Suggested Reading -- Middle East
MotoDC
Posts: 947
A post in another thread -- something about the area currently held by Israel "always" belonging to the Palestinians -- got me thinking about something related, but to avoid a derail, I thought I'd make a separate thread.
I've only just begun my personal "study" of Middle Eastern history, but if there's one thing that has become evident, there's very little that was "always" anything there. Some books certainly make it seem more chaotic than others, but overall the transitions from one ruling authority (whether political or religious or both) to another and from one area to another can make your head spin. Man what a confusing historical journey though, at least to this outsider. Between abassids, fatimids, the caliphates that governed (or pretended to) them, jews, pagans, turks, persians...easy to get lost.
It seems nearly impossible to find reading on the topic that doesn't have an agenda or at least suffer from a bias of omission, so I'm trying to compensate for that by choosing my books in pairs. I'm basing those pairings literally on the 1-star ratings on Amazon; though that probably sounds silly, I've found that those are the reviews that scream the loudest about the (supposed or otherwise) biases in the books.
So far I've only read "No god but God" by Reza Aslan and "The Middle East" by Bernard Lewis. The former is a Muslim himself and focuses much more on the evolution of Islam itself; while the latter address the evoltion of the Middle East as a political and social entity(ies) and seems to address Islam only insofar as it directly influenced those (which of course is quite a bit). Lewis's book is incredibly convoluted as it doesn't seem to adhere to any sort of strict timeline, nor does he quickly introduce his next topic in transition. This is particularly confusing for someone who is just diving into the topic because if you don't recognize the
names and dynasties immediately, you might not know if he's talking 700AD or 1100AD.
I'm thinking my next adventure is going to be on the Balfour agreement, perhaps "The Balfour Declaration" by Scneer. I guess my real point is -- What are you guys reading?
I've only just begun my personal "study" of Middle Eastern history, but if there's one thing that has become evident, there's very little that was "always" anything there. Some books certainly make it seem more chaotic than others, but overall the transitions from one ruling authority (whether political or religious or both) to another and from one area to another can make your head spin. Man what a confusing historical journey though, at least to this outsider. Between abassids, fatimids, the caliphates that governed (or pretended to) them, jews, pagans, turks, persians...easy to get lost.
It seems nearly impossible to find reading on the topic that doesn't have an agenda or at least suffer from a bias of omission, so I'm trying to compensate for that by choosing my books in pairs. I'm basing those pairings literally on the 1-star ratings on Amazon; though that probably sounds silly, I've found that those are the reviews that scream the loudest about the (supposed or otherwise) biases in the books.
So far I've only read "No god but God" by Reza Aslan and "The Middle East" by Bernard Lewis. The former is a Muslim himself and focuses much more on the evolution of Islam itself; while the latter address the evoltion of the Middle East as a political and social entity(ies) and seems to address Islam only insofar as it directly influenced those (which of course is quite a bit). Lewis's book is incredibly convoluted as it doesn't seem to adhere to any sort of strict timeline, nor does he quickly introduce his next topic in transition. This is particularly confusing for someone who is just diving into the topic because if you don't recognize the
names and dynasties immediately, you might not know if he's talking 700AD or 1100AD.
I'm thinking my next adventure is going to be on the Balfour agreement, perhaps "The Balfour Declaration" by Scneer. I guess my real point is -- What are you guys reading?
Post edited by Unknown User on
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professor at MIT< at one point the most cited living author in the world.
he talks about things as they are happening, gets into a little history, nothing more than a century ago i don't think, still a very valuable source of info on the current conflict.