A History of the Middle East

by Peter Mansfield

  The Jews stood apart from the other peoples who invaded and settled in Syria and Palestine in two important respects. One was that in general they did not intermarry and assimilate with the other peoples of the region. The other was their religious genius, which produced the first of three great monotheistic faiths. The Ten Commandments and the Judaic legal code which derives from them were by far the highest system of morality to be developed by mankind before the coming of Christ. But because the Jews regarded themselves as a distinctive people, specially chosen by God, Judaism was never a proselytizing religion. There was no question of huge masses of humanity converting to the Jewish faith, as was the case with its two successors – Christianity and Islam.

  From about the end of the ninth century BC, the character of the invasions of Syria/Palestine began to change. It was now less a matter of migrating peoples seeking a better place in which to settle – ‘a land of milk and honey’ – than of great powers aiming to conquer and impose their rule over the existing inhabitants. The Assyrians, who had their capital at Nineveh near Mosul in modern Iraq, first appeared in Syria in about 1100 BC, but it was their King Shalamaneser III (859–824 BC) who founded the Assyrian Empire, which lasted for more than two centuries and finally conquered Egypt. The former great empire of the Pharaohs had been in sad decline since the time of Rameses III of the Twentieth Dynasty (twelfth century BC), who was the last to display military genius in the field of battle. Irrigation works fell into disuse and trade decayed. Egypt was governed by local despots in the cities of the Nile Delta, which were constantly attacked and finally defeated by the Assyrians.

  The Assyrians were in turn defeated and overthrown by the Chaldean dynasty of Babylon. In 597 BC their King Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem. But the Chaldean Empire was short-lived. Further east, in present-day Iran, a new and dynamic state was formed by the uniting of Medes and Persians. Their King Cyrus II – ‘the Great’ – reigned from 559 to 530 BC and founded an empire which covered the whole of western Asia in the modern Middle East and more, from the Indus River to the Aegean Sea and the borders of Egypt.

  In 525 BC the successors of Cyrus conquered Egypt with little difficulty, and it could be said that for the Egyptians two thousand years of foreign rule had begun.

  The Persians were then masters of the whole civilized world of the time, apart from China. In the western province of Syria and Palestine, Aramaic was the official language. Administration was efficient, roads were built and taxes were collected regularly. The region enjoyed two hundred years of peace and prosperity.

  As we have seen, the local indigenous population was a meltingpot of races, both non-Semites who had come mainly from the west and north and Semites who had come mainly from the east – the Arabian peninsula. The word ‘Semite’ derives from Shem, the eldest son of Noah, from whom all the Semitic peoples are supposed to be descended. However, it is not a racial but a linguistic term, invented in the late eighteenth century by the German historian Schlözer to denote the languages which were spoken in Mesopotamia, Syria and the Arabian peninsula and which from the first millennium BC spread into North Africa. All the Semitic languages have striking similarities in their syntax and basic vocabularies, just as there are affinities between the social institutions, religious beliefs and even the psychological traits of the peoples who speak them. Almost certainly there was once a single ‘proto-Semitic’ language spoken by the people of Arabia which had dialectical variants.

  The northwards migration of Semitic peoples from the Arabian peninsula was continuous, tending to reach a peak about every thousand years. The Arabs are first mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions of about 850 BC as a nomadic people of the north Arabian desert who paid their tribute to their Assyrian overlords in the form of camels – which had first been domesticated in the Arabian peninsula some five hundred years earlier.

  The racial origins of the Arabs are highly obscure. The Arabs of today have inherited a tradition that they come from two stocks – the Qahtanis and Adnanis. The former originated in the rain-fed highlands of south-western Arabia and are descended from the patriarch Qahtan. The latter came from the north and centre of the peninsula and are descended from the patriarch Adnan. Almost every Arab tribe claimed descent from one or the other. Of the two, it is the southerners or Yemenis who now form half the population of Arabia and are called the ‘true Arabs’, the sons of Adnan being called Mustarib or arabized peoples. Although today there is no obvious racial difference between those who call themselves Qahtanis and those who call themselves Adnanis, there are two recognizable racial types among the general population of Arabia. The tall people with clean-cut, hawk-like features come mainly from the north; while those in the south tend to be shorter with softer and more rounded features – in origin they are probably related to the Ethiopians. It is therefore ironic that it is the southerners who are considered the ‘true Arabs’, for it is the northerners who provide the popular image of the Arab and it was in central and northern Arabia that the classical Arabic tongue – the vehicle of Arab/Islamic civilization – developed.

  It was many centuries before the whole Middle Eastern and North African region (apart from Persia and Turkey) became arabized. In 336 BC Philip, King of Macedon, united the warring Greek city-states, and it was his son Alexander who launched the astonishing series of conquests which overthrew the magnificent but decadent Persian Empire. Greek thought and culture had already started to penetrate Syria/Palestine and Egypt before Alexander the Great’s arrival. A thousand years of Graeco-Roman civilization on the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean had begun.

  The Persian/Arabian Gulf was included in Alexander’s empire. When he reached the limits of his eastern conquests, in India in 326 BC, he set out to return to Persia by land. But he had in mind a great sea-traffic between Babylon, the capital of his eastern empire, and India. So he ordered his admiral, Nearchos, to return to the Euphrates via the Gulf at the head of his huge fleet. Nearchos reported on the existence of two strategic islands at the head of the Gulf. The larger had wild goats and antelope, which were sacred to the Goddess Artemis, and Alexander ordered that it should be named Ikaros after the island in the Aegean Sea which it resembled. A fortress outpost was established which lasted about two hundred years. Today Ikaros is called Failaka and is part of Kuwait.

  Alexander’s dream of a vast united Hellenistic empire did not survive his early death, as his conquests were disputed between his generals. But Hellenistic civilization remained dominant in the successor empires which stretched from Persia to Egypt, and the cities which Alexander founded continued to flourish. Egypt prospered under the wise rule of the early Ptolemys. Alexandria, with its library and museum, became a splendid city and the intellectual centre of the world. Palestine for a time came once again under Egyptian rule. The rest of Syria and Asia Minor (Turkey of the present day) fell into the hands of Seleucus, the Persian ruler of Alexander’s former eastern empire. He founded Antioch, which he named after his father, and this became the capital of Syria for the next nine centuries.

  Hellenism first began to retreat in Persia, but even here it was a slow process. Two hundred years after Alexander’s death, the Seleucids in Persia were overthrown by the Parthians, a predatory nomadic tribe from the region of the Caspian Sea. The Parthians assimilated Greek government practice and continued to make use of the Greek language in addition to their own. Some Greek cities of Seleucid foundation continued to flourish. Hellenistic influence began to weaken only in the first century AD.

  In Syria/Palestine Hellenism was more lasting, but its degree of influence varied greatly. As might be expected, it was greatest to the north and west on the Mediterranean coast, where Laodicea (modern Latakia) and Berytus (Beirut) were typical Greek cities. East of Mount Lebanon, towards the Syrian Desert, Hellenistic influence declined. In fact the whole region was a blend of Hellenism and Semitic Aramaic culture in varying proportions. In both the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires the senior civil servants, and th
e leading businessmen, scholars and intellectuals were Greek. Both empires encouraged immigration from Greece, but the Greeks remained a minority. In their armies the Greeks formed the core or phalanx bearing pikes, but the archers and slingers were Arabs, Kurds and Persians.

  Little more than a century after Alexander’s death saw the beginning of the rise to power of the Roman Republic. After the final defeat of Carthage in 211 BC, Rome gained mastery over the western Mediterranean. It then turned its attention to the east and invaded Greece. There followed more than 150 years of chaos and war in the eastern Mediterranean region. The rival Seleucid and Ptolemaic Empires fought each other beneath the looming shadow of Rome, and went into a long decline. As always, local powers in Syria took the opportunity to assert themselves.

  In Palestine, the small Jewish community enjoyed some freedom to manage its own affairs in the Judaean hills around Jerusalem. The Jewish people were divided between a Hellenized educated upper class which broadly accepted Seleucid rule and a peasantry which clung to their Judaic faith. When, in 168 BC, the Seleucid King Antiochus Epiphanes ordered the altar of Zeus, ‘the abomination of desolation’, to be set up in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, Judas Maccabaeus, the son of a priest, led the fervent Jews in a revolt. Although Judas was killed, his family founded a dynasty of priestprinces – the Hasmonaeans – who gradually extended their rule to cover most of Palestine as the Seleucid Empire disintegrated. They were succeeded under the Romans by the related House of Herod.

  Further to the east another independent state was established by the Nabataeans, with their headquarters in Petra (south Jordan) and Madain Saleh (Saudi Arabia). In the second century BC their powerful commercial kingdom stretched deep into the Arabian peninsula and flourished by controlling the caravan trade which brought Chinese and Indian spices, perfumes and other luxuries from southern Arabia to Syria and Egypt. The Nabataeans spoke Arabic, but their writing was Aramaic. Their culture was superficially Hellenic. The people of present-day Jordan regard them as their ancestors.

  The consolidation of Roman power in the eastern Mediterranean was delayed by the civil war and anarchy in Rome. However, in the 60s BC the triumvirate of generals Pompey, Caesar and Crassus took power, and Pompey set about establishing Roman power in Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean. He invaded Syria and took Jerusalem. But Roman rule was not yet firmly established. The Parthians inflicted a savage defeat on the Roman legions and for a time occupied Syria. It was not until after both Pompey and Caesar had been assassinated that Caesar’s successor Octavian – the Emperor Augustus, who reigned from 29 BC to AD 14 – incorporated the entire Middle East region from Egypt to Asia Minor into the Roman Empire. Only Persia and present-day Iraq remained under Parthian control. Augustus ignored the demands of some of his generals that the defeat of the Roman legions be avenged, preferring to have peace in order to organize Rome’s new eastern provinces.

  The eastern Mediterranean region – Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt – settled down to several centuries of the Pax Romana, which in general meant efficiency, good order and justice in accordance with Roman law. The road and tax systems were greatly improved. Egypt became an important supplier of food to the imperial capital and a military base for the Roman armies. The Romans cleared the Red Sea of pirates and revived the trade through it to India. Egypt was a Roman colony in the fullest sense, living under iron military government and paying exorbitant taxes. The Greek ruling class co-operated with the colonial power and retained its privileged position.

  Egypt, with its population densely concentrated in the Nile Valley and Delta, lends itself to authoritarian centralized government. Roman rule in Syria was rather more relaxed. In the eastern or ‘Semitic’ half of the region, the Romans allowed the local rulers to retain their autonomy – provided they did not become over-ambitious and threaten the settled populations to the west. It was indirect rule of the kind employed by the British in their empire in Asia and Africa some eighteen centuries later. Thus the Nabataeans continued to control east Jordan and Damascus until in AD 106 the Emperor Trajan, exasperated by their spirit of independence, brought them under the subjection of Rome. A century later, Palmyra in the central Syrian Desert emulated the Nabataeans in achieving power and prosperity through control of the caravan trade-routes to the east until its queen, Zenobia, defied Roman authority, only to be defeated and to have the region’s autonomy repressed.

  The western or Mediterranean region of Syria, with its great and flourishing Greek cities founded under the Seleucids, was more directly incorporated into the Roman Empire. The educated urban population, a fruitful synthesis of Mediterranean and Semitic races, was part of the empire’s professional and intellectual élite. These people mixed easily with the Roman officials, and many acquired Roman citizenship. Many Syrian lawyers, doctors, historians and administrators – not to mention poets and actors – achieved distinction and fame. Hellenized Egyptians played a similar role. Antioch and Alexandria were, after Rome, the two largest and most magnificent cities of the empire. While Latin was the official language of government, Greek was the lingua franca. Several of the later Roman emperors were either wholly or partly Syrian, although it has to be said that two of these – Caracalla and Elagabalus, from Homs – were among the least admirable. However, Caracalla can claim credit for the decision to grant Roman citizenship to the whole empire in AD 212. Philip ‘the Arab’, an able ruler, did something to redeem Syria’s reputation during his brief reign.

  Despite the easy racial mixture of the cities, a gulf – and especially a linguistic gulf – remained between the cities and the peasants and tribesmen of the countryside. In Syria these spoke Aramaic; the nomads and semi-nomads on the fringes of Arabia spoke Arabic. In Egypt the majority of the population spoke the ancient Egyptian language. But it was in Palestine that the clash of cultures was most violent, and yet perhaps most productive.

  In 40 BC the Romans appointed Herod from Idumaea (Edom) in southern Palestine as King of Judaea, with Jerusalem as his capital. In his long reign he extended his effective rule over most of Palestine, earning the title of ‘Herod the Great’. An Arab by race, he was a Jew by practice and he saw himself as the protector of the Jews. He rebuilt the Temple of Jerusalem, but as a Hellenizer and a Roman protégé he was detested by the pious Jews. His reign ended in bitterness and violent dispute over his succession in which he ordered the notorious massacre of the innocent infants of Bethlehem. Thus he also became the ogre of Christian tradition, as it was in the little Herodian kingdom that the Jewish founder of the Christian religion was born, lived and was executed – the founder of the religion which in time triumphantly converted the entire Graeco-Roman world.

  Jesus and his Apostles were Jews, and Christianity was originally a movement within Judaism. But the Christian message made little headway among the Jewish people and so it was soon directed towards the gentile world instead. It was the task of the early Christian apologists to define the Christian gospel as both the correction and the fulfilment of Greek and Roman philosophy, and their intellectual achievements in the first three centuries after Christ were considerable. However, the simple message of the Sermon on the Mount made its first appeal to the poor and underprivileged masses of the Graeco-Roman world. Despite official persecution, it thrived and spread – the martyrdom of Jesus providing a model for suffering and endurance. Christianity is thought to have arrived in Egypt with St Mark, before the end of the first century AD, and it spread rapidly among the mass of the Egyptian people, although the Greeks and the Hellenized upper class generally remained pagan.

  The persecution of Christianity in the empire occurred in waves which were interspersed by periods of toleration, but for three centuries Christianity gained converts. Although still a minority – the majority clinging to the old state religions, of which the cult of the emperor was the most popular – Christians formed a substantial proportion among all classes, including members of the imperial family and the Roman aristocracy, by the time the las
t wave of persecution was instituted by Diocletian, at the beginning of the fourth century AD. They were dynamic and well-organized, and within a few years of Diocletian’s abdication his successor, Constantine the Great, declared Christianity to be the official religion of the Roman Empire. Whether Constantine’s conversion was genuine or whether he had recognized Christianity as the conquering faith is immaterial.

  The rise of Christianity was favoured by the decline of the empire. Throughout the third century AD the empire had been beset by internal divisions – indeed, for periods it was ruled by rival emperors – and assaulted from outside its borders by Goths and Persians. At times the empire had seemed on the verge of collapse, until it was rescued once more by an able emperor or army commander. In the east, the Parthian Empire was replaced in AD 224 by that of the Sassanids from west Persia, who claimed descent from the great dynasty of Cyrus and Darius. The Sassanian Empire lasted for four centuries, in which it was almost constantly at war with the rival great power in the west. Shapar I, the second Sassanid ruler, took the title of ‘King of Kings of Iran and non-Iran’, thus emphasizing his claim to dominion of the world.