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Is There a Middle East?

Stanford University Press

Contents

List of Figures..................................................................................................................................................viiList of Tables...................................................................................................................................................xContributors.....................................................................................................................................................xiPreface..........................................................................................................................................................xviiProblematizing a Virtual Space Abbas Amanat.....................................................................................................................11 The Eastern Question and the Ottoman Empire: The Genesis of the Near and Middle East in the Nineteenth Century Huseyin Yilmaz.................................112 British and U.S. Use and Misuse of the Term "Middle East" Roger Adelson.......................................................................................363 Of Maps and Regions: Where Is the Geographer's Middle East? Michael E. Bonine.................................................................................564 Why Are There No Middle Easterners in the Maghrib? Ramzi Rouighi..............................................................................................1005 When Did the Holy Land Stop Being Holy? Surveying the Middle East as Sacred Geography Daniel Martin Varisco...................................................1196 The River's Edge: The Steppes of the Oxus and the Boundaries of the Near / Middle East and Central Asia, c. 1500–1800 Arash Khazeni.....................1397 An Islamicate Eurasia: Vernacular Perspectives on the Early Modern World Gagan D. S. Sood.....................................................................1528 Scorched Earth: The Problematic Environmental History That Defines the Middle East Diana K. Davis.............................................................1709 American Global Economic Policy and the Civic Order in the Middle East James L. Gelvin........................................................................19110 The Middle East Through the Lens of Critical Geopolitics: Globalization, Terrorism, and the Iraq War Waleed Hazbun...........................................207Conclusion: There Is a Middle East! Michael Ezekiel Gasper......................................................................................................231Notes............................................................................................................................................................243Bibliography.....................................................................................................................................................277Index............................................................................................................................................................307

Chapter One

Huseyin Yilmaz

NEAR EAST OR MIDDLE EAST maps were first drawn at the height of intense interest in what Karl Marx labeled "the Eternal Eastern Question." It was the content of this question that defined the geography of this region that came to be known as the modern Middle East. Later attempts to give a consistent geographical or cultural definition to the term all followed major international developments or were made in anticipation of major geostrategic shift s, ultimately creating multiple "Middle Easts" that were based on different sets of criteria. Two such attempts in recent memory were the redrawing of the Middle East following the end of the Cold War and the Greater Middle East Partnership discussed in the G-8 summit in 2004.

Despite staying at the center of international politics for more than a century, the region still has no standard textbook definition. In the popular imagination as well as academic studies, the Middle East is oft en conceived of as the locus of an international question rather than a geo graphically or culturally definable region. Except for the questions it posed, there is hardly any common element that defines the various "Middle Easts" constructed in the media, academic scholarship, and political agencies. As the nature and scope of the Middle Eastern Question change, so do the region's boundaries. There has been no secular organizing principle to make the Middle East a meaningful region other than a historical memory built by the very term itself.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the term "the Eastern Question" was generically applied to almost all conflicts taking place in Eastern Europe, including those in Poland, Macedonia, and the Caucasus. Toward the late nineteenth century, however, within the context of a broader confrontation between Europe and the Orient, the scope of the Eastern Question was extended to all of Eurasia, producing such formulations as "the Afghan branch of the Eastern Question." Even Americans conceived of their western entanglements as "our Eastern Question" in reference to American-Japanese conflict. Reflecting this holistic view in 1878, Victor Duruy presented the three core problems of the Eastern Question as Constantinople, l'Asie Centrale, and l'Océan Pacifique. In some Christian apocalyptic literature, however, "the Eastern Question" referred specifically to the holy land where the demise of the Ottoman Empire would signal the coming of the Armageddon. For them it was a matter of divine providence foretold in scripture and that was unfolding to fulfill prophecies.

Views on the scope and historical depth of the Eastern Question ranged from a mere Great Power rivalry to an existential conflict between two incompatible worldviews with no beginning point in time. John Marriott, who wrote the now classical account on the subject, stated in 1940 that "from time immemorial, Europe has been confronted with an 'Eastern Question.'" For him, conflicts between the Roman Empire and Hellenistic monarchies and between Christianity and Islam reflected this confrontation. Although the semantic range of the term "the Eastern Question" was extended to include the whole scope of relations between the West and the Orient, unless specified it commonly referred to the Euro-Ottoman context. Albert Sorel, who wrote a widely read textbook on the Eastern Question in 1898, argued that "since the first entry of the Turk into Europe, there has been an Eastern Question." It was this perception of the Eastern Question that gave rise to the notion of the Near Eastern Question by the late nineteenth century, from which current conceptions of the Middle East originated.

The term "the Eastern Question" entered into wider circulation with the 1815 Congress of Vienna. Ironically, among the many eastern questions of the nineteenth century, the Eastern Question that formed the focal theme of European thought and diplomacy for much of this and the early part of the twentieth century initially emerged not as Europe's Turkish problem but as the Ottoman Empire's Egyptian problem. European interest on the Eastern Question seems to have been prompted by the internal crisis...