The Middle East: A Political History from 395 to the Present
Jean-Pierre Filiu
Polity, £30, 356 pages
This is a work of detailed knowledge about its subject and comprehensive in scope, even if its readability masks the scholarship behind the text. It alleges that other histories of the Middle East have concentrated on the religious factors underlying the nodal events which characterise the region, and which are now once again the focus of world attention. The author declares that his is a “secular” history (une histoire laïque du Moyen-Orient of the original French title). If by this he means that there are factors such as power struggles, greed for territory or wealth, corruption, gratuitous cruelty and the like, this cannot be gainsaid.
