The central Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid is best known today as the birthplace of the Arab Spring. It was in Sidi Bouzid where a fish seller named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in December 2010, to protest what he believed was unfair treatment at the hands of Tunisia's corrupt government. The repercussions of … Continue reading Today in North African history: the Battle of Sidi Bouzid begins (1943)
Category: history
Today in Middle Eastern history: the Mongols sack Baghdad (1258)
The Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258 brought an end the Abbasid caliphate in most practical senses. It was, obviously, a pivotal moment in world history, and is among the handful of events about which you can genuinely say that the world was one way before it happened and another way after it happened. At … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: the Mongols sack Baghdad (1258)
Today in Middle Eastern history: the Battle of al-Mansurah begins (1250)
Before King Louis IX of France (d. 1270) led the weirdly conceived and badly failed Eighth Crusade against Tunis, he earned his Crusader bona fides on the better conceived but still badly failed Seventh Crusade, which is our subject today. As I wrote when we talked about the Eighth Crusade, if medieval BuzzFeed had put together a … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: the Battle of al-Mansurah begins (1250)
Today in South Asian history: the Battle of Diu (1509)
The appearance of Portuguese explorers in India in 1498 was, it’s safe to say, a world-altering event. When Vasco da Gama proved that it was possible for European ocean-going vessels to reach India by going around Africa, it meant changes not only for Europe and India, but for the kingdoms in between, whose economies had … Continue reading Today in South Asian history: the Battle of Diu (1509)
Today in Middle Eastern history: the Hama massacre begins (1982)
Like any major conflict, when it broke out in 2011 the civil war in Syria didn’t have one single cause and there was no One Simple Trick to preventing it. Some of its causes built on one another. For example, rising food prices caused in part by a severe Mediterranean heatwave/drought exacerbated Syria’s escalating socioeconomic … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: the Hama massacre begins (1982)
Today in Middle Eastern history: Khomeini returns from exile (1979)
One of the ironies of the modern Middle East is that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini became the most popular person in Iran during a time when he wasn’t living there. After a career spent mostly as a non-political religious scholar (albeit one who was known within academic circles to be skeptical about anything that smacked of … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: Khomeini returns from exile (1979)
Today in European history: the Skirmish at Bendery (1713)
The “Skirmish at Bendery” (known in Swedish as the Kalabaliken i Bender, from the Turkish word kalabalık or “crowd”) is a relatively silly affair, but it shows that, even in 1713 when they were supposedly in “decline,” the Ottomans were still capable of the occasional muscle flexing in Europe. It’s the climax of a chapter in the 1700-1721 … Continue reading Today in European history: the Skirmish at Bendery (1713)
Today in European history: the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699)
You know that old joke about how the “Holy Roman Empire” was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire? You could write a similar joke for the 1683-1699 Great Turkish War. It wasn’t “great” (this is admittedly subjective, but it definitely wasn't so great if you were in the Ottoman army). It wasn’t “Turkish” (the … Continue reading Today in European history: the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699)
Today in South Asian history: the Battle of Talikota (1565)
Muslim control over the Indian subcontinent, especially in areas south of modern Pakistan, was always somewhat precarious. Whatever Muslim dynasty happened to be in power at any given time was guaranteed to be part of a religious minority ruling over a vast number of Hindu subjects. The Mughal Empire, which ruled northern India, modern Pakistan, … Continue reading Today in South Asian history: the Battle of Talikota (1565)
Today in Middle Eastern history: the Republic of Mahabad is born (1946)
The Republic of Mahabad was an experiment in Iranian Kurdish self-rule that survived all the way from January (January 22, to be precise) 1946 until December, um, 1946, when the Iranians decided that they weren’t really all that keen on the idea of Iranian Kurdish self-rule. Its story involves Kurdish nationalism, the overthrow of the … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: the Republic of Mahabad is born (1946)
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