LEARNING OUTCOMES

Students who have successfully completed the course will: -- have thorough knowledge of this historical period, especially regarding the growth of Islam and the social and cultural worlds of the Ottoman eras. -- be able to apply their knowledge and analytical skills to understand medieval and modern political and social processes in the Middle East -- be able to express their own critical views on historical developments in Middle East -- have improved their writing skills -- have improved their critical reading skills.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The objective of this course is to give students a more nuanced and complete understanding of the Middle East, its states, and its peoples. Specifically, the course provides the basic tools for the knowledge of the history of the Middle Eastern states, with particular reference to the study of the regional security issues. At the end of the course, students will have acquired the analytical tools and knowledge necessary to understand the main features of the political, social, and cultural history of the modern Middle East. In addition, students will have the opportunity to develop their own professional thinking in this field. Students will acquire a top-down and a bottom-up perspective on the major historical processes and developments in the modern Middle East; to formulate her/his arguments in a clear way (by oral presentation and class discussion); to evaluate and compare between events and processes across the time; and begin to offer a critical view of the academic literature.

PREREQUISITES

Contemporary History - International Relations.

TEACHING METHODS

Frontal lectures, students' presentations, use of media, class discussion.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

Week 1: Overview of the course (presentation of the syllabus; audio-visual tools; hashtags; journals; archives) and preliminary inputs. Introduction to the study of modern and contemporary Middle Eastern history, an introduction to the roots of the Sunni-Shia rift (fitnah).

Week 2: Reform and Rebellion in the ME: the Tanzimat and the end of religious coexistence, Mohammad Ali's Egypt, the Qajar Iran.

Week 3: The Great War in the Middle East: the Ottoman Empire and the Qajar Iran from the revolution to the First World War.

Week 4: The modern Middle East state-system: the mandates and the State formation (Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iran).

Week 5: The Second World War and the entry of superpowers: the Israel’s birth, Nasser’s pan-Arabism and the military coups (Iran, Turkey and the Arab States).

Week 6: Cold War Battles: The Suez Crisis, Arab-Israeli Conflicts, the Lebanese Civil War.

Week 7: The rise of political Islam: the Islamic Revolution, the Turkish-Islamic synthesis, the Kurdish issue, the Iran-Iraq War and the Afghanistan Jihad.

Week 8: The Middle East security in the post-Cold War era: the 9/11 and the Pax Americana project for the ME: the Iraq War, the new Turkey’s foreign policy and the rise of small assertive powers (UAE, Qatar).

Week 10: The Arab upheavals and the reshuffle of regional balances: Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Syrian proxy-war, Gezi Protests, the sectarianization process and the birth of the Islamic State.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Peter Mansfield, A History of the Middle East (4th Edition), London: Penguin Books, 2013.

- Federico Donelli, Sovranismo islamico. Erdogan e il ritorno della grande Turchia, Roma: Luiss University Press, 2019.

To choose one of the following texts as Reading: 

- Mark Lynch, The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East, Washington, Public Affairs, 2017.

- Carlo Degli Abbati, Il radicalismo nel nome dell’Islam: una responsabilità condivisa?, Roma: Aracne Editrice, 2016.

- Federico Donelli, Le due sponde del Mar Rosso. La politica estera degli stati mediorientali nel Corno d’Africa, Milano: Mondadori Università, 2019.

- Nader Hashemi, Danny Postel (eds.), Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East, Oxford: OUP, 2017.

- Raymond Hinnebusch, Adham Saouli (eds.), The War for Syria: Regional and International Dimensions of the Syrian Uprising, London: Routledge, 2019.

Those students who will fail to attend classes according to Department's rules have to add in their readings the following text too:

-  Louise Fawcett (ed), International Relations of the Middle East, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

All other reading materials will be provided on the class website. Students are requested to prepare the required readings carefully, in order to be able to participate to class discussions.

The use of the historical maps is highly recommended.