Author: Gertrude Bell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781633913660
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 260
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Book Description
One very determined woman incontestably held her own and more with the great figures of the Middle East in the early twentieth century. That was Gertrude Bell. Highly strung, petulant, aggressive, and gossipy, she occasionally provided tea but rarely sympathy to the extraordinary group of British imperial administrators whose adventures centered on Basra at the head of the Gulf in 1914-1916. Not enough has been made of the Barra cabal as a group rather than individuals. Nor have the machinations of the 'Basra gang' had the attention given to figures such as Lawrence of Arabia and General Allenby, individuals who when all is said and done were not deeply involved in Gulf and Iraqi affairs. The Arab of Mesopotamia is a collection of once confidential briefing papers that Bell helped to produce for British army officers new to the Mesopotamian theater, published in Basra by a military printer. The tone confirms views that Gertrude Bell and her colleagues were interested in the possibility of playing on the world stage and wanted quiet in the shaikhdoms while they pursued notions of a Middle East empire that would rival the Indian empire. Heady plans were made for an Imperial service that would include Arabia, Iraq, the Trans-Jordan, and even the Sudan. While exiting, this 'mega outlook' was opposed to Arab concerns. The apotheosis for Bell was reached in 1921 when Winston Churchill called a famous meet- ing of forty Middle East experts in Cairo. The conference photography shows her as the lone woman. Secreted in the Semiramis Hotel, she and the other 'forty thieves' laid out policies whose failures (and Lawrence's disillusionment) are well known. Therein lies the tragedy of her life, perhaps more of a tragedy that than of Lawrence. Almost none of the undertakings to the Arabs to which she was an enthusiastic participant were realized. There were a number of these promises, although they were less publicized than those made in the famous McMahon letters. For example, the assurances at the 1916 durbar at Kuwait were equally dishonored: the shaikh of Kuwait received a CSI and Ibn Saud got the KCIE along with pledges that with the defeat of the Turks: "The dream of Arab unity ... has been brought nearer fulfillment than dreams are wont to come, but the role of presiding genius has been recast." Instead of an Arabian viceregality that would justify the wonderful title of 'Viceroys of the Gulf, ' or of a 'final' resolution of the region's conflicts, British Imperial administration be- tween the world wars became a long and unsatisfactory interlude in which little was accom- plished. Hobson remarks in Imperialism about the use of 'masked worlds' and an Imperial Genius for inconsistency: "Most of the men who have misled ... have first been obliged to mis- lead themselves." This was the case with Gertrude Bell, who committed suicide in 1926. After she and her friends departed the scene, the air went out if the balloon, and the 'countervailing disadvantages' of being misled became apparent to the Arabs. This little-known book is one key to heady days at Basra when the Middle East empire seemed likely.
Author: Lee Fratantuono
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1473883296
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192
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Book Description
This volume explores the Roman invasions and military operations in two distinct yet related areas: Mesopotamia and Arabia. In these far-flung regions of the ancient known world, Rome achieved the greatest point of expansion in the history of her Empire. Under the reign of the Emperor Trajan, the Roman Empire reached the point of maximum expansion made famous by maps of the world circa AD 120. Under the Severans, significant efforts were expended on a Roman dream of linking the two regions into one mighty provincial bulwark against Eastern enemies. Individual chapters detail the history of the conquest of these easternmost territories of the Empire, analyzing the opposing armies involved (Roman, Parthian, Sassanian, Arab) and the reasons for success and failure. The story of how Rome won and lost her Far East offers a paradigm for the rise and fall of the greatest military empire of the ancient world.
Author: Daniel T. Potts
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781409405351
Category : Arabian Peninsula
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
This volume focuses on the period between the conquest of the Achaemenid empire by Alexander the Great and the advent of Islam, dominated in the central regions of the Near East by the Seleucid, the Parthian and the finally the Sasanian dynasties. Brought together here are studies on the historical geography of Kerman and Khuzestan in the Seleucid period; the Greek and Parthian presence in Babylonia; popular religion and burial practice in Iran, Mesopotamia, and Arabia and the extent to which these do or do not reflect Zoroastrian orthodoxy; Roman, Parthian, Characene and Sasanian political influence in the Arabian peninsula; and Nestorian Christianity in eastern Arabia. These studies demonstrate how extraordinarily rich a field exists for the further investigation of Mesopotamia, Iran and Arabia in the later pre-Islamic era.
Author: Paul J. Rich
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1461633664
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
Gertrude Bell was one of a select group of Western Arabists who helped create the modern Middle East. She was arguably the single most influential individual in Iraq when the British attempted in the aftermath of World War I to create a nation out of regions that had long been different provinces of the Ottoman Empire. She was called upon to produce this succinct but insightful volume as a guide for the military officers and civil servants who were attempting to create an Iraqi government. A long dispute over whether the volume was actually written by her is settled in Dr. Paul Rich's introduction. It not only was written by Bell, but the reader can see in what she choose to emphasize just what her own views on the course that the development of Iraq should take. Unfortunately Bell's dreams of a successful outcome for Iraq in the aftermath of the war floundered, partly because of the ineptitude of the occupiers but partly too because of the irreconcilable factions that today, so many years later, remain an overwhelming obstacle to peace. Broken in spirit, Bell took her own life and joined Lawrence of Arabia in what is a pantheon of romantic if disillusioned admirers of the Arab lands.
Author: A. Leo Oppenheim
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022617767X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 494
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Book Description
"This splendid work of scholarship . . . sums up with economy and power all that the written record so far deciphered has to tell about the ancient and complementary civilizations of Babylon and Assyria."—Edward B. Garside, New York Times Book Review Ancient Mesopotamia—the area now called Iraq—has received less attention than ancient Egypt and other long-extinct and more spectacular civilizations. But numerous small clay tablets buried in the desert soil for thousands of years make it possible for us to know more about the people of ancient Mesopotamia than any other land in the early Near East. Professor Oppenheim, who studied these tablets for more than thirty years, used his intimate knowledge of long-dead languages to put together a distinctively personal picture of the Mesopotamians of some three thousand years ago. Following Oppenheim's death, Erica Reiner used the author's outline to complete the revisions he had begun. "To any serious student of Mesopotamian civilization, this is one of the most valuable books ever written."—Leonard Cottrell, Book Week "Leo Oppenheim has made a bold, brave, pioneering attempt to present a synthesis of the vast mass of philological and archaeological data that have accumulated over the past hundred years in the field of Assyriological research."—Samuel Noah Kramer, Archaeology A. Leo Oppenheim, one of the most distinguished Assyriologists of our time, was editor in charge of the Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute and John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Chicago.
Author: Hamish Cameron
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900438863X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 387
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Book Description
In Making Mesopotamia: Geography and Empire in a Romano-Iranian Borderland, Hamish Cameron examines the representation of the Mesopotamian Borderland in the geographical writing of Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Claudius Ptolemy, the anonymous Expositio Totius Mundi, and Ammianus Marcellinus. This inter-imperial borderland between the Roman Empire and the Arsacid and Sasanid Empires provided fertile ground for Roman geographical writers to articulate their ideas about space, boundaries, and imperial power. By examining these geographical descriptions, Hamish Cameron shows how each author constructed an image of Mesopotamia in keeping with the goals and context of their own work, while collectively creating a vision of Mesopotamia as a borderland space of movement, inter-imperial tension, and global engagement.
Author: Robert Chadwick
Publisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd.
ISBN: 9781904768784
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
First Civilizations is the second edition of a popular student text first published in 1996 in Montreal by Les Editions Champ Fleury. This much updated and expanded edition provides an introductory overview of the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. It was conceived primarily for students who have little or no knowledge of ancient history or archaeology. The book begins with the role of history and archaeology in understanding the past, and continues with the origins of agriculture and the formation of the Sumerian city-states in Mesopotamia. Three subsequent chapters concentrate on Assyrian and Babylonian history and culture. The second half of the book focuses on Egypt, begining with the physical environment of the Nile, the formation of the Egyptian state and the Old Kingdom. Subsequent chapters discuss the Middle Kingdom, the Hyksos period, and the 18th Dynasty, with space devoted to Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, the Ramesside period. The text ends with the Persian conquest of Mesopotamia and Egypt. First Civilizations also contains sections on astronomy, medicine, architecture, eschatology, religion, burial practices and mummification, and discusses the myths of Gilgamesh, Isis and Osiris. Each chapter has a basic bibliography which emphasizes English language encyclopedias, books and journals specializing in the ancient Near East.
Author: Gertrude Lowthian Bell
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739125625
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254
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Book Description
To understand contemporary Iraq and the ongoing crisis in the Middle East, no book provides a surer guide or more unsettling experience, written as it was for another war, another army, and another time. Gertrude Bell for a fleeting moment was the optimistic progenitor of the Iraq that today is becoming unglued.
Author: Victor J. Katz
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691114859
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 712
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Book Description
In recent decades it has become obvious that mathematics has always been a worldwide activity. But this is the first book to provide a substantial collection of English translations of key mathematical texts from the five most important ancient and medieval non-Western mathematical cultures, and to put them into full historical and mathematical context. The Mathematics of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Islam gives English readers a firsthand understanding and appreciation of these cultures' important contributions to world mathematics. The five section authors--Annette Imhausen (Egypt), Eleanor Robson (Mesopotamia), Joseph Dauben (China), Kim Plofker (India), and J. Lennart Berggren (Islam)--are experts in their fields. Each author has selected key texts and in many cases provided new translations. The authors have also written substantial section introductions that give an overview of each mathematical culture and explanatory notes that put each selection into context. This authoritative commentary allows readers to understand the sometimes unfamiliar mathematics of these civilizations and the purpose and significance of each text. Addressing a critical gap in the mathematics literature in English, this book is an essential resource for anyone with at least an undergraduate degree in mathematics who wants to learn about non-Western mathematical developments and how they helped shape and enrich world mathematics. The book is also an indispensable guide for mathematics teachers who want to use non-Western mathematical ideas in the classroom.
Author: Gwendolyn Leick
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810863243
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301
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Book Description
The Greek name Mesopotamia means 'land between the rivers.' The Romans used this term for an area that they controlled only briefly (between 115 and 117 A.D.): the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, from the south Anatolian mountains ranges to the Persian Gulf. It comprises the civilizations of Sumer and Akkad (third millennium B.C.) as well as the later Babylonian and Assyrian empires of the second and first millennium. Although the 'history' of Mesopotamia in the strict sense of the term only begins with the inscriptions of Sumerian rulers around the 27th century B.C., the foundations for Mesopotamian civilization, especially the beginnings of irrigation and the emergence of large permanent settlements, were laid much earlier, in the fifth and fourth millennium. The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Mesopotamia defines concepts, customs, and notions peculiar to the civilization of ancient Mesopotamia, from adult adoption to ziggurats. This is accomplished through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, appendixes, and hundreds of cross-reference dictionary entries on religion, economy, society, geography, and important kings and rulers.
