Word: ottoman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...virtue of a series of revolutions and counterrevolutions within the 17th century Ottoman Empire, the descendants of bush-bearded Hussein ben AH, the son of a Greek renegade, claim by birth and title to be the "Possessors of the Kingdom of Tunis." In actual fact, since the French took over their kingdom in 1881. the Husseinite Beys of Tunisia have been possessors of little more than a fancy title and the perquisites that go with it-though the perks can be quite handsome. In 1943-when Mohammed al-Moncef showed troublesome signs of getting out of hand, the French dumped...
Churchill's Land. It was Winston Churchill, Britain's Colonial Secretary after World War I, who created the artificial desert kingdom that Hussein rules. Churchill whacked a hatchet-shaped hunk off the defunct Ottoman Empire, called it Transjordan, and handed it to Hussein's grandfather Abdullah "one Sunday afternoon in Jerusalem," as he later said. Churchill was repaying Abdullah's fighting services to Britain in Lawrence of Arabia's desert campaign (another hunk-Mesopotamia, now Iraq-was given to Abdullah's brother Feisal). Thenceforth, while Britain's Glubb Pasha built the British-equipped...
...been found in tens of thousands of tiny fragments; presumably this was the main library of the Qumran Community. The Suez crisis raised serious roadblocks to the scholars' work. Many were called home, and the manuscripts themselves were packed away in 36 cases and locked up in the Ottoman Bank at Amman, Jordan, from which they were returned to Jerusalem for study only last month-some of them slightly moldy and spotted from the damp vault. (Complete photographs of the manuscript material exist, but direct examination is necessary to the delicate process of matching and fitting fragments...
...most ferocious ally, though in fact it is about the weakest sister of the Arab world. The glory of the caliph's Damascus has been gone for 1,200 years. Modern Syria as a nation dates only from the World War I collapse of Turkey's Ottoman Empire. For almost 25 years the French ruled Syria as mandated territory, leaving behind some culture and much hatred. The young Republic of Syria, independent after World War II, joined the invasion of Israel in 1948 and suffered resounding defeat. Its army then seized power, has remained in the foreground through...
Iraq. Syria's larger and richer eastern neighbor (pop. 5,200,000) has long been the only strongly pro-Western Arab state. This is largely the doing of astute old Premier Nuri es-Said, 68, once an officer in the Ottoman army. His country is oil prosperous, and invests 70% of its royalties in soundly planned long-range improvements (dams, irrigation, schools). But the mobs in the streets, stirred by Cairo, Damascus and Moscow radios, denounce Nuri es-Said as a British stooge. Last week open trouble broke out. For six days Arabs demonstrated in the holy city...