- 432 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
An incisive look at the past, present, and future of the religious divide that lies at the heart of the Middle East. At the heart of the Middle East, with its regional conflicts and proxy wars, is a 1400-year-old schism between Sunni and Shia. To understand this divide and its modern resonances, we need to revisit its originsāwhich go back to the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632; the accidental coup that set aside the claims of his son Ali; and the slaughter of Ali's own son Husayn at Karbala. These events, known to every Muslim, have created a slender faultline in the Middle East. The House Divided follows these narratives from the first Sunni and Shia caliphates through the medieval empires of the Arabs, Persians, and Ottomans to the contemporary Middle East. It shows how a complex range of identities and rivalriesāreligious, ethnic, and nationalāhave shaped the region, jolted by the seismic shift of the Iranian Revolution of 1979.Rogerson's original approach takes the modern chessboard of nation states and looks at each through its particular history of empires and occupiers, minorities and resources, sheikhs and imams. The result is wide-ranging empathy, understanding, and insightāa book that is vital for anyone wishing to understand many of the current tensions in the Middle East today.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- The House Divided: Introduction
- Part One: The Origins of the SunniāShia Schism
- Part Two: Medieval Caliphates
- Part Three: The Emergence of the Three: Turkey, Persia and Saudi Arabia
- Part Four: Colonial Night, 1830ā1979
- Part Five: 1979 Revolutions: The Middle East Transformed
- Part Six: 21st-century Battlefields: Syria, Iraq and Yemen
- Part Seven: The Enemy of My Enemy: Egypt, Israel, USA and Qatar
- Part Eight: Far Frontiers: Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Chechnya and Chinaās New Silk Road
- Post-Gaza: Afterword: The Middle East after the Gaza War
- Further Reading
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Index
- Timeline of Islamic Dynasties
- Copyright