A Short History of the Middle East

From Ancient Empires to Islamic State

Gordon Kerr

• Publisher: Pocket Essentials
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781843446361
• eBook ISBN: 9781843446378
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

Situated at the crossroads of three continents, the Middle East has confounded the ambition of conquerors and peacemakers alike. Christianity, Judaism and Islam all had their genesis in the region but with them came not just civilization and religion but also some of the great struggles of history. This book makes sense of the shifting sands of Middle Eastern history, beginning with the early cultures of the area and moving on to the Roman and Persian Empires; the growth of Christianity; the rise of Islam; the invasions from the east; Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes; the Ottoman Turks and the rise of radicalism in the modern world symbolized by Islamic State.

The Modern Middle East

Nationalist Aspirations and Oil

The Axis and the Allied powers had both encouraged the nationalist aspirations of the countries of the Middle East. Some Arab states had gained a degree of independence and were making their way in the world. The Arab League was founded in March 1945 with six members – Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Its objective was to ‘draw closer the relations between member States and co-ordinate collaboration between them, to safeguard their independence and sovereignty, and to consider in a general way the affairs and interests of the Arab countries.’

The first oil-drilling in the Middle East took place in the Russian-controlled parts of the region in 1842, in the Absheron peninsula in Azerbaijan. The first refinery was constructed at Baku in 1863 and within fifteen years a pipeline linked Baku with the refinery. The Baku oil fields were supplying Russia with about 95 per cent of all her oil needs by the end of the First World War. Meanwhile, European and American businessmen were agitating for concessions in the Iranian and Ottoman territories. As we have seen, the first major concession was granted by the Shah of Iran, Mozaffar ad-Din, to the Englishman William Knox D’Arcy (1849-1917). For £20,000 D’Arcy was given a 60-year concession to explore for oil in an area of 480,000 square miles and the Iranian government was to receive 16 per cent of the company’s annual profits. It was an agreement that the Iranians would regret until the late twentieth century. This was just the first of many such deals by which British, Dutch, French or American companies would exploit Middle Eastern oil. Oilfields were opened in Iraq, Arabia and elsewhere, as the Middle East became one the world’s major oil-producing areas. This would lead at last to development. Better communications were necessary and new roads were built; printing, newspapers, cinema, radio and the paraphernalia of modern life soon arrived in the region, coupled with economic development.

The British and the French had been interested in the region because of its strategic importance. It had acted as an effective buffer zone, helping the British to protect their great imperial possession, India, and the French to safeguard their North African colonies. The French had also claimed to have cultural reasons for their presence in the Middle East – the protection of the Christian minorities in the region, especially the Catholics, and the dissemination of French culture. Economic considerations had not been high on the agenda until the discovery of oil, although it was not as important in the early twentieth century as it became in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Ultimately, however, it is not in doubt that the people of the Middle East were better off in 1939 than they had been in 1914. With British and French involvement in the region most of them enjoyed a higher standard of living; they had better amenities and could expect to live longer. There were more services and their countries had better infrastructures. There were other benefits, such as language – the use of English and French brought many people of the Middle East into the modern world. It also brought modern scientific and cultural ideas to them more easily. Naturally, however, there were those who saw the influence of Western culture as an evil to be abhorred.

Independence and Uprisings

The post-war period brought chaos to the world, with millions of people being displaced and the Soviet Union making advances in Central and Eastern Europe. In Asia and Africa serious questions were posed by the retreat of the imperial powers. Although its problems were not as great, the Middle East was not immune and there were frequent upheavals. These were often more intense and less open to political or diplomatic solutions.

As in other colonies of the imperial powers around the world, what was uppermost in everyone’s mind was independence. Turkey, Afghanistan and Iran had long been free of the imperial yoke and the years between the wars had added several more to the list of independent states – Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, although the first two of these countries had not fully shaken off the shackles of their imperial rulers, bound as they were by unequal treaties and the presence of British troops and bases on their soil.

Meanwhile, Syria became a sovereign state when it was liberated from Vichy control in 1941 and gained full independence from the French Mandate in October 1945. British troops entered Lebanon in 1941, the British government fearful that the Germans would seize control. That year the French announced that the country would become independent and elections were held in 1943. At the end of the war, the Mandate was ended and Lebanon was admitted to the newly formed United Nations. Transjordan gained independence in March 1946. By the early 1950s, the European powers had withdrawn completely from the region.

Other Arab countries soon followed those already independent – Libya in 1951; Sudan, Tunisia and Morocco in 1956; Mauritania in 1960; Kuwait in 1961; Algeria in 1962; South Yemen (formerly Aden) in 1967; and the Gulf states in 1971. Most achieved independence through negotiation but two – Algeria and South Yemen – got there only after a long and bitter struggle.

Even with the creation of these new states, however, the old problems and conflicts did not go away and, in fact, some new ones emerged. A state such as Saudi Arabia had advantages in that, although its population was made up of different tribal and regional groups, it was at least all Arab and all Muslim and, apart from areas in the east of the new country, it was all Sunni. The other states had internal rivalries and age-old enmities within their borders. This led to civil war, rebellion and revolution.

The Lebanon was one of the worst, riven with internal divisions driven by rival factions and sometimes there were yet further conflicts within these factions. Civil war ripped the country apart in 1958, between 1975 and 1976, and between 1983 and 1991. Similarly, southern Arabia was also in constant turmoil. With the support of Egypt, a republic was created there in 1962, but in North Yeman there was conflict for a number of years, between Saudi and Egyptian forces and between the royalists and the republicans. Another civil war erupted in the united Yemen in 1990. Between 1965 and 1975, Yemen was also embroiled in the conflict in Dhofar which was trying to secede from the Sultanate of Oman. It took an Iranian expeditionary force to quell the uprising. Meanwhile, force was used elsewhere to subdue uprisings. Turkey and Iraq both used troops to deal with unrest amongst their Kurdish minorities, and Iraq sent in its army against the Shiites who populated its central and southern regions, despite the fact that they actually represented a majority in the country. In the Sudan, there was perpetual conflict between the Arabic-speaking Muslim north and the non-Arab, non-Muslim Africans who lived in the south of the country. In 1970, Jordan also experienced difficulties, when the Palestine Liberation Organisation rebelled against the state but were defeated. Algeria, too, was convulsed by a bloody civil war in the early 1990s in which around 100,000 people lost their lives.

Post-War Palestine

The Jewish Agency had done all it could during the war to ingratiate itself with the British. It provided hospitality for troops on leave and disseminated propaganda designed to persuade them of the success of the Jewish National Home and to convince them that the Jews in Palestine could get on with the Arabs when the latter were not being encouraged to act against them by their leaders and the British. The collective settlements – kibbutzes – and the contribution to daily life made by the trade union organisation Histadrut were particularly impressive to those of a socialist tendency. Thus, when a Labour government was elected in Great Britain in July 1945, the Zionists were excited. After all, this was the party that only a few months previously had declared itself in favour of unlimited migration of Jews to Palestine. But little changed and the Zionists began to become agitated. The Jewish Agency was at the time collaborating with Jewish terrorist groups such as the Stern Group and the Irgun, even though they officially denounced them, and it was proposed by one member of the Agency that they cause ‘one serious incident’ that would serve as a warning to the British. On the night of 31 October, one of the terrorist groups, the Palmach, blew up railway lines in 153 places in Palestine and also destroyed three police boats that were used to prevent the arrival of illegal immigrants. There was an attempt by the Stern Group to blow up the oil refinery at Haifa and the Irgun attacked railway yards. The British government, meanwhile, had come under pressure from the American President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) to open the doors to around 100,000 displaced European Jews and this could not be ignored. A Committee of Enquiry was established ‘to examine the position of Jews in those countries in Europe where they have been victims of Nazi persecution... and the political, economic and social condition in Palestine as they bear upon the problem of Jewish immigration and settlement therein, and the well-being of the peoples now living therein.’

The Zionists were incensed and held a strike in protest. Government buildings were set on fire in Jerusalem and the Jewish Agency issued a strong statement:

‘The policy to which the British government pledged itself in the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate sprang from the recognition that the Jewish problem can be effectively solved only by the greatest possible concentration of Jews in Palestine and by the restoration of Jewish nationhood... The Jewish Agency... upholds the right of every Jew impelled by material or spiritual urge to settle in Palestine... The Jewish people... will spare no effort or sacrifice until the restoration of the Jewish Commonwealth of Palestine has been achieved.’

A few weeks later, the CID headquarters in Jerusalem was blown up by the Irgun, killing seven police officers and soldiers. Two more died in further attacks in Jaffa and Tel Aviv. The Agency dissociated itself from these acts, denouncing them for the loss of life but added that, while Britain pursued its current policy, they could do nothing to prevent them. Against this background, the Committee of Enquiry released its report in which it failed to come to a clear conclusion, recommending the continuation of the Mandate ‘until the hostility between Jews and Arabs disappears’. The 100,000 Jewish victims of persecution were to be granted admission to Palestine ‘while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population were not prejudiced.’ It went on to emphasise that violence should be suppressed: ‘... we express the view that the Jewish Agency should at once resume active cooperation with the Mandatory in the suppression of terrorism and illegal immigration, and in the maintenance of law and order’. Before the immigrants were allowed to enter Palestine it was imperative that the British persuaded the Jewish Agency to actively work for the suppression of terrorism. The Arabs were furious with this change to the 1939 White Paper and demanded the end of the Mandate, the withdrawal of British troops and the creation of an Arab state. They threatened that they might turn to the Russians for support. The British, on the other hand, were turning to the Americans for help.

The Jewish ‘Resistance Movement’, as it was termed by the illegal Zionist radio station, renewed its activities and, in order to terminate their campaign, British troops occupied the offices of the Jewish Agency, arresting prominent Zionists, including Moshe Sharett (1894-1965), the Agency’s head. Arms caches were seized and commanders of the paramilitary organisations were arrested. Matters escalated further when, on 22 July 1946, the Irgun ignited a bomb in the basement of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the British administrative headquarters for Palestine, killing 91 people, most of them Arab and Jewish civil servants. British public opinion was outraged but the attack did little to change the British approach to the Anglo-American agreement on Palestine, then in its final stages.

On 31 July, a Federal Plan was published for the division of Palestine into two districts, one Arab and one Jewish. Each grouping would manage its own affairs, including immigration which in the meantime continued illegally, many times the permitted quota arriving and being held in camps. When the British came up with a plan to transfer illegal immigrants to Cyprus, the ships used for this purpose were attacked by the Zionist paramilitaries. Negotiations on the Federal Plan continued with the Arabs proposing a state offering equal rights for all citizens but ending Jewish immigration.

In November, the arrested Zionists were released and a new wave of terrorism began with more British deaths. It ended, however, with the opening in December of the 22nd World Zionist Conference where the delegates demanded that Palestine be made a Jewish state and that 700,000 immigrants be allowed in so that there would be a Jewish majority in Palestine. Terrorist activity resumed the following January and, in February, a revised Federal Plan was rejected by both parties. At the end of April, the United Nations General Assembly considered the Palestine question in a special session, the terrorist campaign continuing in the background. A committee of representatives of countries with no interest in Palestine was set up and it recommended to the UN a Jewish state incorporating its present territory plus the Beersheba sub-district of Southern Palestine and Eastern Galilee. The Arabs would retain Western Galilee. It stipulated that, in the first two years, 150,000 Jewish immigrants should be allowed to enter Palestine. The problems included the fact that around 500,000 Arabs would be inside the Jewish state and, with the loss of Jaffa, the Arabs would have no port. They would also have to accept a higher rate of immigration than ever. Their independence would be conditional upon a guarantee by them of Jewish rights and the agreement to an economic union with the Jewish state, precluding any arrangements they might have wanted to make with other Arab countries.

In September, Britain declared that it would be unable to implement a policy that was not acceptable to both the Jews and the Arabs and would, therefore, be withdrawing its troops and closing down the British administration of Palestine. On 29 November, the United Nations approved the plans for partition of Palestine and fighting broke out almost immediately, the Arabs eager to demonstrate that they would not have the UN plan forced upon them without a struggle, and the Jews attempting to persuade the Arabs that such resistance was futile. When it became evident that the partition could not be achieved peacefully, the United Nations recommended that Palestine be placed under temporary UN trusteeship. On 14 May 1948, the day that the British Mandate on Palestine expired, the Jewish state of Israel was proclaimed by ...

Table of contents

• A SHORT HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST
• About the author
• Introduction
• Ancient Civilisations
• Christianity and Islam
• External Threats
• The Middle East to 1800
• The Ottoman Empire After 1800
• A New Middle East
• The First World War and the Fall of the Ottoman Empire
• Between the Wars
• The Second World War
• The Modern Middle East
• New Threats
• December, 2015
• Copyright