Top products from r/MiddleEastHistory

We found 15 product mentions on r/MiddleEastHistory. We ranked the 15 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top comments that mention products on r/MiddleEastHistory:

u/gritztastic · 1 pointr/MiddleEastHistory

I'm in the middle of the book Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History by Thomas Barfield, and from what I can gather, the country is most valued for it's 'buffer zone' status. Sure, There are a few cities worth ruling (Herat, Kandahar, Kabul), but most of the rest of the country is not worth the cost of central administration.

While there may be a vast quantity of metals and other valuable commodities underground, is it profitable to extract and export (security for facility, security transporting to regional hub, building/maintaining roads, bribes at checkpoints, bribes to gov't officials, etc)?

ETA: Here's a fun Ethnic Groups Map of Afghanistan from the Gulf 2000 Project. More Maps Here

u/alltorndown · 2 pointsr/MiddleEastHistory

I would also recommend the textbook that was used for my Modern Middle East courses when I was an undergrad. It's perfect for what you're doing, as its grouped by themes and then explaining where each country/region falls in.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0582256518/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1466250185&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=malcolm+yapp&dpPl=1&dpID=51ZIEyetseL&ref=plSrch

Unfortunately, it looks twice the price in the US, I suppose that's the US textbook market for you, but I'm sure you can pick it up second hand, the editions are broadly the same, and if it's just you doing it for lesson plans/copying the odd section (you can photocopy up to 10% of a book here in the UK), then that'll be fine.

I also second Hourani, and want to mention his protege, Eugene Rogan's book simply entitled "the Arabs", published by penguin (uk) and basic (us). A bit of an update on Hourani's no less impressive text.

u/King_Cropduster · 1 pointr/MiddleEastHistory

The Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun is a great read if you're interested in early modern Islamic history.

u/Moon_Mist · 2 pointsr/MiddleEastHistory

This book is one of the most valuable tools in learning about the context of modern events in the middle east

u/TheChocolateEinstein · 2 pointsr/MiddleEastHistory

It's a crazy complicated history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Some of the earliest Jewish settlements were to escape Russian pogroms in the late 1800s. During this time the area we refer to as Israel or Palestine now was under control of the Ottoman Empire, which were relatively religiously tolerant provided citizens paid their taxes to include the Jizyah. Fast forward about 30-40 years, the Ottoman Empire (one of the Central Powers during WW1) is dissolved into many of the modern day states of the middle east by the British and French (Sykes-Picot Agreement). One of the easiest ways to see this is the hard angular lines of country's borders in the middle east. Anyway, when the the British and French divided the territories of the Ottoman Empire, the British ended up with Palestine. The British ran a provisional government of sorts during this time and ultimately the Jewish settlers of the area had far more experience with Western European notions of bureaucracy than the Arab Palestinians (far more accustomed the the rule of authoritarian's like the Ottoman Sultan). Anyway this continues for roughly the next 50 years with Jewish settlement continuing in several waves referred to as Aliyahs (Return in Hebrew if I remember correctly). Post WW2 the UN grants Israel statehood. This is a crazy crazy simplification of a highly complex issue but if your interested in reading about it, I would look into these 3 books.

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Land, Labor and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Land & Power: The Zionist Resort to Force

The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Crisis Revisited