A History of Modern Middle East William Cleveland

This comprehensive work provides a penetrating analysis of modern Middle Eastern history, from the Ottoman and Egyptian reforms, through the challenge of Western imperialism, to the Iranian Revolution and the recent Gulf War. After introducing the reader to the region's history from the origins of Islam in the seventh century, Cleveland focuses on the past two centuries of profound and often dramatic change. While built around a framework of political history, the book also carefully integrates social, cultural, and economic developments into a single, carefully crafted account.Cleveland sets the stage with a superb, concise overview of the long-term, general patterns of Middle Eastern history. The book opens with a portrayal of Islam that stresses an understanding of this great world religion and culture on its own terms and in its specific historical setting. The rich potential of this culture manifested itself in shifting centers of Islamic florescence, culminating in the rise of the Ottoman and Safaris Empires as the central political and social entities of the Middle East in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. The book next examines the crucial developments of the nineteenth century an era characterized by attempts at the self-transformation of Middle Eastern societies, a process sometimes misleadingly referred to as modernization” or Westernization.”