PREFACE TO THE
EIGHTH EDITION
This textbook has now come to be called "classic," and its original author
has retired from teaching, so Lawrence Davidson, Professor of History at
West Chester University, has now joined Arthur Goldschmidt in writing
its latest edition. This work should be titled "A Decreasingly Concise His-
tory of the Middle East" because of the mounting pace of events and
changes that are taking place in the area, but we have pruned our account
as often as we could.
The events of 11 September 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
have heightened American awareness of the Middle East more than ever
before. Subsequently, US troops have been sent to fight in this region, with
unpredictable results. Under these circumstances, teachers and students
need a book that reflects current scholarship, does not hide its ideas behind
a pseudoscholarly style addressed to pedants, and does not reinforce politi-
cal or ethnic biases. Students—and members of the wider English-speaking
public—deserve clear explanations of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Middle
East's role in the energy crisis, the Islamic resurgence, and the war in Iraq.
The book has gone through seven previous editions and, despite the ap-
pearance of other general histories, has become ever more widely used in
universities.
More and more scholars, both Middle Eastern and Western, are enlarg-
ing what we know about the history of the area. We can—and we must—
share their findings with university students, both to arouse their interest
in the Middle East and to make them more aware of themselves by expo-
sure to other lifestyles, other areas, and other eras. Teachers and textbooks
cannot free themselves from bias, but both authors want to make sure that
our students see more than one side of the burning issues of the present
and the past. Let us also reveal what we know to the wider public. Many