Status Updates From The Middle East

“When the [religion-defined] Ottoman millet system was still functioning in accordance with its own inner logic, ethnic solidarities did not define basic identity nor did they determine ultimate allegiance. The people whom we call, and who now call themselves, Turks and Arabs, did not describe themselves by those names until fairly modern times. [ ] It was only in modern times, under the impact of European ideas

“The rise of mercantilism in the producer-oriented West helped European trading companies, and the states that protected and encouraged them, to achieve a level of commercial organization and a concentration of economic energies unknown and unparalleled in the East, where—as a matter of fact more than of theory—‘market forces’ operated without serious restrictions. The Western trading corporation, with the

“Many stories are told in the Arabic chronicles of how, when the Arabs came as conquerors, they tried to take over the government but couldn’t, because nobody could read the accounts except the accountants, and no one could deal with correspondence except the clerks in the office. And so, the stories relate, perforce the Arabs had to give way, and though they were the unchallenged political and military masters

“The titulature of sovereignty in Islam, unlike that of Christendom, does not normally make use of territorial or ethnic designations. There are no equivalents to the kings of England, of France, of Spain, or other realms in the West. During the great wars between the sultan of Turkey and the shah of Iran in the 16th century, these were titles which each applied to the other to belittle him, and never to himself.

“The resulting struggle [between the Ottoman Turks and the Safavid Iranians] was for both the leadership of Islam and the control of the Middle East. It was waged not only on the battlefield but also in a war of propaganda between the Sunni and Shi’a faiths of which the Ottoman sultan and the Safavid shah were respectively the champions. The struggle ended with a limited victory for the Ottomans, who were able

“Wherever Shi’ites are to be found, on [the date of the Battle of Karbala] they commemorate the martyrdom of the Prophet’s family, the penitence of those who failed to save them, and the wickedness of [the Umayyad soldiers] who killed them, in religious rituals inspired by the potent themes of sacrifice, guilt, and expiation. The doctrinal differences between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims are of minor importance,

On the Roman/Persian rivalry that preceded (and enabled) Islamic conquest of the Middle East:
“The Roman, and then Byzantine interest, was to establish and preserve external trade links with China and India, thus bypassing the Persian-dominated center. The Persian Empire tried to use its position athwart the transit routes to control Byzantine trade, so as to exploit it in times of peace or stop it in times of war.