After 19 years as Editor of The Middle East Journal, I am retiring as of the end of January, that is, today. I have now also spent nine y...

Even in the days of Husni Mubarak, there were opposition Presidential candidates. They never won, of course, or stood a chance, but the pret...

A Happy New Year, but also a reminder that a great many Middle Eastern Christians of the eastern tradition have not yet celebrated Christmas...

I want to wish those readers who celebrate Christmas on the Western date today my wishes for the season. Since many Middle Eastern Christian...

I was busy last night with a holiday party and so failed to note an actual holiday. Last night was the Winter solstice, and thus the ancie...

Greetings on this first night of Hanukkah to my Jewish readers.

Allenby enters the Jaffa Gate After the British occupied Jaffa in November, 1917 , General Allenby set his sights on the hill country ar...

President Trump has said that recognizing Jerusalem a the capital of Israel will advance the peace process. Using the same logic, the fires ...

‘Ali ‘Abdullah Salih became President of what was then North Yemen in 1978. Though he stepped aide as President of united Yemen in 2012, he ...

After General Allenby's forces took Beersheba on October 31, 1917 , the early days of November were spent occupying Ottoman lines betwee...

I was slowly catching up on blogging when the Middle East went haywire, or even more haywire than usual. The Saudi Crown Prince removed most...

Work has kept me busy but mostly the whole Saudi Palace Coup/Hariri "Resignation" fracas has been moving faster than I could comme...

A century ago: Many commentators have already analyzed the Balfour Declaration before its centennial, and there is ...

Sixty-three years ago today, a day remembered as Toussaint Rouge, "Red All Saints' Day," the Algerian National Liberation Fro...

George Lambert, The Charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba, 1917 When we last discussed the centenary of the Palestine camp...

I'll be doing a lot of historical posts this week. Today is the 100th anniverary of the Battle of Beersheba, one of the great cavalry ch...

Mas‘oud Barzani's decision not to seek another term as President of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) (despite his current term...

The glories of Baghdad during the reign of the ‘Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid have been much celebrated and elaborated upon in the tales of...

Iraqi Armed Forces entered Kirkuk today , pushing back Kurdish Peshmerga and lowering the Kurdish flag. Following a period of threats and sy...

After Irfan Shahid died in 2016, I lamented the fact that his multi-volume life's work, Byzantium and the Arabs, and its "Prolego...

Jalal Talabani, former President of Iraq and founder of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), has died in Germany at the age of 83. One ...

This year, like last, both the Jewish and Muslim New Years coincided. And since each tradition marks the tenth day of the New Year, the obse...

The Iraqi Central Government has demanded that the Kurdistan Regional Government turn over border positions to the Central Government; Iran ...

Rosh Hashanah greetings to all my Jewish readers.

In an attempt to resume my past efforts to highlight the occasionally offbeat, here's a link to "A Pub Crawl in Ottoman Cairo,...

On September 17, 1801, in Hereford, England, Edward William Lane was born. 146 years later, I was born. I believe I have noted this annuall...

On September 13, 1922, fire broke out in the ancient city of Smyrna (İzmir), days after Turkish Army forces had entered the city, ending t...

Kurdistan Regional Government President Mas‘oud Barzani was in Kirkuk today , a reminder of the potential explosiveness of the September 25 ...

Moulay Hicham Morocco's so-called "Red Prince," Moulay Hicham, first cousin of King Mohammed VI, was arrested by Tunisian ...

I will start with the good news: I intend this post to mark the resumption of regular, possibly daily, blogging. I'm back. The bad new...