Review by New York Times Review
Muslim rulers, Zachary Karabell says, did not force conversion upon their subjects. MANY Westerners think the world would be safer if it were less Muslim, more Western. And in the Middle East and beyond, many Muslims are horrified by our arrogance; a tiny minority respond with violence. Yet the so-called clash of civilizations, as Zachary Karabell's important new book demonstrates, draws strength from a profoundly partial reading of history. "Peace Be Upon You" is a polemic in the service of peace - readable, accessible and, maybe, indispensable. Karabell, the author of "Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal," begins with a brief but very clear account of early Islam, turning easy assumptions on their heads. He explains that the faith was not created in direct opposition to the other monotheistic religions; it built upon them, and against the tribal pantheism of seventh-century Arabia. Muslims believe that with Muhammad, the revelation given to earlier prophets was perfected. Islam was generally not spread by the sword, either. True, a Muslim military caste defeated, and replaced, existing rulers, Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian or pagan. Still, ordinary life went on. Even the dreaded jihad, Karabell writes, was an ambiguous concept, and could mean a moral program of self-discipline and purification. Karabell's Islam is a multifaceted faith that has no pope, no single interpretation of the law. In Muhammad's lifetime the holy city of Medina was an ideal, never "a viable model for Muslim society." After the Arabs conquered the Middle East scarcely a decade following the Prophet's death in 632, they faced the problem of how to govern the conquered. What, in effect, would Muslim society be in the real world? The short answer, Karabell says, was: tolerant. Pragmatism prevailed in most Muslim states from then on, for nearly 1,400 years. In both North Africa and Spain, ordinary people sometimes converted, hoping for access to wealth and status. Often the conversions were sincere. They were welcomed, within limits, but they were very rarely forced. Only reverse conversions were anathema to the Muslim authorities: apostasy was a crime. Islamic rulers, like rulers anywhere, enjoyed the benefits of the powerful, financed by public taxation, while the public, as usual, grumbled, married, had children, died. The rulers spent the money in different ways, depending on their outlook and opportunities; some pursued wild game, others translations of Greek philosophy. Some were strict and pious, others drank and recited poetry. Harun al-Rashid, best known from "A Thousand and One Nights," did them all together. Jerusalem fell to Frankish Crusaders in 1099, and there was a gruesome massacre that shocked even its perpetrators. But here Karabell brings out another strand of his narrative, rightly asserting that to dwell on the massacre is to misunderstand the significance of the next 200 years of frequent coexistence in the Middle East. The complexity of the Muslim-Christian relationship of the time belies the supposition that it should be viewed in terms of a religious conflict. Christians battled Muslims, certainly; but Muslims fought Muslims, too, and everyone sought logical alliances, holy or otherwise. But if the Crusades were not exclusively, or even primarily, religious, why were they fought? For the usual rewards, Karabell says - trade, influence and dynastic advantage. Had it been otherwise, he writes, "Christians throughout Europe would have rushed to fight side by side with their Byzantine brothers, and Muslims would have overcome their divisions and joined hands to fight a common adversary. That did not happen." The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul in a 19th-century lithograph by Louis Haghe. Over time, however, the Crusades became established as a myth of perpetual conflict, to be exploited at different times, and in different societies, for particular historical reasons. So Sir Walter Scott's Muslim warrior Saladin was the avatar of British chivalry, not because this is what Saladin was, but because Scott was a 19th-century Briton. Most other versions were more loaded and inflammatory. After the era of the Crusades, Karabell reports, pragmatism continued to hold sway in the Muslim world. By the early 16th century, the Ottoman Turks' capture of Egypt and the cities of Medina and Mecca made them the pre-eminent Islamic rulers of the world, responsible, among other things, for subsidizing and protecting the annual pilgrimage to Mecca and the government of Jerusalem. The Ottomans placed great stress on their Islamic credentials - which did not stop them from ruling over millions of Christians, or from welcoming the Jews from Christian Spain after their expulsion in 1492. The Ottomans were dynasts. They waged endless weits, against both their Western enemies and the Shiite empire in the east, to maintain their control and to expand their dominions. Sometimes these wars were styled as jihad. But the Turks had no more interest than the Arabs in converting people. Their non-Muslim subjects were second-class citizens - they paid a valuable head tax, and they were exempt from military service - but they were citizens nonetheless. They were answerable to the leaders of their faiths - the patriarch, or the chief rabbi; so that a Jew in Salonika or a Greek in Smyrna seldom encountered the Ottoman authorities. The career of Sabbatai Sevi, a Jew who considered himself the Messiah, is a perfect illustration of Ottoman pragmatism. When he toured the Jewish communities of the Ottoman world gathering adherents and outraging the Jewish establishment with his mystic utterances and scandalous decrees, the Ottomans ignored him. But when he marched on Istanbul, he was arrested for inciting rebellion, interrogated and compelled to choose between converting to Islam or being executed. Sevi converted. Order was maintained. What, then, accounts for the current hostility? Insecurity, of course, is widespread in the Muslim world. And terrorism works very well in an age of mass global communications and sophisticated technology. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict creates injustice, gets worse daily and has encouraged a complete reinterpretation of history. As this enlightened and enlightening book makes clear, we can, if we want, find evidence of clash and discord in the past, which makes for good reading. But we can also, if we wish, find many centuries, and many lands, in which nothing much happened, triumphantly - in which people of all faiths concerned themselves with "the uneventful reality of everyday life." History matters; but, in Karabell's resounding phrase, "it is up to each of us to use it well." We can find discord in the past, but we can also find many centuries in which nothing much happened. Jason Goodwin is the author of "Lords of the Horizon: A History of the Ottoman Empire." His most recent book is an Ottoman crime novel, "The Snake Stone."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
At the end of the eighteenth century, the Middle East had remained beyond the orbit of European concerns since the end of the Crusades in the late thirteenth century. Egypt, in particular, was viewed as a backward Ottoman province. In 1798, Napoleon led a massive force across the Mediterranean to the Nile Delta, quickly overwhelming the Egyptian forces, but the French occupiers were expelled by British and Ottoman armies in 1801. Although the military effects of the French incursion were minimal, the long-term cultural and political results were immense. Historian Cole, effectively utilizing diaries and letters of contemporaries on both sides, illustrates the confusion, hostilities, and necessary accommodations as two distinct cultures collide. French scholars who accompanied the expedition make the now familiar claims of liberating a people from backward oppressors while respecting the traditions of a great people. Arab reactions range from outrage to indifference. At the center of events, of course, is the young emerging titan, Napoleon, who is revealed here as cynical, power hungry, but possessed of an enormous intellect and insatiable curiosity. --Jay Freeman Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In July 1798, Napoleon landed an expeditionary force at Alexandria in Egypt, the opening move in a scheme to acquire a new colony for France, administer a sharp rebuff to England and export the values of French republicanism to a remade Middle East. Cole, a historian of the Middle East at the University of Michigan, traces the first seven months of Napoleon's adventure in Egypt. Relying extensively on firsthand sources for this account of the invasion's early months, Cole focuses on the ideas and belief systems of the French invaders and the Muslims of Egypt. Cole portrays the French as deeply ignorant of cultural and religious Islam. Claiming an intent to transplant liberty to Egypt, the French rapidly descended to the same barbarism and repression of the Ottomans they sought to replace. Islamic Egypt, divided by class and ethnic rivalries, offered little resistance to the initial French incursion. Over time, however, the Egyptians produced an insurgency that, while it couldn't hope to win pitched battles, did erode French domination and French morale. Perplexingly, Cole ends his account in early February 1799, with Napoleon still in control of Egypt but facing increasingly effective opposition. Napoleon's attack on Syria is only mentioned, not detailed, and his return to Cairo and eventual flight to France are omitted altogether. In a brief epilogue, Cole makes an explicit comparison between Napoleon's adventure in Egypt and the current American occupation of Iraq. Though at times episodic and disorganized, this doesn't detract from the value of Cole's well-researched contribution to Middle Eastern history. Illus. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte sailed for Egypt with an army of 25,000, aiming to establish French power in the eastern Mediterranean (thus impeding British access to India) and to communicate Enlightenment ideals to the Muslim world. Cole (history, Univ. of Michigan; Sacred Space and Holy War) traces Bonaparte's effort to remake Egypt from the initial landings in July 1798 to the aftermath of a major anti-French uprising in December. The substance of the book is the encounter between cultures. Using excerpts from primary sources authored primarily by Frenchmen, Cole recounts both personal anecdotes and assessments of policy, documenting the cynicism and misperceptions that informed Bonaparte's approach. He initially attempted to represent his arrival in Egypt as having the tacit approval of the sultan and portrayed French revolutionary anticlericalism as sympathy for Islam. After defeating any organized resistance, he tried to install a government with both Islamic and revolutionary credentials. Soon, however, his lifeline to Europe was cut by the British, and the sultan declared war on France. Egyptian resistance intensified as the French position deteriorated, and Bonaparte's protestations of goodwill gave way to a brutal occupation. The only false note is Cole's epilog, where he attempts to justify the book's subtitle by explicitly comparing Bonaparte's Egypt expedition to the current war in Iraq rather than leaving readers to make such an association unassisted. Nevertheless, Cole has produced an engaging and provocative book. Suitable for public and academic libraries.-Richard Fraser, M.I.L.S., Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by New York Times Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
