The Middle Eastern front in World War II often merits only a brief mention before you move on to Pearl Harbor, the Pacific campaign, and so forth. So Operation Exporter, or the Syria-Lebanon Campaign, doesn’t get that much attention. Indeed, even during the war news about the campaign was downplayed or outright suppressed in Britain, … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: Operation Exporter begins (1941)
Tag: middle eastern history
Today in Middle Eastern history: the Lebanon War begins (1982)
The 1982-85 Lebanon War can also be treated as the third phase of the 1975-90 Lebanese Civil War, following its first (the Lebanese National Movement and the PLO against the Christian Phalanges) and second (the Phalanges against the intervening Syrian army and the PLO against Israel) phases. But as it does involve a discrete event—the invasion … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: the Lebanon War begins (1982)
Today in Middle Eastern history: the 15 Khordad Movement (1963)
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled Iran on January 16, 1979, in the face of a revolution that had reached its zenith. But the seeds of the Iranian revolution were planted decades earlier, as is usually the case in these situations, and you can make a pretty good case that they first sprouted in 1963, during … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: the 15 Khordad Movement (1963)
Islamic History, part 30: the early Islamic military (7th-9th centuries CE)
Islamic History Series I feel pretty certain that nowadays we would point to the advent of Islam as the most important development of the movement that Muhammad began in Mecca and Medina in the first part of the 7th century. However, to contemporary observers in the period immediately following his death, it must have seemed … Continue reading Islamic History, part 30: the early Islamic military (7th-9th centuries CE)
Today in Middle Eastern history: the Turkish War of Independence begins (1919)
There’s a kind of symmetry in the fact that the Turkish War of Independence began around three years to the date after Britain and France signed the Sykes-Picot agreement on how to divide up the Arab world. Sykes-Picot, for better or worse, has become the symbol for all of the plans the Allies had for … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: the Turkish War of Independence begins (1919)
Today in Middle Eastern history: a bad day for the Crusades
May 18 was a really bad day for the Crusades. There are no fewer than three Crusades-related events we can talk about today that either involve Crusader crimes against humanity or major Crusader losses. Let’s go in chronological order. This is just a placeholder. If you’d like to read the rest please check out my … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: a bad day for the Crusades
Today in Middle Eastern history: Sykes-Picot is signed (1916)
Today is the anniversary of ISIS’s least-favorite arbitrarily-drawn line on a map, the Iraq-Syria boundary delineated by the Sykes-Picot agreement. Al-Jazeera has a pretty handy explainer on the agreement, though I think the headline oversells the content a little bit. Here’s another explainer over at Juan Cole’s Informed Comment that is pretty good. Or you can read my long-ago look … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: Sykes-Picot is signed (1916)
Today in Middle Eastern history: the Surrender of Kut (1916)
Today is the anniversary of one of the worst military fiascos in British history, the surrender of the 6th division of the Indian Army to the Ottomans at the Iraqi town of Kut. Kut followed right on the heels of the Battle of Ctesiphon in November 1915, and this epilogue turned that indecisive battle into a major strategic … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: the Surrender of Kut (1916)
Today in Middle Eastern history: Conrad I of Jerusalem is assassinated (1192)
The leaders of the medieval Islamic spiritual order known as the Assassins were certainly not the first people to come up with the idea of murdering one's political opponents. But the reason why the murder of a political leader is known as an "assassination" today is because these guys were very, very good at it. … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: Conrad I of Jerusalem is assassinated (1192)
Today in Caucasian history: the Battle of Bagrevand (775)
When Arab armies moved out of Arabia in the 630s they brought an end to the Roman-Persian balance of power that had defined western Asia for centuries. It’s likely that nobody, apart from the Romans and the Persians, felt this change more acutely than the Armenians. The Kingdom of Armenia had long been a buffer between … Continue reading Today in Caucasian history: the Battle of Bagrevand (775)
The Foreign Exchanges Companion 