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Introduction: The General at the Tomb On July 25, 1920, French troops led by General Henri Gouraud entered Damascus. They had just routed the Arab forces at the Battle of Maysalun, ending the short-lived dream of an independent Arab Kingdom in Syria. According to a persistent, though historically debated, anecdote, one of Gouraud’s first acts upon entering the city was to visit the tomb of Saladin, the legendary sultan who had expelled the Crusaders from Jerusalem in the 12th century. Standing before the sepulcher, the French High Commissioner is said to have declared, “Saladin, we have returned.” Whether the event happened…
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Introduction: The Villa Devachan and the New World Order On April 19, 1920, the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers convened at the Villa Devachan, an ornate Edwardian residence in the Italian resort town of San Remo. The setting was tranquil, overlooking the Mediterranean Riviera, but the business at hand was the definitive partition of the Middle East. For eighteen months following the Armistice of Mudros in October 1918, the fate of the Ottoman EmpireOttoman Empire ottoman-empire The Islamic empire centred on Istanbul that ruled Anatolia, the Arab Middle East, North Africa, and southeastern Europe from the fourteenth century to…
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Introduction: The Geometry of a Wartime Alliance In July 1915, a courier traveling from Mecca arrived at the British residency in Cairo carrying a letter addressed to the High Commissioner, Sir Henry McMahon. The letter was signed by Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca and the Emir of the Hejaz. It contained a proposal that would fundamentally alter the British strategy in the Middle East: an offer to launch an armed uprising against the Ottoman EmpireOttoman Empire ottoman-empire The Islamic empire centred on Istanbul that ruled Anatolia, the Arab Middle East, North Africa, and southeastern Europe from the fourteenth…
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Introduction: The Arab World Meets Bandung In April 1955, as the leaders of twenty-nine newly independent states gathered in Bandung, Indonesia, one figure stood out among the delegates from the Arab world — Gamal Abdel NasserNasser nasser Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918–70), President of Egypt from 1956 to 1970, who nationalised the Suez Canal, championed pan-Arab nationalism, and became the most charismatic and influential Arab leader of the twentieth century. His political legacy is inseparable from the 1967 military catastrophe that destroyed the pan-Arab project he embodied. Nasser came to power through the 1952 Free Officers’ coup that overthrew King Farouk,…