The Alexandria Quartet (Lawrence Durrell, four parts released 1957-1960)

(884 pages)

Setting in this part of the world - Alexandria in particular.  Distinguishing it from Cairo - which is more African/Egyptian - Alexandria founded by a Greek, sited on Mediterranean, more European-focused.  

Be that as it may - I'm always fascinated by the mix of ancient groups happening here, evolving over time.  Islam as vast majority; Coptic Christians (Hosnani family featured), Jews, etc.Multiple ethnicities, religions, crossovers.

Favorite parts are set on the Hosnani lands - the "country squire" life, Egypt-style. Can see how the author would be a successful travel writer. Much liked the descriptions.

Also liked the descriptions of the (Brit) Foreign Service life.  The changes in the 20th century as government is turned back to the Egyptians.

Book 3 - shifts perspective - nice change of pace with a relatively longer read.

A couple of writers as key characters - writers writing about writers is not new and can be tedious - thought this generally was handled well, effective way to handle retelling of events from >1 perspective (in books 1-3).

Angst over love - a lot of this.  Overlapping relationships.

Darley - lead character, I'd say

Pursewarden - writer, a key voice

Pombal - Darley's oft-roommate

Justine - married to Nessim but a history; lost a daughter

Melissa - dancer, simple

Nessim; his brother Narouz; their mother Leila - wealthy, influential, politically active; Coptic Christians

Mountolive - connects with Leila; rises through Foreign Service

Scobie - an odd Brit character; comic relief?

Clea - artist

Destiny Disrupted - A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes (Tamim Ansary, 2009)

(357 pages)

Early parts of the book were making me uncertain about how far to go - author seemed rather credulous as to the activities of the founders . . . seemed to pretty much accept the stories as packaged (in a way that would never happen with Old Testament, Book of Mormon, etc.)  Also seemed to take the position that Islam's earliest days are part of a somewhat systematized history. But then he gets around to discussing how pretty much nothing was written down for literally centuries (as discussed here) . . . and I felt like the overall discussion from there on was well balanced, at least from my limited-knowledge perspective. (And this is not to diminish the founder-achievements, just to note the timing of emergence of written source materials. Which is relevant.)

I thought this was a highly useful overview - necessarily very compact given the geographic scope and long time period, but that's fine.  And I liked his premise - to help Westerners think about how the Islamic world (far from a monolith, of course) might think about the way the West emerged from a well-deserved reputation of "backwardness" relative to the Islamic world, to a position of greater development.

Some ideas that came through - not necessarily in order or particularly important, just thoughts that were new to me or came through in a different way - 

• He explains how there ended up being three caliphates when by definition only one was possible (Spain, Egypt, original (based in Damascus, Baghdad, etc.)]

• Discusses the extensive Persian influence in the "original" caliphate - as this book discusses - sheer numbers and cultural weight were telling.

• Religious tenets that talk about peace, etc. But warrior mentality, head-of-religion conflated with head-of-state; jihad; what can only be called imperialist expansion, right?  A religion that was literally fighting for its existence from day one - constant warfare or expansion coloring the development of the religion in those centuries before things were written down.

• Talks about how the Middle East areas that preceded Islam went through a cycle of expansion when everything works - easier to recruit and motivate warriors when you are capturing new territories and lots of loot that you can parcel out to them.  Clearly applied to Islamic expansion - and Western empires - nothing wrong with any of that, seems to be the normal order of things.  Except things get very difficult when expansion stops, let alone when contraction sets in.

• On the religious side - splits, fundamentalist, mystics (Sufi) emerge - normal for religions. And how the religion evolves to conveniently include principles congenial to those in power.  See also Christianity, LDS, etc.  A useful discussion.

• Part of Western self-loathing?  Our culture-setters endlessly pillory Christianity; European colonization is racist, violent imperialism using religion as a cover; true enough, but how distinguishable from expansion by Islamic or other groups?

• Liked his perspective on the Crusades.  Not nearly as significant to the Islamic world as the immediately-following incursion by Mongols - which was a genuine disaster.  He thinks Crusades were stressful enough, but much more trumped-up now.

• Author moves onto discuss Islam in India, longer discussion in this book.

• Throughout there is helpful discussion of separation of Sunni and Shiite, and how the Shiite portion became centered in Persia/Iran c. 1500. Mentions plenty of other subgroups - Sufi, fundamentalists - Saud/Wahhabi.

• Secular/modernist movements in 20th century - started earlier, but that's the era I'm familiar with from '60s and '70s.  Surprising how much that has changed.

• Good discussion of the failure of most of these countries to make much progress economically.  Abundant natural resources can be a curse - elites sell them off to foreigners in exchange for private riches, little concern about effect on the overall country (author cites Iran, others).

• The difficulty of development of a modern state when there is no separation of church and state.

And more.