Book Review - The Emergence of the Middle East 1914-1924 by Howard M. Sachar

 The Emergence of the Middle East 1914-1924 by Howard M. Sachar

London: Allen Land The Penguin Press, 1970 (first published 1969)  ISBN 0713901586

This is a well-written history in the old style, describing the impact the First World War had on the creation of what we know now as the countries of the Middle East and its littoral - specifically Greece, Turkey, Syria, Palestine as it then was (Israel now), Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Before World War One, all of these countries apart from Greece were part of the Ottoman Empire, and this book is essentially a description of how that Empire was broken up, mainly through the actions of the victorious members of the Entente, specifically England and France.

Many of us think we know the history of how the modern Middle East came to be, but Sachar's book taught me things I didn't know about what occurred during these years; things that have filled in some gaps in my knowledge and brought to me a greater understanding of why history in that part of the world has developed in the way it has.

The Ottoman Empire's fateful decision to side with Germany during the War brought ruin. The British, fearing for their access to the Suez Canal, went to great efforts to defeat the Ottomans in Palestine, and used everything at their disposal, including inciting the Arabian Peninsula to revolt. This is of course a famous story, and Sachar fills it out in a historical sense, pointing out the limited effectiveness of the revolt in the fight against their Turkish overlords (it was the British army that did most of the "heavy lifting"), and putting the Lawrence legend into proper historical perspective.

A story less well-known is the Ottoman's war against Russia, which was, until the Revolution a successful one for the Entente, as opposed to the disaster at Gallipoli. Iraq was hellish for both sides - initially a tactical failure by the British, although strategically important. Ottoman losses were catastrophic, and when the end came, the carcass of their Empire was up for grabs.

Sachar describes the machinations of the carve-up of the Empire well. He shows us that the infamous Sykes-Picot agreement was in some ways only a minor cause of the current problems in the Middle East. The British imagined a rule over Mesopotamia (Iraq), but initially wanted the Arabs to rule their own kingdom, which included the interior of Syria, all of Palestine, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The French scuppered the Syrian part of the plan, insisting that they extend their rule beyond the coastal strip (including Lebanon) and having suzerainty over the inland as well. After initial talks, an agreement between Feisal and the Jewish communities in Palestine could not be reached: because England had committed to a Jewish homeland in Palestine, they felt that they had the right and indeed the responsibility to rule in that place. The machinations between the pro-Jewish and pro-Arab sections of the British government did much to poison relations between Jew and Arab there, with results that echo down to today.

Feisal was sent to Baghdad to rule over the protectorate of Iraq, while his brother Abdullah was given the Transjordan area as his feifdom, much to the anger of the Jewish people in Palestine, who thought that they would inherit this. It must be remembered that all these areas were not colonies of the two European imperial powers, but protectorates under a League of Nations mandate. As Sachar points out, this kindled the idea and hope within natives of these areas that one day they would be masters in their own lands, which did indeed happen after the next great conflagration.

The remaining part of the Empire, Turkey (Sachar does not really deal with Arabia in this book), was a different story. Defeated, dispirited and exhausted, but the fighting was not over. The Armenians (Sachar devotes a chapter to their war time destruction within Anatolia) attacked the Turks to claim their homeland, assisted by the Russians. After setbacks, Kemal managed to destroy them. The Greeks, based around Smyrna, attacked initially to gain territory that had a plurality of their countrymen, but after initial successes, tried to get to Ankara. Kemal again defeated the Greeks and destroyed their army in Turkey. The Italians, French and English, tired of war and the expense of occupation, forced a solution at the Lausanne conference, beginning the biggest mass exodus of populations in history to that stage, and in the process creating a (basically) ethnically homogenous Greece and Turkey.

There is much base politics and treachery in this story, all of which is well told by Sachar. His descriptions of many of the major players give a good sense of the type of people they were, and he manages to tie this multi-stranded story into one connected thread. When I began this book I suspected that it would turn out to be a dry academic tome, but it's actually quite readable, accompanied with decent maps, notes and bibliography.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia by Phillip Knightley and Colin Simpson

 The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia by Phillip Knightley and Colin Simpson

London: A Panther Book, 1971   (First published 1969)

This is a solid work of journalism, in which Knightley and Simpson investigate the life of T.E. Lawrence using information that had recently come to life, from de-classified documents and testimony of friends and those who worked with him both in Arabia, and in England after the War.

What do we learn about this most enigmatic hero? Firstly, that he was not necessarily the idealistic seeker for Arab freedom that he portrayed in his writings. He was a soldier of the King, and used his undoubted charisma and intelligence to inveigle the Arab Revolt to work for the Entente war effort, all the while knowing that it was extremely unlikely that any Arabs would have self-determination in their or his lifetime.

Secondly, that despite his desire to return to the anonymity of the ranks after the end of Versailles, he could not help but to get involved in policy, particularly the development of the RAF. He was always scheming, plotting and writing letters to the head of the Force (Trenchard), MPs, or even the likes of Lady Astor. While sometimes his meddling was not welcome, others of his ideas continue today; he basically invented the idea of air sea rescue, and designed many of the early rescue launches of the RAF.

Thirdly - and perhaps today less shocking to the reader than it was when this book was written - was that Lawrence suffered depressive illness throughout his life, and the guilt he felt over his actions led him to engage in masochistic acts, both when he was in Arabia, by pushing himself beyond endurance, and back in England, where he degraded himself by serving in the ranks, and by having people beat him with a birch. The torturous stories he invented to justify his birching, especially those given to John Bruce, show a man at the end of his tether.

It was the Arab revolt that in many ways destroyed Lawrence, even as it was the making of him as a public figure. Not only the warfare in the desert, but the (to Lawrence) shamefulness of his lying to Faisal and Hussein and the act of writing Seven Pillars of Wisdom all took a heavy toll on his psyche. He had plans for other literary works, but his death only ten weeks after being discharged from the RAF put paid to that.

Knightley and Simpson also attempt to clear up the identity of S.A., to whom Seven Pillars of Wisdom is dedicated. They fairly convincingly conclude that it was Lawrence's friend Salim Ahmed, who was known as Dahoum. What they failed to get to the bottom of was Lawrence's sexuality; it seems he was sexless. There are also questions about his infamous night in Deraa, or at least the version of it as portrayed in his writings, with which some of the known facts conflict. It seems, from investigation, that Hacim Muhittin Bey was aggressively heterosexual, and would seem an unlikely instigator of buggery. Given the conflicting accounts, I do wonder whether Lawrence couldn't bring himself to write that he was raped by mere rankers, and had to inflate his attacker's status to that of Governor.

Overall then, this book is a good counter-factual to the story that Lawrence would have liked us to believe was true. In no way does it diminish his status as a hero of World War One, but it does bring us the complete man much more than we see in his own writings. If you can hunt out this book, and you are interested in Lawrence of Arabia, then it's well worth reading.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Six Day War by Randolph and Winston Churchill

 The Six Day War by Randolph S. Churchill and Winston S. Churchill

London: Heinemann, 1970 (first published 1967, reprinted with postscript 1970)

The Six Day War is receding into history now, but still resonates as one of the most amazing feats of arms in the history of warfare. In a carefully planned and immaculately executed series of attacks and battles, the Israeli Defence Forces overwhelmed the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian armies in the space of a week. Facing a crisis that threatened the end of their country, the Israelis struck first, annihilated the military forces of their enemies, and changed the strategic map of the Middle East, a change that still resonates today.

This book, written at the time by the son and grandson of Winston Churchill, is a very good piece of reportage and battle reporting. We get a good introduction of the events leading up to the War, the closure of the Straits of Tiran and the provocations of Nasser. A concise description of the Orders of Battle describe the advantage of the Arab forces over Israel. Of course material is one thing, morale and tactical superiority is another.

The key to Israeli victory was the Air Force. Their pre-emptive attack, which effectively destroyed the Egyptian Air Force, meant that not only were the cities of Israel safe from bombardment, but also the Israeli armour could move unmolested by air attack through the Sinai, which they did with incredible speed and ruthlessness. The Egyptians were completely overwhelmed, losing hundreds of aircraft, tanks, artillery pieces and thousands of men.

The Israeli government and military had made the decision that, while they would attack Egypt, they would not instigate hostilities against Jordan or Syria. The Jordanians however, in support of their allies, attacked the Israeli forces around Jerusalem. After vicious fighting, the Israelis took Jerusalem and all of the West Bank.

They then went on to take the Golan Heights from Syria before agreeing to a UN ceasefire. In six days Israel had militarily secured its future, driven a stake through the heart of Arab unity, and had opened up a chance to completely change the politics of the Middle East. The postscript in this updated edition describes how that chance to re-shape the Middle East was slipping between the collective fingers of Israel, the Arab countries, the USA and USSR. As we now know, the 1967 war, while it guaranteed Israel's existence, did not create a lasting peace. War has continued, although something has happened that was unforeseen at the time of the writing of this book, and that is that Israel has been recognized by many of the countries that they fought in 1967.

This book is a well-written, pacy and informative summation of the build up, the battles and the immediate aftermath of the war.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Rome and Jerusalem by Martin Goodman

 Rome and Jerusalem: the Clash of Ancient Civilizations by Martin Goodman

London: Penguin, 2007                                                     ISBN 9780140291278

What a book! This magisterial work is so much more than the title and prologue might suggest. Using the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 by the Roman Empire as a focal point, Martin Goodman has written a book that takes the reader through both Roman and Jewish society before and after the cataclysm of the destruction of the Temple during the Roman sack of Jerusalem.

With wide-ranging and deeply researched chapters on how both Rome and Jerusalem saw themselves (and others), how they governed, how family life was lived and more, this book is a compendium of what life was like in Rome and its Empire in the First Century AD. The amount of detail is staggering:  this book is like a rich dessert after a big meal - delicious, but to be partaken of in small servings (it took me nearly two months to get through, which is about 4-5 times longer than I would usually take to read a book of this size).

Goodman makes a case that the destruction of Jerusalem was not initially due to any great Roman hatred of Jews, or the Jewish faith, but more an unfortunate by-product of Roman political maneuvering, especially Vespasian's rise to power after the death of Nero and the year of the four emperors. 

In the first section of the book, where Goodman gives the reader the detail of both Roman and Jewish lives and activities, he makes it clear that both the Romans and the Jewish sides did not have a natural enmity. From the Roman side, the Jews and the Jewish faith were seen as exotic and quaint, perhaps more so than other conquered peoples, but not in a threatening way. In fact some Romans took up some of the Jewish ideas, including resting on the Sabbath. While there were wobbles in the relationship when Caligula ordered that a statue of himself be installed in the Jewish Temple, fortunately Caligula died before his order was implemented. While the Romans thought it odd that the Jewish people only had one God, they generally let them alone. From the Jewish side, they were happy to pray to their God for the health and good fortune of the Emperor, but not to worship him.

So how did the peace collapse? Like most revolutions, the core problem was taxation. This led to a raid on the Temple, which caused a more widespread uprising. Nero sent Vespasian to quell the province, initially avoiding Jerusalem. Vespasian was called back to Rome, which was in disarray after Nero's death, and he left his son Titus in Judea to continue the campaign. The  Jewish side was in disarray after factional fighting, and Titus launched an assault on Jerusalem to provide a triumph for his father, as that was felt to be politically necessary after his accession to power. Titus assaulted the city, causing many casualties, but initially avoided destroying the Temple. There is a school of thought - one that Goodman is inclined to believe - that it was never the Roman's intention to destroy the Temple, and that its destruction was an accident. The fact that Roman troops rarely desecrated shrines of other peoples they fought lends weight to this theory.

However once the Temple was destroyed it was politic for Titus and Vespasian to tell the story that the destruction was always intended. Of course that also meant that the Jewish people in the Empire were under persecution, not necessarily for things they'd done (other groups rebelled from time-to-time under the Empire but weren't persecuted in the same way), but to assist in the projection of Imperial power. The end of the war in AD70 was not the end of Jewish suffering - they were forced to pay a yearly tax, and of course they were not allowed to rebuild. In fact Jerusalem was made free of Jews, another punishment. While the Jews for many years held out hope of rebuilding the Temple, to this day it remains a ruin.

Goodman shows us that it was the political shenanigans in Rome, from Vespasian all the way through to Constantine, that kept the Jews as a repressed and un-loved people. These political issues led to the Christians moving from seeing themselves as a sect of the Jewish faith, to something in opposition to Judaism. With the power of Rome directed against the Jews, early Christians did not want to be associated with them. Thus the birth of Antisemitism can be seen to have occurred through the need for Vespasian to have a triumph to cement his new-found imperial stature, and the Jews being the unfortunate victims at the time.

This book is an absolute treasure-trove of information and thinking on Rome, Jerusalem, the Jewish faith and early Christianity. It has been for me both eye-opening and mind-widening.

Highly recommended.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence

 Seven Pillars of Wisdom: a Triumph by T.E. Lawrence

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books in association with Jonathan Cape, 1975 printing

(First published privately in 1926, first published by Jonathan Cape in 1935, and by Penguin in 1962)

ISBN 0140016961

I first read Seven Pillars of Wisdom at university, which is when I suspect many young men read it, at least in the 70s and 80s, when the book had almost a cult status with those who would like to think they were in some way intellectual. Like many others of impressionable age at an impressionable time in their lives, I was very impressed by it. I still have the copy I purchased second-hand in the Monash University co-op, and I note that I paid the then (for me) princely sum of five dollars, which was the equivalent of several beers or a decent meal at that stage in my life.

I had always intended re-reading the book, but have been put off the task over the years by the notion that it was a book for young men, and that those wearied by the natural cynicism of age had found it just so much twaddle when they went back to it. That was my father's advice to me as well, and I didn't want to destroy my good opinion of the book. But then lockdown hit, and I've had a bit of a project to read some classic works, so I decided to bite the bullet and risk destroying an icon after watching an interesting television documentary about Lawrence that got me thinking about him, and Seven Pillars.

Is it as good as I remember? No. Is it just so much twaddle? No. Is it a great classic? Of that I'm not sure. It is definitely more than an exciting narrative of someone's wartime adventures, but it is also definitely less than a great work of literature. What it most definitely is, is an insight into the complex and difficult character that was T.E. Lawrence.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom, ostensibly about the Arab Revolt and the consequent battle of the Arabs against the Turks from Medina to Damascus, is actually about the wish-fulfilment of Lawrence's dreams to become famous, by whatever means became open to him. He admits as much several times in the book, while going on to admit that in fulfilling his wishes, he destroyed his soul through lying, killing, and the degradations that came to him during the campaign.

His opportunity, which came about when he was appointed liaison and intelligence officer to Feisal, became a legend, and he burnishes the legend (while seeming to deprecate it) in this book. He claims to run not only the Arabs, but also the British intervention in their theatre of war, explaining how his intelligence and forward thinking ran rings not only around the Arabs, who he describes as petty and unthinking, but also the British staff officers, who in his eyes are hide-bound and old-fashioned.

The book is a series of descriptions of his travels throughout the theatre, and some of the actions in which he took part, and of some of the characters he met along the way. Anyone who agreed with him, or fell in with his ideas, is painted glowingly, and those that didn't are not. The best parts of the book are his descriptions of his travels through the Hejaz and Jordan, with his writing placing the reader on the back of the camel with him, feeling his tiredness and hunger, and elation at arriving at a well-watered camp.

It is when he switches to mystic mode that the book suffers. Like many young idealistic men, his ideas about the beauty of man's struggle, of the meaning of war and society, and of the differences between men are incohate and hard to decipher in any meaningful way. He wishes to bring the Arabs into their hegemony, and so tries in his writing to make them more than they were: to create castles and kings from tents and wandering nomads. 

There is no doubt that Lawrence was a troubled soul. His upbringing was harsh, and sexually he was not classifiable, and there are passages in Seven Pillars of Wisdom where he revels in the degradation forced on him through his wanderings with the Arab tribes. He seems to have a theory that beauty and truth are unobtainable in the physical world, and so one should eschew the physical and in fact try and destroy it. There is no doubt in my mind that by the end of the campaign Lawrence was suffering mentally from his trials, and he just made it over the line in Damascus, so that the prize that he had been hoping for came to him as a bitter fruit indeed.

His mental state was definitely affected by his capture torture and rape in Deraa, which I think led not only to him hating the Turks, but also to hating the Arabs. In a strange way the reader gets the feeling that Lawrence almost felt that he'd deserved such punishment, and after the incident on several occasions the reader finds Lawrence uncaring about whether he lives or dies.

It struck me while reading the book that Lawrence is very much a precursor to the modern age, and the modern person. It is all about him, everything is done according to his plan, and other people are just so many chessmen to be placed on the board. It strikes me that Lawrence would have been a natural on social media, an influencer and icon.

There is no doubt that Lawrence hoped that Seven Pillars of Wisdom would become a great classic - a classic of endurance, of struggle and overcoming, and of the mystical beauty of a people and their history. That he failed in achieving that I think he knew, and we know as well. However, it is still a fine book, a worthy book, and no doubt a book that will continue to inspire those young men who find it at the right time in their lives.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple

 From the Holy Mountain: a Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium by William Dalrymple

London: Flamingo, 1998 (First published 1997 by HarperCollins)  ISBN 0006547745

This book is a diary of a journey undertaken by William Dalrymple in 1994, from Mount Athos to the Great Oasis in Egypt, visiting Christian communities, churches and monasteries on the way. He uses as his "guidebook" The Spiritual Meadow, a book written in about 610AD by John Moschus, a monk and ascetic who travelled throughout the Levant and Middle East. Dalrymple, as did Moschus, travels with a view to discerning the current state of Christianity in its early heartland. Moschus travelled at a time when the hold of Christianity over much of this region was great, but beginning to show cracks: Dalrymple travels at the end of days for many of the communities and establishments that he visits, and  ventures over the intervening millennium-and-a-half of history to show why the time of Christianity in the Middle East is over.

He began his trip with the idea in his head that the upswell of fundamentalist Islam was the main reason that Christianity was losing its foothold in its birthplace, but his journey uncovers a much more complex, multi-layered, and nuanced story. In Turkey, the Christians are the forgotten people - not seen as Turks or Kurds, the don't fit into any national story that either of those ethnicities want to tell. The Turks want to deny any Christian history of their country, both to hide the realities of the massacre of the Armenians and to engender a patriotism based around Islam and Turkishness. The Kurds, in their struggle for an independence denied to them by history, created a war zone in the remaining Christian areas, which destroyed Christian as well as Kurd villages, and meant that the government was suspicious of any Christians as possible fellow-travellers with the Kurds.

The story in Syria at the time of writing was a better one for the Christian community. Assad needed the Christians to bolster his Alawite government against the more mainstream Muslims who didn't like his rule, and so they had less issues with repression than Dalrymple expected (the situation is different now of course - many of the cities he visited, such as Aleppo and Homs have been destroyed in the civil war). In Lebanon, the Christians were their own worst enemy, precipitating the civil war there, which did not turn out well. Israeli Christians are seen as Arab, and potential enemies - their land is sequestered, their ancient sites neglected, and their ability to worship curtailed. In many ways being a Christian in Israel is harder than in Muslim majority countries, where there is (was) at least some respect for Christianity as a religion. Only in Egypt can Dalrymple find true evidence of Islamic fundamentalism threatening the ongoing status of Christianity. Of course, much has changed in all these countries since 1994, and many of the issues that dogged Christian communities in these areas have become much worse since then.

What Dalrymple constantly notes in this book, and has happened at an increased rate since, is the emigration of members of Christian communities to the West (USA, Canada and Australia in particular). So while stories of churches being destroyed and people being killed make the headlines, the facts are that Christians are leaving for many different reasons, with persecution being only one. This mass migration not only impoverishes the religious life of the countries they leave, but also is economically damaging, as many of the Christians were dis-proportionally represented in the ranks of professionals and business.

The broader social and political story is only one aspect of Dalrymple's book. It is a book of a journey, and he writes of the people he meets along the way: those that have suffered dislocation and war, those that still cling to what little hope there is ("we trust in God"), and those with a religious vocation who follow it whatever the cost. Some monasteries in 1994 are hanging on by the skin of their teeth, with only two monks left, surrounded by ruined Christian churches (in Tur Abdin), while St. Anthony's in Egypt is still thriving despite harassment by local Islamists and the Government. Dalrymple walks through Byzantine towns in Syria that are almost completely preserved, tries to find churches in Turkey that have been converted into mosques, and ruins in Alexandria that are almost hidden by later building. He walks through parks in Israel that elide the Christian history of the ruins they are "preserving", and talks to many Christians who are too fearful to speak out against their persecution in case they bring more upon themselves.

One perhaps surprising thing revealed in From the Holy Mountain is the intermingling of Christian and Muslim beliefs, especially around holy places and shrines. On more than one occasion Dalrymple finds himself at a monastery or tomb and sees Muslims worshipping alongside Christians. This is perhaps not as surprising as it might first seem. As Dalrymple points out, at the time of Moschus, Islam was seen by some as a Christian sect rather than a separate religion, and many of the beliefs of the Christians in the Middle East transferred across into Muslim practice. In fact, as Dalrymple points out, the bowing and prostration that forms part of Muslim prayer has its origins in early Christian practice, practice that Dalrymple witnesses himself in the Syriac monasteries.

Along the road, we see the journey through John Moschus' eyes as well. Dalrymple, a Roman Catholic, is the product of the Twentieth Century, unable to see events through a lens anything other than rational and modern. Many of the monks Dalrymple meets on his journey would understand Moschus better, with their belief in visions of Saints and fighting off demons. Moschus was quick to point out immorality amongst the faithful, as well as collecting stories of those holy men who left a mark by their sayings or activities. While the towns and cities Moschus visited have either changed completely or disappeared, many of the monasteries and some of the churches were not only still standing, but are still operational.

However, they were becoming fewer and fewer, and in the twenty-five years since Dalrymple undertook his journey they have become even fewer. From the Holy Mountain is a fascinating journey through space, time and religions, and a wonderful historical document in itself. It is well written, learned and urbane.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The wells of Beersheba by Frank Dalby Davison

The wells of Beersheba : an epic of the Australian Light Horse 1914-1918
by Frank Dalby Davison, illustrated by Will Mahony

Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1947

The charge of the 4th Light Horse Brigade at the Battle of Beersheba is widely thought of in Australia as the last succesful cavalry charge to ever have taken place (which can be disputed on a number of levels - the Light Horse were not cavalry, and several charges are recorded in World War 2). The charge was certainly a great feat of arms, and was crucial to the success of the campaign to take Damascus.

The wells of Beersheba was a commissioned work, and self consciously written as a paen to the troops. Styled as a prose-poem, the book is broken into a few sections, describing the origins of the horses the troops rode, the harshness and boredom of travel in the desert, and the shock and terror of the battle itself.

The book is fiction, but based on real events, and the description of the charge is, as far as can be known, quite accurate. There are no main "characters" in the work (the only people named are Chauvel and Allenby); instead Davison creates a character from the Unit itself, where the mass of men becomes one in their united pain and triumph.

This short book has become something of a minor classic in the Australian milieu of military writing, and was the inspiration for the film 40,000 horsemen, which is a minor classic of Australian cinema.

Well worth reading on a sunny afternoon.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Did Muhammad exist? by Robert Spencer

Did Muhammad exist? : an inquiry into Islam's obscure origins by Robert Spencer

Wilmington Delaware: ISI Books, 2012               ISBN 9781610170611


Robert Spencer is a somewhat controversial author and commentator, perhaps best known for his jihadwatch website, and his polemical books about Islam. This book, while no doubt having controversial things to say, is not a polemic, but a look at the current state of study into the origins not so much about Muhammad himself, but the Koran.

Of the three main monotheistic religions, it is Islam that claims the most historicity for it's origins. Muhammad lived in the late 6th and early 7th century, was a prophet and warrior, and received the Koran in a series of revelations from the Angel Gabriel around Mecca and Medina. The problem with this seemingly historical statement is that the more it is investigated, the harder it is to pin down.

There is no mention in other historical sources of Muhammad, or the Koran itself, for over a hundred years from the supposed date of Muhammad's death. In fact between the date of Muhammad's death and the first mention of the Koran, coins were produced and buildings erected that seem to suggest the local rulers in Arabia were, if anything, Christians of a sort. It is only in the 9th century that something that we would recognise as Islam appeared in the historical record.

How to account for this gap in the story? It is clear that  both the Abbasid and Umayyad Caliphates were keen to enlist God as a partisan on their side, and had seen how religion could unify otherwise separate peoples into a large empire. It is also clear that large parts of the text of what came to be the Koran had existed for some time as separate fragments before being collected into one book. It also seems to be true that there did exist at some time in the 7th century in Arabia a "prophet armed with a sword". Spencer's theory is that the Caliphs were responsible for putting these disparate facts together to create a religion that could justify their rule.

The Koran itself is the major item under scrutiny in this book. Notoriously hard to interpret, recent study is bringing to light several sources of the suras of the Koran and leading to some extraordinary conclusions by some scholars. There can be an argument made that some of the text originated from Christian communities that denied the Trinity. These texts, which would have been in the Syraic language, were adapted as needed, with additions where required, to create the Koran as we have it now. These theories can explain some of the mysteries of the text itself, and also possibly the meaning behind some of the seemingly contradictory statements made in the Koran about Jews and Christians: they are due to the accretions made over time to original Christian sect texts.

Even the name Muhammad itself then comes into question - meaning "praiseworthy", the name itself is only mentioned four times in the Koran, and each time it could possibly be referring to Jesus, or other figures, rather than to a person named Muhammad himself.

The historiography of religious texts is a notoriously fraught business, and possibly no text is more difficult to look at than the Koran, as not only is it seen by Muslims as the literal word of God, but also is seen as a definite historical artifact emanating from a known point in history from a known person. Both the Jewish and the Christian Bibles have been studied historically for a long time, and Koranic studies have a long way to go in this area.

Did Muhammad exist? is an interesting work that gathers together some of the threads of current research into early Islam. There is a decent bibliography for further reading, and both the notes and the index are helpful.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Islam and the future of tolerance: a dialogue - Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz

Islam and the future of tolerance: a dialogue by Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz

Cambridge, Mass.; Harvard University Press, 2015      ISBN 9780674088702

This short book takes the form of a dialogue between Sam Harris, author of books such as The end of faith and Maajid Nawaz, former member of Hizb ut-Tahrir and author of the book Radical, and co-founder of the Quilliam Foundation.

The book is a timely discussion about Islamic extremism, or Islamism, and how it can be tackled. What comes out of this discussion is the urgent need for other voices than those radical jihadists to get out into the World and be heard. It's clear that the Islamists dominate discussion around the Qu'ran and what it means, and Nawaz in particular is keen to get the alternative, more peaceful and tolerant, interpretations of Islam more into the mainstream, both to quell the West's hostility, and to show potential radicals that God is not on the side of the Islamists.

While for Muslims the Qu'ran is the word of God, Nawaz points out that the interpretation of those words is all too human. As is the case with the Bible, there is much that is seemingly contradictory in the Qu'ran, as well as obscure. Add to that the difficulty of translating the old Arabic in which it is written, and there is a mass of interpretation that has to go into even a basic reading. As (Sunni) Islam has no structured priesthood, guidance on how to interpret the text can and does come from everywhere.

Islamism, as Nawaz styles it, is more a political ideology than a truly religious movement, but it is the religious aspect that enables the likes of ISIS to brainwash people to die for the "cause". Both Harris and Nawaz are clear that this false view of religion needs to be tackled front on, and that it is Muslims that need to be seen to be doing it. At the same time, they are both agreed that the political and military structure of ISIS needs to be destroyed utterly. Such destruction will have the effect of showing would-be radicals that God does not smile on their jihad, and that in fact the deluded views of ISIS leadership in no way correspond with God's.

There is in the book also some discussion of the tendency for the West to hold minorities and Middle Eastern countries to a lower standard of human rights and freedom than that which they demand for themselves. Both authors call this out as mindless and actually fuelling the ends of the terrorists.

This book will take an hour or two to read, and is well worth the time invested.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Philby of Arabia by Elizabeth Monroe

Philby of Arabia by Elizabeth Monroe

London: Quartet Books, 1980                         ISBN 0714333465

It's a sad state of affairs that when one mentions the name Philby usually the first person to be discussed is Kim, the Soviet Spy and British traitor. His Father, Harry (known as St. John) Philby, or as he came to be known "Philby of Arabia", is a more fascinating man for all sorts of reasons.

In this book Elizabeth Monroe has done a serviceable job of relaying a life of a driven, difficult, yet talented man who carved out his own niche in the history of the political development of the Middle East, and in exploring both the geography and history of much of the Arabian Peninsula. 

The subject of a broken home, Philby exhibited his precocious talent early, winning an exhibition to the famous Westminster School, and on to Trinity College at Cambridge. His mother's lack of means meant that rather than continue on at University he went to India to work in the civil service, where his quick facility for languages served him well, but where his quick temper and forthright views served him less so. He was seen early on as a bit of a "queer fish" owing to his mingling with the locals, and his developing views on Indian independence, although in many other ways Philby was English to his core, never losing his love of London club life, or watching cricket at Lords.

Like many men of his era, World War One was a turning point in his life. He chafed to be of use to his country, and eventually found his way to Mesopotamia, where he worked with the governing forces. He never saw action, but became a vital member of the civil government for a time. However, his forceful nature and inability to compromise saw him lose favour with the powers that be, which was a constant theme in his life. He did have his supporters though and they suggested he be sent to gauge the political outlook of Ibn Saud, the major Sheikh in Arabia during the War. Philby, in the course of this task, became the first European to traverse Arabia from East to West, and was one of the first to enter Riyadh and stay there for any length of time. He became friends with Saud, and in his impulsive way, saw Saud as the true liberator and ruler of all the Arabs. Because Philby was a man who only saw things in black-and-white, this meant that he was totally opposed to Hashemite rule in Arabia, which again brought him into conflict with the British Government. He played a small part in the negotiations around the political shape of the Arabian peninsula after the War, but was never able to grasp the bigger picture, failing even to see that Ibn Saud was following an agenda different to the one Philby thought he should.

Philby though had seen one thing - that his future lay in Arabia. He revealingly wrote to his long-suffering wife, Dora - who was left in England for long periods without much money to bring up their children - that he was desperate for fame, and he felt that Arabia was the place for him to find it. He had written a book about his wartime journey, and was seen as something of an Arabian expert, so was hired by a company to represent them in Arabia. It took several "lean years" before he could turn his friendship with Saud into a profitable one, years in which he further antagonised the British government with his outspoken writings suggesting Arabia should be independent. During these years he also converted to Islam, which seems to have been driven by practical motives as it enabled him to be with the King in the Holy City of Mecca - Philby never seems to have been a very religious man.

His business career began to meet with some success in the 1930s, and he was given permission by the King for the first of his Arabian journeys, into the Empty Quarter. Although Philby in many ways was not a nice person, he was a good explorer and mapmaker, producing quality geographical information on his trips, as well as collecting interesting specimens of wildlife. Philby being Philby, he also caused a diplomatic incident when he entered Yemen without permission, which made Ibn Saud wary of giving him permission to explore in similar areas near the border.

World War Two saw Philby spend some time under arrest in Britain for his views on Britain and its Middle Eastern Policy: Philby thoughout his life could never understand why his outspokenness may not be welcome, and always saw himself as a loyal but critical Englishman. His short foray into politics was similarly damaged by his outspoken nature, gathering only 526 votes the only time he stood for office.

After the war he was back in Arabia, living well until the demise of Ibn Saud, which included starting another family with a girl given to him by the King. In the 1950s he made several expeditions into the ancient lands of Midian, before being for a time banished from the Kingdom after Saud's death, for criticism of the Kingdom's growing problem with corruption and greed.

Philby eventually was welcomed back, but by this time he was an old man, and eventually died at his son Kim's home in Beirut in 1960. By this time Kim was already under pressure, with speculation about him being "the third man" rife: he fled to the Soviet Union shortly after his father's death.

Philby's legacy is his exploration and mapping work, with the results of his Midian expedition with Rykmans still being written about to this day. His was one of the last of those lives lived when an Englishman could impose himself anywhere in the world and live a life worth writing about. A fascinating man, this book is a good introduction to him and his achievements.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell