ISBN10: 0275968901, ISBN13: 9780275968908, [publisher: ABC-Clio, Incorporated] Hardcover pp. 240
[New York, NY, U.S.A.] [Publication Year: 2000]

ISBN10: 0275968901, ISBN13: 9780275968908, [publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, Westport] Hardcover Hardcover. Sicker explores the political history of the Middle East from antiquity to the Arab conquest from a geopolitical perspective. He argues that there are a number of relatively constant environmental factors that have helped condition-not determine-the course of Middle Eastern political history from ancient times to the present. These factors, primarily, but not exclusively geography and topography, contributed heavily to establishing the patterns of state development and interstate relations in the Middle East that have remained remarkably consistent throughout the troubled history of the region.In addition to geography and topography, the implications of which are explored in depth, religion has also played a major political role in conditioning the pattern of Middle Eastern history. The Greeks first introduced the politicization of religious belief into the region in the form of pan-Hellenism, which essentially sought to impose Greek forms of popular religion and culture on the indigenous peoples of the region as a means of solidifying Greek political control. This ultimately led to religious persecution as a state policy. Subsequently, the Persian Sassanid Empire adopted Zoroastrianism as the state religion for the same purpose and with the same result. Later, when Armenia adopted Christianity as the state religion, followed soon after by the Roman ...

Praeger Publishers, Date: 2000. Hardcover. New. 2000. Praeger Publishers ISBN 0275968901 9780275968908 [IN]