A History of the Middle East Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  A HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST

  Peter Mansfield was born in 1928 in Ranchi, India, and was educated at Winchester and Cambridge. In 1955 he joined the British Foreign Office and went to Lebanon to study Arabic at the Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies. In November 1956 he resigned from the foreign service over the Suez affair, but remained in Beirut working as a political and economic journalist. He edited the Middle East Forum and corresponded regularly for the Financial Times, the Economist, the Guardian, the Indian Express and other newspapers. From 1961 to 1967 he was the Middle East correspondent of the Sunday Times, based mainly in Cairo. After 1967 he lived in London, but made regular visits to the Middle East and North Africa, and in the winter of 1971–2 he was visiting lecturer on Middle East politics at Willamette University, Oregon. As editor his books include The Middle East: A Political and Economic Survey and Who’s Who in the Arab World. He has also written Nasser’s Egypt, Nasser: A Biography, The British in Egypt, The Ottoman Empire and Its Successors, Kuwait: Vanguard of the Gulf and The Arabs, a comprehensive study generally believed to be his magnum opus, which is also published by Penguin. Peter Mansfield died in 1996, and in its obituary notice The Times praised him as ‘Eloquent, scholarly, free from convention…[He] earned himself a distinguished place by forty years of thoughtful work and the passion of his convictions.’

  Nicolas Pelham studied Arabic in Damascus, before joining a London law firm specializing in Islamic law. In 1992 he moved to Cairo as editor of the Middle East Times, and then joined the BBC Arabic Service producing documentary programmes from across the Arab world. In 1998 he moved to Morocco as correspondent for the Economist, the BBC and the Observer. In 2005 he moved to Jerusalem as a senior analyst for International Crisis Group, reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs.

  A History of the

  Middle East

  Fourth Edition

  revised and updated by Nicolas Pelham

  PETER MANSFIELD

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA), 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  First published in Great Britain by Penguin Books Ltd 1991

  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,

  a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1991

  Published in Penguin Books (UK and USA) 1992

  Second edition published in Penguin Books (UK) 2003

  Published in Penguin Books (USA) 2004

  Third edition published in Penguin Books (UK) 2010

  This fourth edition published in Penguin Books (UK and USA) 2013

  Copyright © Peter Mansfield, 1991

  Copyright © The Estate of Peter Mansfield, 2003

  Copyright © Nicolas Pelham, 2010, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this product may be reproduced, scanned,

  or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials

  in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Mansfield, Peter, 1928–

  A history of the Middle East / Peter Mansfield.—Fourth edition / revised

  and updated by Nicolas Pelham.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-698-15659-3

  1. Middle East—History—19th century. 2. Middle East—History—20th century. I. Pelham, Nicolas. II. Title.

  DS62.4.M36 2013

  956—dc23 2013019936

  To Luis Cañizares

  Contents

  List of Maps

  Foreword to the Third Edition

  1. Introduction: from Ancient to Modern

  2. Islam on the Defensive, 1800–

  3. Muhammad Ali’s Egypt: Ottoman Rival

  4. The Struggle for Reform, 1840–1900

  5. Britain in Egypt, 1882–1914

  6. Turks and Arabs

  7. The Persian Factor

  8. The Sick Man Dies: 1918

  9. The Anglo-French Interregnum, 1918–1939

  Partition of the Arab East. The Inter-war Years – Egypt; The Mandates. Persia/Iran. Oil and the Middle East

  10. The Second World War and Its Aftermath

  Middle East Reactions: Nationalism, Pan-Arabism and Islam

  11. The Entry of the Superpowers and the Nasser Era, 1950–1970

  12. The Years of Turbulence

  The Rise of the Oil States. Egyptian Initiatives. Israel/Palestine and the Lebanese Victim. Islamic Reassertion, Revolution and War. Iraq’s World Challenge

  13. Pax Americana

  Humbling Iraq. Umpiring the Arab–Israeli Conflict. Israel’s Missed Opportunity for Peace. The Elusive Promise of Democratization. The Growth of Muslim Liberation Theology. The Globalization of Islamic Jihad

  14. Bellum Americanum

  Iraq’s Shia Conversion. The Sunni Counter-attack. Iraq’s Civil War and Shia Victory. The Region-wide Rise of Popular Movements. Shia Non-state Actors. Sunni Non-state Actors. Defending the Old Order: Reviving the Region’s Security States. Preparing for the Showdown

  15. Regime Change from Within not Without

  Old and New Autocrats. The New Old Middle East

  Notes on Further Reading

  Index

  Maps

  The Middle East today

  The Ottoman Empire in 1792

  The Ottoman Empire in 1908

  The Levant in 1939

  Foreword to the Third Edition

  In his concluding chapter, ‘Prospects for the Twenty-first Century’, written two decades ago, Peter Mansfield proved remarkably prescient. He predicted the resurgence of an armed Islamic movement across the Middle East. He foresaw that Arab regimes, however slim their power-bases, would survive. But there was one prediction where he went badly awry. In the concluding paragraph of the History, Peter ventured that as the Cold War faded away, the United States would lose its raison d’être as a military presence in the Arab world, and ‘would hardly maintain its superpower status in the region’.

  Perhaps had Western policy-makers harkened, much of the subsequent bloodshed might have been averted. Certainly it is hard to argue that the Middle East is any better for the military intervention that followed. When he completed the first edition almost two decades ago, the United States was at the peak of its power. It was celebrating victory after chasing Iraq out of Kuwait; the mujahideen it backed in Afghanistan had won their jihad against the Soviet Union, and Arab states were for the first time preparing to sit down publicly with Israel to negotiate an end to their conflict.

  In hindsight it looks a more innocent age. US policies in a region ten thousand miles away have boomeranged, at a cost of thousands of American lives both at home and in the Arab world. After returning to war with Iraq, the US is beating a retreat with the country’s promised political and economic reconstruction still unrealized. In Afghanistan as well as many places elsewhere, the US is fighting its former allies. And after two decades of on-off negotiations, the promised end of conflict between Israel and the Arab world remains as elusive as ever. And under America’s watch hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners have perished in continuing conflicts in Iraq, Algeria, Sudan and Israel/Palestine. US credibility in the region is in tatters.

  Th
is update of the History attempts to analyse what went wrong. In two new chapters, it looks at unfolding US policy towards Iraq, the Arab–Israeli conflict, and the evolving jihadi movements. It suggests that rather than seek to opt for regime change from without, US interests would be better served by working with the existing political movements on the ground. Peter understood that to resolve conflicts, societies have to be at peace not just with their enemies but also with themselves. ‘What the Arab world urgently needs is more democracy, wider political participation and much greater respect for human rights,’ he wrote two decades ago.

  Almost universally, the deficit is greater today than it was then. Since Peter wrote his book, the Middle East has shrunk in on itself and become a more embittered, suspicious and intolerant place. Cosmopolitan cultures have atomized into their communal parts. For the vast majority of Arabs, the promise of independence has failed to materialize. For Palestinians, their homeland has been cut into an obstacle course of walls and checkpoints, rendering movement for an entire population the most restricted anywhere on earth. From where I write, I like millions of others can travel barely five minutes without being asked for my papers.

  Whether the United States can yet be a force for good in the region is much debated. The outpouring of support President Obama received following his May 2009 Cairo address is testimony to the belief of many that it can. Clearly too a superpower cannot withdraw from a region that fuels the world. But as the past decade has shown, America’s armadas, bombings and military bases spark more problems than they solve. And after President Obama invested his political capital in Israel and Iran with no immediate dividend, scepticism abounds that persuasion and soft power can do any better.

  Recent books on the Middle East commonly end with a prophecy of better days ahead. Invariably those written in recent years have had their dreams dashed. But if there is now a silver lining, it is that as the US prepares to withdraw from Iraq, the peoples of the Middle East are again honing their own methods of conflict resolution and self-determination. As Peter notes, ‘over the centuries, the Middle East has confounded the dreams of conquerors and peacemakers alike’. Come the next edition, perhaps the region will again be able to look forward to more Pax and less Americana.

  I am grateful to Luis Cañizares, to whom Peter dedicated his History, for trusting me to don Peter’s mantle and update the text; to my agent Michael Sissons for seeking me out; and to Simon Winder of Penguin for his patience. My contribution has benefited greatly from the editors I have been fortunate to work with during my years in the region: Barbara Smith and Xan Smiley, Middle East editors at The Economist; Roula Khalaf at the Financial Times, and Rob Malley at International Crisis Group. Throughout my travels I have benefited from the insight and encouragement of countless friends and colleagues, including several in conflict zones who risked their well-being to ensure mine. Above all thanks go to my wife, Lipika, who dreamt as a child in lush Bengal that she would be cast out to a desert, and for almost two decades has supported me in making it come true.

  Nicolas Pelham

  Jerusalem, February 2010

  1. Introduction: from Ancient to Modern

  ‘The Middle East’ is a modern English term for the most ancient region of human civilization. Before and during the First World War, ‘the Near East’, which comprised Turkey and the Balkans, the Levant and Egypt, was the term in more common use. ‘The Middle East’, if employed at all, referred to Arabia, the Gulf, Persia (Iran)/ Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Afghanistan. After the First World War Allies had destroyed the Ottoman Turkish Empire and established their hegemony over its former Arab provinces, ‘the Middle East’ gradually came to encompass both areas. This trend was reinforced during the Second World War, when the entire region was seen as a strategic unit in the struggle against the Axis powers. Egypt was the site of the Allies’ Middle East Supply Centre. At the end of the war, Cairo also became the headquarters of the Arab League, which linked Egypt with the independent Asian Arab states. The Turkish Republic, which had joined NATO and saw its destiny as part of Europe, scarcely belonged to the Middle East any more.

  The term ‘the Middle East’ is Eurocentric. The people of the Indian subcontinent understandably find it irritating. For them after all, the region is ‘the Middle West’. ‘Why not “West Asia”?’ they might ask. But this has the disadvantage of excluding Egypt. Similarly, ‘the Arab world’, now in common usage, excludes Israel and Iran which, to say the least, are both at the centre of the region’s concerns, although ‘the Arab world’ does have the advantage of including the North African Maghreb states, which are increasingly partners in the affairs of the region in spite of the practical failure to achieve political union of the two halves of the Arab world. ‘The Middle East’ seems likely to continue in use for some time. It is not even confined to European languages: in Arabic – Asharq al-Awsat – it is the title of the Saudi Arabian newspaper with the largest international circulation of all Arab newspapers.

  Common usage, however, should not allow us to lose sight of the drawbacks of the term, of which the most important is that it assumes a Western domination of the world. That distinguished scholar the late General John Bagot Glubb enjoyed reminding his readers that, in terms of civilization and culture, the Middle East region was in advance of western Europe for all but the last five hundred of the five thousand or so years for which human history can be traced back. Archaeologists will continue to dispute whether the Nile Valley and Delta, narrow but richly fertile, or Mesopotamia, the land of the twin rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, can claim precedence as the cradle of human civilization, but it is their joint role in the development of mankind which matters.

  Hammurabi, King of Babylon in the eighteenth century BC, formulated the first comprehensive code of law which has survived. Akhenaten, Pharaoh of Egypt in the fourteenth century BC, had the first conception of a single all-powerful deity. Some fifty years later Rameses II – ‘the Great’ – created an empire which covered most of the Middle East region.

  In the huge arc of territory which stretches from the Euphrates around the northern edge of the Syrian Desert along the eastern Mediterranean to the Nile Valley, much of human history was made. It was the Fertile Crescent, because either river irrigation or winter rainfall nurtured productive farmland and settled populations. The central portion of this arc is the isthmus of land which connects Egypt with Anatolia (central Turkey). Bounded on the west by the Mediterranean and on the east by the Syrian Desert, it is some 500 miles long and 75 miles wide. Later called the Levant, it today comprises Lebanon, Israel and the western parts of Syria and Jordan. All the great powers of the ancient world fought over and occupied this stretch of land; it contains the oldest continuously inhabited towns on the earth, such as Jericho and Byblos (Jubail). It was the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity. The name of its most famous city, Jerusalem, still arouses more passionate responses than any other.

  The glorious if violent history of this territory was shaped by its geography. Its features run north and south. First the narrow coastal plain, then the upland chain from the Alawite or Nusairiyah mountains of Syria to the north, through Mount Lebanon, Galilee, Samaria and Judaea to Beersheba. To the east of this a deep rift is formed by the valley of the Orontes, the Bekaa Plain, the Jordan Valley leading to the Dead Sea, the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea, and then another mountain chain – the Anti-Lebanon, Mount Hermon, Kerak and the mountains of Moab. Because the winter rains are blown in from the west, the land is most fertile on the coast and the western slopes of the mountains. Eastwards the farmlands become pasture, until they merge into the limestone steppe of the Syrian Desert stretching to Mesopotamia. The city of Damascus stands like a port on the western edge of this wilderness, which was always a more formidable barrier than the Mediterranean Sea.

  This short causeway along the eastern Mediterranean between Egypt and present-day Turkey was the scene of an astonishing and productive mixture of peoples and cultures. They ca
me from all directions. The non-Semitic and highly civilized Sumerians from Mesopotamia dominated Syria for about a thousand years, from 3500 BC. They were defeated by the Semitic Amorites, nomads from central Arabia, but the Sumerians taught their conquerors how to write and how to farm the land. Babylonians in the middle of the third millennium were followed by Egyptians, who first conquered the coastal plain of Syria at about the same time. The Egyptians were frequently driven out by the new invaders such as the warlike Hittites from Asia Minor, who took all of Syria in 1450 BC, but just as often they returned and recovered control.

  The settled inhabitants of Syria and Palestine were known as Canaanites from about 1600 BC. Almost certainly they did not constitute a single race but were formed through a mingling of peoples, some of whom came from the sea and some from the desert. They never created a powerful imperial state of their own; they submitted to the successive waves of conquerors, paid them tribute and traded with them. They were skilful workers in metal.

  One people who came to settle on the Levant coast in about 1400 BC was the extraordinary seafaring Phoenicians, who established trading colonies on most of the Mediterranean shore and even on the Atlantic coasts of Europe and Africa. Carthage, Tyre and Sidon are the most famous of these. The name ‘Phoenician’ derives from the Greek word for purple – the Tyrian purple dye was renowned throughout the ancient world. Many Lebanese of today like to think of the Phoenicians as their ancestors.

  Another wave of invaders came from central Arabia – the Aramaeans. By about 1200 BC they had gained control over Damascus. They took their culture from the more civilized, settled inhabitants of Syria, but it was their Semitic language – Aramaic – which became the lingua franca of the region and was spoken by Jesus Christ a thousand years later.

  About a century after the Phoenicians the Hebrews, having escaped from Egypt, invaded the land of Canaan from the east, seized Jericho and gradually subdued its settled population in the hills. But they had to contend with a new wave of invaders from across the Mediterranean – the Philistines – who settled on the coastal plain, giving their name to the region: Palestine (falastin in Arabic). The struggle ebbed and flowed until David, King of Israel, united the Hebrew tribes, captured the Jebusite town of Jerusalem and made it his capital. There his son Solomon built the first Jewish temple. The Kingdom of Israel lasted some two centuries before it split into two – the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. In about 720 BC the newest great power from northern Iraq – the Assyrians – overran the two little Jewish states and caused them to disappear. From then on there was never an independent Jewish state until the twentieth century, although the Jews had a degree of autonomy in the Maccabean kingdom (166–163 BC) and its successor, the House of Herod. When the Jews rebelled against the Roman Empire in AD 70, the Emperor Titus destroyed Jerusalem. Their final revolt was put down by Hadrian in AD 135 and the Jews were scattered; only a few thousand remained in Galilee.