The Pre-Islamic Middle East

THE PRE-ISLAMIC MIDDLE EAST THE PRE-ISLAMIC MIDDLE EAST Martin Sicker Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sicker, Martin. The pre-Islamic Middle East / Martin Sicker. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–275–96890–1 (alk. paper) 1. Middle East—History—To 622. I. Title. DS62.2.S54 2000 939′.4—dc21 99–054421 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2000 by Martin Sicker All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99–054421 ISBN: 0–275–96890–1 First published in 2000 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10987654321 Contents Introduction 1 1. The Middle East in Early Antiquity 9 2. Egypt and Asia 25 3. The Rise and Decline of Assyria 43 4. The Rise and Fall of Media 63 5. The Empire of the Achaemenids 75 6. The Persian-Greek Wars 83 7. The Macedonian Conquest 97 8. The Dissolution of Alexander’s Empire 109 9. Reconfiguration of the Middle East 123 10. Rome Enters the Middle East 137 11. The Roman-Parthian Conflict 149 12. The Struggle over the Euphrates Frontier 161 13. The Roman-Persian Stalemate 173 14. The Era of Shapur II 183 15. The Struggle for Persia’s Frontiers 193 16. End of the Sassanid Empire 201 Afterword 211 Bibliography 213 Index 221 Introduction Throughout the second half of the twentieth century,our attention has been drawn repeatedly to the tumultuous events taking place in various parts of what has become known as the Middle East. The term, which clearly re- flects a Eurocentric perspective, was coined at the beginning of the century by the American naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan to designate the region centering on the Persian Gulf and stretching from Arabia to India. The area originally encompassed by the term reflected Mahan’s particular stra- tegic interest, one that was not necessarily shared by other writers on the history and foreign affairs of that part of the world, who assigned to the term a different content. As a result, there is no consensus regarding the precise delimitation of the territories that are included in the Middle East. In this work, I consider the Middle East to consist of a core area sur- rounded by a peripheral region of intrinsic geopolitical and historical importance. The core area is composed of Iran, the Persian Gulf littoral, and the Fertile Crescent. Historian James Breasted coined the latter term early in the twentieth century to describe the arc of territory stretching from the Persian Gulf to Egypt. The crescent arches northward, encompassing the territory between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and circumscribing the perimeter of the Arabian Desert along the coastal region of the eastern Mediterranean, where it finally stretches south to Egypt. The Fertile Cres- cent thus includes the modern states of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Is- rael. In the east, the peripheral region includes Afghanistan and Transcaspia as far as the Syr Darya River; in the west, the Aegean and southern Balkan regions; in the north, Turkey, the southern littoral of the Black Sea, and the Caucasus region; and in the south, the Arabian Penin- sula and the Horn of Africa. 2 Introduction Over the past several decades, the Middle East has become one of the most politically and economically important regions of the globe. Princi- pally because of the rich petroleum resources it contains, although far from evenly distributed throughout the region, it has served until most recently as an arena for the clash of superpower interests and remains an area of pri- mary economic importance for much of the industrialized world. Aside from its place on the global stage of international affairs, the region itself appears to be plagued with chronic internal instabilities and conflicts. It is widely acknowledged to be a veritable powder keg that is capable of erupt- ing with great explosive force, as is amply demonstrated by the many wars that have taken place there since the end of World War II. Moreover, in terms of conventional non-nuclear weaponry, the Middle East is unques- tionably the most heavily armed region in the entire world on a per capita basis. The last two decades of the twentieth century have witnessed a seem- ingly endless series of conflicts in the region. Anine-year war between Iraq and Iran over domination of the Persian Gulf region was brought to an in- conclusive end. This was followed by Iraq’s unsuccessful attempt to assert its claim to hegemony in the Arab world with the invasion and conquest of Kuwait. Iraq also suppressed once more the age-old Kurdish yearning for national self-determination, this time by the use of internationally out- lawed chemical weapons. The former Soviet Union withdrew its armies from Afghanistan after a prolonged bloody but indecisive attempt to im- pose its will on the country, leaving in its wake a civil war that is still ongoing at this writing. The decades long Greek-Turkish confrontation over Cyprus remains unresolved. Lebanon has recently come under the effec- tive hegemony of Syria, which not only has its own expansionist ambitions there but also uses the country as an instrument in its ongoing low-level conflict with Israel. In the Caucasus, Armenian, Georgian, and other long- suppressed nationalisms have reemerged following the disintegration of the Soviet Union and are now testing the cohesion and stability of several states in the region. The current unresolved conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over control of the Nagorno-Karabakh area has the potential for involving Russia, Turkey, and Iran in a wider struggle, evoking recollec- tions of the nineteenth-century conflicts in that volatile area. The disintegration of Yugoslavia and the struggle over the dismemberment of Bosnia threaten to trigger a series of Balkan wars that may draw in Turkey,Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, and possibly other countries, seriously undermining any potential for security and stability in the eastern Mediterranean. Given this incomplete but nonetheless rather extensive list of current and prospective conflicts in the Middle East, it seems reasonable to ask whether these are idiosyncratic or endemic to the region. Are we witness- ing an unrelated series of crises coincidentally taking place simultaneously in the Middle East, or are these events and circumstances consistent with a Introduction 3 historic pattern that has characterized the area for centuries if not millen- nia? One of the tasks of this work is to provide some historical background for a reasonable response to this question. It is a truism of modern thought that man, through the intelligent application of his rational faculty, is capable of imposing his will on many as- pects of his environment. In the study of politics and international affairs, this notion is reflected in the appealing thesis that virtually every intra- national or international conflict can be resolved peacefully by the con- scious application of man’s will and reason. What those inclined to accept the validity of this premise frequently ignore is the fact that a nation’s control over its environment is at best a qualified one. It may be constrained by factors over which its leaders have little or no control, which in turn may limit the practicable options available to them. Indeed, such factors may ef- fectively predispose their probable choices, and there is no assurance that objective reason will carry the day under any given set of circumstances. The central thesis of this work is that there are a number of relatively con- stant environmental factors that have helped condition—not deter- mine—the course of Middle Eastern political history from ancient times to the present. These factors, which are primarily but by no means exclusively geographic and topographic in nature, have contributed heavily to estab- lishing the patterns of state development and interstate relations in the Middle East that have remained remarkably consistent throughout the troubled history of the region. For example, this discussion of the region in antiquity will suggest that it was primarily because of fundamental geopolitical considerations that Egypt emerged as a unitary state dominating the Nile Valley, while the region in which Mesopotamian civilization flourished remained fragmented. Moreover, the very fact that Egypt, an African state, played a critical role in the history of the Middle East is also primarily the consequence of geopolitical factors that apply with the same force today as they did in remote antiquity. Although a political map of the country will indicate that Egypt encom- passes a substantial swath of territory,its sheer physical size has never con- stituted a significant component of its national power. This is because the commercial, political, and population centers of the country have always been concentrated in the relatively small Nile delta region. As a consequence, Egypt’s leaders have perennially been challenged by the fact that, notwithstanding its apparent size, the country actually possesses little stra- tegic depth in which to repel a land invasion from the northeast before the heart of the country is overrun. As will be amply demonstrated, Egypt has always been highly vulnerable to attack from Asia and has therefore consis- tently linked its security to its ability to dominate or at least control the territory of the African-Asian land bridge, that is, Palestine and Syria.

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