This remarkable book recreates one of the watershed moments in the history of the Middle East:
the ferocious outbreaks of disorder across the Levant in 1860 which resulted in the massacre of
thousands of Christians in Damascus. Eugene Rogan brilliantly recreates the lost world of the
Middle East under Ottoman rule. The once mighty empire was under pressure from global economic
change and European imperial expansion. Reforms in the mid-nineteenth century raised tensions
across the empire nowhere more so than in Damascus. A multifarious city linked by caravan
trade to Baghdad the Mediterranean and Mecca the chaos of languages customs and beliefs made
Damascus a warily tolerant place. Until the reforms began to advantage the minority Christian
community at the expense of the Muslim majority. But in 1860 people who had generally lived
side by side for generations became bitter enemies as news of civil war in Mount Lebanon
arrived in the city. Under the threat of a French expeditionary force the Ottomans dealt with
the disaster effectively and ruthlessly - but the old generally quite tolerant Damascene world
lay in ruins. It would take a quarter of a century to restore stability and prosperity to the
Syrian capital. This is both an essential book for understanding the emergence of the modern
Middle East from the destruction of the old Ottoman world and a uniquely gripping story.
