When a group of Iranian students from an organization called “Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line,” on their own volition though possibly with the approval of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, stormed the American embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, and took 66 US citizens hostage, I doubt anybody involved fully realized what was about … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: the Iran Hostage Crisis begins (1979)
Category: history
Today in Middle Eastern history: the Balfour Declaration (1917)
It was on November 2, 1917, when British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour sent a relatively brief letter to Walter Rothschild that would wind up becoming one of the most consequential letters in modern Middle Eastern history. If you’d read it at the time, you probably wouldn’t have envisioned the importance it would come to … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: the Balfour Declaration (1917)
Today in Middle Eastern history: the last Ottoman Sultan is deposed (1922)
The removal of the last Ottoman sultan, Mehmed VI Vahideddin (d. 1926), is among history's greatest anti-climaxes. The Ottomans had (obviously) lost World War I, which resulted in the dismantling of their empire under the terms of their 1918 armistice and the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres. Sèvres not only put the empire's Arab dominions under … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: the last Ottoman Sultan is deposed (1922)
Today in European history: the Battle of Río Salado (1340)
Whoever came up with the term Reconquista to describe the Christian conquest of the Iberian Peninsula from Muslims deserves an all-time gold star for public relations work. I mean, there were parts of modern Spain that were in Muslim hands for well over seven hundred years, and if there's a statute of limitations on when something stops … Continue reading Today in European history: the Battle of Río Salado (1340)
Today in Middle Eastern history: Antioch surrenders to the Arabs (637)
This will be short, since there's very little to say about the Arab conquest of Syria after the Battle of Yarmouk in 636 shattered Byzantine resistance there. But Antioch was one of the great cities of the eastern Roman Empire, and its conquest was significant, if anticlimactic. The city itself put up almost no resistance … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: Antioch surrenders to the Arabs (637)
Today in North African history: the Eighth Crusade ends (1270)
King Louis IX of France (d. 1270, which is a bit of a spoiler), who would later be known as Saint Louis, would probably go somewhere on a list of the 10 greatest Crusaders of all time. He'd be right up there alongside men like Godfrey of Bouillon, the first Christian ruler of Jerusalem, and Richard the … Continue reading Today in North African history: the Eighth Crusade ends (1270)
Cannibalizing the Past
I really don't have much to say about Benjamin Netanyahu's latest kerfuffle, the one where he intimated that (an apparently reluctant) Adolf Hitler was talked into exterminating the Jews (all he wanted to do was expel them from Europe) by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during the 1920s and most of the … Continue reading Cannibalizing the Past
Today in Middle Eastern history: the “People’s Crusade” ends (1096)
The “People’s Crusade” actually preceded the First Crusade, so you could argue that it was sort of a test case for the concept. In hindsight, certainly, European leaders should have treated it as such and scrapped the Crusading enterprise before it really got started. This is just a placeholder. If you’d like to read the … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: the “People’s Crusade” ends (1096)
Today in European history: the Second Battle of Kosovo ends (1448)
When you mention the names of some famous battles, everybody knows which engagement you're talking about. There's only one “Battle of Actium,” for example, and the 1815 “Battle of Waterloo” is unlikely to be confused with any other “Battle of Waterloo” that may have taken place. That’s not always the case, though. If you want … Continue reading Today in European history: the Second Battle of Kosovo ends (1448)
Today in Middle Eastern history: Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim destroys the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (1009)
It would be easy to read the title of this post and think, “See? Muslims persecuting Christians; it’s been going on for over a thousand years!” But that would be unfortunate, because it wasn’t “Muslims” who ordered the destruction of the church that (allegedly) stands on the site of Jesus’s crucifixion and burial. It was, … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim destroys the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (1009)
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