the Middle East
Tall tales of the Golden East: the fabulous fabrications of two 20th-century con artists
Capitalising on his Afghan-Indian heritage, Ikbal Shah claimed to have crucial inside knowledge of Central Asia, while his son Idries later purveyed a rebranded Sufism for the West
A horrifying glimpse of Syria’s torture cells
More than 100 interviews with surviving detainees and former prison workers reveal how profoundly shocking President Assad’s regime continues to be
Is Christianity about to end in the place it began?
Janine di Giovanni’s book begins in a Paris apartment during the first lockdown. She’s at a friend’s home, which she…
The cosmopolitan spirit of the Middle East vanished with the Ottomans
One of the most depressing vignettes in Michael Vatikiotis’s agreeably meandering account of his cosmopolitan family’s experiences in the Near…
What the Pope's visit means for Iraq
You could be forgiven for taking a cynical view of Pope Francis’s visit to Iraq this weekend. How could the…
Heroism in a hopeless cause: why the crusades remain fascinating
The crusades are part of everyone’s mental image of the Middle Ages. They extended, in one form or another, from…
Niall Ferguson's biography of Henry Kissinger is a masterpiece
I have met Dr Kissinger, properly, only three times. First, in Cairo, in 1980, when, as a junior diplomat escorting…
The Ottoman empire: the last great casualty of the first world war
In a possibly apocryphal story, Henry Kissinger, while visiting Beijing in 1972 as Nixon’s national security adviser, asked Zhou Enlai,…
Baiting the trap with CHEESE: how we fooled the Germans in the second world war
Second world war deception operations are now widely known, particularly those which misled the Germans into thinking that the D-Day…
Baghdad's rise, fall – and rise again
Ali A. Allawi on the fluctuating fortunes of Iraq’s fabled capital
The American who dreamed of peace for the Arabs – but was murdered in their midst
‘Arabist’ is fast becoming an archaism. Perhaps it is already one. These days the word conjures up enchanting visions of…
‘A dandy aesthete with visions of sacrificial violence’
Eschewing the biblical advertising of ‘the promised land’ or indeed ‘a land of milk and honey’, the Conservative colonial secretary…
Lawrence of Arabia, meet Curt of Cairo
How do you write a new book about T.E. Lawrence, especially when the man himself described his escapades, or a…
A spectacular faller in the Benghazi stakes
What an unedifying affair the war in the North African desert was, at least until November 1942 and the victory…
Songs of the blood and the sword
Douglas Murray 28 October 2017 9:00 am
Jihadi Culture might sound like a joke title for a book, like ‘Great Belgians’ or ‘Canadian excitements’. But in this…