Sophus Helle— “Gilgamesh is tremendous!” the poet Rainer Maria Rilke exclaimed in 1916. “I hold it to be the greatest thing a person can experience.” Many modern readers have shared Rilke’s enthusiasm for the epic. Gilgamesh will soon celebrate the 150th anniversary of its rediscovery in 1872, and since then
Considered a modern classic, this New York Times bestseller by the award-winning journalist Ahmed Rashid provides an early glimpse into the history of the Taliban. Ahmed Rashid— The links between the Taliban and some of the extreme Pakistani Deobandi groups are solid because of the common ground they share. Several
Franck Salameh— Middle East specialists of a hundred years ago have traditionally been philologists trained in a dozen or more Middle Eastern languages, including Latin and Greek, but also the obligatory Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Turkish, and Persian among others. Today, many of the luminaries of this venerable area of inquiry
Philippe Joseph-Salazar— First, let us remember that terrifying images of throat-slitting are not new. The atrocity of which our discourse community is (not) aware is more than a decade old: It did not begin with the execution of the American journalist James Foley, beheaded on prime time in August 2014.
Dieter Helm— When the Saudis decided to draw a halt to the great shale oil boom in the United States at the end of 2014, they thought they could administer a short, sharp shock of lower prices that would kill off this threat, and then the market would rebalance again
Guy Laron— Are wars the result of accidents, compounded by misassessments, misunderstandings, and miscalculations? If this is true, there is no one to blame; according to this view, wars simply happen. But perhaps wars are born out of meticulous and willful planning by individuals and institutions that might benefit from war. If
Rory Miller— In the early 1970s, the six Sunni Muslim monarchies of the Arab Gulf—Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait—took control of their own fortunes. Since then, they have used their oil and gas wealth to pursue stability at home and influence abroad. In
Christopher Phillips— The acrimonious breakdown of the latest Syrian ceasefire and the renewed assault on Eastern Aleppo serve as reminders that Syria’s highly internationalized civil war seems unlikely to be resolved any time soon. The conflict originated in a largely peaceful uprising against President Bashar al-Assad that turned violent in
Neil Faulkner— A hundred years on from Sykes-Picot, the Middle East is in turmoil. These two things are intimately related. Mark Sykes was a British diplomat, François Georges-Picot his French opposite number. They gave their names to a secret agreement to carve up the decaying Ottoman Empire between Britain, France,
Ibrahim Fraihat— Five years have passed since several Arab countries revolted against their repressive regimes, and peace and stability are nowhere in sight. The unraveling of their political systems pushed these countries into challenging transition processes where violence is always a serious possibility. Yemen and Libya’s civil wars present blunt