The Damascus Events
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  • Published: 2 May 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241646922
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 400
Categories:

The Damascus Events

The 1860 Massacre and the Destruction of the Old Ottoman World

Formats & editions
Paperback
9 Sep 2025
Hardback
6 Aug 2024
EBook
2 May 2024
Audiobook
2 May 2024
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The dramatic history of a massacre in Damascus, and the collapse of the old Ottoman world order

This remarkable book recreates one of the watershed moments in the history of the Middle East: the ferocious outbreaks of disorder across the Levant in 1860 which resulted in the massacre of thousands of Christians in Damascus.

Eugene Rogan brilliantly recreates the lost world of the Middle East under Ottoman rule. The once mighty empire was under pressure from global economic change and European imperial expansion. Reforms in the mid-nineteenth century raised tensions across the empire, nowhere more so than in Damascus. A multifarious city linked by caravan trade to Baghdad, the Mediterranean and Mecca, the chaos of languages, customs and beliefs made Damascus a warily tolerant place. Until the reforms began to advantage the minority Christian community at the expense of the Muslim majority.

But in 1860 people who had generally lived side by side for generations became bitter enemies as news of civil war in Mount Lebanon arrived in the city. Under the threat of a French expeditionary force, the Ottomans dealt with the disaster effectively and ruthlessly - but the old, generally quite tolerant Damascene world lay in ruins. It would take a quarter of a century to restore stability and prosperity to the Syrian capital.

This is both an essential book for understanding the emergence of the modern Middle East from the destruction of the old Ottoman world, and a uniquely gripping story.
  • Published: 2 May 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241646922
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 400
Categories:

Also by Eugene Rogan

The Fall of the Ottomans
The Arabs
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Praise for The Damascus Events

Compelling and authoritative, powerful in narrative, and filled with new revelations, this book offers a superb account of the 1860 Damascus massacres—much neglected nowadays but central to the creation of the modern Middle East

Simon Sebag Montefiore

In the hands of the distinguished historian and master storyteller Eugene Rogan, an incident of communal violence in Damascus in 1860 is at once an evocation of the vanished world of the Ottoman empire and an ominous foreshadowing of the communal violence tearing apart the Middle East of today

Margaret MacMillan

A stunning portrait of the Ottoman Empire and of Damascus during a time of crisis. Absolutely riveting

Peter Frankopan

This book stands out for its impeccable scholarship, gripping narrative and captivating prose. There is a great deal of new material here that not only brings events alive, but also leads to fresh assessments of one of the most momentous events in modern Arab history. Rogan uses the full panoply of primary sources in French, Ottoman Turkish and Arabic to brilliantly illuminating effect. A remarkable book by a remarkable historian

Avi Shlaim

A surprising and enlightening account of how order was restored to the city after an eruption of violence in 1860... accessible, enlightening and ultimately surprising account of an episode of which most western readers will be unaware

Christopher de Bellaigue, Financial Times

Rogan zooms in and brilliantly captures the tragic outcome of this inter-imperialist struggle

William Eichler, History Today

[A] magnificent new book... Rogan’s account highlights just how deadly the combination of inter-communal tensions and incompetent leadership can be, especially in a city as diverse as nineteenth-century Damascus. But he also offers a message of hope and humanity, and a lesson about the capacity of fractured societies to reconcile and rebuild

Shlomo Ben-Ami, Project Syndicate

[An] exemplary study

Tony Barber, The Financial Times