Remembering Philip Hitti's Role in US Middle East Studies

Back in 2012, I did a post about the role of the late Philip K. Hitti (1886-1978) in founding Middle Eastern/Arab studies in the United States. Though his famous History of the Arabs and many other works have now been largely superseded, he remains the US pioneer in the field.

Now, here's a post about Hitti's contribution that actually includes interesting selections from an unpublished Hitti memoir.

Philip K. Hitti at Princeton

Fidel Castro and the Middle East

With Nasser

Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, a critical juncture in the decolonization of the Third World, and had considerable success in portraying himself as a champion of decolonization efforts worldwide.

Castro was no romantic hero, but indeed a brutal dictator despite some beneficial reforms on the domestic front, and a man who committed Cuban troops to various adventures in Latin America and a bloody war in Angola. But he cultivated many admirers, and some emulators, in the Middle East.

Since 1959 is now nearly 60 years ago, it may be worthwhile to take a moment to recall the context. In 1955-56, Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalized the Suez Canal, accepted the Soviet offer to build the Aswan High Dam, and resisted the British-French-Israeli intervention in the Suez War.

Four years before the Cuban Revolution, in 1955, the Afro-Asiatic Conference at Bandung had laid the groundwork for what would come to be called the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). When the NAM was formed at Belgrade in 1961 Cuba, though increasingly aligned with the Soviet Bloc, was a charter member, as was Egypt.

In 1958, following US and British interventions in Lebanon and Jordan (to block unrestblamed by the West on Nasserist propaganda), Egypt and Syria united in the United Arab Republic, creating the alignments Malcolm Kerr branded "The Arab Cold War."

Also in 1958, four years into the Algerian War of Independence against France, French nationalist generals rebelled against the Fourth Republic; out of the crisis came the creation of the Fifth Republic under Charles de Gaulle.

It was in this context that Castro entered Havana on January 1, 1959. After he defeated the US-backed exile landings at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, he came to be seen as a Third World hero who had defied the United States, as Nasser had defied Britain and France.

With the rapid decolonization and independence of British, French, and Belgian colonies in Africa, in 1960-62, Castro and Che Guevara, like Nasser, saw Africa as a fertile ground for asserting influence, beginning with the Congo.

With Algeria's Bouteflika

With Algerian independence in 1962, Cuba offered training to the new Algerian Army, after supporting it in the independence struggle. Cuba also supported, via Egypt, the fight for independence for South Yemen, which would lead to the only Marxist-Leninist state in the Arab world. With the formation of the PLO, Cuba became an early supporter, providing training to Palestinian guerrillas.

With Qadhafi

With the Libyan Revolution in 1969, Cuba found a fellow apostle of Third World Revolution in Mu‘ammar Qadhafi, and he, like the Cubans, had a preoccupation with Sub-Saharan African movements.

Castro, with his long ties to Algeria, joined the Algerians in supporting the POLISARIO Front against Morocco in the Western Sahara.

With Saddam

With the death of Nasser, Egypt's tilt to the West, and the decline of leftist liberation movements and the rise of Islamist ones, not to mention Cuban military over-commitments in Central America and Angola, Cuban influence in the Middle East  was much reduced. Castro even criticized the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba's foreign adventures were much reduced, and limited to supporting Latin American leftists like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Castro opposed Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.

In the Middle East of today, with ISIS and similar movements long having replaced revolutionaries of the left, the 1960s seem a long time ago. But Algeria, one of Cuba's early allies and one still led by Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who had known Castro since the early sixties, has declared eight days of mourning for the Cuban leader.

The Last Great Battle of the War Galleys: Lepanto, 545 Years Ago Today

On October 7, 1571, 545 years ago today, one of the critical naval battles of history took place off the west coast of Greece: Lepanto. The confrontation between the Holy League, a Christian alliance led by Spain and  Austria and supported by the Pope and Venice, and the powerful Ottoman Navy was one of the bloodiest sea battles on record. The Christian victory was deemed a miracle, stopping the advance of the previously undefeated Ottoman fleet into the western Mediterranean.

16th Century Maltese War Galley

From Ancient Greece (even from the Catalog of Ships jn the Iliad) through Rome and the Byzantines,  Venice and Genoa and the rise of Spain, naval warfare in the Mediterranean meant the clash of war galleys, long, low to the water warships powered by oars (though usually with a sail as auxiliary) and manned by slaves or prisoners. The age of sail had already dawned but in the Mediterranean/the galley still ruled supreme. Though galleys would linger as coastal patrols and anti-pirate missions, the last great clash of war galleys in line of battle was Lepanto.

Don Juan (John) of Austria

Lepanto would become the great symbol of Catholic Europe blocking Islamic expansion; (in the Catholic calendar today is still marked as the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, who was credited with the victory), and remains a more powerful symbol among Catholic countries than Protestant, since the Admiral in charge of the Christian fleet, Don Juan of Austria (who was Spanish, not Austrian, but the Hapsburgs got around). Don Juan was the illegitimate son of the Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, defender of the Catholic faith against Protestantism; that made Don Juan a half brother of Phillip II of Spain, future creator of the Armada; Charles was a nephew of Catherine of Aragon, whose divorce from Henry VIII provoked the English Reformation, so the Hapsburg victory at Lepanto was never a big deal in Protestant countries. An exception was the English Catholic author G.K. Chesterton, whose "Battle of Lepanto" is an expression of Catholic triumphalism and contains insulting language about the Ottomans and even Islam itself, but has a catchy power:

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,

Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,

Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,

The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,

The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,

That once went singing southward when all the world was young,

In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,

Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,

Don John of Austria is going to the war . . .

 Before I discuss the battle itself let me note two historical asides:

1. Lepanto, in the Ionian Sea and the Gulf of Patras, is extremely close to another decisive naval battle fought in these waters on the western coast of Greece: Actium, in 31 BC between Octavian (soon to be Augustus) versus Antony and Cleopatra, was fought nearby.
2. On one of the Spanish galleys, Marquesa, was a young, 20-something  Spanish naval infantry (Marine) infantryman who had been ill but insisted on remaining on deck through the battle. Of the nearly 70,000 soldiers and sailors on the Christian side, he may have been among the least known. His name was Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. He would write a book known as Don Quixote.

The battle itself was enormous, probably the largest naval battle up to that time, and the bloodiest. The forces were roughly equivalent; for convenience I'll use Wikipedia: on the Holy League side 212 ships, 206 galleys and six galleasses with 28,500 soldiers and 40,000 sailors and oarsmen; the Ottomans with 251 ships, 206 galleys and 45 galliots, with 31,490 soldiers and 50,000 sailors and oarsmen.

The Catholic view of the battle uses the slightly larger Ottoman numbers as proof of a miracle, but the Holy League had 1,815 guns, versus 750 on the Ottoman side. The huge cannons the Ottomans had used in land battles were not on their naval vessels; the Western small arms, arquebuses and muskets, were superior to those of the Ottomans, though the latter had excellent bowmen.

The Holy League forces were commanded by Don John, and the Turks under Muezzinzade Ali Pasha, fought hard, but the battle results were one-sided. Again using Wikipedia, the Holy League lost 7,500 men and 17 ships, while the Ottomans lost 20,000 dead, wounded or captured^, 137 ships captured, 50 ships sunk, and 12,000 Christian galley slaves freed.

Ali Pasha

Ali Pasha himself, and his two subordinate commanders were killed in the battle. Don Juan came to be seen as the savior of Europe.

List of Digital Resources for Middle East History

A useful list: "11 Essential Digitized Collections for Middle East Historians."

The New York Post Can't Tell its Asquiths Apart

The New York Post has a piece by Amir Taheri called "Lesson of the 'Mad Mullah,' the original beheading jihadist."

It is referring to the Somali religious and resistance leader Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, who led a war against the British and eventually against the Ethiopians and Italians as well in the early 20th century, and who was dubbed by the British at the time "the Mad Mullah of Somaliland." As an early anti-Western Salafi, comparing him to contemporary movements is not necessarily far-fetched. But then I saw this:

Is President Obama repeating the mistake of Britain’s liberal Prime Minister Anthony Asquith in dealing with jihadists a century ago?

This has been up for a day and is still uncorrected. I don't know if the error was Taheri's or was introduced by an editor, but it suggests we Yanks can't tell our Asquiths from a hole in the ground.

Herbert, not Anthony

Anthony Asquith (1902-1968) was a British film director. It was his father, Herbert Asquith (1852-1928), who served as British Prime Minister 1908-1916.

Just in case they spot the error and fix it, here's a screencap for posterity:

An Example of Ottoman Multiculturalism

From the @worldbulletin Twitter feed, a 1911 Ottoman calendar page from a multinational Empire:

"Caliph Ibrahim" is not the First Caliph to Make His Capital at Raqqa

As a onetime specialist on the ‘Abbasid Caliphate, I thought it might be worth noting that the Islamic State's self-proclaimed "Caliph Ibrahim" is not the first Caliph to make his seat at the town of Raqqa in eastern Syria. That precedent was set by one of the most famous ‘Abbasids of all: Harun al-Rashid.

Although thanks to the 1,001 Nights tales, Harun is inexorably associated with the glories of Baghdad, the city founded by his grandfather al-Mansur, and he did indeed preside over the flourishing of the great city on the Tigris, he decided in AD 796, a decade into his reign, to move his Caliphal seat from Baghdad to Raqqa. The reasons are not entirely clear and may have been strategic, but he actually governed the Empire from Raqqa for the next 12 years, until his death in 809. It remained an administrative center for the western part of the Empire after the capital returned to Baghdad.

I doubt if "Caliph Ibrahim" will be the subject of songs and stories centuries from now. But then again, I rather suspect Caliph Ibrahim doesn't approve of the 1,001 Nights.

Alfred J. Butler, Egypt, and the Copts, Part II: The Arab Conquest and its Sequels

I'm on vacation. As I have done each year, I have prepared a number of posts on historical and cultural subjects unlikely to be overtaken by events, with at least one appearing daily. Part I of this post appeared Thursday and I had intended for this part to appear Friday, but was delayed.

A.J. Butler

Having introduced A.J. Butler in Part I, and discussed his works on Coptic churches and practices, I want to turn today to the works for which he is best known: his 1902 study of the Arab Conquest of Egypt, and two sequels in which he followed up on the original as new sources became available.

The period of the Arab Conquests of the Middle East in the early Islamic period has notoriously created challenges for historians. Traditional Arab historiography derived its fundamental methodology from hadith criticism, the method devised to determine the practices of the Prophet Muhammad through anecdotal evidence (hadith) documented by a chain of transmission (isnad) of the form "I heard from so-and-so who was taught by so-and-so who heard it from his uncle so-and-so who heard it from the Prophet in person." Recognizing that transmitters might invent these chains, scholars known as mutahaddithun studied biographies and other data to determine if each link in the chain held up (Were they alive at the same time? Were they ever in he same place?) Many modern critics have raised doubts about the method, but Arab historians expanded it to documenting the early years of the faith. Though most of our systematic Arab history dates from a later period, the second and third centuries AH, the traditional chains offer a far more textured and detailed account than is available for, say, Western Europe in the same era.

The problem is that, when an Arab historian encountered seemingly inconsistent or contradictory versions, he simply listed them both, even if they muddled the chronology or the narrative. For the conquest period, the standard and massive work of al-Tabari follows at least two distinct traditional lines (each with their own internal variations). For the conquest of Syria-Palestine, the chronology and command structure and even the dates of battles is very muddled. Nineteenth-century Orientalist scholars such as Michael Jan de Goeje in Mémoire sur la Conquête de la Syrie and Prince Leone Caetani in his meticulous Annali dell'Islam hammered out a sort of "received version" of the chronology and sequence of events, that dominated Western scholarship and influenced Arab scholars,and still does, though these were not the only possible choices. Modern scholars such as Fred Donner, Hugh Kennedy, and the Byzantinist Walter Kaegi (and many others) have challenged some of the conventional account and elaborated upon it.

There is an exception. Most of these modern reworkings either stop before the conquest of Egypt, or generally follow the broad interpretation put forth by Butler between 1902 and 1914.

His major work, The Arab Conquest of Egypt and the Last Thirty Years of the Roman Dominion, appeared  in 1902, the same year Butler received his Ph.D. (Google books version; various other formats at Internet Archive here.) (Let me add that while the full original edition is available digitally online for free, there is a 1978 Second Edition from Cambridge University Press which collects the book and its two sequels and adds an Introduction and extensive "Additional Bibliography" by P.M. Fraser to bring the state of research down to the 1970s.)


That the book is still of value may seem somewhat surprising, since Butler wrote it without access to some of the key sources. He had seen only parts of Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam's Kitab Futuh Misr, the earliest and fullest Muslim work on the subject, and judged that it contained "a good deal romance mingled with history." While that may hold true for the section on the Maghreb and Spain, Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam came from a long line of Egyptian mutahddithun and thus was in possession of solid traditions dating from long before his own ninth century. Butler also lacked a full text of Tabari's massive universal history..

He did recognize that the Christian sources were much earlier than the Muslims', and made full use of the Chronicle of John of Nikiu, who wrote in the late seventh century and my have been a boy at the time of the conquests. (John's Chronicle can be found online here.) 

In the 1902 book, however, Butler made a blunder concerning the value of the other key early source, The History of the Patriarchs. Although seemingly aware of the work he was misled by the attribution to Sawirus (Severus) of Ashmunayn and referred to it as a 10th century work. In fact, Severus was merely the compiler of earlier biographies, and that of the Patriarch Benjamin at the time of the Conquest was written by one George the Archdeacon, who flourished in the late 7th century and may also have been a boy at the time of the Conquest; in any event, he would have been able to speak to eyewitnesses. The section of the History of Patriarchs dealing with the period can be found in Patrologia Orientalis Vol. I, fasc. 4 in Arabic and B.T.A. Evetts' English translation (Google Books version here; various formats from Internet Archive here; English text only here).

Despite missing some key sources, Butler was able to offer a chronology of the conquest which still stands, and to put forward an interpretation of the figure known in the Arabic sources as "al-Muqawqis," identified by Butler as the Chalcedonian Patriarch Cyrus. Both of these interpretations still largely stand, though there have always been dissenters on the identification of al-Muqawqis. Still, most scholars accept Butler's view as largely correct. (Al-Muqawqis may be a post for another day.)

As Fraser points out in the 1978 edition and Additional Bibliography, the earlier parts of Butler, on Late Byzantine Egypt and the Persian  occupation, do not hold up as well due to new sources, and the discovery of administrative papyri from the early Islamic period also renders his account of administration outdated. But the basic conquest narrative still largely stands, especially if read with Butler's two subsequent monographs.

For in fact Butler soon gained access to the sources he had missed, and wrote two updates, now usually reprinted together with The Arab Conquest. These were his 1913 The Treaty of Misr in Tabari: An Essay in Historical Criticism (various formats at Internet Archive) and his 1914 Babylon of Egypt: A Study in the History of Old Cairo (various formats at Internet Archive). The three works together remain the essential starting point for any historical research on the conquest period.

Just Saying: Previous Caliphs Named "Ibrahim" Did Not Leave Stellar Records

So Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi wants to be recognized as "Caliph Ibrahim." There seems no rush, even by fellow jihadis, to offer the bay‘a to him. It may be worth noting that previous Caliphs named Ibrahim have not been well-remembered; for the first, there is some dispute whether he was ever even accepted as Caliph; the second was the Ottoman Sultan known as Ibrahim the Mad. Not great precedents.

Ibrahim ibn al-Walid was named successor to his brother, the Umayyad Caliph Yazid III in AD 744, but was quickly opposed by his relative Marwan II and deposed. At most he ruled for a few weeks, and there's some dispute about whether he was ever fully recognized. Marwan deposed him but allowed him to live peaceably under his protection. Until the ‘Abbasid revolution of 750, when Ibrahim was killed with most members of the Umayyad house. Marwan II also was killed, after fleeing to Egypt.

Ottoman Sultan Ibrahim was Ottoman Sultan 1640-1648. He is known as Ibrahim I as Sultan, but if one accepts the Ottoman claim to the Caliphate, he would have been the second Caliph named Ibrahim. His reign was troubled to say the least, marked by family rivalries, executions, and provocations of neighboring powers. In 1648 the Janissaries revolted; Ibrahim's Grand Vizier was torn to shreds and Ibrahim deposed and executed. He is remembered as "Ibrahim the Mad."

Neither is a very inspiring role model.

Juan Cole reminds us of the Zangids

The medieval historian in me is delighted to see Juan Cole evoking the Zangids to discuss Iraq and Syria: ‘"Neo-Zangid State erases Syria-Iraq Border, cuts Hizbullah off from Iran."

He particularly notes that during the rule of ‘Imad al-Din Zangi (d. 1146 AD), who controlled northern Syria and Iraq but never held Damascus or Baghdad. (His son Nur al-Din took Damascus, but eventually was supplanted by Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi (Saladin).

The Bonapartist Temptation, The Man on the White Horse: But is Sisi Napoleon I or Napoleon III?

The Original (Wikimedia Commons)

Several months ago, I noted that despite the tendency of many of General Sisi's critics  to misuse the word "fascist," for the mix of populist enthusiasm and yearning for a strong military leader we see in Egypt today, "Bonapartist" was probably the more appropriate term. At that time, one of my commenters suggested that if Gamal Abdel Nasser was Napoleon I, General Sisi was likely to be Napoleon III.

Indeed, there is a big difference between Napoleon I, the victor of Austerlitz who conquered most of Europe, and his nephew Louis Napoleon, the loser at Sedan who lost Alsace and Lorraine for half a century.

Juan Cole takes up the theme in a post brilliantly titled (paraphrasing Karl Marx), "The 18th Brumaire of Gen. al-Sisi in Egypt." That of course is a reference to Karl Marx's famous "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," analyzing Napoleon III's accession in the wake of the failed revolutions of 1848 ("18th Brumaire" refers to the coup in which the original Napoleon overthrew the Directory in 1799). (That is also the work that begins with Marx's famous lines, "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.") Cole:

Marx, who saw the government as a managing committee for the business classes, viewed the accession to power of Napoleon III after the failed revolutions of 1848 as an investment of power in dictatorship by threatened entrepreneurs and financiers.

The anointing of al-Sisi as the candidate of the officer corps and his popularity with the Egyptian wealthy points to a similar configuration. He is a symbol of order and authority at a time when the foundations of society have been repeatedly shaken. But above all he is the great hope of the social classes that had gotten wealthy off the public sector and off of government licenses. They had been deeply threatened by the revolution. Al-Sisi’s function from their point of view is to continue to shore up the public sector companies, protect the wealth of the government-tied entrepreneurs, and attract more foreign investment and Gulf rent.

The Fallul, to use a non-Marxist term.

Masrawy (via Zeinobia)

You may also have seen  the controversy over pro-Sisi demonstrators holding military boots on their heads at the Morsi trial, a highly dubious choice of symbolism indeed; Zeinobia posted many of the pictures and like other observers she was reminded of Orwell's line at the end of 1984 "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever " 

I suspect these young Sisi enthusiasts have read neither Marx nor Orwell, but the be-careful-what-you-wish-for rule should be kept in mind. Napoleon I, even in defeat, made a comeback from Elba for 100 days; but not all Bonapartes are the same:

Not his Uncle: Napoleon III (left) with Bismarck after the Surrender

On a Bloody Morning: January 25, 1952 (Police Day), 2011 (the Revolution) and Now

The latest car bombing in Cairo, at Police Headquarters in Cairo's Bab al-Khalq neighborhood,  which augurs no good, reminds us that Saturday is January 25. It is Egyptian Police Day, the 62nd anniversary of a landmark day in Egypt's struggle against the British, and also the third anniversary of the beginnings of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 (inspired by the Tunisian Revolution, Egyptian protesters deliberately chose Police Day to launch their protests).

The original Police Day celebrated the Police confrontation, not with Egyptian protesters, but with the British. As I noted in last year's post:

The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 had provided for British withdrawal of its troops from Egypt, except for bases in the Suez Canal Zone for the protection of the Canal, but with the outbreak of the Second World War, Britain had invoked a clause allowing it to reoccupy Egypt. After the war British troops did withdraw to the Canal Zone, but kept force levels well above the 10,000 troops allowed in the treaty. After the Wafd Party, Britain's traditional nationalist rivals, won the 1950 elections, the Egyptian government in October 1951 unilaterally abrogated the treaty and demanded that Britain negotiate for its withdrawal.

The Cold War was in full swing and Britain (and behind it the US) were already engaged in a struggle with Iranian Prime Minister Mossadeq over Iranian oil, and now faced a challenge to the Suez Canal. The Wafd, and its other traditional rival the King, were both losing influence in Egypt to growing social and economic dissatisfaction and the growth of movements with their own disciplined and sometimes armed militias, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Communists, and others.

The Egyptian government decided to sanction the creation of "Liberation" squads, recruited from vlunteers (many from the Brotherhood), who began a guerrilla war against the British in the Canal Zone. The British responded with proactive moves against the "terrorists," and on January 21 entered Egyptian quarters of Ismailia seeking to uproot the Liberation squads. After coming into conflict with Egyptian police, on the 25 the Lancashire Fusiliers surrounded the Ismailia police headquarters.

The Egyptian Interior Minister, Fuad Seraggedin Pasha (who would survive to head the New Wafd in the 1970s and 1980s), ordered the police in Ismailia to resist the British Army, a dubious decision which, after a six hour siege, left some 50 policemen dead. This video, apparently a British newsreel (there's no sound at least in this version), shows aspects of the British operation, including rounding up prisoners:

Let me also rerun that video:
The next day, the 26th, was Black Saturday. More on that later today or perhaps Monday.

The Barman of Cairo's Windsor Hotel Bar Remembers

Last week ended with Nelson Mandela's passing. Let me start this week with a more positive note, and with a video that will warm the hearts of old Cairo hands, and perhaps educate the young ones.

Let me begin by noting that the bar of the old Windsor Hotel in Cairo, often called "the barrel bar" because the chairs (some at least) are made from barrel staves, an old British-era bar that survives pretty much intact, is by far the greatest bar in Cairo or in all of Egypt.

Not everyone will agree with this seemingly dogmatic, sweeping, but in fact quite factual, statement.

But they will quite simply be wrong.

Deceived perhaps by flashy modern bars, the slanders of Islamist critics, or simple ignorance, they should learn from this post.

(If you still disagree, start your own bloody blog and post your own misguided opinions.)

I will not exaggerate by saying, for example, that it is the greatest bar on the African continent, or the greatest bar since the unification of Egypt in 3100 BC, because I have no way of proving that, obviously.

But I'm pretty sure it's both, nonetheless.

Now, the video. Then a bit more. Via Zeinobia's indispensable blog, and produced by these folks, is this brief but wondrous profile of the man who has been barman at the barrel bar for more than three decades. In colloquial Egyptian Arabic, but with English subtitles:

The Windsor has been a favorite of mine for some 40 years. It stands on a side street not far from where the old Shepheard's stood until Black Saturday of 1952; I understand in British days, when the senior officers stayed at Shepheard's, the lesser officer ranks stayed here. I've stayed at the hotel, which can't threaten the five-stars, and eaten at the restaurant but forgotten it, but the bar is unforgettable.

More perhaps another time. Michael Palin of Monty Python fame did one of his world travelogues from the place, and it's one of the last surviving colonial-era bars in the capital. Do they still offer the day's newspapers in library sticks, like a British club? I hate colonialism, but damn, the Brits did good officers' bars wherever they went.

The Windsor hotel website is here. A few pictures:

The Answer to Monday's JFK Trivia Question: Bouteflika the Inevitable

On Monday, I posted a trivia question relating to the JFK funeral 50 years ago. Though a commenter got the solution within a couple of hours of the posting (first credit to the commenter known as Michal), I've waited till today to let others ponder if they choose to. Now I'll offer the answer, though it's been in the earlier comments thread since Monday night.

This was the original question, referring to the delegations from 90 countries that attended the funeral. First of all, I said I thought that only two were still in public office, and said:

One of these is HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth II, now 92. He is still in the same job and has held it continuously.

The other is an Arab, senior then and now but in a higher-ranking job today. He is not a member of a royal family. Who is he?

Well, first of all, I am obviously not well-informed about some of the smaller European countries' royalty. I then posted an update on two of these: King Harald V of Norway, who was Crown Prince at the time, and ex-Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, who was then Princess Beatrix and reigned as Queen from 1980 until her abdication earlier this year. Whether an abdicated monarch is actually still "in public office" is arguable, but she's still a public figure at least. And if you count Beatrix, my own Managing Editor found me another comparable case: Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg, who was the heir at the time, ruled 1964-2000, and abdicated in favor of his son, but is still alive. I obviously am not up on European royals. (I wondered if someone might try to argue that Caroline Kennedy, the new US Ambassador to Japan, attended the funeral and is "still in public office," though she wasn't at the time, but I clearly limited this to the foreign delegations.)

Bouteflika in 1964

Now to the actual answer: it is, of course, the Arab leader who keeps going and going and going: Algeria's Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was Algeria's first Foreign Minister and attended the funeral when Algeria had only been independent for a year.

Still Going, and Going, and Going ...

And he's not merely still in public office, he's indicated that despite his stroke earlier this year, which led to a long recovery, he's planning to run for a fourth term.

Trivia Question Involving the JFK Funeral and the Middle East

Back in August I posted a nostalgia photo quiz  as a contest, and posted the answer later that day. I guess that was too soon, since there was only one guess and they got it wrong. But as I assume you are all aware (since if you're illiterate or in North Korea you're probably not reading my blog), this Friday, November 22, marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Thankfully, the assassination had no obvious Middle Eastern links. Even the crazier conspiracy theories blamed the CIA, FBI, Soviet Union, Cuba, the Mafia, Fidel Castro, Lyndon Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, or some combination of the above. (How many people were on that Grassy Knoll, anyway?) Jim Garrison charged an unknown New Orleans businessman named Clay Shaw, and pretty much ruined his life, though a jury acquitted him easily. Oh, yes, and Lee Harvey Oswald. (On reflection, I suspect somebody, somewhere, has blamed "Zionists," but not among mainstream conspiracy theorists.)

So for a Middle Eastern connection, I'm turning to JFK's funeral on November 24. A stunned world (these were more innocent times, though not for long) sent delegations: 90 countries were represented, almost all the independent countries with which the US had diplomatic relations at the time (thus mainly excluding Communist China, North Korea, North Vietnam Mongolia, Cuba, and perhaps a few others).

De Gaulle & Haile Selassie at funeral

Many were heads of state or government, monarchs or foreign ministers. Others sent their Ambassadors to Washington. Those arriving in time for the November 24 funeral marched in the procession; those arriving late attended a reception held by President Johnson the next day. One of my own vivid memories of the day was that France's Charles de Gaulle and Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie marched side by side  and stood side by side at the funeral; they may have been the tallest and shortest adult persons there, and the contrast was striking. The long and the short of it. Photo at left.

The Middle East, being farther away, mostly was represented by their Washington Ambassadors, but some sent Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers, etc. I think the only Middle Eastern head of state was Israeli President Zalman Shazar, a figurehead, but Foreign Minister Golda Meir was also there, and I suspect the most senior female not a member of royalty.

Now here's my trivia question: of those 90 delegations half a century ago, most of the members are deceased or at least retired. So far as I can tell (please correct if there are others) [Two additions below], only two of these held senior public office then and still hold senior public office now, 50 years later.

One of these is HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth II, now 92. He is still in the same job and has held it continuously.

The other is an Arab, senior then and now but in a higher-ranking job today. He is not a member of a royal family. Who is he?

You can cheat and figure it out by using Google, with little effort. I at least urge you to think about it without searching, to check your knowledge of the modern Middle East. (Don't read the comments first, either.)  [Update: Add current King Harald V of Norway, then Crown Prince, and Princess Beatrix of the  Netherlands, who reigned as Queen from 1980 until April 30 of this year. I'm not sure if "Ex-Queen" is a senior public office, but I missed these. I add them now so you won't check the comments, which give away the answer already.] I'll post the answer in a couple of days or on Friday in the highly unlikely event no one responds.

Why Did Al-Masry al-Youm Print This Picture Now?

The independent Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry al-Youm ran this picture with a very short news story a couple of days ago. The headline of the story reads "Watch of King Farouq Reveals the Borders of Egypt,"

Perhaps I'm reading too much into what could just be a picture Egyptian readers might find interesting, but obviously the King's specially made watch show the borders of what is now Egypt and the Sudan together. This is not news: the King's title was always King of Egypt and the Sudan, though Sudan was then a joint Anglo-Egyptian condominium, the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, until its independence. That's a given, though the short article with the picture makes no reference to the British, and refers to the watch as showing the borders of Egypt at that time.

Is there some sort of message here? Irredentism? Monarchism? Something to do with the Nile waters dispute? Again, I may be trying to read more meaning into this than was intended.

An Old Picture for Friday, but Nothing Nostalgic About It

I'm still working on the third part of my 1973 Golan post, but it's coming. Meanwhile, I usually leave you with a "Friday nostalgia picture." Nothing nostalgic about this one: this poor fellow is strapped to the barrel of a cannon and is about to be executed. It's said to be in Shiraz, Iran, sometime in the 19th century.

Actually, this is an old and well-attested means of execution; it even has its own Wikipedia article, and for those thinking "how barbarous these foreigners are," may I remind you that in the wake of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the British, who had followed a pre-existing Mughal practice of using it as a punishment for desertion or mutiny, executed quite a few people this way, as this 19th-century painting depicts:

Egypt's Neglect of its Modern History

Here's a thoughtful peace by Paul Sedra on "Egypt's History Problem." An excerpt:

Over the past ten years, I have visited Egypt roughly once each year. And in the course of these visits, I have developed a sort of ritual — namely, I make an attempt to visit the Taha Hussein Museum, or “Ramatan,” just adjacent to Haram Street in Giza. The museum is the former home of the great thinker and writer of twentieth-century Egypt. I say “attempt” because I have never quite succeeded in making the visit. I have managed to locate the museum, to view the exterior walls — nay, I have even spoken with the staff, both on the telephone and in person. But I have never actually set foot within the walls of the museum — not once, after ten years of attempts. And every time I have communicated with museum staff, I have received but one excuse for the apparent indefinite closure of the museum — tarmim, restoration.

Egypt can seem utterly saturated with history. What countries can boast so vast a heritage, with such a visible wealth of monuments? But Egyptians frequently have a paradoxical — and, as I will suggest, problematic — relationship with that history, that is illustrated, at least in part, by the anecdotes above. For while there exists a fierce pride in Egyptian history, not to mention an intense interest, there likewise exists a casual, almost cavalier attitude in certain quarters towards preserving and showcasing Egyptian heritage — an attitude that I can only characterize as paradoxical.

He concentrates on Egypt's neglect of its modern history, which I think is the most neglected of all; Pharaonic is seen as the main draw for tourists, with the Coptic and Islamic periods less so, and modern history largely an afterthought. His conclusion:

Can one in good conscience call the Mahmoud Khalil Museum — attracting perhaps a dozen foreign visitors each day — a museum? Perhaps only in the most dismal sense of the term: as a place to warehouse dusty relics with which one has no connection. Egypt has the raw materials for literally dozens of museums, which could rank with the very best the world over — places where Egyptians could explore the genealogy of their everyday lives. But this time will only come when the museum is refigured as a place for all Egyptians.

 Amen.

Almost Certainly the Best Headline About Avicenna You Will See Today

Avicenna (not from life)

Ibn Sina, the great Persian-born 11th century polymath, philosopher and physician known to the medieval West as Avicenna, doesn't make a lot of news these days, and I don't think this blog has had an Avicenna post before. So how can I possibly resist linking to the headline, "Did Avicenna kill himself by having too much sex?"

One of the best Avicenna headlines ever, to be sure (though it's not a huge universe of competitors), but sadly the post summarizes a paper not linked, which apparently answers the question, "no, not really."

But it's a headline that grabs you, doesn't it? At least if you're a medieval Islamic historian at heart, as I am.

And as both a philosopher and a physician, I sort of like to think Avicenna might have said, what a way to go.

The Byzantine Reconquest in 10th Century Syria, Part II

I'm on vacation. As I've done in recent years, I've prepared a number of posts on topics of historical and cultural interest ahead of time, posts unlikely to be overtaken by events. There will be one or more of these per day, and I may drop in to comment on current developments as required.

Coronation of Tzimisces

My opening vacation posting, on Monday, introduced the situation in the Levant in the 10th century AD, when the splintering of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate weakened the defenses of the Islamic world against their Byzantine adversaries, and the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus Phocas waged several campaigns against the Hamdanid Amir of Aleppo, Saif al-Dawla. If you haven't read Part I, please do so before reading the rest of this.

We stopped at the coronation of the Emperor John I Tzimisces, who had just assassinated his uncle, Nicephorus Phocas. After Phocas' widow, and Tzimisces' reported lover, the Empress Theophano, had been duly packed off to a convent instead of being married to Tzimisces due to the Church's opposition, Tzimisces (the name is Armenian; his mother was a sister of Phocas), who had been one of Phocas' key generals, returned to the Syrian frontier.

But not immediately. After Tzimisces' coronation in 969, he had to spend 970-971 fighting off an incursion from Kievan Rus and otherwise securing his European frontier. In 972 he turned his attention to the Islamic world again. In that year he moved into Upper Mesopotamia.

Hamdanid power had been weakened by the campaigns of the Emperors Romanus and Nicephorus, and the powerful commander who had long controlled the frontier, Saif al-Dawla of Aleppo, died in 967. The growing Byzantine successes had provoked domestic rebellions, and he had taken ill and soon died. His son Sa‘d al-Dawla was soon driven from Aleppo by rivals. Meanwhile, as we saw last time, Antioch had been take by the Byzantines, and now even Aleppo agreed to pay tribute to Byzantium.

But also 969 was the year the Fatimids consolidated their power in Egypt, ending the weaker Ikhshidid rule and providing a major new counterweight to the Byzantines.

Meanwhile Saif al-Dawla's brother Nasir al-Dawla, ruler of the other Hamdanid state in Mosul, had endured problems of his own, fighting off challenges from rivals and seeing his capital captured by the Buyids who ruled most of Iran. Nasir al-Dawla recouped but was deposed in the same year his brother died, 967.

So Tzimisces' invasion of Upper Mesopotamia (the Jazira) in 972 found a weakened polity and met with a number of successes. In 975 he turned again to Syria, and this time advanced farther into the country than the Byzantines had done since the days of Heraclius, taking in turn Homs, Baalbek, Damascus, Tripoli, Beirut, Sidon, Damascus, Nazareth, Tiberias, and Caesarea. His goal was Jerusalem, but he was blocked by the rising Fatimid power. Most of these conquests were for the briefest of times and resulted in a tributary relationship, not Byzantine rule. In these campaigns, however, the much-weakened Hamdanids were reduced to Muslim vassals of Byzantium, which they accepted as a counterweight to the Fatimids. In 976, returning from this campaign, Tzimisces died suddenly. Poison was rumored. He was succeeded by his nephew and co-Emperor Basil II.

Basil II

Basil II is one of the best-known Byzantine Emperors, but he is primarily remembered by his nickname Bulgaroktanos, the Bulgar-killer. But in addition to his final conquest of the Bulgarians, he also campaigned in the East.

For the first decade of his reign, however, Basil had to cope with domestic rebellions, in part due to the long neglect of domestic imperial issues by his predecessors. The growing Fatimid power took advantage  of this preoccupation and regained much of the territory lost under the two previous emperors.  In 987 Byzantium signed a seven-year truce with the Fatimids. In 991, though, the Fatimids attacked the Hamdanids of Aleppo, who as we have seen were by now a Byzantine protectorate. When the Fatimids threatened to take Aleppo and Antioch, Basil took the field. Through the 990s the lines moved back and forth, and with the accession of the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim in 1000 a truce was established. This held despite the Fatimids' conquest of Hamdanid Aleppo (which continued to pay tribute to Constantinople) and even Hakim's destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in 1009, though that would ultimately lead to the Crusades.

During the Fatimid truce, Basil turned to the campaign that would ensure his fame, against Bulgaria. The border stabilized, with the main long-term gain being Antioch. It remained under a Byzantine duke until after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, when the Seljuq Turks took eastern Anatolia from the Byzantines, taking Antioch in 1084. In 1098 they lost it to the Crusaders. The Byzantines initially saw the Crusaders as potential allies for the recovery of Jerusalem, though they were eventually disabused of that notion by the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade.

The Byzantine reconquests in Syria in the 10th century were mostly brief, the one major success being returning the ancient Christian Patriarchal city of Antioch to Christian rule for over a century.