1. Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd al-Rahman Al Saud, better known in the West as Ibn Saud, founder of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is pictured here (center with glasses) towering over his advisers in Jidda in 1928. Following his conquest of the Hashemite Kingdom of the Hijaz in 1925, Ibn Saud took the title “Sultan of Najd and King of the Hijaz.” In 1932, Ibn Saud renamed his kingdom Saudi Arabia, making it the only modern state named after its ruling family.

2. Fawzi al-Qawuqji (center) among commanders of the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine. Qawuqji took part in the most famous Arab revolts against European rule, including the Battle of Maysalun in Syria (1920), the Syrian Revolt (1925–1927), the Arab Revolt in Palestine, and the Rashid Ali Coup in Iraq (1941). He took refuge from the British in Nazi Germany during WWII before returning to lead the Arab Liberation Army in Palestine in 1947–1948.

3. Exemplary punishment: The British Army destroy the homes of Palestinian villagers suspected of supporting the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt. Such collective punishments, conducted without due process, were given legal standing by a series of Emergency Regulations passed by British authorities to combat the Arab insurgency. An estimated 2,000 houses were destroyed between 1936 and 1940.

4. The opening of the Syrian Parliament, August 17, 1943. Following the Free French declaration of Syrian and Lebanese independence in July 1941, the Syrians went to the polls to elect their first independent government. The National Bloc list took a clear majority and, in the first parliamentary session (pictured right), their leader Shukri al-Quwwatli was elected president of the republic.

5. The Syrian Parliament in disarray, May 29, 1945. Despite French assurances, De Gaulle’s government had no intention of conceding full independence to Syria and refused to transfer control of the country’s armed forces to President al-Quwwatli’s government. When the Syrians rose in nationalist demonstrations in May 1945, the French stormed the Parliament, fired upon government offices, and bombarded residential quarters in Damascus in a vain attempt to impose their authority on the unwilling Syrians. The last French soldier withdrew from Syria in April 1946.

6. This posed propaganda photo portrays a mixed group of regular and irregular soldiers defending the walls of Jerusalem from Jewish attack, under the command of a Muslim cleric distinguished by his turban.

7. In reality, Palestinian fighters were ill-prepared to defend their country in 1948. Poorly armed and trained, none had combat experience to match that of the Jewish forces they faced in 1948. Worse yet, they underestimated their adversary, and suffered total defeat to Jewish forces by the time the British withdrew from Palestine on May 14.

8. The Egyptian Free Officers shortly after taking power in Egypt in July 1952. At 51, General Muhammad Naguib (seated behind the desk) was the elder statesman of the young Free Officers, whose average age was 34. Lieutenant-Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser (seated to Naguib’s right) had Naguib placed under house arrest and assumed the presidency in 1954. Nasser’s right-hand man, Major Abd al-Hakim Amer is standing to Naguib’s right. Republican Egypt’s third president, Lieutenant-Colonel Anwar al-Sadat, is seated fourth from the left.

9. The leadership of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) is shown here before boarding the Moroccan airliner that would fly them to captivity. Originally destined for Tunis, French warplanes intercepted the DC-3 and forced it to land in the Algerian city of Oran on October 22, 1956, where (from left to right) Ahmed Ben Bella, Mohammed Khider, and Hocine Ait-Ahmad were arrested and held for the remainder of the Algerian War. Prince Moulay Hassan (later King Hassan II, pictured here in uniform), son of Sultan Mohammad V of Morocco, saw off the Algerian revolutionaries.

10. Christian women, supporters of former president Camille Chamoun, taunted soldiers of the Lebanese Army with broomsticks in popular demonstrations against the government of Prime Minister Rashid Karami and the new president, General Fuad Shihab, in July 1958. Many women were reported wounded in the fighting.

11. Lebanon became the only country to invoke the Eisenhower Doctrine when President Chamoun requested American support against “Communist subversion” in the aftermath of the Iraqi Revolution in July 1958. Within three days, some 6,000 U.S. Marines landed on the shores of Lebanon, where they came under the scrutiny of the residents of Beirut. The force grew to a total strength of 15,000 men, backed by the Sixth Fleet and naval aircraft, before withdrawing on October 25 without having fired a shot in anger. [original caption: Interested Lebanese watch as U.S. marines relax . . . ]

12. Colonel Abd al-Salam Arif was one of the leaders of the Iraqi Revolution that overthrew the Hashemite monarchy in July 1958. He seized the national radio station on July 14 to declare the Republic and the death of King Faysal II to the shocked Iraqi nation. The Iraqi people gave their full support to the revolution. Here Arif addressed masses of supporters in the Shiite shrine city of Najaf on the objectives and reforms of the new government. Arif subsequently overthrew President Abd al-Karim Qasim in 1963 to become the second president of the Iraqi republic.

13. The Israeli Air Force initiated the June 1967 War with a series of devastating attacks on Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian air bases on the morning of June 5. In less than three hours, the Israelis had destroyed 85 percent of Egypt’s fighter aircraft and rendered their air bases unusable. Once they had achieved air superiority, Israeli ground forces swept over the Sinai, the West Bank, and Golan, inflicting total defeat on the armies of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Here, Israeli soldiers examine destroyed Egyptian aircraft in a Sinai air base.

14. The Israeli conquest of the West Bank in June 1967 drove over 300,000 Palestinians to seek refuge in the East Bank of Jordan. The journey was made all the more perilous by the destruction of road and bridges between the two banks of the Jordan River. Many of the new refugees fled with only those possessions they could carry.

15. Leila Khaled was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who successfully hijacked a TWA airliner in 1969 from Rome to Damascus, where all passengers and staff were released unharmed. Her second operation, against an Israeli airliner, was foiled by El-Al security officers who killed her partner and overwhelmed Khaled before making an emergency landing in London, where Khaled was taken into custody by British police. She was released by the British on October 1, 1970, as part of a prisoner exchange.