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This chapter is written to provide an advanced introduction to the politics of the Middle East. I believe it is useful to introduce some themes before examining individual nations and regions. Thus this chapter lays out the themes of the course; which largely concentrate on the reasons to study Middle East politics, and how to do it. Two chapters summarizing the history of the overall region follow, to cover both the singularly important historical events as well as the historical trends that have shaped the area. The first chapter covers the ancient period to the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, and the second chapter details all that follows. Then two chapters outline the most significant issues encompassing the Middle East follows. The first chapter covers "political" issues, such as democratization, foreign and security issues, political succession and such. The second issues chapter is about social and economic issues, including human rights, the rights of women, economic challenges, and other social and economic things that impact on the political systems of the nations under consideration here. This is intended to provide an issue focus to the three sections that follow, covering the three geographical regions that make up the Middle East: the Arabian Gulf region, the Eastern Mediterranean, or Levant, and North Africa, or the Maghreb. Each section contains individual chapters on the nations located there. These divisions differ from authority to authority, and they are sometimes adopted simply from the need to put things somewhere. So I include Egypt in the section on North Africa, though most Middle Eastern scholars regard it as a part of the Middle East. I include Iran in the section on the Arabian Peninsula, even though it lies across the Persian/Arabian Gulf from that location. I include Iraq in the Eastern Mediterranean section, even though it does not have a coast on that body of water. I maintain that comprehensive and up-to-date coverage of a particular nation is more important that in what section it is located, and, beyond this, most nations in the greater Middle East influence each other, no matter where they are located there.

While the title of the chapter emphasizes politics, readers will quickly discover a good dose of history in the chapters that follow. I do this without apology, but with an explanation. I firmly believe that the present cannot be understood without some connection to its past. Present day actors carry out their functions in an environment where their freedom to move is shaped considerably by what has gone before. Their own understanding of their history similarly forms their own beliefs and values.

This is true in every nation state, in the world, and it may be particularly true of nation-states in the Middle East. This is because the Middle East, along with China, India, and another few scattered places around the world, is one of those few "core areas" where human civilization developed many thousands of years ago. The early inhabitants of the region between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers who build the ancient civilizations of Sumer and Babylon left footprints thousands of years old for those who came after them to follow. While it is probably true that the connection between the early Mesopotamians and those who settled the land after they disappeared was broken, the people who live there today still feel connected to those ancient cultures. The same is true in Egypt, in Israel, in Yemen, and almost all other places in the modern Middle East. But one does not have to have just ancient roots to serve as signposts to the present. Peoples of the Middle East were also impacted by more recent events on the scale of time, as they are similarly impacted by trends that last over time. One such trend in the Middle East is the constancy of invasion by those living outside. In around 1208 BCE the "Peoples from the Sea" invaded Egypt. The Hyksos, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the French, and the British would follow them. As a consequence, no native-born Egyptian ruled Egypt between 335 BCE and 1952 CE, when the Egyptian Free Officers ousted King Farouk and established the modern republic of Egypt. Some argue that this experience cultivated a belief that Egyptians were not suitable for self-governance, and thus fated to be ruled by others. The Hebrew-Jewish history also shapes beliefs for the modern inhabitants of Israel. The constancy of oppression against the Jews reinforces the belief today that the paramount role of the state of Israel is to provide physical security for the Jewish people, who, for the first time since the Roman conquest of Jerusalem in 70 CE have their own state and their own security apparatus.

The Scholarship of the Middle East. Readers of this chapter should know something about how it was written -- about where the information came from. This is important since the accuracy of any chapter is dependent on the accuracy of the information it contains. Scholars who write about the Middle East, though, do have some handicaps on accurate information over their counterparts who write about American politics. There is a gold mine of information on almost all aspects of American politics, and even things shrouded in secrecy, like the CIA and nuclear weapons, have been the subject of wide-ranging studies. American scholars have access to reasonably objective news sources, to archival material, and to interviews with active and former public officials. In addition they have the Freedom of Information Act to help then gain access to sensitive but vital research material.

Scholars of the Middle East generally lack such sources for their research. In most Middle East nations the government publishes the only legal newspapers, and the "truth" is whatever they say it is. There are, to be sure, illegal newspapers circulated underground, or published by exile groups in places like London or Paris or New York, but their version of the "truth" is often similarly suspect. The ruling regime also often controls the radio and television channels, and produces the news that flows over them. Archives in many nations are not open to researchers, and there is no Freedom of Information Act to gain access to material protected by the state. Public officials are often not available for comment, particularly when there is suspicion that they may have been involved in something controversial.

None of this should imply that all or most information on Middle East politics is tainted and unreliable. Much of what is available is honest -- at least to a point. News agencies do report that events occur, even if they limit discussion about why they occurred. They may blame usually unnamed "foreign influences" for their problems rather than their own governments, but they at least concede that something is wrong. They also take understandable and deserving pride in their accomplishments, and tout them zealously. They can also point out with some justification that those outside the Middle East report on almost nothing but negatives, and who else but the government news agencies will report the good news? They have a point.

How to study this region? Readers will quickly find that there is considerable history in this text. This is because history and the patterns it sometimes leaves behind are one way to understand the present and project the future. In the Middle East (and in many other parts of the world) it is often the best way. History represents building blocks upon which political analysis can be constructed. That in turn provokes the question: how to get accurate information on political subjects?

One avenue for political research is reporting from reliable newspapers. I consider such papers to include the New York Times, Le Monde, the Washington Post, the London Times, and other papers of similar statute that have established a long-standing reputation among scholars for accuracy and objectivity. There are also regional papers which have established a standard of accuracy, to include Israel’s The Jerusalem Post, Ha’aretz, and Ma’ariv. The Jordan Times, and the Jordan Star, The Lebanon Star, published in Beirut, and others.

I also rely on scholarly journals that have established standards of objectivity and fairness. Those include Middle East Journal, Middle East Policy, Mediterranean Quarterly, Political Science Quarterly, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Brookings Review, and other journals that do not carry in built-in bias. I do not use Middle East Review (published with a strong pro-Israeli bias) nor Middle East International (published with a strong anti-Israeli bias). I avoid The Nation, Dissent, Commentary, and The National Review, among other sources, for the same reasons. There is ample bias and emotion passing for truth, and I do not wish to add to the mistruth or half-truths about the Middle East that too frequently pervades even intelligent discussion about the area.

My purpose is to inform and educate, and not to sway opinions. I have tried to avoid even inadvertent language that might be construed as showing a political, religious, or social preference for a nation, people, or movement. While no writer is completely free of biases, I have tried to leave mine out of this chapter. Yet when one travels to the Middle East, one sees things that do evoke emotions. I cannot claim to remain free of feelings when I viewed photographs of the faces of hundreds of dead Kuwaitis killed by Iraqi troops during the 1990-91 invasion. I cannot avoid the feelings of tragedy when visiting the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, or witnessing the shattered glass and wood fragments where a terrorist bomb detonated in a group of children wearing their costumes in celebration of the Israeli Purim holiday. One cannot help feeling sympathy for the nine-year old Palestinian boy in a hospital in Cairo who will remain in a wheelchair for the rest of his life after being struck in the spine by an Israeli rubber bullet during the Palestinian uprising known as the Intifada. Yet we as scholars have an obligation to do our best to insure that our value judgements do color our writings too much, and that we tell the truth. In an area as controversial as is the Middle East, students should demand nothing less.

Readers will find short pieces at the beginning of each section and chapter that I call "images." These are based on my personal observations while visiting the region; things I saw that left, well, an image in my mind that helped me think about that particular area. I hope that they do the same for the reader as they do for me.

Why study the politics of this area? To many outside the Middle East and North Africa, it seems remote, lying almost half way around the world from North America. Its culture and its customs appear particularly foreign to westerners, and its primary religion almost incomprehensible. When reports of the Middle East filter through the American media, they are often negative, depicting acts of terrorism, anger towards the U.S., or, at best, oil-rich Arabs wallowing in decadence. The Middle East is rarely depicted in popular literature or entertainment in a positive light. Movies tell of American women desperately trying to gain back a child whose Middle Eastern father kidnapped back to his country. The Delta Force combats ruthless terrorists who savagely brutalize passengers on the planes they have hijacked. The most common religion there seems to be "Islamic Fundamentalism," and the Middle East leaders most Americans are familiar with are Saddam Husayn and Muammar Qaddafi.

There are negatives, to be sure, in the Middle East. Unfortunately they gain so much attention that the whole region seems like a forbidding place that few Americans would want to travel to. Indeed one encounters few American tourists in the Middle East, and most of those appear to travel to Israel for religious reasons. Yet the Middle East remains a vital area for American and world interests, and for reasons that go far beyond oil. Oil, though, tends to focus people’s attention on the Middle East, along with terrorism, religious extremism, weapons of mass destruction, and the outbreak of wars.

Chapter Two notes the significance of the oil resources from the Middle East. Around three-quarters of the world’s known oil reserves are located there, and a large percent of that total is in or near the Arabian or Persian Gulf (see below for terminology). Any serious interruption of the flow of oil to the consuming nations would play havoc on the international economy, as was demonstrated by the oil crises of 1973 and 1979. In both those cases the U.S. impacted both the decisions to withhold oil and to ultimately produce it again. Thus some understanding of the Middle East is essential just for that reason.

Oil is only one factor that makes the Middle East important, though. World commerce today sustains the livelihood of billions of people, and much of that trade moves by land, sea, and air through the Middle East. The sea-borne trade between Europe and Asia generally passes through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea, while much of the world’s oil transits the narrow Straits of Hormuz at the mouth of the Arabian Gulf. Other ocean trade moves through the Mediterranean Sea, north of the coasts of Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt. That makes the stability of those nations important.

There are less tangible factors that link the Middle East to the rest of the world. It is, for example, the birthplace of the world’s three monotheistic religions. This is no more aptly demonstrated than in Jerusalem, where one can visit the sites of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Western Wall of the Second Temple, and the Dome of the Rock in less than an hour. They are, in order, the purported site of Christ’s crucifixion, the remains of the Second Temple (destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE), and the place where the Prophet Muhammad reportedly ascended to heaven from after a nightlong journey from Mecca. They lie within a small part of the old city of Jerusalem, no more than around 5 square kilometers in size. These sites command much passion, both from those who live there, and from those around the world. The Western Wall (sometimes called the "Wailing Wall") is the holiest site in the world for Jews, who come to pray there, and to thus connect to both their faith and their past. Muslims regard the Dome of the Rock as the third holiest place in the world, ranking only behind the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina and the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Christians make pilgrimages to the holy places of Christianity, including the Stations of the Cross and the Church of the Nativity in nearby Bethlehem. Part of the Israeli justification for the taking of the old city of Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war was to regain Jewish access to the Western Wall (denied by Jordan since 1947). Palestinian riots in 1996 resulted when Israeli Prime Minister Benyimin Netanyahu authorized a tunnel running under a part of the hillside under the Dome of the Rock Mosque. Netanyahu’s decision lead to a belief by Palestinians living there that his decision was a part of a larger effort by Israel to take control of the sacred area.

It is difficult to find another place in the world where as many religious passions focus as on Jerusalem. But sacred, too, are the two cities in Saudi Arabia that played a significant role in the life of Muhammad, and in the events leading up to the propagation of the Islamic faith from those cities after Muhammad’s death in 632 CE. Muslim bow towards Mecca when they pray, and the niche in a Mosque pointing towards the holy city is the most significant part of that structure. The tomb of Mohammad is in Medina (the first city to accept his teachings outside of Mecca), and is marked by the Prophet’s Mosque. The Grand Mosque is in Mecca. Non-Muslims are forbidden to enter either city and even an aircraft carrying non-Muslims cannot fly over either Mecca or Medina.

The region is the historic site of many of the world’s ancient civilizations, and their remains alone tell us much about where we came from; and, some might argue, where we are going. Most Americans have little awareness of their cultural and historic connection to the Middle East, largely because those connections date back many centuries. But consider the following:

"Spanish style" architecture so popular in places like California or Texas is actually Middle Eastern in origin, coming to Spain with the arrival of the Islamic armies who occupied much of the Iberian Peninsula between 711 and 1492 CE. Arched porticos, red tile roofs, courtyards with fountains, and stucco walls characterize Middle Eastern and North African houses thousands of years ago. When the Muslims crossed into Spain, they built Mosques, with squared minarets in the North African style. When Spanish Christians retook Spain from the Muslims in the Fifteenth Century, they converted the mosques to Christian churches, and the minarets became the now-familiar steeple that graces Christian churches across the world.

Soap and daily bathing are habits found in the Middle East by the Crusaders, and taken back to Europe. So are eating utensils such as forks and knives, foreign to the crusaders who ate mostly with their hands. Toilets serviced by running water were in use in the Middle East before the Common Era, and may date back to early Mesopotamia, while outdoor privies existed in much of Europe and the United States until the 20^th Century. Perfumes distilled from roses came from Persia long before they came from Paris.

Common foods and beverages originated from or passed through the Middle East to the West. Yogurt (laban in Arabic) was a Mongol dish left with the Arabs after the Mongol defeat in the 13^th Century. Citrus trees arrived in Europe from the Crusades. Coffee has obscure origins, but seems to have been popularized by Sufi mystics in Yemen, who needed to stay awake for evening religious services. The Arab word for the beverage, qawah, became "coffee." and the beverage reached Europe after Turkish armies abandoned bags of it at the gates of Vienna in 1683 after a failed siege. The industrious Viennese turned it into Viennese coffee, and it survives as such over 300 years later. They also baked pastries in the shape of a crescent to celebrate the triumph of the Muslim Turks, familiar today as the croissant. Middle Easterners probably popularized fast food meat sandwiches with the Shwarma, (stands serving lamb sliced into pita bread) long before the first MacDonalds opened. The first known cookbook appeared in Babylon almost 4,000 years ago. One of its recipes instructs how to prepare stewed kid with onions, garlic, soured milk, and blood.

Developments in science, medicine, mathematics, literature, music, and other such things that make up what is often called "Western Civilization" often came from or at least through the Middle East. The Babylonians developed sophisticated mathematical skills, including the computation of exponentials and geometry. They also developed the idea of time measurement, dividing each day into 24 hours, hours into 60 minutes, and minutes into 60 seconds; a concept that remains universal after 4000 years. The concept of zero, the concepts in algebra (itself an Arab word), discoveries in medicine (including the circulation of blood), measurement of celestial objects, and many other scientific works came from the Arab and Islamic worlds. The ancient Egyptians left records indicating a fairly advanced understanding of human diseases and their causes. Their concept of geometry was so well developed that the base of the Great Pyramid misses perfect squareness by one-fourth of an inch.

The concept of law, used today to regulate almost every society, first appeared (at least in written form) in the Babylon of King Hammurabi, who ruled from 1795 – 1750 BCE. His code, divided into 282 sections, defines rules and penalties for a variety of activities, including business law, civil relations (including marriage and divorce law), and criminal law. Hammurabi’s Code also contained the first know statement of the rights of women, to include the right of women to divorce (they got their dowry back if they could prove cruelty, but the man suffered no additional penalty).

The development of theology and the concept of monotheism in particular came from the Middle East thousands of years ago. The Old Testament, filled with prophets, kings, and events such as the Great Flood is a history of the ancient Middle East. Some contend that the belief in one god arose in Egypt around 1500 BCE with the Pharaoh Akhenaten, who broke with Egyptian polytheism and formed the cult of Amun, the Sun God. Others note ancient Mesopotamian beliefs in such things as immaculate conception, the story of Cain and Abel, and a massive flood as precursors of the Old and New Testaments. Places in ancient Middle East history get constant mention in church sermons and hymns; Galilee, Nazareth, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Street Called Straight, Zion, the Garden of Gethsemene, and the Mount of Olives.

European languages contain words from the Middle East, including "algebra," "admiral," "arsenal," "alcohol," "cane," "hazard," "soda," "sheriff," "tomato," "salad," and a host of others. Tennis players play with a "racket," (from the Arabic rahat, or palm of hand), and hit tennis balls named after Tinnis, a town in Egypt from which linen for the balls came. From Persian comes "artichoke," "asparagus," and other words now incorporated in many European languages.

Usage of Terms.

This chapter uses terminology in ways that will hopefully not produce confusion. Unfortunately this is not always possible, so the best solution is to clarify terms here and to indicate the considerable ambiguity that often accompanies them. For example:

Middle East. This normally refers a region encompassing a section of Southeast Asia and North Africa. The term came originally from the British, who divided the world into regions based on their distance from London. So Britain placed Turkey and Egypt in the "Near East," the Arabian Gulf and Mesopotamia in the "Middle East," and China and Japan were the "Far East." In 1941 the Royal Air Force Headquarters for the Middle East moved from Baghdad to Cairo, joining the Near East Headquarters there. Since the two headquarters became one, they needed only one name, and after some debate, "Middle East" won out, and the name now applies to the whole area.

However the term "Middle East" is used in selective ways that do not always make sense. For example, Egypt, technically located in North Africa, is counted as a part of "the Middle East," while neighboring Libya and the other nations to its west are considered to be a part of "North Africa" but not the Middle East. Turkey is located largely in Asia, and the vast majority of its population is Muslim, but Turkey is not always considered a part of the Middle East. Nations like Afghanistan and Pakistan, also majority Islamic in population, are also not included in the "Middle East," but instead in "Southwest Asia." Iran, though, is considered "Middle Eastern."

Are there any rules to use in including a nation in, or not in, the Middle East? A majority of the nations are Arabic-speaking, though Iran and Israel are also counted as "Middle East." The Islamic religion is the majority faith in most Middle Eastern nations, but Israel is more than 80 percent Jewish, and Lebanon has a significant Christian population. Islam, though, is also the majority religion in many other nations that are neither Middle Eastern nor Arabic. Islam spreads south through the Sahel (the semi-desert region south of the Sahara Desert), and across Southeast Asia. Indonesia, thousands of miles away from the Middle East, is the world’s largest Islamic nation. Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei and the Philippines also have large Islamic populations; the result of centuries-old contact with Muslim traders from the Middle East who took their religion with them on their sea voyages.

The majority population of the Middle East is considered "Semitic," to include most Arabs, most Jews, and most Persians (persons who now speak Farsi, the descendent of the Persian language. This is one of the reasons why is probably makes little sense to accuse Arabic speakers of "anti-Semitism" if they criticize Israel or persons of Jewish faith, since Arabs themselves are Semitic. Not all persons of Jewish faith are, though. Some are descended from Eastern and Central European stock, and converted to Judaism after the initial fall of the Hebrew nation in 70 CE. Not all Arabs are Semitic either; some are peoples who live in central Africa who learned Arab generations ago and still speak it today.

The study of the Middle East, in other words, requires a considerable tolerance for ambiguity. That makes it like most other regions of the world, though.

The Geography of the Middle East and North Africa. The geographical region of the Middle East is divided generally into three regions, the Arabian Gulf, the Levant, and the Maghreb. Table I shows the nations in each of the three areas:

The following map indicates the location of these places:

Arab: This term is clearer; an Arab is one whose native language is Arabic, and an Arab nation is one where Arabic is the majority language. A list of Arab nations includes:

Syria

Jordan

Lebanon

Palestine

Egypt

Libya

Tunisia

Algeria

Mauritania

Saudi Arabia

Kuwait

Qatar

Oman

United Arab Emirates

Yemen

Morocco

Bahrain

There are other nations with large minority Arab populations, like Sudan with a 39 percent Arab population, and Arabic as the official language, or the Republic of Comoros, where the population is largely black, yet 86 percent are Islamic and both French and Arabic are considered the "official languages." Neither are included in this chapter, though.

The major non-Arab nation in the Middle East is Iran, different in that Iranians speak Persian, today known as Farsi. The difference is more than linguistic; it is also cultural. While Islam reached Persia in 638, the nation remained Persian-speaking. As a consequence of the defeat of Ali Husayn at the Battle of Karbala in 680 (see Chapter ---), many Shi’ia fled to Persia, and today the religion is the dominant form in Iran.

Turkey is another nations that some regard as "Middle Eastern." But generally Turkey (where Turkish is the majority language), is considered to be on the periphery of the greater Middle East, as is Pakistan, Afghanistan, Chad, and other nations bordering the area. In this chapter they will be covered where they impact on the primary nations described here, as where Turkish water policy impacts on the down-river nations of Syria and Iraq.

The race and ethnicity of peoples in the Middle East and North Africa is complex. A majority of the population, regardless of language, is considered Caucasian, or "white." But such designations over-simplify the nature of race, and most peoples there are actually mixtures of numerous racial and ethnic groupings. Caucasian peoples who may have originally come from the Asian sub-continent moved into the Middle East thousands of years ago, but mixed there with "Negroid" peoples from sub-Saharan Africa and later from "Mongoloid" peoples from Asia.

It might be argued that race really does not matter in the Middle East and North Africa. For example, the division between Saharan Africa and sub-Saharan Africa is based partially on a racial dividing line. Nations in the "Saharan" zone are predominately white, while those below are predominantly black. It is important to note, though, that there has been considerable inter-mixing of races here. While Islam has spread below that line to include much of sub-Saharan Africa, Arab culture and language has not, with a few exceptions like Sudan. But even in Sudan there is a dividing line between the Arab north and the black south that has formed the front line in a prolonged and often violent conflict between the two groups.

In Saudi Arabia blacks from Africa were often a part of the slave class, and many of these slaves remained in Saudi Arabia when slavery was officially abolished in 1964. They have largely been integrated into the society, but still find themselves largely second class citizens.

Arabian Gulf: This is the body of water and its adjacent nations generally referred to in American media circles as the "Persian Gulf." The origins of that particular term are unclear, but interesting in light of the fact that Iran, once "Persia," has been out of favor since the 1979 collapse of the pro-U.S. Shah. On the Arab side the lexicon is clear – it is the Arabian Gulf. While it may smack of political correctness, this author has stood only on the Arab side of the Gulf, and sometimes at the invitation of those nations. So in this chapter the term "Arabian Gulf" will used to describe the body of water lying between the Gulf Arab nations and Iran.

Terminology of Dating. Customary dating practices use BC and AD ("Before Christ"), and "anno domini" ("in the year of our Lord") to indicate dates before and after the believed time of the birth of Christ. Later practices use BCE ("Before the Common Era" and CE ("Common Era") to reduce the apparent Christian bias in using dates. The problem is that the terms mean the same thing as previous practice; BCE is still before year 1 and BCE is year 1 and after. Still the terms BCE and CE are used here, but readers should recognize that they are Christian in origin, and that there is another dating systems used in the Muslim world, and yet another in Israel. There the term AH "anno hijjera) designates dates after the Christian calendar year 622, which on the Islamic calendar is the year 1. In that year the Prophet Muhammad journeyed from Mecca to Media (then called Yathrib) at the invitation of some citizens there to resolve a dispute. Because that was the first recognition of the Prophet as a Messenger of God outside of his family and a small circle of believers in Mecca, the Islamic calendar begins at that point. There is also a Jewish calendar.

Spellings of Arab words. Arabic is a unique language written in a script that does not directly transliterate into English or other Latin alphabet languages. That means that there is no consensus on how to transliterate Arabic into English, and consequently words may be spelled differently but has the same meaning. For example the U.S. media normally spell the name of the Iraqi leader as Saddam Hussein, but it is also correctly spelled "Husayn." In this chapter the more scholarly method of spelling Arabic will be used. This, I must add, is counter to common practice, where common spellings are used. But it is, in the end, their world, meaning the peoples who live (and speak and write) there, and perhaps we should become more used to doing it their way instead of our way.

Sources of Information. One of the most useful sources of basic information on all the nations and regions in the world is the CIA World Fact Book. This is the source for the economic and much of the political data in this chapter. I have also used the Foreign Area Studies/Area Handbook Program prepared by American University for the Department of the Army. Other sources include good newspapers from both the United States and other nations, (like the New York Times and the Washington Post and magazines like the Economist. The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) is another source used frequently in this chapter. FBIS, produced under contract for the Central Intelligence Agency, is a translation of major radio broadcasts and newspapers in many nations. Other material comes from interviews based on the author’s travels to Morocco, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain. Not all of those who agreed to be interviewed want their names in print, though, and I have respected their wishes.

There exists a vast collection of written material on the Middle East and North Africa, and much of it is based on careful scholarship. Unfortunately much is not. Too much of what passes for informed writing on the Middle East is based largely on passion and propaganda. Political tracts are one thing – one expects them to be highly partisan and designed to appeal to emotion rather than reason. But there is too much semi-scholarly material that contains hidden or at least partially hidden biases. That makes it difficult for the non-expert reader to choose what is reliable and accurate and what is not. And there are no easy methods of finding out. Generally shrill or highly critical language indicates unreliable scholarship, as does one-sided criticism or praise. Given the sweep of events in the Middle East and North Africa, there is enough praise and criticism to be distributed fairly evenly.

Even the most careful researcher is often confounded by a lack of hard information. Most Middle Eastern and North African nations do not allow open access to their historical archives, nor do they have open and free media outlets. Sometimes the only newspapers available are those approved by the government, and they exist in order to say good things about the leadership. Access to public officials is also sometimes difficult to obtain, and even if granted, there are few reliable ways to tell if what one hears is the truth. Public officials, after all, owe their careers to the state, and consequently they have few reasons to criticize it, or its leadership. So unfortunately much information gleaned about the Middle East and North Africa comes from sources that cannot be carefully documented or checked for accuracy. Gossip passed around the table in the home of an American "expatriate" in Riyadh passes for truth because there is no other source of information to prove or disprove the subject of the rumors.

In this chapter every effort has been made to verify the accuracy of the information presented. Moreover there is no conscious effort to lean one way or another on the often-sensitive issues presented here. Those with highly partisan views on these issues hopefully will not find much comfort in these pages. But then we as scholars own that much to our readers.