Middle Eastern History: Free Courses

Image by Muham­mad Mah­di Karim;, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Right now, all eyes are turned toward Japan. That’s under­stand­able. But, all the while, the unrest in the Mid­dle East con­tin­ues unabat­ed, espe­cial­ly in Libya and Bahrain. So it seems time­ly to high­light a resource that will give you a deep­er under­stand­ing of this evolv­ing region. Richard Bul­li­et, a pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, has post­ed a 26 lec­ture course called The His­to­ry of the Mod­ern Mid­dle East. The course takes you back to the found­ing of Islam, then works for­ward to the 19th and 20th cen­turies, cov­er­ing the cre­ation of Mid­dle East­ern states, the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict, the role of oil, the Iran­ian rev­o­lu­tion, etc. In short, he gives you the lay of the mod­ern land.

For even deep­er con­text, you can access two oth­er free cours­es taught by Bul­li­et: First, the His­to­ry of the World to 1500 AD, avail­able on YouTube here, and sec­ond, the His­to­ry of Iran to the Safavid Peri­od (essen­tial­ly pre-mod­ern Iran) avail­able on the Inter­net Archive here. All three cours­es appear in the His­to­ry sec­tion of our mega col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. In total, you will now find 1,700 cours­es, all free to down­load to your com­put­er or mobile device…