathed to the Library of the University of Leiden by Levinus Warner in 1665. The eighteen articles, ranging from book history to manuscript...

Cinema Before the World investigates the transnational origins of filmmaking by focusing on a case study in world cinema – the 1896-1897 voyage of one of the Lumière Brothers' camera operators, Alexandre Promio, across North Africa and the Middle East. The book shows how the sites in these early films are not simply backdrops, but integral to film form and...

The Syrian regime endured the uprisings that began in 2011, aided by Russian military intervention in 2015 that changed the trajectory of the conflict and brought more territory under government control, until its eventual collapse in 2024. Over this period, how did the state attempt to manage the conflict away from the battlefield and reestablish control over the population? Samer...

Aligning Heaven and Earth in Early Islam focuses on the construction of historical knowledge during the first centuries of Islam (7th-10th centuries CE) and sheds light on the much-neglected genre of astrological histories. It contends that astrologers played a significant, albeit totally overlooked, role in the making of Islamic historiography. The volume documents a unique moment in historical writing and...

In 1894, Great Britain invited ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan, the amir of Afghanistan, to England for a state visit. Then at the height of its imperial might, Britain sought to strengthen ties with the strategically important Afghanistan, which shared a long frontier, not yet a border, with British India. The amir’s aim for the visit was to secure permission for an...

This section of al-Ḫabar ʿan al-bašar, the last work of the fifteenth-century historian al-Maqrīzī, presents an overview of the genealogies of the pre-Islamic northern Arabs, regarded as the descendants of the apical ancestor figure ʿAdnān. Al-Maqrīzī’s text is embedded in the broader context of the genealogical tradition as a major organising principle in premodern Muslim historiography. The volume highlights the...

Muhammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870) stands as one of the most distinguished figures in Islamic intellectual history. His magnum opus, the Ṣaḥīḥ, is revered as the most authoritative collection of Prophetic traditions in Sunni Islam and is the most cited book in Islamic history. Beyond its juridical and theological significance, the Ṣaḥīḥ was venerated in pre-modern societies as a...

The United States's superpower status is often associated with its industrial, financial, and military might. Yet its global power after the Second World War hinged in part on something often seen as backward: agriculture. In contrast to Britain, the predominant global power of the nineteenth century, which depended on its current and former colonies for food and raw materials, the...

Xerxes: The first full-scale account of a Persian king vilified by history. Xerxes, Great King of the Persian Empire from 486–465 B.C., has gone down in history as an angry tyrant full of insane ambition. The stand of Leonidas and the 300 against his army at Thermopylae is a byword for courage, while the failure of Xerxes’ expedition has overshadowed...

From 1980 to 1988, Iran and Iraq fought the longest conventional war of the twentieth century. The tragedies included the slaughter of child soldiers, the use of chemical weapons, the striking of civilian shipping in the Gulf, and the destruction of cities. The Iran-Iraq War offers an unflinching look at a conflict seared into the region's collective memory but little...

In this book, the distinguished writer Edward Luttwak presents the grand strategy of the eastern Roman empire we know as Byzantine, which lasted more than twice as long as the more familiar western Roman empire, eight hundred years by the shortest definition. This extraordinary endurance is all the more remarkable because the Byzantine empire was favoured neither by geography nor...

The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020 was a major armed conflict between the two modern, regular armies of Armenia and Azerbaijan. This open access book examines the causes and consequences of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. The first part of the book includes chapters discussing why the ceasefire regime failed after long twenty-six years, international mediation and diplomacy, the geopolitical tensions,...

What does true global solidarity look like, and how can it help us fight for the oppressed? Rising for Palestine is a groundbreaking anthology that reveals the deep ties between some of the world's most powerful liberation struggles. For decades, African nations and movements have stood firmly with the Palestinian people. From anti-colonial uprisings and the Pan-African Congress of 1945...

As bombs rained down on Gaza in October 2023, images of mass death and destruction gripped the world, and openly genocidal statements from Israeli leaders foretold the magnitude of horrors to come. But the US media was quick to downplay, obscure, and repackage an emerging campaign of extermination into a slick "war on terror" framework. How to Sell a Genocide...

On October 7, 2023, Hamas fighters killed more than eleven hundred Israelis and took more than two hundred hostages, prompting an Israeli response that has in turn taken tens of thousands of lives and devastated the Gaza Strip. Why did this happen, and can anything be done to grant peace and justice to Israelis and Palestinians alike? In Tomorrow Is...

In 2011, in a city in northern Syria, the people began a movement that aimed to remake their country after decades of brutal dictatorship. For the next eighteen months, citizens of Manbij carried out one of the most remarkable experiments in democracy in modern times. Days of Love and Rage tells the story of the Syrian revolution, from its early...

A moving, riveting and immersive story of six Iranians who, together, lived the entire arc of modern Iranian history—the promise of the 1979 revolution, its betrayal by the Islamic mafia state and a people's undying spirit of resistance. Fuelled by Iranians' dreams of social justice and political freedom, the 1979 revolution swept aside the shah's ailing, repressive monarchy. But in...

A major new history of the Crusades that illuminates the strength and sophistication of the Western and Muslim armies During the Crusades, the Western and Muslim armies developed various highly sophisticated strategies of both attack and defence, which evolved during the course of the battles. In this ambitious new work, Steve Tibble draws on a wide range of Muslim texts...

‘Bold, vital and urgent . . . Blows the old parochial Western accounts clean away’ SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB ‘Refreshing and astutely judged . . . immensely enjoyable’ JONATHAN PHILLIPS A spectacular new panoramic history of the Crusades. From their foundation in 1097 to Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem almost a century later, the Crusader States transformed the Middle Eastern world. In an...

A major new history of revolutionary Iran, from the 1940s to the present Iran's revolution in 1979 shook the world. The Pahlavi dynasty came crashing down, and the Islamic Republic rose in its place. But what led to this seismic event? How did the revolutionary movement gain such strength? And what has its legacy been for modern Iran? In this...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life the most intriguing woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt. Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years,...

In recent years, the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, the House of Saud, has promoted the oil-rich kingdom as an open, liberalising nation that has invested in culture, tourism, and social innovation to become a beacon for the region. International political manoeuvring, sports sponsorship, and the Vision 2030 programme with its vast architectural planning declare a bold future. But the...

Shi'i Islam and Sufism is published by I.B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies. Offering new perspectives on the relationship between Shi'is and Sufis in both modern and pre-modern times, this book challenges the supposed opposition between these two esoteric traditions in Islam. It explores what could be called "Shi'i Sufism" and "Sufi-oriented Shi'ism" at various points...

I.B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies The exceptional intellectual richness of seventeenth-century Safavid Iran is epitomised by the philosophical school of Isfahan, and in particular by its ostensible founder, Mir Damad (d. 1631), and his great student Mulla Sadra (aka Sadr al-Din Shirazi, d. 1636). Equally important to the school is the apophatic wisdom of Rajab...

The oil price collapse of 1985-86 had momentous global consequences: non-fossil energy sources quickly became uncompetitive, the previous talk of an OPEC 'imperium' was turned upside-down, the Soviet Union lost a large portion of its external revenues, and many Third World producers saw their foreign debts peak. Compared to the much-debated 1973 oil shock, the countershock has not received the...

A Modern History of the Kurds, by David McDowall, is a ground-breaking history that traces the journey of the Kurds from the 19th century to the present day. The book documents the underlying dynamics of the Kurdish question. The division of the Kurdish people among the modern nation states of Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran, and their ongoing struggle for...

A masterpiece of Arabic love poetry in a new and complete English translation The Translator of Desires, a collection of sixty-one love poems, is the lyric masterwork of Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi (1165-1240 CE), one of the most influential writers of classical Arabic and Islamic civilisation. In this authoritative volume, Michael Sells presents the first complete English translation of this work...

Most observers did not expect the Arab spring to spread to Syria, for a number of seemingly good reasons. Yet, with amazing rapidity, massive and unprecedented anti-regime mobilization took place, which put the regime very much on the defensive; what began as The Syrian Uprising in March 2011 has evolved into one of the world’s most damaging and protracted conflicts....

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the history and culture of the Parthian Empire, which existed for almost 500 years from 247 BC to 224 AD. The Parthians were Rome’s great opponents in the east, but comparatively little is known about them. The Parthians focuses on the rise, expansion, flowering and decline of the Parthian Empire and covers both...

As the largest contiguous empire in history, the Mongol Empire looms large in history: it permanently changed the map of Eurasia as well as how the world was viewed. As the empire expanded, the Mongols were alternately seen as liberators, destroyers, and harbingers of apocalyptic doom. At the same time, they ushered in an era of religious tolerance and cross-cultural...

The Muslim world is tremendously rich and diverse, yet few Westerners are familiar with the writings and teachings of a culture that is at the forefront of world events. In their insightful anthology The Middle East and Islamic World Reader, historians Marvin E. Gettleman and Stuart Schaar have assembled a broad selection of documents and contemporary scholarship to give a...

The first in-depth look at how postwar thinkers in Egypt mapped the intersections between Islamic discourses and psychoanalytic thought. In 1945, psychologist Yusuf Murad introduced an Arabic term borrowed from the medieval Sufi philosopher and mystic Ibn 'Arabi—al-la-shu'ur—as a translation for Sigmund Freud's concept of the unconscious. By the late 1950s, Freud's Interpretation of Dreams had been translated into Arabic...

Israel is not the only ‘new’ state around, but it is one of the few states whose legitimacy is still questioned. Its future affects the future of the Middle East as a whole and probably the stability of the international system. The reasons for this unique reality lie in its past and the particular historical circumstances of its birth. This...

End of Days is both a meditation on Jewish morality in the age of Israeli Jewish power, and a cri du coeur by an Orthodox Israeli Jew, a former combat officer in the IDF. The author urges Israelis to look into the Jewish religious ethical tradition for an alternative to the secular and religious Zionism that sanctifies power, statehood, and...

This book provides translated selections from the writings of Muhammad Ibn Othman al-Miknasi (d. 1799). The only writings by an Arab-Muslim in the pre-modern period that present a comparative perspective, his travelogues provide unique insight into Christendom and Islam. Translating excerpts from his three travelogues, this book tells the story of al-Miknasi’s travels from 1779-1788. As an ambassador, al-Miknasi was...

It is impossible to understand Palestine today without a careful reading of its distant and recent past. But until now there has been no single volume in English that tells the history of the events—from the Ottoman Empire to the mid-twentieth century—that shaped modern Palestine. The first book of its kind, A History of Palestine offers a richly detailed interpretation...

Cappadocia, a picturesque volcanic region of central Anatolia, preserves the best evidence of daily life in the Byzantine Empire and yet remains remarkably understudied, better known to tourists than to scholars. The area preserves an abundance of physical remains: at least a thousand rock-cut churches or chapels, of which more than one-third retain significant elements of their painted decoration, as...

Today, the Iranian world, which encompasses the whole Persian-speaking and culturally "Persianate" region, including Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Tajikistan, parts of Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, is a geopolitically sensitive region. But it is also a distinct cultural area with a rich and complex history, a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups, ancient languages and dialects, and sophisticated literatures. The essays...

Focusing on Oriental Jews and their relations with their Arab neighbours in Mandatory Palestine, this book analyses the meaning of the hybrid Arab-Jewish identity that existed among Oriental Jews, and discusses their unique role as political, social, and cultural mediators between Jews and Arabs. Integrating Mandatory Palestine and its inhabitants into the contemporary Semitic-Levantine surroundings, Oriental Neighbors illuminates broad areas...

Israel on the Brink argues that Israel can’t continue on its current path. The events of 7 October and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza revealed significant flaws in its foundations. It was exposed as a nation unable to protect its citizens, torn between messianic theocrats and selective liberals. Additionally, it is resented by its neighbours and losing support from Jews...

A century before the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism, a passionate discourse emerged in the Ottoman Empire, rebutting politicised Western representations of the East. Until the 1930s, Ottoman and early Turkish Republican intellectuals, well acquainted with the European political and cultural scene and charged with their own ideological agendas, deconstructed tired clichés about “the Orient.” In Europe Knows Nothing about...

An anthropologist's groundbreaking account of how Islamic religious authority is assembled through the unceasing labour of community building on the island of Java. This compelling book draws on Ismail Fajrie Alatas's unique insights as an anthropologist to provide a new understanding of Islamic religious authority, showing how religious leaders unite diverse aspects of life and contest differing Muslim perspectives to...

Folktales are instrumental in ensuring the survival of oral traditions and strengthening communal bonds. Both the stories and the process of storytelling itself help to define social, cultural, and political identity. For Palestinians, the threat of losing their heritage has engendered a sense of urgency among storytellers and Palestinian folklorists. Yet, there has been remarkably little academic scholarship dedicated to...

A new kind of society is being built in Syria, but it's not one you would expect. Surrounded by deadly bands of ISIS and hostile Turkish forces, the people living in Syria's Rojava cantons are carving out one of the most radically progressive societies on the planet today. Western visitors have been astounded by the success of their project, a...

Narratives of the modern history of Palestine/Israel often begin with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Britain’s arrival in 1917. However, this work argues that the contest over Palestine has its roots deep in the 19th century, with Victorians who first cast the Holy Land as an area to be possessed by empire, then began to devise schemes for...

In this magisterial cultural history of the Palestinians, Nur Masalha illuminates the entire history of Palestinian learning with specific reference to writing, education, literary production, and the intellectual revolutions in the country. The book introduces this long cultural heritage to demonstrate that Palestine was not just a ‘holy land’ for the four monotheistic religions – Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Samaritanism...

With characteristic rigour and readability, Avi Shlaim reflects on a range of key issues, transformations and personalities in the Israel-Palestine conflict. From the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the 2008 invasion of Gaza, Israel and Palestine places current events in their proper historical perspective, and assesses the impact of key political and intellectual figures, including Yasir Arafat and Ariel Sharon, Edward...

This book is an intellectual and social history of Salafism that moves beyond a focus on specific organisations or a commitment to the boundaries of particular nation states to trace the emergence of distinctly Salafi social practices from 1926 to the present. Salafis explicitly base their legitimacy on the word of the Qur'an and the Sunna, and scholarship has taken...

Ahmad bin Yahya al-Baladhuri's History of the Arab Invasions is perhaps the most important single source for the history of the great Arab conquests of the Middle East in the sixth and early seventh centuries. The author, who died in 892, was a historian working at the court of the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad. He had access to a wide...

Gods in the Desert explores the fascinating religious cultures of the ancient Near East. From the mysterious pyramids, tombs, and temples of Egypt to the powerful heroes, gods, and legends of Mesopotamia, Glenn Holland guides readers through the early religions that are the root of many of today's major faiths. Holland compares the religions of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Syria-Palestine,...

What happens when refugees encounter Indigenous sovereignty struggles in the countries of their resettlement? From April to November 1975, the US military processed over 112,000 Vietnamese refugees on the unincorporated territory of Guam; from 1977 to 1979, the State of Israel granted asylum and citizenship to 366 non-Jewish Vietnamese refugees. Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi analyses these two cases to theorise...

With Ancestor of the West, three distinguished French historians reveal the story of the birth of writing and reason, demonstrating how the logical religious structures of Near Eastern and Mesopotamian cultures served as precursors to those of the West. "Full of matter for anyone interested in language, religion, and politics in the ancient world."—R. T. Ridley, Journal of Religious History...

Albanese is perhaps the one figure of our times that future historians will recall as the one who did the most to redeem our generation from its guilt over the genocide of the Palestinian people. Her reflections in this book are not just timely - they are for the ages - Yanis Varoufakis Israel's genocide in Palestine and the complicity...

Walk your way through Jewish history, life, and culture—from Abraham to today Jewish History For Dummies provides unbiased, factual history of Jewish life, culture, and history. You'll take a look at the roots of Jewish history, beginning in 2000 B.C.E. with Abraham and his descendants. Chapter by chapter, you'll trace the evolution of the Jewish people through the biblical record...

A new history that tells the story of how European imperial ambitions destroyed the Ottoman Empire during the Great War and created a divided and unstable Middle East. The Ottoman Empire's collapse at the end of the First World War is often treated as a foregone conclusion. It was only a matter of time, the story goes, before the so-called...

Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2017 In 2011, many Syrians took to the streets of Damascus to demand the overthrow of the government of Bashar al-Assad. Today, much of Syria has become a war zone where foreign journalists find it almost impossible to report on life in this devastated land. Burning Country explores the horrific and complicated reality of...