Modern Middle East: history, politics, and contemporary issues

¶ … Middle East/Gulf region has a complex history and has experienced a series of important events both during and in the years following Muhammad's influence in the territory. While Muhammad's ruling played an important role in shaping thinking in the region, his legacy was actually more important, taking into account that it practically influenced people in taking on certain attitudes and in expressing great interest in wanting to promote Islamic thought.

The Arab Caliphate greatly expanded the Islamic Empire and turned it into one of the greatest in all of history. It lasted from 632 until 1513 and it involved a series of leaderships: the Rashidun period, the Umayyad period, and the Abbassid period. These three dynasties kept Arabs together and provided them with a sense of unity and cultural identity. Introducing Arab as an official language further contributed to making individuals in the Middle East feel as if they were part of a larger community and that it was thus important for them to get actively involved in assisting the respective group experience success.

Even with the fact that Arabs managed to stay together for almost one millennium before the Arab Caliphate was brought down, it was not until the year 750 that matters in the region changed when regarding attitudes toward non-Arabs. While Arabs changed their attitudes toward non-Arabs and put across greater acceptance when regarding individuals from this group, the act eventually back-fired, as Mamluk generals rose against their leaders and eventually came to rule the territory.

The Ottoman Empire was installed as Ottoman sultans defeated Mamluks and provided people in the region with a ruling similar to the one they experienced during Arab leadership. This proved to be essential in assisting them gain appreciation among Arabs, as change was practically difficult to observe and as conditions were largely similar to how they were before the rise of the Mamluk generals.

The Ottoman Empire eventually came to be defeated by a combined army of European forces with the British Empire leading them. The empire was dissolved during a decade, from 1908 and until 1918, with Arabs entering the modern era as members of a series of states expanding across the Greater Middle East / Gulf region. "Instead of permitting Arab unity, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, which promised a homeland for the Jews in Palestine, and the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which led to the partitioning of geographical Syria into British and French spheres of control" (Barakat 6). While the British created a home for the Jewish population, they failed to acknowledge the unrest this would trigger in the Arab world and generally focused on reducing the threat of a united Arab peoples being able to regain their power.