European influence in world affairs was shattered by the Second World War. The postwar years were a period of decolonization as the states of Asia and Africa secured independence from their former colonial rulers, often by force of arms. The United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the dominant powers in the second half of the twentieth century, and the rivalry between them defined the rules of the new age, which came to be called the Cold War. It was then that Moscow and Washington entered into an intense competition for global dominance. As the United States and the USSR attempted to integrate the Arab world into their respective spheres of influence, the Middle East became one of several arenas of superpower rivalry. Even in that age of national independence, the Arab world found its room to maneuver constrained by outside rules—the rules of the Cold War—for nearly half a century (from 1945 to 1990). The rules of the Cold War were straightforward: a country could be an ally of the United States, or of the Soviet Union, but could not have good relations with both. The Arab people generally had no interest in American anticommunism or Soviet dialectical materialism. Their governments tried to pursue an intermediate path through the Non-Aligned Movement—to no avail. Eventually, every state in the Arab world was forced to take sides. Those states that entered into the Soviet sphere of influence called themselves “progressives” but were described in the West as “radical” Arab states. This group included every Arab country that had undergone a revolution: Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and South Yemen. Those Arab states that sided with the West—the liberal republics like Tunisia and Lebanon, and conservative monarchies like Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States—were dubbed “reactionaries” by the progressive Arab states but were considered “moderates” in the West. These labels came to be used by Western journalists and policymakers alike. What followed were patron-client relations, in which Arab states secured arms for their military and development aid for their economies from their superpower patrons. Arab states proved able participants in the Cold War, deploying a range of weapons in a bid to level the playing field with the superpowers. In the 1950s and 1960s the Arabs placed their faith in the politics of Arab nationalism. However, repeated defeats to Israel and the death of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser undermined the movement’s credibility. In the 1970s some Arab states used their oil resources to gain leverage in international affairs. In the 1980s many in the Arab world turned to the politics of Islam to provide strength and unity against external powers. None of these strategies liberated the Arab world from the rules of the Cold War. So long as there were two superpowers, there were checks and balances in the system. Neither the Soviets nor the Americans could afford to take unilateral action in the region for fear of provoking a hostile reaction from the other superpower. Analysts in Washington and Moscow lived in fear of a third world war and worked day and night to prevent the Middle East from sparking such a conflagration. Arab leaders also learned how to play the superpowers off each other, using the threat of defection to secure more arms or development aid from their patron state. Even so, by the end of the Cold War the Arabs were well aware that they were no closer to achieving the degree of independence, development, and respect they had aspired to at the start of the era. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Arab world was to enter a new age?on even less favorable terms.

The Cold War came to an end shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. For the Arab world, the new unipolar age began with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. When the Soviet Union voted in favor of a UN Security Council resolution authorizing a U.S.-led war against the Kremlin’s old ally Iraq, the writing was on the wall. The certainties of the Cold War era had given way to an age of unconstrained American power, and many in the region feared the worst. The rules of the new age of American dominance are perhaps the hardest to define. Three U.S. presidents pursued very different policies in the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century. For George H. W. Bush, who was in office as the Soviet Union collapsed, the end of the Cold War marked the beginning of a new world order. Under Bill Clinton, internationalism and engagement remained the hallmarks of U.S. policy. But with the advent of the neoconservatives to power following the election of George W. Bush in 2000, the United States turned to unilateralism. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, these policies had a devastating impact on the region as a whole, leading to a war on terrorism that focused on the Muslim world, with the Arabs as prime suspects. Arguably, the rules have never been more disadvantageous to the Arab world than they are today. Aside from the Arab Gulf states, which have negotiated the new era of American domination to achieve remarkable economic growth and political stability for their citizens, the post–Cold War era has been marked by violence and instability in the Middle East. Prospects for the future in the Arab world have never caused more pessimism—at home, in the region, or internationally. As Samir Kassir said with characteristic restraint: “It’s not pleasant being Arab these days.”

It would be wrong, however, to emphasize the tensions in Arab history to the detriment of all that makes the Arab world so fascinating. As a lifelong student of the Middle East, I was drawn to Arab history because it is so rich and diverse. Following my childhood in Beirut and Cairo, I took my interests in the Middle East to university in the United States, where I studied Arabic and Turkish to enable me to read the primary sources of Arab history. Reading court records and chronicles, archival documents and manuscripts, histories and memoirs, I was equally struck by the familiar and the exotic in Arab history. So much of what the Arab world has undergone in the past five centuries is common to human experience around the globe. Nationalism, imperialism, revolution, industrialization, rural urban migration, the struggle for women?s rights?all the great themes of human history in the modern age have played out in the Arab world. Yet, there are many things that make the Arabs distinct: the shape of their cities, their music and poetry, their special position as the chosen people of Islam (the Qur?an stresses no less than ten times that God bestowed His final revelation on humankind in Arabic), their notion of a national community stretching from Morocco through Arabia. Bound by a common identity grounded in language and history, the Arabs are all the more fascinating for their diversity. They are one people and many peoples at the same time. As the traveler moves across North Africa from Morocco to Egypt, the dialect, calligraphy, landscape, architecture, and cuisine—as well as the form of government and types of economic activity—transform in a constantly changing kaleidoscope. If the traveler continues through the Sinai Peninsula into the Fertile Crescent, similar differences arise between Palestine and Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, and Iraq. Moving south from Iraq to the Gulf States, the Arab world shows influences of nearby Iran. In Oman and Yemen, the influences of East Africa and South Asia are apparent. All of these peoples have their own, distinct history, but they all see themselves bound by a common Arab history. In writing this book, I have tried to do justice to the diversity of Arab history by balancing the experiences of North Africa, Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, and the Arabian Peninsula. At the same time, I have tried to show the linkages between the histories of these regions—for example, how French rule in Morocco influenced French rule in Syria, and how rebellion against French rule in Morocco influenced rebellion against French rule in Syria. Inevitably, some countries take up more than their fair share of the narrative, and others are woefully neglected, which I regret. I have drawn on a wide range of Arab sources, using eyewitness accounts of those who lived through the tumultuous years of Arab history: chroniclers in the earlier periods give way to a wide range of intellectuals, journalists, politicians, poets, and novelists, men and women famous and infamous. It has seemed only natural to me to privilege Arab sources in writing a history of the Arabs, much as one might privilege Russian sources to write a history of the Russians. The authoritative foreigner—statesmen, diplomats, missionaries, and travelers—have valuable insights to share on Arab history. But I believe Western readers would view Arab history differently were they to see it through the eyes of Arab men and women who described the times through which they lived.