About Islam, The Middle East, and The West

This course will introduce you to the history of the Middle East from the rise of Islam to the twenty-first century. The course will emphasize the encounters and exchanges between the Islamic world and the West. It will be structured chronologically-each unit will focus on the emergence of a particular Middle Eastern society or empire during a specific time period. Each unit will include representative primary-source documents that illustrate important overarching political, economic, and social themes, such as the emergence of Islam in the seventh century, conflicts between Islamic and Christian peoples during the Crusades, European domination of Muslim territories in the nineteenth century, independence movements and the rise of nationalism in the 1900s, and the formation of Islamic fundamentalist groups and anti-Western sentiment in the latter twentieth century. By the end of the course, you will understand how Islam became a sophisticated and far-reaching civilization and how conflicts with the West shaped the development of the Middle East from the medieval period to the present day.