Keys to Understanding the Middle East
The text covers all the areas it sets out to address appropriately, moving from a discussion of languages in the Middle East (ending with a discussion of Arabic), to the religious context (with a suitable focus on the diversity of religious affiliations in the Middle East), to the Middle East during the modern period. An extensive glossary of key terms appears at the end of the book. There is also a Table of Contents, but no index at the back of the book. One important factor to mention here is the attention paid to Afghanistan throughout, something one generally does not find in an introductory textbook on the Middle East.
Developed from many years of experience teaching students in International Studies at the Ohio State University, Keys to Understanding the Middle East offers readers accurate introductory content about the Middle East: languages, religions, historical context, and politics. A highlight is the book’s inclusion of solid material about modernization, the non-aligned movement, and Western imperialism in the second half of the twentieth century.
Because the book avoids the immediately contemporary period and limits its treatment of the modern period to the twentieth century for the most part, the material included will continue to remain relevant far into the future. In the coming years, additional material could be added to directly address the Middle East during the early twenty-first century.
The textbook is eminently clear in how it deals with its subjects in a lucid, straightforward language that should be accessible to a high-school-, or possibly even middle-school-level reader. Jargon is either avoided or immediately explained. The glossary at the end of the book is also a useful resource.
The textbook is consistent across the three chapters, introduction, and conclusion with its terms and approach.
The book is highly modular, even within the three chapters. Shorter sections (e.g. “Gamal Abdul Nasser and Non-Alignment”) could be excised from the text and used independently of the larger book’s framework. Overall, the text is presented in manageable chunks throughout, making an instructor’s job of choosing what to give for a specific reading assignment simple.
The progression of topics in the three chapters proceeds in a logical, clear manner.
In the PDF version of the text that I consulted, the book cover and associated images (which are cited on page 2 of the PDF) are missing entirely. There are also some formatting issues that should be addressed, especially in the case of other images within the text. Take, for example, the photographs of “Modernizing Leaders” Reza Shah Pahlavi, Amanullah Khan, and Mustafa Kemal Aratürk on pp. 86-88 of the document (not of the PDF). There is quite a bit of white space on these pages outside of the images, and this also often happens between sections. Furthermore, there are some minor issues with text not appearing correctly and other typography problems. (E.g., on the same pages, see the mistaken “?” inserted between the alif and nūn of Antoin when written in Arabic script or the misplaced umlaut in Atatürk’s name that appears above the “r” not the “u”.) Lastly, the problem of spacing also shows up on pages v-vi in the document where the authors include their Romanization chart for Arabic letters. This is likely a result of the conversion of the document into a PDF, but it could be easily fixed.
There are, every now and then, issues with the use of articles. For instance, on page ix, we find, “Giza, district of Cairo where pyramids…,” missing the “a” before “district.” There are also some minor errors in the transliterated Arabic or Persian. Sa‘di Shirazi’s name is transliterated as “Saadi Shirazi” only two pages after the book’s Romanization Chart, which indicates that the ʿayn will be transliterated with an apostrophe ('), not the “a” that we see in "Saadi." Consider also the transliteration of al-jihād al-aṣghar and al-jihād al-akbar rendered as "Jihad al-Asghar" and "Jihad al-Akbar." The missing macrons or diacritical marks are not an issue, particularly in an introductory textbook, but the missing definite article on jihad in both instances is incorrect. Elsewhere, we find the term muadhdhin (a person who does the call to prayer) rendered as muadhan (pp. 64, 119), which leaves out the repetition of the geminated second radical in the word and, unfortunately, would be read by someone who knows Arabic not in the active sense, but rather in the passive due to the transposition of the (correct) “i” into an “a.” These last mistakes reflect the authors’ research abilities in Arabic, but indicate a lack of fluency in the language. In a future edition, I would suggest avoiding transliterated Arabic in these cases and instead, for instance, using the anglicized “muezzin,” which better reflects the actual sounds of the word for a reader that has no experience with transliterated Arabic. Alternatively, a consultant fluent in Arabic could also be brought in to check over transliterations.
The book makes a point of including material on a variety of different Middle Eastern languages, faith traditions, and countries. It is fair and unbiased in its treatment of its various subjects. I would perhaps have expected yet more space to be devoted to Arabic, in the chapter on languages, and Islam, in the chapter on faith and religious identity, but I understand the authors’ choice to bring more balance to their approach.