A History of Islamic Societies

The Arab Middle East can be divided into two zones: the Fertile Crescent countries including Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine; and the Arabian Peninsula countries of Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the smaller Gulf states. The Arabian Peninsula and Arab North Africa will be considered in the following chapters.

The Arab Fertile Crescent countries, like Turkey, had their origins in the Ottoman Empire, but they developed in a different way. In the case of Turkey, with the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the state elites absorbed European influences and assumed control of the construction of a Turkish national state and society. In the Arab Fertile Crescent, there were no organized states, no continuing governing elite, and only the beginnings of national political movements. There was no widely accepted concept of an Arab nation. In this chapter, we will discuss Arab elites and Arab nationalism in the late Ottoman era, the formation of colonial states after World War I, the emergence of independent states after World War II, and their history to the present. With independence, authoritarian military and family regimes came to dominate most countries, and the new states were replete with unresolved conflicts among national, ethnic, and religious sectarian identities. The new states attempted to control Islamist activities, but since the 1970s, Islamic opposition movements have generated profound political and cultural changes.