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History of the Middle East

College9 units and 27 lessons. Helio talks each one through and draws each step on a board.

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Units

  1. The rise of Islam and the caliphates

    3 lessons
    1. Muhammad and ArabiaDescribe Arabia before Islam, the revelation to Muhammad, the hijra of 622 and the community of Medina, and explain how a merchant's preaching in Mecca became a political community that unified Arabia by 632.
    2. The conquests and the Umayyad caliphateExplain how the Arab armies conquered an empire from Spain to Central Asia between 632 and 750, how the dispute over succession divided the community into Sunni and Shia, and how the Umayyads ruled from Damascus.
    3. The Abbasid revolution and BaghdadExplain how the Abbasid revolution of 750 overthrew the Umayyads, why al-Mansur founded Baghdad in 762, how the House of Wisdom and the translation movement made it a centre of learning, and why Abbasid power declined.

  2. Medieval dynasties, Crusades and Mongols

    3 lessons
    1. Fragmentation: Fatimids and SeljuksExplain how the Islamic world broke into rival caliphates and dynasties by about 1050, describe the Fatimids of Cairo and the Umayyads of Cordoba, and show how the Seljuk Turks took Baghdad and defeated Byzantium at Manzikert in 1071.
    2. The CrusadesExplain why Pope Urban II called the First Crusade at Clermont in 1095, how the crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099 and founded states in the Levant, and how Muslim rulers from Zengi to Saladin recovered Jerusalem at Hattin in 1187.
    3. The Mongols and the MamluksExplain the Mongol conquests of Central Asia and Iran, the sack of Baghdad in 1258, the Mamluk victory at Ain Jalut in 1260, and the rise of the Mamluk sultanate and the Mongol Ilkhanate as the two powers of the Middle East.

  3. The Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires

    3 lessons
    1. The Ottoman empireExplain the rise of the Ottomans from a frontier emirate to an empire, the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the reign of Suleiman, and the millet, devshirme and timar systems by which the empire governed, with the empire's extent around 1683.
    2. Safavid IranExplain how Shah Ismail founded the Safavid state in 1501 and made Twelver Shiism its religion, why the Ottomans defeated him at Chaldiran in 1514, and how Shah Abbas I rebuilt the state and the capital at Isfahan.
    3. The Mughal empireExplain how Babur founded the Mughal empire at Panipat in 1526, how Akbar built its administration and religious policy, and how the empire reached its greatest extent under Aurangzeb and then declined.

  4. Nineteenth-century reforms and European imperialism

    3 lessons
    1. Muhammad Ali's EgyptExplain how Muhammad Ali built a centralized, militarized state in Egypt from 1805 to 1848: his seizure of power and the destruction of the Mamluks, a conscript army of Egyptian peasants, state monopolies built on long-staple cotton, schools and student missions to France, and the wars in Arabia, Greece and Syria that brought him to the edge of toppling the Ottoman sultan until the European powers stopped him in 1840.
    2. The Tanzimat and Ottoman reformExplain the Ottoman reform era from 1839 to 1908: the Gulhane decree of 1839 and the Reform Edict of 1856 promising equality of all subjects, the centralizing state and new law codes, the Young Ottomans and the constitution of 1876, the borrowing that led to the default of 1875 and the Ottoman Public Debt Administration of 1881, and Abdulhamid II's autocratic modernization.
    3. European expansion and the Suez CanalExplain how European empires expanded into the Middle East and North Africa from 1830 to 1907: the French conquest and settlement of Algeria, the Suez Canal of 1869 and why it shortened the route to India, the path from Egyptian debt to the Urabi revolt and British occupation in 1882, and Qajar Iran caught between Russia and Britain, from the Tobacco Protest to the 1907 partition into spheres of influence.

  5. World War I and the mandates

    3 lessons
    1. The Ottoman war and the Arab RevoltExplain the Ottoman empire's war from 1914 to 1918: its entry on the German side, the Ottoman victories at Gallipoli and Kut, the Armenian genocide and wartime famine, the Hussein-McMahon correspondence and its disputed promise of Arab independence, the Arab Revolt from Mecca in 1916, and the British advance to Jerusalem, Baghdad and Damascus that ended four centuries of Ottoman rule in the Arab lands.
    2. Sykes-Picot and the Balfour DeclarationExplain the three wartime commitments Britain made about the Arab lands: the Hussein-McMahon promise of Arab independence (1915), the secret Sykes-Picot agreement dividing the region with France (1916), and the Balfour Declaration supporting a Jewish national home in Palestine (1917); read the Sykes-Picot zones on a map and the Balfour text closely; and weigh how far the promises contradicted one another, using Palestine's population in 1922.
    3. The mandate systemExplain how the mandate system turned wartime plans into new states from 1920 to 1932: Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant and the idea of tutelage, the San Remo conference of 1920 assigning Syria and Lebanon to France and Iraq and Palestine to Britain, the French overthrow of Faisal's Syrian kingdom at Maysalun, the Iraqi revolt of 1920, the Cairo conference of 1921 and the Hashemite kings, and the paths of each mandate to the 1930s.

  6. Nationalism and independence

    3 lessons
    1. Ataturk and the Turkish republicExplain how the Turkish republic emerged from Ottoman defeat: the Treaty of Sevres of 1920 and the national movement it provoked, Mustafa Kemal's war of independence from 1919 to 1922, the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 and the Greek-Turkish population exchange, the abolition of the sultanate and caliphate, and the secularizing reforms of the 1920s and 1930s with their costs.
    2. State building in Iran and Saudi ArabiaCompare two interwar state builders: Reza Shah, who rose by a coup in 1921, founded the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925 and imposed a centralized army, railway, secular law and forced unveiling until his abdication in 1941; and Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, who conquered Arabia from Riyadh between 1902 and 1932 with the Wahhabi Ikhwan, then crushed them, and founded a kingdom that found oil in 1938.
    3. Arab independence and NasserExplain how the Arab states won independence and how Nasser's Egypt came to lead Arab nationalism: the independence of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan from 1932 to 1946, the Free Officers' coup of July 1952, land reform, the Suez crisis of 1956 and its outcome, and Pan-Arabism up to the United Arab Republic with Syria in 1958, with the limits that showed in 1961.

  7. The Arab-Israeli conflict

    3 lessons
    1. Palestine, partition and 1948Explain how the British mandate in Palestine ended in partition and war: Zionist immigration and the changing population from 1922 to 1946, the Arab Revolt of 1936 to 1939, the Peel plan and the 1939 White Paper, the UN partition resolution of November 1947 and its vote, and the war of 1947 to 1949, which created the state of Israel and the Palestinian refugee problem, presenting both the Israeli and Palestinian narratives.
    2. The wars of 1967 and 1973Explain the wars of 1967 and 1973 and their diplomatic outcome: the crisis of May 1967 and Israel's conquest of Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in six days; UN Security Council Resolution 242 and its ambiguous wording on withdrawal; the October 1973 war and the oil embargo; and Sadat's path from war to the Camp David Accords of 1978 and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979.
    3. The intifada and the Oslo processExplain the Palestinian national movement and the peace process from 1987 to 2000: the PLO's rise after 1967, the first intifada from December 1987 and the founding of Hamas, the PLO's 1988 shift toward a two-state solution, the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995 with the division of the West Bank into Areas A, B and C, settlement growth, Rabin's assassination, and the collapse at Camp David in 2000 and the second intifada, weighing the main explanations for failure.

  8. Oil and the Iranian revolution

    3 lessons
    1. Oil and the politics of the GulfExplain how control of Middle Eastern oil moved from foreign companies to producing states between 1908 and 1980: the concession system and Aramco, the fifty-fifty profit split of 1950, Iran's nationalization in 1951 and the coup of 1953, the founding of OPEC in 1960, the 1973 embargo and price shock read from a price series, and the political effects of oil wealth on the rentier state.
    2. The Iranian revolution of 1979Explain the Iranian revolution: the shah's White Revolution and oil-fuelled development, the sources of opposition among clergy, bazaar merchants, students, the left and liberal nationalists, the mass protests of 1978 traced month by month to the shah's departure and Khomeini's return in February 1979, and the consolidation of the Islamic Republic under velayat-e faqih, with the embassy hostage crisis.
    3. The Iran-Iraq warExplain the Iran-Iraq war of 1980 to 1988: Saddam Hussein's motives, including the Shatt al-Arab border dispute and fear of the Islamic revolution; the course of the war mapped from Iraq's invasion of Khuzestan through Iran's counter-offensives to the stalemate; the tanker war, chemical weapons and Halabja, and the Gulf states' and superpowers' support for Iraq; and the war's effects on both regimes, including Iraq's debt that led to the invasion of Kuwait.

  9. The region since 1990

    3 lessons
    1. The Gulf War and the Iraq WarExplain the two American-led wars against Saddam Hussein's Iraq: the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the UN-backed coalition and the campaign of 1991, the uprisings and no-fly zones that followed, a decade of sanctions and weapons inspections, the 2003 invasion and its contested justification, and the occupation's decisions, de-Baathification and disbanding the army, that fed insurgency and sectarian civil war.
    2. The Arab SpringExplain the uprisings of 2010 and 2011 and their divergent outcomes: the long-term causes of youth unemployment, corruption and ageing autocrats; the spark in Tunisia and the eighteen days in Tahrir Square; the spread to Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria mapped; and why outcomes ranged from democratic transition in Tunisia to military restoration in Egypt, repression in Bahrain and civil war in Libya, Syria and Yemen.
    3. Syria, the Islamic State and the region todayExplain the Syrian civil war from 2011 and the rise and fall of the Islamic State: the regime's crackdown and the war's internationalization, the Islamic State's origins in al-Qaeda in Iraq and its territory in 2014 mapped from Raqqa to Mosul, the coalition campaign that destroyed its territory by 2019, the refugee crisis read from data, the fall of Assad in December 2024, and the Iran-Saudi rivalry that runs through the region's conflicts.

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