Arabs in Conquest and Revolution: 1516 to the Present
About This Novel
The history of the Arab world is a bloody story of colonization, war and resistance, but also a diverse and moving story full of creativity. In this groundbreaking work for both the popular and the secular, award-winning Oxford historian Eugene Rogan draws extensively on five centuries of Arab sources to place the Arab experience in its critical historical context and to present it objectively from the perspective of the Arabs themselves. Covering the entire Arab world from North Africa to the Arabian Peninsula, this landmark book explores every aspect of modern Arab history. Starting from the conquest of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, to the era of European imperialism, the superpower competition during the Cold War, and now to the current era of American hegemony, Rogan vividly depicts the evolution of Arab identity and the tortuous journey of striving for national sovereignty and realizing national rejuvenation over the past five hundred years. He explores the historical causes of many difficulties in the Arab world today, and is full of authoritative and wise academic insights. In many parts of the world, the history, culture and character of the Arab nation are often seriously misunderstood. This book is an essential choice for anyone who wants a clear, efficient, and reliable understanding of the modern Arab world.
What Readers Think
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Official(3)Scraped 25d ago
From today's perspective, Jewish civilization seems to be far superior to Arab civilization in fundamentals: it has contributed many smart minds to the world and even Judaism, the origin of monotheistic religions; Israel has been growing stronger and stronger surrounded by the Arab ocean since its founding in 1948, and has even mastered nuclear weapons. However, if we expand our perspective to the long history before 1948, Jewish civilization has reached a fundamental low point of almost 2000 years: Jews are scattered all over the world, without their own national language, and are completely marginalized in various civilizations, ready to take various scapegoats at any time, until the lowest point of the Nazi's "Final Solution". In the past 2000 years, if you told any Jew that his descendants would eventually return to the land "full of milk and honey", I am afraid he would think it was crazy.
The same is true for history's evaluation of civilization. Civilization can only be evaluated within a long enough time period. This period of time undoubtedly far exceeds the physiological life span that a single human individual can achieve. In this sense, the first half of Graham's sentence may not be useful. But in this scene, we can learn from Buffett's famous saying when talking about himself: Being born in the United States of this era is my ovarian lottery, otherwise I would not be able to achieve what I am today.
It begins with the Battle of Dabiq in 1516, when Ottoman Sultan Selim I defeated Sultan Gamsu of the Mamluk dynasty, overthrew the empire that covered Egypt, Syria and the Arabian Peninsula, and eventually ruled the core area of the entire Arab world, and ended with the "Arab Spring" in the second decade of the 21st century. The writing style is as ups and downs and fascinating as the history described, making readers immersed in the ups and downs of the Arabs' fate in conquest and revolution from 1516 to the present.
Rating
Community(0)
Official(3)Scraped 25d ago
From today's perspective, Jewish civilization seems to be far superior to Arab civilization in fundamentals: it has contributed many smart minds to the world and even Judaism, the origin of monotheistic religions; Israel has been growing stronger and stronger surrounded by the Arab ocean since its founding in 1948, and has even mastered nuclear weapons. However, if we expand our perspective to the long history before 1948, Jewish civilization has reached a fundamental low point of almost 2000 years: Jews are scattered all over the world, without their own national language, and are completely marginalized in various civilizations, ready to take various scapegoats at any time, until the lowest point of the Nazi's "Final Solution". In the past 2000 years, if you told any Jew that his descendants would eventually return to the land "full of milk and honey", I am afraid he would think it was crazy.
The same is true for history's evaluation of civilization. Civilization can only be evaluated within a long enough time period. This period of time undoubtedly far exceeds the physiological life span that a single human individual can achieve. In this sense, the first half of Graham's sentence may not be useful. But in this scene, we can learn from Buffett's famous saying when talking about himself: Being born in the United States of this era is my ovarian lottery, otherwise I would not be able to achieve what I am today.
It begins with the Battle of Dabiq in 1516, when Ottoman Sultan Selim I defeated Sultan Gamsu of the Mamluk dynasty, overthrew the empire that covered Egypt, Syria and the Arabian Peninsula, and eventually ruled the core area of the entire Arab world, and ended with the "Arab Spring" in the second decade of the 21st century. The writing style is as ups and downs and fascinating as the history described, making readers immersed in the ups and downs of the Arabs' fate in conquest and revolution from 1516 to the present.
