Review: In God’s Path – The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire by Robert G. Hoyland

In God’s Path

One cannot help but be overwhelmed at places while watching The Message starring Anthony Quinn and directed by Moustapha Akkad. At several points you get a sense of how Arabs, in all their glory and zeal, spread out of Arabia to conquer the lands spread wide with only one mission: to spread Islam and instill the faith that there is no god but God. Al-Azhar University’s support in making the film historically accurate is commendable but does it not deny the audience a wider, and probably more accurate, non-Islamic view of history? History can’t be treated as a singular point of view traversing through the prism of past and presenting upon us a crystal clear narration of events that took place. At most what can be done to be accurate is to take a balanced view of differing and, often, opposing views. This usually will make the narrative bland but that’s the price to paid for near-truth. Robert Hoyland’s In God’s Path is one of those few books which delve into historical complexities and yet do not pull the general reader into a quagmire of dynasties, tribes, families and places. He writes, “histories of the region up until AD 630 present an image of a largely Christian land, where Christ’s word is fast gaining ground even in the deserts of Africa, the Persian Empire and as far as China. But when one turns to Muslim accounts to read about the post-630 world, then it appears that the prophet Muhammad’s preaching was carried at breakneck speed from its birthplace”. This alluring interpretation needs a re-visioning.

In God’s Path is not only an excellent read about how the decline of Byzantine Empire and Persian Empire aided Islam’s spread, but also a treatise on various historiographical sources. He writes, “the distinction I make is simply between earlier and later sources, and I favour the former over the latter irrespective of the religious affiliation of their author” because Muslim historians of that period downplayed the role of non-Arabs and non-Muslims and placed God, Muhammad and the Muslims at the centre stage. The commonly held belief is that religious fervour is what made the Islamic civilization so successful – and I myself have been witness to such proclamations by some very close friends of mine. But the author rightly questions this stance by asking that did the Byzantines or Persians have any less religious passion? Were the Pagans less protective of their idols? Fighting skills can’t be had just be one’s, however strong, attachment to a religion – “Arab tribesmen had been serving int he armies of Byzantium and Persia in large numbers in the fifth and the sixth centuries”. The author categorically states that to understand the Arab conquests one needs to go back to the second and third centuries AD, when the Roman Empire “made a great push to the east” and over time came in conflict with the powerful Sasanian Dynasty of Persian Empire, who achieved numerous victories and “even managed to capture the Roman emperor”.

Correlating events and presenting a fruitful justification is the author’s strength. For example, he writes, “Islamic religious tradition came to be inimical to imperial government, Persian literature celebrated it and for this reason was enthusiastically adopted by imperial rulers like Mongols of Iran, Timurids of Central Asia and Mughals of India”. Concluding the conquests, he states how the Arabs were able to set in motion two processes which helped to offset their political fragmentation; Arabisation (language and identity) and Islamisation (spread of Islam and developing an Islamic way in religion, politics, art, literature etc.). He even analyses how not only did Arabs influence culture and religion to whichever region they fared to but even they themselves assimilated the culture and language of the place they settled in – for example in Iran and Transoxania where, because of fewer Arabs, they took to learning Persian.

 

Numerous kings and places form an integral part of the book: Heraclius, Trajan’s war, Septimius Severus, Khusrau, Constantinople, Caucasus, Seleucia-Ctesiphon, Khazars, Turks, Mongols, Samarkhand, Kashgar, Bulgars, Slavs and even Sindh, Gujarat and Buddhism and Chinese dynasties. Sometimes, however, it does become slightly taxing to the average reader to keep track of the various battles and events in different regions as the author covers them chronologically: in any given period, the author covers the major happenings in different regions like Spain, North Africa, Central Asia, Southern Russia and of course Arabia itself.

 

This scholarly book also clears away various Islamic myths which have propagated over hundreds of years. They make good for presenting a glorious past but do less justice to ground realities: the contribution of non-Arabs and non-Muslims in the spread of Islam; the presence of a State structure and processes borrowed from Byzantine and Persian empires – “corpus of law remained current (as it was influenced by Eastern and Roman law) after the Arab conquests, and was taken over and reworked by Muslim scholars”; the recruitment of nomads into Arab armies because the former were much more mobile; use of taxation to subjugate and convert the non-Muslims; large scale non-Arab recruitment in the armies; . He does end with an introspective question: why would the conquerors grant access to the conquered so easily just by paying taxes and resulting in the latter enjoying all benefits of the former? He hints at the numerical problem of having so many slaves from different regions of the world that it became difficult to separate them once they started converting to Islam. With unperturbed clarity, this book peels off the many layers of the spread of Islam and presents to the reader a balanced, objective version of the influences the conquerors had while conquering the world around them. A must read for anyone interested in a realistic portrayal of an often ‘mystically narrated’ saga.

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Zakirnama

(Please click on the orange coloured Play button above before you start reading)

 

 

 

“Aunty, aunty!”, shouted Zakir in his shrill voice perched atop the high stool, brush in his right hand and a packet of tambaku clenched tightly in his left. The emptiness of the large room made his voice echo. It was nine-thirty in the morning and he already had been working since over two hours with his boys. The days weren’t of winter yet, but the calm of morning had a pleasing effect on him. Otherwise too he was never short-tempered or irritable, just a little fidgety with his depthless words and childlike actions. He was half done with the painting-job which was to be finished a week before Diwali so that his aunty could have enough time to bring a sense of order into the household, currently strewn all over with dust, paint blobs, and tattered newspapers.

“Aunty! Where’s my tea? Have been wanting since so long now. If you can’t give it to me now then I’d better go out and have it. Can’t wait anymore”, and he rattled off the orders for his perfect tea to be made with cow’s milk, tea bags from the Nilgiris, herbs, three teaspoonful of sugar. Luxury, when could be had, shouldn’t be refused. The chai from gallah was no match for his signature morning drink.

“Sorry, sorry, beta. I got busy with pooja and totally forgot about your chai“, she spoke while hurrying to offer water to the Tulsi plant in the verandah. The rattle of the utensils and the clanking of the stirrer soothed his frayed nerves somewhat. He kept the brush aside, popped the tambaku in his shirt pocket and climbed down the stool. He and his boys waited at the backside of the home, patiently this time as even bhajiyas were being fried for them today.

“Zakir”, his aunty shouted from inside the kitchen while cleaning the kitchen slab. “Zakir! Come here. Have some work for you today”. He went inside with a bhajiya in his hand while attempting not to bite too much of it lest he burn his tongue.

“Yes, aunty”

“Now that your uncle has gone away for some work and won’t be returning before evening, I need you to take all of those idols of gods and goddesses and the paintings as well and immerse them in the pond next to the highway”

“But aunty, that pond is far away and I am not going there right now”, he said in his trademark swagger. His mannerisms and way of talking were more Hyderabadi than like that of the state in which he had spent his lifetime. He was only thirty-four but always had stories to regale one with of humour, awe, and sometimes disgust.

“Beta, am not taking a no for an answer. You need to do it today well before your uncle returns. If he sees these being disposed of then he is going to fight with me again. Don’t you remember what happened last week? Those old bedsheets? And also don’t eat any non-veg food today before immersing them”

“Alright, alright. Don’t stress over this. I will do something about it. Maybe I will take them with me when I go for my namaaz in the masjid during lunch time. That should work, right?”

“Yes, yes. Should work”, and she closed the refrigerator door and headed upstairs for some rest.

Zakir, a Musalman, was pious about his practices and beliefs. However, when it came to work in his aunty’s home, he kept them aside and did whatever she asked him to do. Whether it was buying milk in the morning or getting vegetables from the nearby market in the evening. Or even fetching flowers for her morning pooja. And his aunty too, a Hindu, was least concerned about ritualistic righteousness. To her, he was still the young starry-eyed boy who had helped her paint the home more than nearly two decades ago. He was still his beta.

He was done with his portion of the wall of the drawing hall and thought of heading to the masjid before it became too crowded on that Friday. He called out his boys and proceeded with them to the masjid. The idols of Hindu gods and goddesses and the pictures of Rama and Sita were all jostling for space in the large plastic bag hung upon the front of his cycle. The front wheel against the bag made a chiseling sound.

On reaching the masjid he pondered upon where to keep the bag but decided not to keep it hanging outside for the fear of it being stolen. Thieves, after all, have no religion, he thought to himself. And anyways it was just a matter of half-an-hour or so and hence the bag won’t be noticed by anyone inside. No harm intended and no harm done.

“Asalaam Alaikum maulvi sahab”, he wished the head of the masjid. “Alaikum As Salaam” came back the prompt greeting. As the worshipers kneeled the loudspeaker started playing the prayer as a call to the neighbourhood muslims to come and pray. After his prayers, rather than going straight for lunch he slept for some time inside the premises to give rest to his tired self. The afternoon sun had showed no respite to them on their way. A quick lunch at the nearby Halal Meat Restaurant, and he and the boys were back at their workplace. She too had just finished her lunch and was busy watching satsang on the television. They resumed their work but couldn’t continue for too long as suddenly a crowd started building up in the lane outside. They, for some unknown reason, were howling religious Hindu chants and with a great fervor.

“Aunty, looks some sadhu baba mandli has come for donation. Maybe some food as well they would want. Or is it some festival today? Ramnaumi?”

“No, it’s not. Otherwise how could have I missed it? But still let me check”, and she got up from the chair and flipped the dirty calendar on the window. The hydra-hands of Lord Ganesha bestowed blessings upon her from the front page, while Lord Krishna gazed at her from his serene eyes from the second page. On the lower right hand corner was the block where she had marked all religiously-important days and nothing was marked for that day. It wasn’t a day on which she would have to get up at four in the morning, wash the idols, pray to the sun, keep a fast, recite never-ending mantra or feed the cows with the symbolic roti. It was one of those days on which she could just pray for a couple of hours and see some satsang on the television set and be content with it for having done whatever she could to dedicate herself to the gods. And the goddesses. And their avtars. And to just about everyone except her frail and neglected body.

“No, no. There isn’t just about anything today. Maybe some kirtan has been organized by the temple nearby. Let me check”, and she stepped out of the door. The frenzy quickly convinced her of the non-religious underpinnings of the crowd. Some were shouting anti-Muslim statements, while many had sharp-edged weapons in their hands. She asked one of the men from the crowd on what was happening. “Doomsday! Doomsday for the Musalmans today. They have hurt the feelings and beliefs of us, the Hindus. They will not be spared. They will….”, and he disappeared in the meandering crowd. But before she could go inside, a man, old for his age to be involved in such activities, came up to her and cautioned her, “Some Hindus have been hurt and their homes attacked by Muslim followers of the nearby masjid. Our Hindu brothers didn’t do anything. They were innocent, and yet were attacked. You be safe and stay inside. Don’t venture out. And stay clear of Muslims. They are not worthy of being trusted. They stab you in …”, and before he could finish she went inside and closed all the open doors and windows.

“Zakir! Get down at once from this stool”, her voice loud and frightening like never before. Zakir was bemused by this but nonetheless followed her instructions.

“Where are all of your boys? Where have they gone? I can’t see anyone around”, she thundered.

“They have just gone for having some paan, aunty. They will be back soon. But what happened, aunty? You seem very agitated”.

“Don’t question. Let’s go upstairs. This crowd outside doesn’t make me comfortable. Some Hindu-Mulsim skirmishes have happened and it is not safe for you and your boys to be seen around”, and she grabbed his thin arm and pulled him upstairs. She forced him inside the smaller bedroom and asked him not to come out or call out for her till the next few hours. She locked the room from outside.

“And I hope all of your friends are safe and return safely either to their homes or here. These times are not good…”, she spoke as she tried to comfort him. “Zakir, beta, hope you have immersed those idols in the pond. Your uncle might be returning anytime. You did, right?”

And his thoughts drowned him.

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Review: Pakistan: A Hard Country by Anatol Lieven

Pakistan: A Hard Country

I had known of this book as it was being ‘recommended’ to me on Flipkart and maybe even Amazon but had decided against buying or reading it as had already done some amount of reading on Pakistan in Tinderbox, Pax Indica and Moderate or Militant. But fate, that slithery force, makes things happen despite of one’s contrary decisions. The library in my office building had this stocked up right in front in the ‘Management’ section. Management? Probably in the hope that some political leader will come and pick this up to learn about how to or how not to manage a country. Dashed hopes apart, I picked it up.

“‘Pak’ in turn means ‘pure’ in Urdu, and so Pakistan was to be ‘The Land of the Pure‘“, Anatol writes commenting on the idea of the Muslim state and adding that the term was coined by Rehmat Ali, and Indian Muslim student in Britain in 1933 in Urdu, “which started as the military dialect of the Muslim armies of the Indian subcontinent in the Middle Ages“. The introduction of the book tries to hard to slice the commonly held ‘wrong’ perceptions about Pakistan. Various points discussed in the Introduction are debatable, but few are worth mentioning here. Anatol writes, “support for extremist and terrorist groups is scattered throughout Pakistani society and mass support for Islamist rebellion is present only in the Pathan areas – less than 5 per cent of the population”. That seems like a valid point – the media especially after 9-11 and the
Afghanistan debacle has unnecessarily painted the ‘whole of Pakistan’ as extremist which is ready to take up arms at the whiff of a whistle against its enemies – whether USA or India. He says that the when terrorist attacks on India gain support amongst Pakistani mainstream it happens because of Muslim nationalism rather than Islamic extremism – again a valid point. He outlines three reasons that could lead to the overthrow of a state and that India shouldn’t be very happy about it as it will lead to anarchy there and its diffusion here – a point well made and also cogently argued for in Shashi Tharoor‘s Pax Indica. The author says Pakistan is far more important than Afghanistan or Iraq right now because of the tentacles of extremists emerging out of Pakistan and the tightly knit community in UK. Possession of nuclear weapons by Pakistan is a major deterrent for USA to attack Pakistan to force it to tighten the noose on Afghanistan. But the flaw begins right here. Is it too difficult to see that USA-Pakistan arms trade is, in no small measure, significant: $5.2 billion during FY 2002-FY2011 and has funded and trained more than 2000 Pakistani military officers (as per the latest Congressional Research paper here) and has recently issued a fresh waiver for arms trade with Pakistan. So would USA want to attack its own market? No. Then Anatol proceeds to debunk the theory that says that Pakistan will disintegrate the way it did in 1971. He says that the majority of the reason for that having happened is India rather than the ethnic and cultural differences that existed between the East and West of Pakistan. He doesn’t disregard the differences in totality, but rather says that the grouping together of these two disparate regions divided by a 1000 miles of hostile India was a colossal mistake. But for a second, lets assume that India did not have a hand in the 1971 war – then would Bangladesh have been East Pakistan today as well? Meager chances if at all.

The author describes how Pakistan is a weak state and a strong society (a very similar argument was in Gurcharan Das‘ book). He says that like in most of South Asia, in Pakistan as well the majority of political parties are dynastic, “PPP (Pakistan People’s Party) is the party of the Bhutto family; the PML(N) (Pakistan Muslim League) is that of the Sharif family; and the Awami National Party (ANP) in the Frontier is the party of the Wali Khan family“. The weak state part I understand bu the strong society part, when applied to Pakistan, I don’t. If the term would have been applied in the historical sense when India was undivided could have been apt and correct, but in the aftermath of Partition and given the way Pakistan’s institutions function it is hard to believe. He explains how kinship has played a much stronger role in loyalties and has acted in the way of state building (just like in China as vividly detailed in Fukuyama‘s The Origins of Political Order). But he takes support of a very irrelevant and amateurish example to prove it: that a menial person in northern India who may be in a position to help or harm you is addressed as Bhai-sahib. The origins of the coming together of the terms Bhai and Sahib may have been because of this, but today, in common parlance, the term Bhai-sahib is only used to call someone out with respect and not as a token of addressing someone as Lord! Anatol almost defends the dictators of Pakistan when he says that “a tiny handful of politicians have ever been executed in Pakistan” and the dictatorial standards have been mild when compared to elsewhere. He draws lot of comparisons between the brutality of corrupt institutions in India and Pakistan, and which to a great extent is true. He also covers the economy of Pakistan and its shortcomings (which is a much welcome analysis – because MJ Akbar totally ignored it in his Tinderbox and focused only on the narrative); the water crisis coupled with the burgeoning population ticker. He compares the Sayyids and Qureishis, “being (ostensibly) descendents of the Prophet and his clan“, to the Brahmins of Hindu society in terms of their role and status.

Anatol draws the conclusion that because Islam was at it’s glorious and magnificent peak before the British came to South Asia, which resulted in the former’s decline, for the Muslims “to accept a subordinate position in what they saw as a future Hindu-dominated India“.  This interpretation is again wrong – first, Jinnah and Muslim League gained substantial voter base only in 1942 and thereafter, until which they were not capable enough of dissecting the country into two. Had this been the case the Muslim League would have garnered huge support from the beginning itself. Second, though the roots of the division and creation of Pakistan had much older roots starting from mid-eighteenth century, but the culmination resulted only at the hands of Jinnah – and it is not very difficult to conclude from authoritative accounts elsewhere that Gandhi was tired of the fights of Jinnah and Nehru and reluctantly agreed, or rather didn’t prevent or do enough, to prevent the division. Also, the clash of egos between Nehru and Jinnah is mentioned in most of the comprehensive historical accounts. His interpretation that Congress did not accept the League after it (Congress) got majority of the votes is biased, but at the same time he says nothing of how the thousands of Hindus who willingly or otherwise stayed back in Pakistan have been the worse of the lot. (Lot of Hindus in India give the reason that Muslims in India should be happy that they are not being made to suffer as much as the Hindus of Pakistan – this, again, is a view of hardliners and is parochial and self-defeating. Surprisingly Javed Akhatar had once questioned Arvind Kejriwal as to why was he being so negative about the state of affairs in India and then he asked him to be happy that he is not in Pakistan, for had he been there he couldn’t have even raised his voice. Why would one want to compare one’s country (and desire its betterment) with one that is far below it on developmental and other terms? Strange)

 

Anatol attributes the turning of Pakistan into a theological state to the early deaths of Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan. So just by the presence of those two men it would have become secular as envisioned by Jinnah? Would the religious hardliners have never risen up? Unbelievable. And he attributes India’s democracy to the fact that Jawaharlal Nehru lived upto the 1960’s and formed a political dynasty strong enough to continue after him. Laughable. The basis of creation of Pakistan was religious, while for the struggle for Independence (for an undivided India) wasn’t religious – and this has been easily ignored by the author. He says that most of the people are uneducated (and hence too weak) to demand anything from the government – they why is it a strong society? Also, would the government do beneficial programs (in the least positive sens) only when it is demanded from them? Then he compares and clubs Musharraf with Ayub and analyzes Bhutto and Zia separately and their performances. On the Pakistani army, he says it is a very organized, disciplined and honest force. The term “honest” is poles apart from the picture painted by other authors – that the army has a strangulating control over the functioning of the country, from schools to universities (not that such schools are not in India or other countries, but are merit based rather than on sifarish)

But let us not give up on this book so soon. The chapter Justice  is one of the best in the book. It talks about the multiple layers, not necessarily one above the other, that exist in the country. First is the State Law, then Shariah, followed by localized customs (which are as good as laws) like Pakhtunwali (similar to Khap or Panchayat). The role of the police is analyzed through a lens of empathy and a lot of similarities are drawn between the Indian situation and the Pakistani one. The grudgingly slow pace of court cases, the nexus between judges and lawyers, political interference in law cases and the demand of the law machinery for more autonomy – it ain’t that different from what we constantly hear in India. I was happy to read this chapter as it made me aware of the unavoidable struggle between the Western concept of law and the South Asian one, which has existed since hundreds of years. But the only disappointing part in this chapter, like in all other chapters, is the frequent comparison of the worse state of affairs (of Pakistan) with bad state of affairs (of India). And it seems like the author is justifying every incorrigible situation in Pakistan by its similarity in India. Probably he is trying to draw out parallels between the two countries and conclude that as India (with all the flaws and inefficiencies) is not disintegrating and is not a failed state, Pakistan (more similar than dissimilar to India) will also not disintegrate and hence is not a failed state.

 

Rest of the book covers Religion, Military, Politics; then the provinces Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan; and finally Taleban and the Conclusion. The author doesn’t surprisingly cover: Education, Media and Economy in Pakistan (though a few tidbits about taxation and business do appear here and there). Reading through the rest of the book it did present a realistic picture of the pull of contrasting forces int the Pakistani society and more or less is accurate in presenting the ground realities. However, the biggest shortcoming of the book lies in its conclusions and comparisons with India. He says that the West should stop conducting wars against the Muslim states whatsoever. The chapters are long with most of them around 40 pages and the narration is drab – but nonetheless informative in most of the places. Some hard-to-believe suggestions in the beginning take away half of the charm of the otherwise good book. If you can separate the chaff from the wheat, this book makes up for a good read on the facts but not so much on the conclusions and Anatol almost appears as an apologetic polemicist. (Not all facts though appear to be correct – he says Pakistan never helped the Taleban in Afghanistan. Maybe the State has never done it directly but through ISI – which has been written about so many times and not in the least by Steve Coll in Ghost Wars. On the conclusions side – he spots neatly dressed couples loitering around in Lahore and says this couldn’t have been possible in a ‘failed state’. Though he does however convince that Pakistan is not yet a failed state, but the causal observations he writes of are not remotely linked with the state of the State. Ecological disasters – mainly concerning water – and conniving US/India intervention can be the only two sources of a fallible existence of Pakistan, he states.) (Praveen Swami‘s review of the same book can be read here)

(Please note that I am not an anti-Pakistan Indian bigot who relishes in the failures of Pakistani institutions and the decay of its politics. That for only last six and a half decades have these divisions existed and the commonality of culture and practices have existed for over thousands of years is a fact I very well am aware of. I may dislike the Pakistani State only for the frequent wars with India and the constant threat of extremists wreaking havoc in India, but I don’t dislike the people. Pakistan and India are similar on most of the counts, yet different on the others. What differences, if at all, exist amongst the people? All want the same – peace, security and welfare – and this has constantly come out with my interactions with Pakistani citizens on social networking sites. Of course, above the concept of nationalism is the concept of Imagined Communities, which can be discussed some other time.)

Review: All the Shah’s Men by Stephen Kinzer

All The Shah’s Men (Image source: Amazon)

When I came across this book as a suggestion by an online retailer, I couldn’t be happier. It fitted perfectly as the missing first part of my trilogy of books on Iranian politics, with the other two being The Oil Kings and The Guests of the Ayatollah. Unwittingly though, I have read these three books in the reverse order from the chronological perspective. Though I hadn’t ever heard of Stephen Kinzer, but the reviews were good enough apart from the description to lure me into buying it. However, since I read the reviews of In the Name of Sorrow and Hope on Amazon (http://goo.gl/exbfD) I have begun to trust reviews with a less trusting eye, and more so after reading an article on Forbes about fake reviews (http://goo.gl/sJY0R).

 

The golden shiny cover of the book gave it a look of a classic book, but it also had an ugly red colored circle proclaiming it to be a ‘national bestseller’. I personally like books which don’t proclaim what praise they have got on the front page. On the back cover is fine, but on the front page is being superabundant. Books usually by universities like Oxford, Cambridge etc. don’t indulge in such foolish and naive braggadocio. The preface to the 2008 edition told me how “more than half a century had passed since the United States deposed the only democratic government Iran ever had” and how Iran would have been different had the “United States not sent agents to depose” Mohammad Mossadegh and how “the United States deposed a popular Iranian nationalist” in 1953. It continued to explain how “the British secret service worked with the CIA to depose Prime Minister Mossadegh” and that the “United States  violently interrupted Iran’s progress toward freedom by overthrowing Prime Minister Mossadegh in 1953” and how Akbar Ganji, an Iranian dissident, reported “Iranians will never forget the 1953 U.S.- supported coup that toppled the nationalist, moderate, democratic government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh” and that “Operation Ajax, as the CIA plot to depose Prime Minister Mossadegh was code-named, brought immense tragedy to Iran“. After such tortuous harping about the “deposition of Mossadegh” I wondered how could this book make it to the list of “national bestseller”; and it made me think about the state of the “nation” where it was so!

 

I did not buy this book to know “how” it was done, but rather “why” it was done. But hope was not in sight especially after reading what was coming up. The author intelligently suggests that the current Iranian crisis can be handled with negotiations just like the way it was done with China and North Korea. Yes, that sounded like a baritone amongst a barrage of squeaks. But it died down when he goes on to say that “in the interest of the United States to promote all manner of social, political, and economic contacts with people” the United States should “invite as many Iranians as possible to the United States and flood Iran with Americans, ranging from students and professors to farmers and entrepreneurs to writers and artists“. People don’t go and settle down in other countries to promote goodwill amongst two arguing nations, but rather as an after effect of goodwill between two countries. It left me wondering what else I could have done with Rs. 996/-.

 

The author, being a journalist, expectedly starts with events on 15th of August, 1953 and rewinds back to give a fascinating yet somewhat aloof overview of the history of Iran. He starts from how “migrants from Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent began arriving in what is now Iran nearly four thousand years ago“, continues to Darius, Cyrus and Xerxes and the fights of the Zoroastrians with the Arabs and the ultimate triumph of a different form of Islam, Shia Islam, in the region. He explains how the British imperialists exploited the region for oil and power and how ultimately the United States, resisting earlier under Harry Truman but gave in under Dwight D. Eisenhower, became a party to overthrow Mossadegh. The book covers how the Qajar dynasty was thrown out with the rise of Reza Khan and the later ascent of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It ends with a very fleeting view of the Iranian revolution. Completing this book gave me a better understanding of the 1979 revolution’s roots and would recommend it to be read as a beginner’s book on understanding West Asian politics.

 

At last I am convinced that I could have done nothing better with those Rs. 996/-. And also to never judge a book neither by its cover, nor by its preface!