Author: David B Ottaway
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802777643
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
"Just how oil, arms, and Allah have served over time either to bind or sunder the United States and Saudi Arabia relationship is the focus of this book," writes David Ottaway, who has chronicled "the special relationship" over the course of three decades at the Washington Post. No two governments and societies could be more different, and yet we have been bound together since1945 by vital national security interests, based on a simple quid pro quo: Saudi oil at reasonable prices in return for U.S. protection of the House of Saud from all foreign foes. However, the balance points of the relationship-often tenuous even in peacetime-have been fractured by the attacks of 9/11 and the U.S.'s subsequent invasion of Iraq: the price of oil has skyrocketed and Saudi Arabia has been powerless to stop its rise; the U.S. invasion of Iraq has unleashed the prospect of a Shi'ite-dominated regime allied to Iran on Sunni Saudi Arabia's borders; and militant elements within Saudi Arabia are ever more threatening. Not since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran has the House of Saud felt itself in such peril, and the Saudis have not forgotten the inability, or unwillingness, of the U.S. to save the Shah. Nobody has been more emblematic of the Saudi-U.S. relationship, nobody has been at its center for longer, than Prince Bandar, the first Saud royal ever to serve as ambassador to Washington. David Ottaway's personal connection to the prince has allowed him unparalleled insight into the complex geopolitics that govern and have governed Saudi Arabia's dance with the United States, and his book, coming at a crucial juncture, will examine what new common ground may be found between the two countries, and what may ultimately pull them apart.
Author: Alan Mikhail
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571331920
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 450
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Book Description
The Ottoman Empire was a hub of flourishing intellectual fervor, geopolitical power, and enlightened pluralistic rule. At the helm of its ascent was the omnipotent Sultan Selim I (1470-1520), who, with the aid of his extraordinarily gifted mother, Gülbahar, hugely expanded the empire, propelling it onto the world stage. Aware of centuries of European suppression of Islamic history, Alan Mikhail centers Selim's Ottoman Empire and Islam as the very pivots of global history, redefining such world-changing events as Christopher Columbus's voyages - which originated, in fact, as a Catholic jihad that would come to view Native Americans as somehow "Moorish" - the Protestant Reformation, the transatlantic slave trade, and the dramatic Ottoman seizure of the Middle East and North Africa. Drawing on previously unexamined sources and written in gripping detail, Mikhail's groundbreaking account vividly recaptures Selim's life and world. An historical masterwork, God's Shadow radically reshapes our understanding of a world we thought we knew.A leading historian of his generation, Alan Mikhail, Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at Yale University, has reforged our understandings of the past through his previous three prize-winning books on the history of Middle East.
Author: Fred Halliday
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Arabia
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Author: Mai Yamani
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857731106
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 150
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Book Description
Is Saudi Arabia really a homogeneous Wahhabi dominated state? In 1932 the Al Saud family incorporated the kingdom of Hijaz, once the cultural hub of the Arabian world, in to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The urban, cosmopolitan Hijazis were absorbed in to a new state whose codes of behavior and rules were determined by the Najdis, an ascetic desert people, from whom the Al Saud family came. But the Saudi rulers failed to fully integrate the Hijaz, which retains a distinctive identity to this day. In "Cradle of Islam", the product of years spent in Mecca, Medina, Jeddah and Taif, Mai Yamani traces the fortunes of the distinctive and resilient culture of the Hijazis, from the golden age of Hashemite Mecca to Saudi domination to its current resurgence. The Hijazis today emphasise their regional heritage in religious ritual, food, dress and language as a response to the 'Najdification' of everyday life. The Hijazi experience shows the vitality of cultural diversity in the face of political repression in the Arab world.
Author: Jan Morris
Publisher: Eland Publishing
ISBN: 9781906011178
Category : Oman
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
An account of the first crossing of the Omani desert by motorcar, as Jan Morris accompanied the Sultan on his royal progress, with the winds of change - oil and revolution - in the background.
Author: Madawi al-Rasheed
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521644129
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
Saudi Arabia is a wealthy and powerful country which wields influence in the West and across the Islamic world. Yet it remains a closed society. Its history in the twentieth century is dominated by the story of state formation. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Ibn Sa'ud fought a long campaign to bring together a disparate people from across the Arabian peninsula. In 1932 the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was born. Madawi al-Rasheed traces its extraordinary history from the age of emirates in the nineteenth century, through the 1990 Gulf War, to the present day. She fuses chronology with analysis, personal experience with oral histories, and draws on local and foreign documents to illuminate the social and cultural life of the Saudis. This is a rich and rewarding book which will be invaluable to students, and to all those trying to understand the enigma of Saudi Arabia.
Author: Christiane Bird
Publisher: Random House Incorporated
ISBN: 0345469402
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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Book Description
A dramatic account of the slave trade in the early 19th century Indian Ocean is presented through the stories of the Omani Sultan Said and his daughter, Princess Salme, offering insight into the Arabian Peninsula kingdom's lucrative growth and ties to America.
Author: Sergey Plekhanov
Publisher: Trident Press Ltd
ISBN: 9781900724708
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
Author: William Facey
Publisher: Arabian Publishing Limited
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
Until 1986, the farmhouse al-'Udhaibat was a tumbledown, neglected mud-brick ruin, no different from many other such old buildings which have survived in Saudi Arabia. It was unmaintained and-- as all buildings of sun-dried mud will, if left-- was quietly sliding into oblivion. The restoration of this farmhouse developed into a complex project, with important implications for rural housing and the place of traditional materials in modern building. Al-'Udhaibat has become a source of inspiration for the new generation of Saudi architects.
Author: Peter Fibiger Bang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107022673
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 399
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Book Description
This book explores the aspiration to universal, imperial rule across Eurasian history from antiquity to the eighteenth century.
