Abdulmejid II was a talented painter, music enthusiast and Francophile. He was also the last Ottoman Caliph, expelled from Istanbul in March 1924 when Turkey abolished the 1,300-year-old Caliphate.From his villa on the French Riviera, Abdulmejid launched a plan to resurrect the institution and transform world history. Indian politician Shaukat Ali brokered a marital alliance between the Ottomans and the Nizam of Hyderabad, the world’s richest prince, who governed a state the size o...

This major new history of the Ottoman dynasty reveals a diverse empire that straddled East and West.The Ottoman Empire has long been depicted as the Islamic, Asian antithesis of the Christian, European West. But the reality was starkly different: the Ottomans’ multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious domain reached deep into Europe’s heart. Indeed, the Ottoman rulers saw themselves as the new Romans. Recounting the Ottomans’ remarkable rise from a frontier pri...

The key to understanding the Arab world today is unlocking its past. In this authoritative account, John McHugo takes the reader through the political, social and intellectual history of the Arabs from the Roman Empire right up to the present day. Going beyond the headlines, he describes in vivid detail a series of key turning points in Arab history - from the mission of the Prophet Muhammad and the expansion of Islam to the region's interaction with Western ideas and the rise of Islamism....

Kashmir is one of the most protracted and bloody occupations in the world-and one of the most ignored. Under an Indian military rule that, at half a million strong, exceeds the total number of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, freedom of speech is non-existent, and human- rights abuses and atrocities are routinely visited on its Muslim-majority population. In the last two decades alone, over seventy thousand people have died. Ignored by its own corrupt politicians, abandoned by Pakistan a...

From Fouad Ajami, an acclaimed author and chronicler of Arab politics, comes a compelling account of how a generation of Arab intellectuals tried to introduce cultural renewals in their homelands through the forces of modernity and secularism. Ultimately, they came to face disappointment, exile, and, on occasion, death. Brilliantly weaving together the strands of a tumultuous century in Arab political thought, history, and poetry, Ajami takes us from the ruins of Beirut's once glittering m...

The 1400-year-old schism between Sunnis and Shi`is has rarely been as toxic as it is today, feeding wars and communal strife in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and many other countries, with tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran escalating. In this richly layered and engrossing account, John McHugo reveals how this great divide occurred. Charting the story of Islam from the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad to the present day, he describes the conflicts that raged over the succes...

**The definitive history of Iran, from the ancient Persian empires to today.“Michael Axworthy’s deft untangling of the country’s history, from the advent of Zoroastrianism to the 1979 revolution, is a stunning achievement.” ―Guardian**Iran is a land of contradictions. It is an Islamic republic, but one in which only 1.4 percent of the population attend Friday prayers. Iran’s religious culture encompasses the most censorious and dogmatic Shi’a Muslim clerics in the ...

**A sophisticated look at Pakistan—one of the most overlooked, yet vastly consequential, countries of modern times“Lieven’s eye for detail, command of subcontinental history and old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting make this in many ways an excellent primer on Pakistan.” —Wall Street JournalNamed a Best Book of the Year by The Daily Telegraph and The Independent**Since Pakistan’s formation as a modern nation state, onlookers have doubted i...

Over thirteen centuries, Baghdad has enjoyed both cultural and commercial pre-eminence, boasting artistic and intellectual sophistication and an economy once the envy of the world. It was here, in the time of the Caliphs, that the Thousand and One Nights were set. Yet it has also been a city of great hardships, beset by epidemics, famines, floods, and numerous foreign invasions which have brought terrible bloodshed. This is the history of its storytellers and its tyrants, of its philosophe...

This "brilliant and erudite" history by the award-winning Arabist provides vital context for understanding the contemporary Middle East (Patrick Seale, author of Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East).From Algeria and Libya to Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, the Arab world commands Western headlines. Nowhere else does the unfolding of events have such significant consequences for America. And yet its complex politics and cultures elude the grasp of most W...

'Along with Edward Said, Ilan Pappe is the most eloquent writer of Palestinian history.' New Statesman The Husayni family of Jerusalem dominated Palestinian history for 250 years, from the Ottoman times through to the end of the British Mandate. At the height of the family's political influence, positions in Jerusalem could only be obtained through its power base.In this compelling political biography, Ilan Pappe traces the rise of the Husaynis from a provincial Ottoman elite clan into the...