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CHAPTER 1

introduction

Geography, history and the people

Ours is the world and all who dwell upon it, and when we assault, we assault with power. When kings deal with their peoples unjustly we refuse to allow injustice among us. We are called oppressors; we never oppressed yet, but shortly we shall be starting oppression! When any body of ours reaches his weaning, the tyrants fall down before him prostrating. We have filled the land till it's too strait for us and we are filling the seas back with our vessels. So let no man act foolishly against us, or we shall exceed the folly of the foolhardiest.

Amr ibnel Kulthum — pre-Islamic poet of the sixth century

The greatest single unifying factor in the Middle East is the climate which, throughout the millennia, has imposed a special way of life and has been the mainspring of all social, economic and cultural diversifications. Within the Middle East are the great rivers Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, Arax and Kura. The Nile is fed by the Blue Nile (rising in the Ethiopian Highlands) and the White Nile (rising in the Central African Highlands). The waters of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates mingle some sixty miles before reaching the Persian Gulf. Their junction creates the Shatt-al-Arab waterway which forms the boundary between Iraq and Iran and has been a bone of contention over the centuries. Both rivers rise in the Armenian Highlands and zig-zag their way to the desert lands of Syria and Iraq. The Tigris (the Arrow), so named because of the swiftness of its waters, also receives several tributaries from the Zagros mountains of Iran. The plain here is threaded by numerous tributaries fed from one river to the other creating naturally formed irrigation schemes.

The Arax and Kura rivers rise in the Caucasian Highlands and flow into the Caspian Sea. The Arax borders the Armenian SSR and Turkey, whilst the Kura passes through the Georgian and Azerbaijanian SSR. The waters of the Arax irrigate the rich Ararat plateau.

Other important rivers are the Kizel Irmak (Turkey), Sefid and Kashka (Iran) and the Karun which waters south west Iran. Whilst the smaller rivers Orontes, Litani and the Jordan irrigate Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Trans-Jordan.

With the exception of the Caspian Littoral of Iran and Azerbaijan, 'Pontic' Turkey, and the Caucasian coastline of the Black Sea, rainfall is not only inadequate, but limited to spring and winter. The entire Mediterranean, therefore, stretching from Libya and Egypt, up the Levant to Turkey receives rainfall similar to California and south western Australia.

In the summer, drought is the general rule. Ninety per cent of the entire region is arid desert or semi-desert and whatever forests it once contained have long since vanished. Only five to six per cent of the Middle East is cultivated today and one-fifth of that needs water desperately.

Water is the most important human factor throughout the region. It has been deified throughout the ages and myths have been created around it. To preserve this scant and precious commodity the Ancient Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Hittites, Urartians and Romans built cisterns and viaducts, the remains of which can still be traced throughout Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

The Persians built qanats — underground conduits — to bring water for hundreds of miles from the mountains to the plains. In parts of Arabia water is so scarce that, rather than waste it, Bedouin women wash their hair in camel urine. The pious Muslim substitutes sand for water as he ritually 'cleanses' himself during prayer time. In ancient Armenia and Iran there existed (and still does) the Water Festival of 'Vartavar'— Burning of Roses. On this day people drench each other with water and the ecclesiastical procession throws rosewater at the congregation. The aim is to invoke the Gods for rain.

Today extensive work is being done to 'green' the land. Huge irrigation schemes such as the building of the Aswan Dam in Egypt, the Euphrates Dam in Syria and Ataturk Dam in Turkey have been established and already the effects of intensive agricultural techniques are seen in a number of highly productive farming areas such as western Lebanon, the Aleppo region of Syria, the Ararat valley in Armenia, the oasis of Damascus and, perhaps the most spectacular of all, the Jewish settlements of Israel, particularly in the Negev.

The position that the Middle East occupies in history is unique for it was here that man first began to cultivate food-plants and to domesticate wild animals. Wheat was cultivated in Jarmo (Kurdistan) 9000 years ago. Gradually peas, lentils and other crops were added to the 'original cuisine' of the inhabitants. With the full adoption of crop and stock raising man gave up nomadism and settlements grew into villages and then towns. As the population increased in the mountain regions people moved down to the plateaux and plains of the Tigris and Euphrates. There they were confronted with hot, semi-arid earth which they had to irrigate with the abundant waters of the two great rivers. The same process undoubtedly occurred around the Nile delta and further afield in the Ganges Basin of India. Towns produced social order, city states, nations and empires with which came literature, law and order.

By about 5000 BC the Egyptians were making wine and bread, rearing animals and cultivating crops. The produce grown at this time was extensive: wheat, barley, spelt, millet, legumes, root crops, melons, olives, grapes, figs and dates and, at a slightly later date, apples, peaches, pomegranates and apricots.

Around 3000 BC the Sumerians built their irrigation canals and city states and evolved a society divided into technological–social classes — nobility, priests, traders, farmers and artisans — divisions that still hold good for most Middle Eastern people today. The Sumerians, a non-Semitic people, were soon joined in Mesopotamia by Semitic tribes coming from Arabia and, in time, a new, mixed people were formed. Further north along the middle of the Euphrates several Semitic races intermingled and created city states. In 2350 BC the entire region was united under the leadership of Sargon, and his empire, in time, was replaced by that of the Amorites (1688 BC) whose most distinguished member was Hammurabi the law giver. The Amorites fell under the rising power of the Indo-European Hittites and Hurrians from the north — the ancestors of the Armenians and most modern Turks. By 1350 BC the Hittites had occupied Syria and wrested Palestine from Egypt and had become the mightiest power in western Asia.

Meanwhile, Egypt had developed its dynastic and political institutions and created one of the seven wonders of the ancient world — the pyramids of Gizeh. The Old Kingdom was followed by the Middle Kingdom (2200 BC) ushered in by the brilliant Twelfth Dynasty when peace, prosperity and overall economic success had made her the most civilized land on earth. Then the Hyksos — the shepherd kings, initially a branch of the Hurrian races — came down from Armenia and on their march, mixing with the Semitic elements, they overran the peaceful empire of the Pharoahs. They introduced the horse, the war chariot became the dominant power until the Pharoah Ahmos succeeded in throwing them out of Egypt and launching her into an imperial stage in history, all of which culminated with Rameses II (1301–1234 BC). He agreed to end all wars and signed a pact with the Hittites which maintained a balance of power and temporary stability. This earliest of international pacts was meant to bring 'Peace and good brotherhood between the contending parties for ever.'

A new Semitic people from the city state of Ashur (Assyrians) were largely responsible for the destruction of the Hittite empire. They were followed by Babylonians whose last king, Balshazzar, was also the last Semitic ruler of the East; henceforth it was the Iranian–Aryan tribes who dominated the canvas of history. Cyrus the Great (550–529 BC) introduced not only a new language, but also a new religion — Zoroastrianism, and the Persian rulers were tolerant of their subjects attempting no imposition of language or religion.

In the spring of 334 BC a twenty-one-year-old Macedonian, at the head of 35,000 fighters, crossed the Hellespont and launched his victorious campaigns all the way to India. Great as those military exploits of Alexander were in themselves 'greater they loom in their cultural consequences. They opened the way to the confrontation, harmonization and final fusion of Greek and Near Eastern ideas and institutions, thereby effecting a pioneering revolution in the world's outlook.'

Alexander died young aged thirty-two and his kingdom was quickly divided between his four ablest generals who henceforth began to quarrel amongst themselves. They all, particularly Seleucus, continued Alexander's policy of planting numerous Greek cities all over his kingdom. In time old soldiers, traders and craftsmen, as well as adventures, followed into the Middle East mixing with the Semitic people and giving birth to a new Hellenistic civilization which, for over a thousand years, remained a dominant feature in the Middle East and was only overtaken by that of Islam in the tenth century AD.

Indeed it is safe to say that in the last 2000 years of Middle Eastern history the two most powerful cultural forces have been those of Hellenism and Islam. Yet Hellenism was primarily an urban feature. The rest of the populace continued to speak their native tongues, whether Egyptian, Persian or Aramaic, and to worship their own deities. Hellenism created an economic uniformity. Transport was improved; the highways were guarded by chains of colonies; inns, resting places and market towns were created and along these routes passed cereals, oil, wine, fruits, minerals, pepper and cinnamon. Saffron came from India via Persia; frankincense and myrrh from Yemen, wheat from Egypt and gold and silver from Armenia. Great cities were founded — Antioch, Iaodicea and, perhaps greatest and most magnificent of them all, Alexandria in Egypt — for generations the cultural capital of the world. 'And then came the Roman wolf.'

In the year 66 BC, with the fall of the mighty Armenian Empire of Tigran II, the Roman general Pompeius took over the command of all the forces in the East and the Roman conquests commenced. The rule of the Romans was a continuation and development of the Hellenistic. The subject races lived in greater security and comparative affluence than their predecessors. Yet in spite of that there were still millions of people who were unhappy with their lot and many of these became ardent followers of the new ideas emanating from Bethlehem. These were swiftly synthesized into religious forms, and arrived in auspicious time in the heart of Rome.

The first nation to be converted to this new religion was Armenia, under Dirtad III in AD 301, and twenty-five years later Constantine raised it to an official state religion in his newly-founded capital Constantinople (Istanbul), strategically situated between Europe and Asia Minor on the Bosphoros. For the next 1100 years Constantinople was to be the focal centre of the entire Middle East militarily, economically and especially spiritually. The temporal triumph of Christianity did not bring the majority of men spiritual freedom or alter their economic lives and this, coupled with ethnic differences and the general resentment of the corrupt bureaucracy ruling from Constantinople, found expression in the dogmatic disputes which in time caused the eventual disintegration of the empire, and paved the way for the rapid ascendancy of Islam.

The Prophet Muhammad was born in AD 570 in Mecca. He began to undergo his religious experience about AD 610. He was vehemently opposed by the merchanttribes of Mecca, among whom he was born, so that in the year 622, with a band of seventy converts, he fled to Medina. There he rapidly made more converts and in a short space of time almost all the tribes of Arabia submitted to his authority. After Muhammad's death (in 632) Abu Bakr became the first Caliph ('successor') and decided to employ the warlike energies of the tribes by invading Syria and Palestine. Within less than a century after the Prophet's death the Arabs had reached the Atlantic in Morocco and the river Oxus in modern Turkistan. In every country the Arabs conquered the great majority of the population, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Pagan or Christian, embraced Islam. One of the most remarkable features of the Arab conquests was the small number of warriors involved. However, Muhammad had authorized the use of women captured in war as concubines: 'The amazing extent of the Arab conquests had enabled them to acquire great numbers of such foreign concubines; Greeks, Persians, Armenians, Egyptians and North African Berbers. Thus a few generations after the conquests the "Arabs" of Syria were ethnologically a different race from the conquerors who had emerged from Arabia after the death of the Prophet.'

Syria became the first seat of the empire, but in the year 750 power was transferred to Baghdad (Iraq). The Arabs reached the height of their glory in the reign of Harun el Rashid (786–809) and his son Al-Mamun (813–833), a period in history which is vividly described in the pages of the Arabian Nights and similar literary works. This was a time of elaborate extravagances enacted at festivals, ceremonial occasions and weddings, and artists, poets and scientists from all corners of the empire were attracted to Baghdad.

Yet slowly a cancer was settling in the heart of the empire which was gradually destroying the very fabric and goals on which it had been created. For the warlike instincts of the nomadic Arab had gradually disappeared. He surrounded himself with luxury which his ancestors could not have dreamt of in the desert and, in the words of Gertrude Bell: 'The ancient ghosts of Babylonian and Assyrian palace intrigue rose from their muddy graves, mighty in evil, to overthrow the soldier Khalif, to strip him of his armour and to tie him hand and foot with silk and gold.'

In the first half of the eleventh century 'a new scourge appeared'; wild Turkish-speaking nomads (the Ghuzz) entered Persia and, under their chiefs (Seljugs), they swept across Persia to Armenia 'massacring, looting and raping as they went.' The Seljugs occupied Baghdad, Syria, Palestine and Egypt and then moved on to Asia Minor where they created the first 'Turkish' empire until its demise some 150 years later under Mongol attacks.

Only Byzantium remained as the bastion of Christianity, but she too was weakened by the loss of Armenia in 1071 at the battle of Manzazkert when Alp Arslan shattered the Byzantine-Armenian forces under the leadership of Emperor Romanus Diogenes. The new emperor, Alexius Comenus, appealed for help to the western Christian powers and the Pope, Urban II, preached his crusade in 1095. Not surprisingly, however, the crusades were a failure, and today only dim reflections of romantic troubadours, chivalric heraldry, sculptured tombstones in old cathedrals and a few Arab words, much maligned and distorted, remain of the 300 years of western Christian presence in the Levant.

Then came the Mongols, burning, pillaging and levelling cities to the ground, only to be followed by far more savage tribes from Central Asia — the Turks. From their countless tribes, in time, the 'Ottoman' branch gradually expanded from their adopted homeland of north western Asia Minor and succeeded, in 1453, in capturing Constantinople. Under Suleyman 'the Magnificent' (1520–68) the Ottoman empire reached its peak and it was now a major naval power. The people of the Ottoman empire that came to rule the Middle East for nearly 400 years formed a heterogeneous complex of religious, linguistic and ethnic groups — Greeks, Slavs, Armenians, Kurds, Arabs, Christians, Muslims, Jews — all artificially held together by the Ottomans. Throughout the life-history of the empire the Turkish element remained a minority, but one that was constantly expanding by deportation, mass murder and forced conversions of other groups. Yet the period of imperial glory did not survive for long, for the sultans, far too often, were interested in matters of the flesh. Dissipation and corruption were rife throughout the court. The seeds of weakness embedded in the Ottoman state and society began to fruit in the late sixteenth century because a government primarily created for warfare rather than welfare and peace lacked the capacity to adapt to change. The subject races had no love for their rulers.

While the Ottoman empire decayed from within the pressures upon it from outside increased. In the seventeenth century the problem was further aggravated by the emergence of two powers, Russia and Austria-Hungary; the opening of a new trade route to Asia via the Cape; the establishment of Dutch and British power in Asia and finally, the constant warfare with neighbouring Persia.

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Excerpted from "Middle Eastern Cookery"
by .
Copyright © 2008 Arto der Haroutunian.
Excerpted by permission of Grub Street.
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