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The long-term geopolitics of the pre-modern Middle East
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 May 2016
Abstract
The geopolitical shape of the Middle East has varied greatly over time. This article is concerned with the period from Late Antiquity to the end of the eighteenth century, during which four basic configurations succeeded each other. Late Antiquity was marked by the coexistence of two large empires, one based in the western Middle East and the other in the eastern Middle East; the early Islamic period saw the dominance of a single empire the location of whose centre was unstable; the medieval period was characterised by the absence of large and lasting empires and a shifting plurality of smaller states; finally in the Ottoman period we see the renewed dominance of a single empire, now based in the western Middle East. Are these changes to be seen as random fluctuations, or can they be explained in terms of a small number of underlying factors? The point of this article is to argue that a focus on the potential imperial heartlands of the Middle East can help us to explain much—though not all—of the changing geopolitical configuration of the region.
- Type
- Part I: Pre-Mongol Period
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- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2016
References
1 An earlier version of this article was the basis of one of the Merle Curti Lectures which I gave in 2014 at the University of Wisconsin, where David taught for many years. I am indebted to Timothy May for his comments on a draft.
2 From time to time I will refer to configurations as far back as Achaemenid times, but no further. The geopolitics of the region before the coming of the Medes and Persians were clearly different, and I make no attempt to cover them in this essay, even in asides. See, for example, Bedford, P. R., “The Neo-Assyrian Empire”, in Morris, I. and Scheidel, W. (ed.), The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium (Oxford, 2009), p. 30 Google Scholar.
3 One consequence of this is that many of the claims I make in this article will be left unfootnoted. Even where I do give supporting references, I make no attempt to be comprehensive in citing relevant literature.
4 This desert is just the kind of territory that the second-century historian Appian of Alexandria tells us that a sensible empire would not wish to rule; from an imperial perspective it was populated by “barbarian tribes, which are poor and unprofitable” (Appian's Roman History with an English Translation by Horace White (London 1912–13), vol. I, pp. 10–11, quoted in Hopkins, K., “The political economy of the Roman Empire”, in Morris, I. and Scheidel, W. (ed.), The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium (Oxford, 2009), p. 185)Google Scholar. As to the client states, the kingdoms of the Albanians, Armenians, Georgians, Ghassānids, and Lakhmids had all disappeared before the rise of Islam.
5 The complementarity was already alluded to by Cyrus the Great, if we are to believe Herodotus: “Soft lands breed soft men; wondrous fruits of the earth and valiant warriors grow not from the same soil” (Herodotus IX. 122; Greek text and English translation in Herodotus with an English Translation by A. D. Godley (London, 1946–50), vol. IV, pp. 300–301).
6 The widespread recognition of Ibn al-Zubayr while he resided in Mecca as Caliph during the civil war of the 680s constitutes an exception, but a transient one, and in terms of the exercise of real power doubtless a hollow one. See Hawting, G. R., The First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate AD 661–750 (London, 1986), pp. 48–49 Google Scholar.
7 Thanks to the Zangids it served a crucial role in the twelfth century as a stepping stone from the Seljūq empire based in Iran to the Ayyūbid empire (if we can call it that) based in Egypt, but the Zangid state was not itself an empire.
8 Waines, D., “The Third Century Internal Crisis of the Abbasids”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, XX (1977), pp. 286–287 Google Scholar. As Waines aptly comments, “Iraq had lost its primacy in the empire as a source of revenue”.
9 For a concise discussion of the Iraqi irrigation system and the damage it sustained in this period, see Waines, “The Third Century Internal Crisis of the Abbasids”, pp. 287–295.
10 For the longevity of the Artuqids in the Jazīra—from around 1101 to 1409—see the entry on the dynasty in Bosworth, C. E., The New Islamic Dynasties: A Chronological and Genralogical Manual (New York, 1996), no. 96Google Scholar.
11 A telling detail is the fact that five hundred Turks who crossed the Dardanelles in the early fourteenth century to join the Catalans in raiding in Thrace then found themselves stuck for two years on the European side of the straits, unable to cross back (Encyclopaedia of Islam, second edition (Leiden, 1960–2009), vol. II, p. 983, in the article “Gelibolu” (H. İnalcık)).
12 See Bosworth, The New Islamic Dynasties, Chapters 4–6, 9–12, 14.
13 For indication of the extent of this exploitation in the sixteenth-century Ottoman context, see İnalcık, H. and Quataert, D. (ed.), An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 82–83 Google Scholar, 540. We have no comparable data for Late Antiquity.
14 Baybars left Aleppo early in April 1277 and was back in Syria in mid-May ( Amitai-Preiss, R., Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-Īlkhānid War, 1260–1281 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 168, 175–176CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
15 Syria was far better endowed with pastureland than Egypt, but a letter addressed by Hülegü to Louis IX in 1262 implies that the limited extent of Syrian pasturage was a constraint on Mongol military activity there ( Morgan, D. O., “The Mongols in Syria, 1260–1300”, in Edbury, P. W. (ed.), Crusade and Settlement (Cardiff, 1985), p. 233 Google Scholar; for a translation of the passage, see Amitai, R., Holy War and Rapprochement: Studies in the Relations between the Mamluk Sultanate and the Mongol Ilkhanate (1260–1335) (Turnhout, 2013), p. 30 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Compare the Turcoman abandonment of Syria in the 1090s ( Cahen, C., “The Turkish Invasion: The Selchükids”, in A History of the Crusades, (ed.) Setton, K. M. (Madison, 1969–89), vol. 1, Chapter 5, pp. 164–165 Google Scholar).
16 For the figures given in the sources for the number of Royal mamlūks under the Mamlūk Sultanate see Ayalon, D., “Studies on the Structure of the Mamluk Army”, in Ayalon, D., Studies on the Mamlūks of Egypt (1250–1517) (London, 1977), pp. 222–228 Google Scholar; for the numbers of mamlūks of Amīrs, see Ayalon, “Studies on the Structure of the Mamluk Army—II”, in the same volume, pp. 462–464; and for figures for the size of the Mamlūk army as a whole, see Ayalon, “Studies on the Structure of the Mamluk Army—III”, in the same volume, pp. 70–73. The highest total figure with any credibility is 24,000 horsemen, given by Maqrīzī for 1315–16 (Ayalon, “Studies on the Structure of the Mamluk Army—III”, p. 70).
17 For figures relating to Mongol armies, see Morgan, D. O., “The Mongol Armies in Persia”, Der Islam, LVI (1979), pp. 82–88 Google Scholar (where the surprise is the small size of Seljūq armies).
18 For the role of native Egyptians in the armies of the Ptolemies, see Lloyd, A. B., “The Ptolemaic Period (332–30 BC)”, in Shaw, I. (ed.), The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford, 2000), pp. 401–402 Google Scholar. For the exclusion of Egyptians from the Roman legions, see Ritner, R. K., “Egypt under Roman Rule: The Legacy of Ancient Egypt”, in The Cambridge History of Egypt, (ed.) Petry, C. F. and Daly, M. W. (Cambridge, 1998), vol. I, p. 6 Google Scholar.
19 See Morgan, D., Medieval Persia 1040–1797 (London 1988), p. 117 Google Scholar.
20 More precisely, the aridity gradient runs from the north west to the south east: very little of Turkey is desert, whereas most of Saudi Arabia is.