Middle eastern parallels: Syria‐Iraq‐Arabia in Ottoman times

Abstract

It has been customary to conceive of the history of the Arab Middle East in the Ottoman period mostly in terms of cities which were centres of imperial administration. Rural and tribal areas away from these cities were treated, for the most part, as though they did not exist. The neglected area consisted of the greater part of Syria, Iraq and Arabia: three regions whose history between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries is commonly thought to comprise little more than sporadic developments of marginal consequence. To gain a proper appreciation of these three regions during this period, the full extent of the internal developments in the neglected territory must be brought out, and the complete range of external determinants that affected these developments must be surveyed. Before this is done, a glance at the physical map would be useful. Geographically, the territory of Syria-Iraq-Arabia may be simply described as a vast stretch of more or less level desert rising gradually from the basin of the Persian Gulf and the valley of Mesopotamia in the east, to end in the west in a fringe of mountains bordering the Red Sea in the south and the Mediterranean in the north. At the south-eastern end of this desert stand the lone mountains of Oman, overlooking the entrance to the Persian Gulf. In the north-east, the desert merges into the valley of Mesopotamia, or Iraq, which extends eastwards to the Zagros mountains. Beyond these mountains lies the plateau of Persia. In the north, the great Syro-Arabian desert (as it may be called) reaches the Taurus mountains which separate it from the plateau of Anatolia and the Armenian and Caucasian highlands. Historically, this vast Arab region, with its mountain, lowland and coastal peripheries, has never been known by a single, all-inclusive name (unless the Ottoman term 'Arabistan' can be considered such a name). It has comprised, throughout history, a shifting mosaic of names, and this diversity in names is matched by a geographical diversity in the area itself. Iraq, as a broad river valley which is mostly plain, is a country of fairly uniform topography where only a few natural divisions can be distinguished. Syria and Arabia, on the other hand, are broken up by mountains and deserts into a myriad of divisions and pockets, each with its own name and often peculiar character. The Lebanon, for example, is a rugged mountain region blessed by heavy rainfall and oriented towards the Mediterranean. Transjordan, another rugged region, has less predictable rainfall and is oriented in the north towards the Syrian interior, and in the south towards the Red Sea and the Arabian desert. Both regions stand in sharp contrast to a desert plateau such as that of Najd, lost in the centre of Arabia and surrounded on all sides by trackless sands; and neither Lebanon, Transjordan nor Najd bear any physical resemblance to the meandering valley of the Orontes, the oasis of Damascus, the basaltic plains of Hawran, the rolling hills of the Aleppo region, or the torrid, bare coastlands of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Even in Iraq, the marshlands of the south,