Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History – The Rashidun Caliphs

Title: Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History – The Rashidun Caliphs
Author: Tayeb El-Hibri
Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2018 (First)
ISBN: 9780231150835
Pages: 471

When Muhammad died in 632 CE, he didn't leave behind any clear instructions on the successor. Since he died in Medina, the two factions in early Islamic society - the Muhajirun (emigrants) and the Ansar (helpers) - sprang into action to get one among them elected as the caliph (commander of the faithful). Umar cleverly handled the power struggle and ensured the almost unanimous selection of Abu Bakr as the caliph. The supporters of Ali, who was the son-in-law of the Prophet and therefore of the same family, felt that he was unjustly side-lined in the selection process. In fact, Ali would continue to be overlooked twice more as Umar and Uthman would step on to the top post in the coming years. He finally obtained the position as the fourth caliph and the first four are called the Rashidun (rightly guided) caliphs. After Ali's death in 661, the caliphate moved away from the companions of the Prophet and effectually ended up as a kingship. This book covers the period from 632 to 661 CE when the reign of the Rashidun caliphs ended. The divergence in the religious concepts of the institutions of Shias and Sunnis emanate from the initial disagreement over who should have succeeded the Prophet and what really happened on the eve of his death. This study revisits these issues in religious and historical sources and argues for an alternative reading of this history as a largely parabolic cycle of literary narrative. It advises that the study of Islamic chronicles should be as texts of representation than as factual testimonies preserved in time. Tayeb el-Hibri is professor of Near Eastern studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

El-Hibri claims that the texts of early Islamic history were finalized only in the ninth century under the tutelage of the Abbasid dynasty on the caliphate. Naturally, the writers preferred themes and parables better appreciated by their patrons even at the cost of verisimilitude. Furthermore, the Quranic reticence on storytelling did not prevent Jewish and Christian converts after Muhammad's death from developing the tradition of religious storytelling anew. There were two schools of study of the early Islamic caliphate - the credulous and the skeptical. The credulous approach places significant belief in the historicity of Islamic traditions and the skeptical approach ranges from placing some trust in them to complete rejection. The skeptical approach is a new development. Religious scholars in the ninth century were in a dilemma over the mortal fight among the Rashidun caliphs for political power. Three out of the four were brutally assassinated. In light of this, they ignored the turbulent history of Uthman and Ali's reigns, opting to emphasize the flattering portions of the biographies. Conflict was blamed on outside instigators while the companions were portrayed as having acted in good faith. Ninth century writers in the Abbasid period answered contemporary economic questions about taxation by attributing certain principles to the Rashidun caliphs making it a touchstone for imagined, idealized practices. The polemical constructions of Sunni hadiths in the ninth century ran parallel to the standard narrative of the Rashidun caliphate with all its controversies and consistently legitimized what they did. 

The book presents the various scenarios and dramatic developments following the death of each leader. Prophet's succession was a contentious issue and we see that the selection of Abu Bakr was not entirely a foregone conclusion at first and also find the different versions of how he came to lead the prayer while the Prophet was alive, but sick. Abu Bakr played a leading role in healing the rift between the Muhajirun and Ansar factions in Medina and reuniting the community with sober council and kind words. Family renown was an overriding factor in early Arab society. It still is. Abu Bakr tells the Ansar that even though they possess all fine qualities, the Arabs will not recognize their authority except in the clan of the Quraysh, for they represent the best in lineage and standing (p.51). Abu Bakr also had a point of contention with the Prophet's daughter too. Bitterness between Fatima and Abu Bakr over her inheriting the estate of Fadak conquered from the Jews spilled over into day-to-day affairs. She insisted that the estate be handed over to her, but Abu Bakr managed to change the inheritance laws to the extent that a sole, surviving daughter of a deceased man would not be allowed to gain the majority share of inheritance from her father as her kin.

The reigns of the next two caliphs were marked by sectarian discord and allegations of nepotism especially in the allocation of war booty. They were also temperamentally much different from the first. Whereas Abu Bakr represented the experience of belief as a leap of faith and trust in the revealed word, Umar represented the experience of belief as an observation of the law and organizing norms. Umar's injunctions prohibited the drinking of wine, instituted the veiling of women and the clear demarcation between believers and non-believers. He is represented as an authoritarian and somewhat angry character. Umar made allies of religiously dubious but politically crafty figures like Muawiya and al-Mughira who knew what to say to Umar and when to say it. Umar was able to bring many new regions like Persia and Khurasan under the Arab sway but Umar and Ali appeared as patrons of the Arab and Persian camps respectively. Persia in general and Khurasan in particular would rise later as the chief patron of the Hashimite cause of Ali. Uthman is presented as a weak character. Scholars claim that Uthman came from a wealthy family, but there are no stories about his being a daring defender of Islam in its uncertain days. Hence, the later eulogy of him as a true companion of the Prophet may be a back-projection of Sunni praise on account of his becoming the third caliph. The slow progress towards the overthrow of Uthman is portrayed in an extensive set of narratives by Tabari about the companions abandoning Uthman to certain death. Muawiya requested Uthman to shift to Damascus from Medina but the latter didn't want to. Uthman was killed by opponents from Kufa, Basra and Egypt. The remaining companions failed to come to his aid. If some of them had intervened, the rebels would have departed in shame.

Ali at last became caliph when Uthman was killed by rebels who were alleged to have his tacit support. Ali's ascendancy set in a fissiparous trend that would rent the community asunder as Shias and Sunnis. The tragic wipe off of his family in the civil war is still mourned by the Shias. At the outset, Ali refused to countenance the contentious officials appointed by his predecessor even if that meant the disintegration of his rule in the provinces. To Ali, political war was a crusade of virtue and he stigmatized any attempt at compromise as something bordering on hypocrisy (p.96). Thus, Ali would be haunted by political setbacks throughout his career. He would often go by ideals rather than sound strategy and conceded his enemies space which a prudent commander would not have. At the Battle of Siffin, he allowed the camp of Muawiya to drink from the wells under Ali's control. In the battle, he fought valiantly alongside his troops, even though he himself had advised Umar against doing this at the Battle of Qadisiyya which Umar led, claiming that it would embolden the enemy to target him. The later narrators also focussed on Ali with a negative perspective. In spite of the wrongs done to Ali, they still conceived a contradictory perspective whereby even though Ali was pitied for his loss of the caliphate, his political distancing was still considered a necessity in order to give legitimacy to the Abbasid line, away from the Prophet's own Hashimite family. With the assassination of Ali, Muawiya transformed the caliphate into a more traditional kingship. Muawiya's qualities of forbearance, endurance and his discretionary system of pardons to wrongdoers and former foes helped him to gradually reconstitute a base of tribal support focused on his new centre in Damascus. Hampered by strict legal and religious codes that sacrificed all political and social considerations, Ali was unable to compromise for political expediency. The transfer of the leadership to Umayyads projected the province of Syria as the bastion of Sunnism in the caliphate, which was devoid of sectarian pretensions unlike the newly conquered regions of Iran and Iraq.

El-Hibri stresses that the stories preserved in the early Islamic narratives were neither real in its details nor intended to be factual. Rather, it played with classical biblical imagery to communicate a parable. To make every anecdote conform to this hypothesis, the author makes abundant use of symbolism to make them suited to what he proposes. This can be elaborated by an example: Arab conquest of Persia is mentioned in the book which unseated the king Yazdajird who fled. Disguised, he sought asylum at a local peasant's cabin who demanded four dirhams as rent for the stay. El-Hibri takes over at this point and argues that 'four' is the numerical symbol of justice or may have symbolized the cardinal points in the empire. This is a rather forced view and with that kind of license, you can claim anything. This book appears to be a learned attempt to focus on Islam's common legacy which it shares with Christianity rather than harping on its exclusivity. This focus on the biblical roots of early Islamic historiography makes it more appealing and acceptable to a Western audience. It does not lay stress on the intolerant mindset of the caliphs even though many instances can be discerned by the reader in passing through the narrative. This book is not for beginners as it assumes a somewhat deep familiarity with the source material. It mainly concentrates on the works of Tabari and also Ibn Sa'd, Baladhuri and Waqidi. It provides a transcript of the original Arabic verses of important citations. The Roman letters ensures that the reader can at least get to know of how the original sounded.

The book is recommended to serious readers who has a background of early Islamic history.

Rating: 2 Star

The Ottoman Endgame

Title: The Ottoman Endgame – War, Revolution and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Author: Sean McMeekin

Publisher: Penguin, 2015 (First)

ISBN: 9780718199715

Pages: 550

 

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ushered in the concept of separation of religion from politics of kingdoms and their interaction with neighbours. The principle of ‘cuius regio, eius religio’ (whose realm, their religion) finally lost relevance and the first seeds of modernity was sown in Europe. A century and a half later, the French Revolution introduced the novel ideas of nation states and national self-determination. While these crucial transformations were materializing in Europe, the Islamic world stubbornly stuck to their political creed of a caliph guiding the faithful both in temporal and spiritual matters. Ever since Selim I hoisted the Ottoman flag in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in 1517 after defeating the Egyptian Mameluke dynasty, the House of Osman jealously guarded the title of caliph. By end-nineteenth century, the Ottomans ruled over a vast land that enveloped numerous communities distinct from each other in ethnicity, religion, language and nationality. Persecution of Christians, Jews and other religious minorities was rampant. However, Europe had considerably progressed in industrial and military strength by this time. Tacit European support encouraged the subject nations to resist Ottoman hegemony. The period also saw Turkey, which was the seat of the Ottomans, being designated the ‘Sick man of Europe’. Foreign powers manipulated them at their will and carved up the empire into many pieces. With Turkey’s defeat alongside Germany in the First World War, the process accelerated and the Ottoman Empire was liquidated. This book narrates the events with long-lasting implications that led to the dismemberment of the Turkish empire that spread its geographical outreach from Morocco in the west to Persia in the east in a historically instantaneous interval of just three decades. The core of the giant Ottoman tree was already eaten by religio-nationalist worms and it just needed a push to come crashing down to the ground. Sean McMeekin is a professor of history at Bard College, New York. For some years, he taught at Bilkent University, Istanbul. This earlier career has biased his outlook and analysis of events mentioned in this book.

 

The book may be broadly divided into four sections, the first being the period from the deposition of Sultan Murad V and coronation of Abdul Hamid II and the downfall of the latter. The second part describes the run up to World War I, followed by the third part dealing with the actual war. The final section narrates the post-war dismemberment of the empire. The first part is especially important as it exhibits the reluctant steps with which Ottomans granted basic civil liberties to its religious minorities. It is surprising that this ordinary act which is taken for granted in all pluralistic societies required the intervention of external European powers. In lieu of support in the Crimean War, European powers demanded civic reforms which made the sultan grant extremely basic rights to non-Muslims. As a tentative step, churches in Istanbul were allowed to toll their bells during religious service! Apart from the hardliners, even moderate Muslims resented the reforms claiming that they were not sure why they had fought and died in a war so as to forfeit their legal supremacy over the Christians and Jews. The Ottoman system was rife with murderous intrigue and the sultan was forever anxious for his safety. Abdul Hamid was so paranoid that army recruits were not allowed to train with live ammunition. Naval vessels were not permitted to be armed while in port. Turkey entered a new era when the Young Turks usurped power and installed Mehmet V as a puppet on the throne.

 

We see shocking descriptions of the religious minorities before, during and after the Great War. Italy forcefully annexed Ottoman provinces in North Africa such as Libya in 1912. Greek soldiers regularly skirmished with their Ottoman counterparts. After the Great War erupted, Russia began incursions in the northeast along the Armenian border. Whoever attacked the Ottomans, their co-religionists were made to suffer in Turkey as hostages. As a result, they clung to the coat tails of whoever came along and had the power to defeat the sultan. The Sublime Porte responded by mass transfer of minority populations inland to prevent them from joining up with the invaders. In May 1915, Armenians were transported to the far-off and largely inhospitable Syrian desert province of Der Zar, implying that the survival of the deportees was not the caliph’s first priority. They were also forced to hand over their homes and property left behind to local Muslims at fire-sale prices. Around 700,000 or half of the Armenian population perished. This disaster, known as the Armenian Genocide of 1915, is not given due importance in the narrative. This gives the first hint of the author’s visible bias towards the Ottoman cause.

 

The book provides a detailed review of the military activities involving Turkey in the War. An important point to note is the Indian involvement in combat operations. India was under colonial rule at that time and the Indian army was extensively used to fight Britain’s war. Britain wanted to control the Dardanelles in the north and Iraqi oil fields in the south. Tens of thousands of Indian soldiers died in the trenches and forts of Gallipoli and Mesopotamia. After initial successes, the invading forces were fiercely resisted by the Ottoman troops. Meanwhile Germany who was an ally of the caliph, unleashed a fierce propaganda campaign to characterize the war as a jihad by the caliph’s forces against infidels. Germans assumed the role of friends of the caliph. Kaiser Wilhelm made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Saladin at Damascus and saluted him as a holy warrior. For his efforts, the German king was called ‘Hajji Wilhelm’ in some circles. The propaganda made some impact among Muslims in India and Afghanistan. This may have led to the germination of the Khilafat agitation in India. Not to be outdone, Britain responded with appeasement measures of its own. It docked four huge grain ships permanently on the Red Sea to feed the population of Hijaz which contained the two holy cities.

 

As we have seen earlier, this book is disappointingly partisan to the Ottoman side. The intervention of outside powers after the war redrew national boundaries in the middle east that do not reflect the people’s will who are fated to live inside these artificial constructs. The Kurds are the largest group that has not been accommodated in a proper homeland. Harping on this sense of injustice, the author whitewashes terrorist organisations as nationalists in statements like ‘pan-Islamic movements like Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda and Islamic State all strive to erase European-imposed state boundaries’. What is truly unbelievable is his cleverly crafted justification of massacres of Christians that have genocidal proportions. He provides a mitigating factor for Greek and Armenian massacres after the war ended in these words dripping with cold, spineless self-interest: “After a war lasting three years, each one more savage than the last, and with recent Greek atrocities nearby in mind, the forbearance of the Turkish occupiers was not fated to last” (p.473). And so, they plundered, burnt, raped and killed..? Disparagement of the Zionist movement provides a sideshow to the eventful history. It all ended with the Lausanne Convention which transferred wholesale populations between Turkey and Greece to make the partition effective and complete. The book shifts the focus quickly and too frequently from the micro to the macro perspectives, thereby confusing the readers. The book is somewhat large and a little tiresome with very small font size of the text.

 

The book is recommended.

 

Rating: 2 Star

 

Lords of the Desert

Title: Lords of the Desert – Britain’s Struggle with America to Dominate the Middle East

Author: James Barr

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2018 (First)

ISBN: 9781471174032

Pages: 401

The US and the UK are bosom friends in everything from culture and commerce to international policy. What pervades this all-weather friendship is the unquestioned dominance of the US in every sphere of activity you can think of. But this was not always like this. There was a time when Britain enjoyed its metropolis status over the destiny of a vast empire in which the sun never set and ruled the waves of all oceans on the planet. The US never had a colonialist hinterland though the nation itself was almost a continent on its own size. The Second World War changed the imperialist status quo. Though Britain and her Allies prevailed over their Axis enemies, the victory was a Pyrrhic one. The economic backbone of the empire was broken and its compulsion to cede independence to the colonies severely curtailed British prospects of ruling the world again. The US stepped in as a replacement to Britain, and turned out to be much more powerful in a different role. During the transition period, the British and the Americans struggled for supremacy in the Middle East, which contained the most promising commodity of the twentieth century – oil. From 1942, until Britain’s exit from the Gulf was completed in 1971, the two countries were invariably competitors in the Middle East and often outright rivals. The two issues of oil and Israel always stood ominously behind the violence in the region. This book is the story of how the Americans rose to prominence while Britain’s star was gradually eclipsed. James Barr is a British author of a number of historical works on the Middle East and is currently a visiting fellow at King’s College London.

Barr examines the economic perspective which pitted both countries against each other. The war effort absorbed sixty per cent of the industrial output in the US. After the World War, the demand would fall away leading to mass unemployment. Increase in exports was the only solution to tide over the crisis but this would place the Americans on a collision course with the British because a successful American export drive in the Middle East would be detrimental to British interests, which in the meanwhile had flooded the markets with British products under the guise of war-time shipping restrictions. Britain almost went bankrupt at the end of the war, resorting to food-rationing to feed its population. Liberal economic aid poured out of the US, but each incoming dollar constrained Britain’s independent maneuverability against conflicting American interests.

Israel was a turning point in Middle East history. Right after the defeat of Turkey in World War I, Zionists had identified Palestine as the place to house the Jewish diaspora. With Nazi persecution of Jews, inward migration reached such a pitch as to alarm the Arabs. Understandably, the Arabs opposed further migration, but their opposition had only a religious basis engendered by notions of jihad. Jews exerted an organized and carefully calculated influence in US politics. Under fire from the Zionists for failing to do more for Jewish refugees, Roosevelt tried to court the Jewish vote during the presidential campaign of 1944. He promised to bring about the establishment of a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. This opened the floodgates of illegal migration to Palestine. Some Jewish organisations even engaged in terrorism, targeting British troops and officials who oversaw the Mandate there. Fundraising continued unabated in the US and the Administration was reluctant to clamp down on them, fearing Jewish backlash in the ballot box. Britain left Palestine on 14 May 1948 and Arab-Israeli war broke out the next day. A Jewish state was declared and Truman promptly recognized it. The book depicts Britain as a staunch opponent of the Jews who in turn directed their physical violence against it. People often accuse the US for aligning their foreign policy in line with their business interests. But in the case of Israel, supporting them cost the US dear in terms of Arab goodwill, but still they continue to steadfastly support them against all odds.

The author accurately analyses the efforts to control the flow of oil to its western markets. Iran and Iraq were traditionally under the control of Britain while Saudi Arabian oil was managed by the US. No effort, howsoever unsavory, was spared to ensure the flow of oil. Bribes were used universally across the region. Aramco laid an oil pipeline from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon’s Mediterranean coast at great peril. It freely bribed Syria’s politicians for transit rights. When that proved insufficient, they organized a military coup to bring down a non-pliable civilian government. When Iranian premier Mossadegh nationalized the British-owned oil company, he too was brought down. Taking his cue, Egypt’s Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956. Britain attacked Egypt but had to withdraw ignominiously when the US opposed the move in a surprising turn of events. During this time, they dramatically increased Saudi oil production and provided its king vast wealth. The windfall from oil often astonished the British as well. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s concession in Iran was termed by Churchill as a ‘prize from fairy land far beyond our brightest hopes’. They massaged the profit figures of the enterprise to cut down on the dividends payable to the Arabs.

A noted aspect of American foreign policy is its stated desire to spread the idea of democracy around the world. Usually, this turned out to be nothing more than rhetoric and an attempt to make the right noises to please its clients at home and abroad. The US persuaded Britain to grant more autonomy and freedom to India but didn’t follow through with coercive measures when it became evident that they had no immediate plans to do so during the war. In the 1950s, this policy underwent a subtle shift in the Middle East. Abandoning their quest for democracy, they actively hunted for competent leaders who were somewhat favourably disposed to the West. With it went the hopes of democracy transforming the Arab states.

The Middle East is dominated by the Arabic language which is spoken in an unbroken chain from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east. Apart from faint spattering of Christians, the people are overwhelmingly Muslim. In the face of these obvious uniting factors, the readers of this book would be astonished at the total absence of cohesion among the people and the very high levels of mutual distrust and suspicion. The monarchs are jealous of each other’s ambitions while demagogues orchestrate to uproot other elected leaders and also monarchs. Arab nationalism appears to be so fractured and fragile that it never rises above tribal aspirations and prejudices. The Hashemites cashed in on the rout of Ottomans while the Saudis displaced them from Arabia proper. The Hashemites further subdivided into Jordanian and Iraqi branches and then tried to outwit the other. Gamal Abdel Nasser rose up as a promising leader who could unify the Middle East. But he was not above resorting to underhand deals and military interventions in other countries. Anyhow, with Egypt’s miserable defeat at the hands of Israelis in the 1967 war sealed his fate. The Arab world continues to be divided even now.

The book is very informative and pleasingly readable. The narrative is witty with lots of side comments that freshen up the reader. In these 340 pages, Barr condenses the entire story of the Middle East for a quarter century. Obviously, he has used much declassified documents which present some shocking details. King Hussein of Jordan is claimed to have received considerable sums of money from the CIA every month as part of their effort to keep the local rulers in good humour.

The book is strongly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Iran Rising

Title: Iran Rising – The Survival and Future of the Islamic Republic

Author: Amin Saikal

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2019 (First)

ISBN: 9780691195551

Pages: 326

The usually volatile Middle East perched dangerously close to an armed conflict last month when the US attacked and killed prominent Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani for his presumed links to state-sponsored terrorism. Iran retaliated with missile strikes at American targets, but luckily for the region and the world itself, both sides did not escalate further. Oil prices shot up in the few days when the crisis raged, because more than a third of the world's oil and gas supply is shipped through the narrow Hormuz Strait on the Iranian coast. Iran is militarily no match against the mighty US, but safe transport of oil through the narrow straits is entirely at their mercy. Both the countries carry an uncomfortable legacy in mutual relations after the Islamic Revolution in 1979 unseated the US-sponsored Shah of Iran and installed a strict, theocratic regime. The relations were never cordial after that and many events came to pass that helped only to bolster the antagonism. The latest point of concern is the US’ unilateral withdrawal from a deal it had entered into with Iran to curb its clandestine nuclear program. This drew considerable ire from Iran at the insouciant walking away from a deal signed by seven nations. This book is a survey of the Islamic republic’s trajectory from the coup of Khomeini to somewhere around the year 2017. Amin Saikal is a professor of political science at the Australian national University and a former director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies. Born in Afghanistan, he has published numerous articles in international journals.

Iran has been oscillating from one source of trouble to the next in its post-revolutionary history. The conservative regime has had to deal with domestic disturbances, foreign intervention and a poor understanding of its nature. Iran is in a hard dilemma to select between its religious legitimacy and pragmatic policies. The central concern of the book is to explore and analyse this oscillation over the last four decades. This book is a sequel to the author’s ‘The Rise and Fall of the Shah’. It summarises the history of Iran in a few pages and brings out the tremendous significance of the events of 1979. The Islamic Revolution was unprecedented in scale and social breadth in modern history before the advent of social media. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini replaced an autocratic, secular monarchy with an autocratic, religious theocracy. But this was not in violation of the spirit of its polity. It nearly perpetrated a political culture of authoritarianism that had underpinned Iranian politics for most of the country’s 2500 year-long history.

It is one thing for religious leaders to sermonize on the moral obligations of the believers and quite another thing to steer the destiny of a modern nation while adhering to the principles he had preached. Khomeini adopted a two-dimensioned approach to Islamic government – jihadi (combative) and ijtihadi (reformist). However, the author does not imply the more violent form of manifestation for the term ‘jihadi’. Here, it refers only to the focus on the Islamic association of politics and everyday life and the term ‘ijtihadi’ denotes a novel interpretation of Islam based on independent human reasoning, to the degree necessary for a strong, modern Islamic Iran. Even with this two pronged approach the regressive ethos lying at the root of a theocracy could not be exorcised. Saikal argues that Khomeini’s Islamic order is a key impediment to Iran’s cultural, economic and national potential as a nation rich in resources and manpower. Had it not been for his establishment of such a highly personalized and religious framework, Iran could have been a far more powerful and respectable nation. This is in spite of a well informed and connected young opposition.

This book offers a glimpse of the facade of respectability jihadi outfits are accorded in the West by its ignorant media and overzealous judicial system. Shah's administration employed repressive measures against the revolutionaries. It was the BBC that regularly carried news of protests against the Shah and the schedule of protest meetings in various cities. This helped to organise the opposition in those days when mobile phones and social media were unheard of. But, when the revolutionaries came to power, this outlet was resolutely blocked. They banned BBC and CNN outright and the few relaxations that have come into being date only to 2015. Another noteworthy feature is the West’s undeserved emphasis on liberal ideals in a society that is unfamiliar with this concept that eventually comes to the rescue of the jihadis. Jimmy Carter, who was the US President during the Islamic Revolution, made human rights a foreign policy priority. His prime target was the Soviet Union, but it also put pressure on the Shah to allow protest and criticism. Many Iranians took advantage of the small window of opportunity to criticize the prevalence of authoritarian rule and the lack of democratic rights and freedoms. Here again, after the clerics took the reins of power, human rights were conveniently buried and the US has no power to influence them.

The author describes some of the compromises made by the hard-line regime on the foreign policy front. Their concessions to the youth on the social front are amusing. Iran’s religion allows temporary marriages (Sigheh). Its officials promulgate this concept as a possible solution to the ‘problems of Iran's youth’ (p.127). This is a euphemism for pre- or extra-marital sex on which former president Rafsanjani’s titillating comments had stunned the Islamic world in the 1990s. This is legal and in accordance with the religious establishment’s rulings as a Shia religious practice. These marriages can also be arranged online.

The author tries his best to portray Iran’s decision-making bodies as a battleground for the fierce tussle between the hardliners and progressives. This two tier system pervades in all levels of bureaucracy and the armed forces. The armed forces are dominated by the IRGC which is responsible only to the supreme leader while the regular army called Artesh is controlled by the elected government. Whatever may be the design, it is always dominated by the hardliners. They allow only those reforms that are necessary for regime survival and national security but that do not harm their political and economic interests and concomitant foreign policy objectives. Saikal also attempts to glorify the conflict between these two factions, but the hegemony of the hardliners is clearly visible from the many examples he suggests.

Saikal tries to appear objective in his analysis, but his marked pro-Iranian mind-set comes to the fore on more than one occasion. It is generally perceived that US President Barack Obama granted unjustifiably liberal terms to Iran while finalizing the JCPOA deal in 2015. There was strong public opinion raised in the US against this generous give-away to a religious orthodoxy that tries to go nuclear. When Donald Trump arrived in the White House, he promptly walked out of the agreement which caused much consternation in Iran. Trump’s act so upset the author that he designates this action as ‘diabolical’! It is difficult to fathom how an impartial observer can give vent to such feelings against what is done by a party in the scheme of things he is narrating. Almost the entire book was prepared before the scrapping of the deal so that its relevance becomes a question mark. Some obvious factual errors are also seen in the text. Gorbachev is claimed to be the Soviet president in 1979 and Narasimha Rao India's prime minister in 1983.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Nasser – My Husband

Title: Nasser – My Husband

Author: Tahia Gamal Abdel Nasser

Translator: Shereen Mosaad

Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press, 2013 (First published 2011)

ISBN: 9789774166112

Pages: 122

Even though the Middle East has not been under colonial domination at any time in its history, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War caused most of the territory coming under the rule of colonial powers like Britain and France. When colonialism beat a retreat post-World War 2, the Arab world came under immense ferment. Monarchy found it difficult to hold on to power in most of the countries. A military coup in 1952 under Gamal Abdel Nasser ended the reign of king Farouk in Egypt and took on the course of modernization and pan-Arab nationalism. Nasser wanted to build a dam at Aswan at great cost, which was essential for irrigation and power generation. The US and UK promised financial aid for constructing the mega dam in return for Egyptian alliance against the Soviet bloc in the ensuing cold war. But Nasser saw it fit to play one side against the other and extract maximum benefit to his own country. Exasperated by the prevarications of Nasser, the western powers withdrew their offer of support to the dam. Incensed at this, Nasser sought and obtained Soviet backing for the project. Moreover, he nationalized the British-owned Suez Canal Company which operated the most strategic shipping channel in the world that offered a shortcut for cargo vessels to reach the Mediterranean from the Red Sea. Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt in 1956 but had to back down under intense American pressure. This victory caused Nasser’s reputation to soar to astronomical heights that Syria briefly joined Egypt to form the United Arab Republic. This book, written by the wife of the mercurial Egyptian leader, examines Nasser as a beloved husband, doting father and caring brother at home, away from his official avatar as the president of the country. Tahia Gamal Abdel Nasser was married to the leader for 26 years until death parted them. We find snippets of the man behind the façade of power in his true elements. Tahia strictly limited her pursuits behind the four walls of home and the affairs of her five children. This was not due to any religious inhibitions. The book is very short and the readers are treated to a ringside view of the Arab demagogue who ignited the imagination and aspirations of the Egyptian people.

Nasser kept politics out of his home and Tahia kept her influence strictly inside it. He was so caring to spare his wife of any tension that he did not divulge to her the fact that he was about to undergo appendectomy until after the surgery. A mild heart attack was also shielded from the wife until the situation stabilized. When his eldest daughter came of age, Nasser made her his personal secretary but it was in no way designed to mould her as his heir. The family stayed under the protective umbrella of the husband and Tahia was almost ignorant of what was going on around their house. Egypt was moving through a difficult phase in 1952 (military coup), 1956 (Suez crisis) and 1967 (Arab-Israeli war), but readers do not get any clue of it because these upheavals, terrible as they were, failed to create any ripple in Nasser’s personal life on account of his integrity to keep public matters insulated from the family members. No incidents are narrated where the president was seen discussing political matters even with his grown-up sons.

Nasser’s family altogether kept out of politics and harm’s way even though his sons stood a good chance to dabble in it in the footsteps of their illustrious father. After his untimely demise of a heart attack at the age of 52, his colleague Anwar al-Sadat succeeded him as the president. The family kept a distinct distance from Sadat and Tahia accuses him of maligning the memory of her husband. This dislike stoops to the level of the personal. Sadat is claimed to have been unaware of the revolution that unseated the king and was not even in Cairo. He was given a job in the new regime under the orders of Nasser. Tahia discloses that many of the articles published under Sadat’s name were ghostwritten by none other than Nasser himself. His physical appearance is also described in a pejorative way when the author unnecessarily reminds the readers about Sadat’s dark complexion on two occasions in the book. The family kept aloof from public eye during the reigns of Anwar al-Sadat and Hosni Mubarak and preserved this memoir under wraps for forty years till Mubarak was ousted from power in 2011. Tahia died in 1990 and this posthumous book was first published in Arabic. Apart from such minor recriminations against Sadat, there are no controversial subjects discussed in the narrative.

This book is only about personal reminiscences, but it still casts some interesting light on the personal life of a charismatic Arab leader who held so much potential to bring about an eventual deal with Israel in realizing lasting peace in Palestine. There are 80 pages of photographs in the book with text spanning just 116 pages. Nasser was addicted to photography and a lot of candid moments are covered in the book. Glancing over the photos, one cannot help wonder at the relaxed nature of religious rules on women’s dressing among the Egyptian middle class at that time. There are many tens of pictures in which Tahia is present, all of them in western attire and none of them in purdah. The book is graced with a foreword by Hoda, the author's eldest daughter.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star