The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died

by Philip Jenkins

In 1800, the population of the whole Middle East region was perhaps 33 million, a number that had grown only to 44 million by 1900. That 1900 figure was about the same as the national population of France, and considerably below the population of Germany. Ironically, this historic center of urbanization had utterly failed to compete with the growth of cities in the West. Still in 1900, only Constantinople could compete with the booming cities of Europe, while cities like Damascus, Alexandria, and Baghdad had a mere two or three hundred thousand residents apiece. Christians in the Middle and Near