Sir P. M. Sykes’s History of Persia (3rd edn, 2 vols, London, 1930) still holds its own for the period before Reza Shah. E. Monroe’s Britain’s Moment in the Middle East 1914–71 (new and revised edn, London, 1981) is unlikely to be surpassed as an account of its subject and P. S. Khoury’s Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism 1920–45 is a penetrating study of the French role in the Anglo-French interregnum in the eastern Arab world. J. Wilson’s The Authorized Biography of T. E. Lawrence (London, 1987) is so exhaustive that it covers most aspects of this period of modern Arab history. International Crisis Group’s Middle East programme provides much-respected studies on flashpoints as they unfold across the contemporary Middle East, ranging from North Africa to Iran. The reports offer an invaluable introduction to the region’s conflicts based on primary sources and are freely available at www.crisis group.org.
For Turkey since the demise of the Ottoman Empire there is Lord Kinross’s Atatürk: The Rebirth of a Nation (5th edn, London, 1971) and for the post-Atatürk period of troubled Turkish democracy G. Lewis’s Modern Turkey (4th edn, London, 1974) and W. R. Hale’s The Political and Economic Development of Turkey (London, 1981). Erik Zurcher’s Turkey: A Modern History (London, 1998) is recommended. Ümit Cizre’s Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party (London, 2008) contains a series of essays on the country’s evolution from Kemalism. Iran in the modern period before the Islamic Revolution is well covered in P. Avery’s Modern Iran (London, 1965) and N. Keddie’s Iran: Religion, Politics and Society (London, 1980). J. A. Bill and N. R. Louis’s Musaddiq, Iranian Nationalism and Oil (London, 1988) is a useful account of this crucial episode in modern Middle East history. Nikki Keddie’s Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (Yale, 2003) offers a good history of Iran up to and beyond the Islamic Revolution.
There are several books on the Arab states since the end of the Ottoman Empire and their eventual achievement of full independence from the European powers:
1. EGYPT
T. Little’s Modern Egypt (London, 1967) is to be recommended. P. Vatikiotis’s The History of Modern Egypt, From Muhammad Ali to Mubarak (London, 1991) is highly recommended. More specifically on the Nasser era, Gamal Abdul Nasser’s Egypt’s Liberation: The Philo-sophy of the Revolution (Buffalo, 1959) still repays study as a seminal manifesto. A. Nutting’s Nasser is an outstanding biography. P. Mansfield’s Nasser’s Egypt (2nd edn, London, 1969) was an attempt to outline his achievements during his lifetime. A. Sadat’s In Search of Identity: An Autobiography (London, 1978) reveals the profound difference in outlook of Nasser’s successor. W. R. Louis and R. Owen’s Suez 1956: The Crisis and its Consequences (Oxford, 1989) provides an essential assessment of this watershed in the modern history of the Middle East.
All the books by Mohammed Heikal, Egypt’s leading journalist and Nasser’s close friend, provide valuable insight but notably The Road to Ramadan (London, 1975) on Arab preparations for the 1973 war and Autumn of Fury (London, 1983) on the events leading to Sadat’s assassination. D. Hopwood’s Egypt: Politics and Society 1945–1981 can be warmly recommended and A. McDermott’s Egypt from Nasser to Mubarak: A Flawed Revolution (London, 1988) is a useful assessment of the whole post-revolutionary period. Timothy Mitchell’s Colonising Egypt (University of California Press, 1991) is a staple of university syllabi.
2. SYRIA
N. A. Ziadeh’s Syria and Lebanon (Troy, 1968) covers the French mandate and the earlier years of independence. Two outstanding books by Patrick Seale are essential reading not only for Syrian affairs but also for the post-war history of the Arab World: The Struggle for Syria: A Study of Post-war Arab Politics, 1945–1958 (2nd edn, London, 1987) and Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East (London, 1988). T. Petran’s Syria (London, 1972) is still rewarding and D. Hopwood’s Syria, 1948–1956: Politics and Society is an excellent short survey of its subject. M. Ma’oz’s Asad: The Sphinx of Damascus (London, 1988) provides a useful Israeli view. Nikolaos Van Dam’s The Struggle for Power in Syria (London, 1996) is a microscopic breakdown of the sectarian composition of Syrian power by a former Dutch ambassador. Caroline Donati’s L’Exception syrienne: Entre modernisation et résistance (Paris, 2009) contains much background and detail on the post-Hafez al-Assad era, not available elsewhere.
3. LEBANON
First and foremost are the books by the Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi, notably The Modern History of Lebanon (London, 1977), Crossroads to Civil War: Lebanon, 1958–1976 (Delmar, NY, 1976) and most recently A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered (London, 1988). There are various books by close Western observers of the modern Lebanese tragedy, of which H. Cobban’s The Making of Modern Lebanon (London, 1985) and J. C. Randal’s Going All the Way: Christian Warlords, Israeli Adventures, and the War in Lebanon (New York, 1983) are perhaps the best. Z. Schiff and E. Ya’ari’s Israel’s Lebanon War (New York, 1984) adds the Israeli dimension, but the impossibility of writing an up-to-date history of modern Lebanon is obvious. For the torment of the civil war following Israel’s withdrawal from Beirut read the memoirs of former Lebanese foreign minister Elie Salem in Violence & Diplomacy in Lebanon (London, 1995). For two recent studies of the Lebanese Shia movement see Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizbu’llah: Politics and Religion (London, 2002) by a Lebanese academic, and Augustus Richard Norton’s Hezbollah: A Short History (Princeton, 2007) for a concise introduction to the movement. More generally, Fouad Ajami’s The Vanished Imam: Musa Al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (Cornell University Press, 1992) provides an excellent background on Lebanon’s Shia revival.
4. JORDAN
M. Wilson’s King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan (Cambridge, 1987) deals with the mandate and the early years of independence, as does A. Dearden’s Jordan (London, 1958). The autobiography by Hussein, King of Jordan, Uneasy Lies the Head (London, 1962), may be read in conjunction with an assessment after his thirty-five years on the throne in J. Lunt’s Hussein of Jordan (London, 1989). P. Gubser’s Jordan: Crossroads of Middle Eastern Events (London, 1979) places the kingdom in its modern context, although the latest events show that the Jordanian role is subject to continuous change. Kamal Salibi’s History of Jordan (London, 1998) is a unique contemporary account by an Amman-based academic. Adnan Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians, and the Hashemite Kingdom in the Middle East Peace Process (2000) is a powerful account of East Bank–West Bank relations by a former senior member of the royal court.
5. IRAQ
For the early modern period S. Longrigg’s Iraq 1900 to 1950 (London, 1953) remains the best account, and for more recent times P. Marr’s The Modern History of Iraq (Boulder and London, 1985) and P. Sluglett and M. Farouk-Sluglett’s Iraq since 1958: From Revolution to Dictatorship (London, 1987). H. Batatu’s The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes, and its Communists, Ba’athists and Free Officers (Princeton, 1978) is still unequalled as a study of contemporary Iraqi society. D. Hiro’s Neighbours Not Friends, Iraq and Iran after the Gulf Wars (London, 2001) succinctly summarizes events over the 1990s. Iraq under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War, (South End Press, 2000), edited by A. Arnove, details the roots of the 1991 US-Iraq war and the human price of sanctions; A. Cockburn’s Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein (London, 2002) examines the acme of the Iraqi leader, ahead of any regime change; see also D. McDowall’s A Modern History of the Kurds (London, 2000). For the case for the weapons inspectors, read former UNSCOM chief R. Butler’s personal account in The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Crisis of Global Security (New York, 2001). Charles Tripp’s A History of Iraq (Cambridge, 2002) is the leading political history of modern Iraq. Toby Dodge’s well-written Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation-building and a History Denied (New York, 2003) offers a biting critique of Britain’s role in the creation of modern Iraq.
The US invasion and its messy af
termath precipitated a flurry of literature by Western journalists based in Baghdad who mapped the unravelling of US adventurism, of which George Packer’s The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq (New York, 2005) and Anthony Shadid’s Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War (New York, 2005) are the two most insightful. Several studies have also focused on the Arab Shia revivalism it unleashed. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr’s The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future (New York, 2006) is a ground-breaking study of global Shia politics by an Iranian-American academic. Yitzhak Nakash’s The Shi’is of Iraq (Princeton, 2003) is a good historical accompaniment. Nicolas Pelham’s A New Muslim Order: The Shia and the Middle East Sectarian Crisis (London, 2008) casts a reporter’s eye over developments, as do Patrick Cockburn’s Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Battle for the Future of Iraq (New York, 2008) and Nir Rosen’s In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq (New York, 2006).
6. ARABIA AND THE GULF
H. St J. B. Philby’s Saudi Arabia (London, 1968) is a detailed account of the Saudi kingdom before it became wealthy. The two modern studies of the kingdom which appeared almost simultaneously – R. Lacey’s The Kingdom (London, 1982) and D. Holden and R. Johns’s The House of Saud (New York, 1981) together provide a highly comprehensive modern history. F. al-Farsy’s Saudi Arabia, a Case Study in Development (revised 2nd edn, London, 1983) is a useful factual account by a senior Saudi official, and two recent American studies – W. Quandt’s Saudi Arabia in the Nineteen Eighties: Foreign Policy, Security and Oil (Washington, 1981) and P. N. Woodward’s Oil and Labor in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia and the Oil Boom (New York, 1988) – are both to be recommended. Mamoun Fandy’s Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent (New York, 1999) is a scholarly and balanced survey by an Egyptian academic; Said Aburish’s The House of Saud (London, 1994) is a highly readable diatribe one might expect from a journalist who claims the kingdom tortured his father to death. Jill Crystal’s Oil and Politics in the Gulf (Cambridge, 1995) remains an incisive account of how the Kuwaiti dynasty survived the Gulf War. M. Klare’s Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (Metropolitan Books, 2001) is an excellent overview of the struggle for oil in the Middle East and central Asia. A. M. Abu-Hakima’s The Modern History of Kuwait 1750–1965 (London, 1983) is very reliable, as, for the more modern period, is H. V. F. Winstone and Z. Freeth’s Kuwait: Prospect and Reality (London, 1979). N. Sakr’s The United Arab Emirates to the 1990s (London, 1986) can be highly recommended, as can R. S. Zahlan’s The Making of the Modern Gulf States (London, 1989). An entertaining but scholarly study of southern Arabia is provided by R. Bidwell’s The Two Yemens (London, 1983), and a salutary radical view of the Arabian peninsula is contained in F. Halliday’s Arabia without Sultans (Harmondsworth, 1974). Mohammad Ayoub and Hasan Kosebalaban (eds), Religion and Politics in Saudi Arabia: Wahhabism and the State (London, 2008) contains an important essay on the relationship between the kingdom’s royals and religion.
7. ISRAEL/PALESTINE
The literature on the two subjects, whether treated jointly or separately, is large and growing rapidly as contemporary studies soon become out of date. W. Z. Laqueur’s A History of Zionism (London, 1972) provides the essential background to Israel, and C. Sykes’s Crossroads to Israel (London, 1965) remains the best account of the moves which led to the creation of the State of Israel, although an Israeli historian, Avi Shlaim, provides some startling new material in Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (Oxford, 1988). M. Bar-Zohar’s The Armed Prophet: A Biography of Ben Gurion (London, 1967) illuminates the creation and early years of the state, and N. Lucas’s The Modern History of Israel (New York, 1977) is an excellent history of its first three decades. A. Perlmutter’s Military and Politics in Israel: Nation-building and Role Expansion (London, 1969) remains highly relevant, as does Y. Peri’s Between Battles and Ballots: Israeli Military in Politics (Cambridge, 1983). S. Flapan’s Zionism and the Palestinians (London, 1979) is an excellent historical overview by an Israeli peace activist of how the Zionist movement from its inception sought to conquer rather than co-exist with Palestinians. A. Schlaim’s The Iron Wall, Israel and the Arab World (London, 2000) is a more optimistic account of the relationship. Golda Meir’s autobiography My Life (London, 1975) illustrates old-style Zionist politics, while that of Ariel Sharon, Warrior (New York and London, 1989), may do the same for those of the future. There are several important critiques of official Israeli policies, among which S. Flapan’s Israel: Myths and Realities (London, 1987) and Y. Harkabi’s Israel’s Fateful Decisions are outstanding. A well-researched account sympathetic to the Palestinian Arabs is D. Hirst’s The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East (London, 1977), and A. Hart’s Arafat: Terrorist or Peacemaker? (London, 1984) contains useful material even if it is not always rigorous in its assessment of sources. Andrew Gowers and Tony Walker’s Behind the Myth: Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Revolution (London, 1990) is a major new contribution. There are a growing number of works by Palestinian writers, such as H. Cattan’s Palestine and International Law, the Legal Aspects of the Arab–Israeli Conflict (2nd edn, London, 1976), E. W. Said’s The Question of Palestine (London, 1980) and M. Tarbush’s Reflections of a Palestinian (Washington, DC, 1986). Tom Segev’s One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate (London, 2000) concludes that Britain during the mandate systematically favoured Jewish claims to Palestine over its Arab counterpart. Charles Smith’s Palestine and the Arab–Israeli Conflict (Boston, 2004) provides a comprehensive and oft-cited overview. Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (London, 2006) revives the ghosts of 1948. Yazid Sayigh’s masterful Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement 1949–1993 (Oxford, 1997) highlights the contradictions between the Palestinian movement’s statism and its revolutionary rhetoric. Rashid Khalidi’s Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York, 1997) – his most widely cited book – traces the history of Palestinian nationalism back to the early twentieth century. Ahron Bregman, Elusive Peace: How the Holy Land Defeated America (London, 2005) offers an illuminating account of the power politics behind the collapse of the Camp David talks in 2000. Several books have studied the rise of Hamas. Halid Harub’s Hamas: Political Thought and Practice (Washington, 2000) is the perceptive view from within the movement. Azzam Tamimi’s Hamas: Unwritten Chapters (London, 2007) offers another insider’s view; two Israeli academics, Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, in their The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence (New York, 2006) offer a remarkably similar portrayal. Jeroen Gunning’s Hamas in Politics: Democracy, Religion, Violence (New York, 2008) is the best external account.
On relations between the Middle East and the superpowers M. Heikal’s The Sphinx and the Commissar (London, 1978) is the illuminating and highly readable contribution of an insider, and E. Karsh’s The Soviet Union and Syria, the Asad Years (London, 1988) is the useful objective work of an Israeli. Said Aburish’s A Brutal Friendship – the West and the Arab Elite is a journalist’s insightful if sensational account of how rulers have juggled the competing interests of their people and their western allies. For the views of leading American and European strategists on shaping the region, Allies Divided, Transatlanic Policies for the Greater Middle East, edited by R. Blackwill (Massachusetts, 1997) is highly recommended. The general history of US relations with the Middle East still awaits a new chronicler; meanwhile there are W. R. Polk’s The United States and the Arab World (Cambridge, Mass., 1965) and personal memoirs such as J. Carter’s The Blood of Abraham, Inside the Middle East (Boston and London, 1985) and passages in H. Kissinger’s White House Years (New York and London, 1979) and Years of Upheaval (New York and London, 1982). G. Sick’s All Fall Down: America’s Fateful Encounter with Iran (London, 1985) goes far to explain the US débâcle in part of the Middle East.
For the role
of oil in Middle East history, S. H. Longrigg’s Oil in the Middle East (3rd edn, London, 1968) and G. W. Stocking’s Middle East Oil (London, 1971) are both excellent on the period when the international oil companies were dominant, and A. Sampson’s The Seven Sisters (London, 1975) sceptically examines the decline in their power and the rise of OPEC. That a general study of Middle East oil has been lacking since then is not surprising in view of the subject’s complexity. OPEC’s fortunes and prospects change swiftly and any history soon becomes outdated, but there is A. Skeet’s OPEC: 25 Years of Prices and Politics (Cambridge, 1988), and M. Arari’s OPEC: The Failing Giant (Kentucky, 1988) is a pessimistic assessment. W. I. Sharif’s Oil and Development in the Arab Gulf States (London, 1985) is an annotated bibliography of special value. For a series of essays on the revival of clan identity across the region, F. Jabar and H. Dawod’s Tribes and Power: Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Middle East (London, 2001) offers an excellent introduction.
Islamic reassertion in the modern world and the Islamic Revolution in Iran are the subjects of numerous books of varied quality. R. Schulze’s A Modern History of the Islamic World (New York, 2002) is a superb and comprehensive analysis of the Islamist movement. O. Roy’s The Failure of Political Islam (London, 1994) offers a French antidote to the scaremongers convinced of the inexorable march of the Islamist populism. J. Esposito’s The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (Oxford University Press, 2002) is a thoughtful history of the cooperation and tensions between Islam and the West. Also recommended: Mahmoud Faksh’s The Future of Islam in the Middle East: Fundamentalism in Egypt, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia (Praeger, 1997). Two which are likely to stand the test of time are E. Mortimer’s Faith and Power, the Politics of Islam (London, 1982) and M. Ruthven’s Islam in the World (Harmondsworth, 1984). On the Khomeini Revolution, S. Bakhash’s The Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution is outstanding, and R. Mottahedeh’s The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran (London, 1986) is a brilliant analysis of the Revolution’s antecedents. Baqer Moin’s Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah (London, 1999) is a perceptive account by a leading Iranian journalist in Britain. On the Gulf War, S. Chubin and C. Tripp’s Iran and Iraq at War (London, 1988) is the best study to date.
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