Showing all 13 resultsSorted by latest
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£25.00
In 1217, the crusader states were in a highly fragile condition. The Fourth Crusade had failed, and Jerusalem had not been recovered. The crusaders now set their sights on Egypt. If the breadbasket of the Mediterranean could be conquered, long-term Christian control of the Holy Land could be ensured. Led by the rulers of Hungary and Austria, and backed by the Knights Templar and Hospitaller, the Fifth Crusade was launched. Thomas Smith tells the gripping story of the crusade for Egypt. Looking at a wide range of Christian and Muslim sources, Smith sheds new light on the brutal reality of medieval combat on land and water.
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£12.99
A vivid and authoritative account of the Middle East's recent history to the present day, from the BBC’s long-serving correspondent in the region.
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£22.00
Fuelled by Iranians’ dreams of social justice and political freedom, the 1979 revolution swept aside the shah’s ailing, repressive monarchy. But the revolution’s leader – Ayatollah Khomeini and his acolytes – built a system in its place that served his narrow Islamic fundamentalist faction, and worsened every failing and brutality that had existed under the shah. In ‘Stolen Revolution’, award-winning journalists Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Yeganeh Torbati tell the entwined stories of six Iranians, providing a powerful new lens on Iran’s recent history in all its bitter twists and stubborn hope.
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£25.00
Written while the organisation he directs, Forensic Architecture, works to produce evidence for the International Court of Justice’s genocide case against Israel, Weizman explores the larger geographical and historical context, from the displacement of the Nakba in 1948 to the present day. He shows how architectural and territorial analysis is key to understanding the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised. The book is an extraordinary and eye-opening journey through the ‘deep cartography’ of the area extending from Gaza’s subterranean tunnels through to its militarised topography, settlements and barriers. Territory is never a neutral backdrop nor the location within which a colonisation takes place. Instead, it is a mechanism by which colonisation is undertaken and key to understanding how Israel’s attack on Gaza in the wake of 7 October has escalated into violence so extreme as to, Weizman argues, meet the definition of
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£20.00
Palestinian Aziz Abu Sarah and Israeli Maoz Inon are unlikely peacemakers, dedicated to finding a solution to the bitter war that has decimated historical, ancient land and ended family lines. Despite the losses they have suffered, the resolve of their friendship has taught them that strength and unity are more powerful than the violence of separation. Throughout their travels, they have been constantly asked: In the face of so much pain and suffering on both sides, when there have been so many lives lost and families shattered, how can they ever find hope? Their answer is always the same. One cannot find hope. We must create it. In this book, Sarah and Inon take readers on their unforgettable weeklong journey across the holy land. They explore each other’s personal and national histories in a land of competing narratives, amid the turbulent push and pull of near constant war, and the recent devastation that has rocked the world.
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£11.99
Before the revolution, the Shah of Iran seemed invincible. The world watched in awe as he commanded a huge army and oversaw an economy awash with billions of dollars of oil revenues. The regime’s secret police had crushed communist opposition and the Shah appeared to have bought off the conservative Muslim clergy inside the country. On the international stage, Iran had become an invaluable ally to the West during the Cold War. But village streets spoke of a different country – people derided the Shah as an American lackey and blamed him for economic inequality, for spending recklessly on lavish parties and for ignoring the Muslim majority. When a volcanic religious revolution erupted, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, the Shah was forced into exile. How did it all go so wrong? This book reveals how the Iranian Revolution was as world-shattering an event as the French and Russian revolutions, and how its repercussions are still felt today.
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£12.99
In ancient times, the vast area that stretches across what is now modern-day Iraq and Syria saw the rise and fall of epic civilizations who built the foundations of our world today. It was in this region, which we call Mesopotamia, that history was written down for the very first time. With startling modernity, the people of Mesopotamia left behind hundreds of thousands of fragments of their everyday lives. Immortalised in clay and stone are intimate details from 4000 years ago. We find accounts of an enslaved person negotiating their freedom, a dog’s paw prints as it accidentally stepped into fresh clay, a parent desperately trying to soothe a baby with a lullaby, and countless receipts for beer. Historian Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid examines what these people chose to preserve in their own words about their lives, creating the first historical records and allowing us to brush hands with them thousands of years later.
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£40.00
Few countries have had as vexed a political history as Syria. Carved out of the Ottoman empire at the end of the First World War, Syria was brutally ruled as a French colony, cut off by a series of new borders with equally newly created neighbours that pulled apart families, trade networks and political assumptions that had already been ravaged by the war. Syria’s subsequent history has been a series of attempts to make sense of its borders, including a failed attempt in the late 1950s to unite with Egypt and several humiliations at the hands of Israel’s armed forces. It has been a satellite of France, an ally of the USSR and, most recently, torn apart by a civil war that has now been in turn subverted by the rise of the Islamic State, an entity that refuse to acknowledge any of Syria’s existing borders.
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£40.00
From its emergence in seventh century Arabia, Islam has been a faith on the move.Over the span of a thousand years, armies, missionaries, and merchants carried it to the edges of Europe, the coasts of Southeast Asia and the remote interior of China. From the Arab caliphate to the Mongol empire, from West Africa to the Philippines, Islam was a world-shaping force. By the nineteenth century, Muslims lived everywhere from South Africa to North America. In the age of European empires, through two World Wars and a Cold War, and into the globalised and fractured 21st century, Muslims lived through global conflicts and everyday struggles for adaptation and survival. Historian James McDougall charts the epic global story of Islam’s origins and transformations, as Muslims adapted to their changing times from late antiquity to the digital age, constantly remaking their own worlds as the wider world around them changed.
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£25.00
When the Inter-Continental Hotel opened in Kabul in 1969, it reflected the hopes of the country – a glistening white edifice that embodied Afghanistan’s dreams of becoming an affluent, modern power. Five decades later, and the Inter-Continental is a dilapidated, shrapnel-damaged shell. It has endured civil wars, terrorist attacks, the US occupation, and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban. But its decaying grandeur still hints at ordinary Afghans’ hopes of stability and prosperity. Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, has been staying at the Inter-Continental since 1988. She has spent decades meeting its staff and guests, and listening to their stories. And now, she uses their experiences to offer an evocative history of modern Afghanistan.
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£16.99
When Europe’s Great War engulfed the Ottoman Empire, Arab nationalists rose in revolt against the Turks. The British supported the Arabs’ fight for an independent state and sent an intelligence officer, T.E. Lawrence, to join Prince Faisal, leader of the Arab army and a descendant of the Prophet. In October 1918, Faisal, Lawrence and the Arabs victoriously entered Damascus, where they declared a constitutional government in an independent Greater Syria. At the Paris Peace Conference, Faisal won the support of President Woodrow Wilson, who sent an American commission to Syria to survey the political aspirations of its people. However, other Entente leaders at Paris – and later San Remo – schemed against the Arab democracy, which they saw as a threat to their colonial rule.
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£11.99
The Balfour Declaration of 1917 promised the Jews a homeland where the Palestinians already lived. Despite constant bloodshed and uprisings, that impossible arrangement continued until 1948 when it was ended by what Israelis call the War of Independence and the Palestinians the Nakba, or Tragedy. Worse was to follow with conclusion of the Six Day War in 1967 and Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, previously respectively under Jordanian and Egyptian rule. Since then, the Palestinian story has been one of occupation and resistance. In this book, Professor Khalidi provides a thorough overview of this enduring and controversial conflict.
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£12.99
This text tells the story of Marjane Satrapi’s life in Tehran from six to 14, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah’s regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution & the devastating effects of war with Iraq. Satrapi paints a portrait of daily life in Iran & of the bewildering contradictions between home life & public life.
