Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

continued to inform foreign affairs in the modern world. The roots of the Sunni-Shia divide can be traced back to the days of the very first caliphs, while the Arab-Persian division that emerged in the eighth century lives on in the modern Middle East in the geopolitical rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The complex legacy of conflict and coexistence between Muslims, Jews, and Christians springs partially from the early medieval Arab conquests. Battles refracted through the lens of faith continue to rage, often on the selfsame sites they did 1,500 years ago: Palestine, Jerusalem, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and Libya. To take just one example, the city of Damascus was not besieged in just the 630s; it was assaulted by the armies of the Second Crusade in the 1120s, was besieged by Muslim Mongols and Turks in 1400, suffered religious massacres in the 1840s and 1860s, was bombed by the French in the 1920s, and has been fought over bitterly by the various factions of the present-day Syrian civil war. During the last of these conflicts, a notorious battle took place in a district of Damascus known as Yarmuk Camp. This is an incredible legacy. But it is not all. For more than anything else the Arab conquests laid the foundations for Islam’s rise as a major world religion. In 2015 it was reported that there were 1.8 billion Muslims in the world—80–85 percent of them Sunni, and 15–20 percent Shia. In the Middle East, Islam is by far the dominant religion, but it is also the lar...