The House Divided: Sunni, Shia and the Making of the Middle East

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'A masterly engagement with the most delicate and important of subjects - filled with gentle empathy, learning and rare balance' Rory Stewart'Rogerson is an original - eloquent and always fascinating' William DalrympleRecommended on The Rest is Politics and EmpireAt the heart of the Middle East, with its regional conflicts and proxy wars, is a 1400-year-old schism between Sunni and Shia. To understand this divide and its modern resonances, we need to revisit its origins, which go back to the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, the accidental coup that set aside the claims of his son Ali, and the slaughter of Ali's own son Husayn at Kerbala. These events, known to every Muslim, have created a slender faultline in the Middle East. The House Divided follows these narratives from the first Sunni and Shia caliphates, through the medieval caliphates and empires of the Arabs, Persians and Ottomans, to the contemporary Middle East. It shows how a complex range of identities and rivalries - religious, ethnic and national - have shaped the region, jolted by the seismic shift of the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Rogerson's original approach takes the modern chessboard of nation states and looks at each through its particular history of empires and occupiers, minorities and resources, sheikhs and imams. The result is a book of wide-ranging empathy, understanding and insights.

Reviews

'This is not a book to be ignored ... [a] digestible history of the restless region [and] a useful alternative to academic tracts' - Richard Spencer

'A balanced, sweeping, hugely ambitious work that delves into the long and tangled roots of the modern Middle East' - Literary Review

'Impressive ... a highly readable, lovingly researched, romantic and engaging history' - Spectator

'Brilliant' - Anita Anand

'A tour de force. One of the best summary histories of Islam I have come across. Informative, engaging, and excitingly written' - Ghada Karmi, author

Author Bio

Barnaby Rogerson is an author, publisher and journalist. Together with his partner Rose Baring, he runs Eland Publishing, which specializes in keeping the classics of travel literature in print. He has also written dozens of travel articles, book reviews and historical essays on various North African and Islamic themes, for Vanity Fair, Cornucopia, Conde Nast Traveller, Geographical, Traveller, Guardian, Independent,Telegraph, House & Garden, Harpers & Queen and the TLS.