Middle East - Anthony Ham [20]
He rode out of Macedonia in 334 BC to embark on a decade-long campaign of conquest and exploration. His first great victory was against the Persians at Issus in what is now southeast Turkey. He swept south, conquering Phoenician seaports and thence into Egypt where he founded the Mediterranean city that still bears his name. In 331 BC, the armies of Alexander the Great made a triumphant entrance into Cyrenaica. After the Oracle of Ammon in Siwa promised Alexander that he would indeed conquer the world, he returned north, heading for Babylon. Crossing the Tigris and the Euphrates, he defeated another Persian army before driving his troops up into Central Asia and northern India. Eventually fatigue and disease brought the drive to a halt and the Greeks turned around and headed back home. En route, Alexander succumbed to illness (some say he was poisoned) and died at the tender age of 33 in Babylon. The whereabouts of his body and tomb remain unknown.
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According to legend, Alexander’s mother dreamed lightning struck her womb, while his father dreamed his wife’s womb was sealed by a lion. A seer told them their child would have the character of a lion.
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Upon Alexander’s death in 323 BC, his empire was promptly carved up among his generals. This resulted in the founding of three new ruling dynasties: the Antigonids in Greece and Asia Minor; the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt; and the Seleucids. The Seleucids controlled the swath of land running from modern Israel and Lebanon through Mesopotamia to Persia.
But, this being the Middle East, peace was always elusive. Having finished off a host of lesser competitors, the heirs to Alexander’s empire then proceeded to fight each other. The area of the eastern Mediterranean splintered into an array of different local dynasties with fluctuating borders. It took an army arriving from the west to again reunite the lands of the east – this time in the shape of the legions of Rome.
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ROMAN MIDDLE EAST
Even for a region accustomed to living under occupation, the sight of massed, disciplined ranks of Roman legions marching down across the plains of central Anatolia must have struck fear into the hearts of people across the region. But this was a region in disarray and the Romans chose their historical moment perfectly.
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In 586 BC, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem and carried many Jews into exile. They were freed, given money to rebuild their temple and sent home by Cyrus the Great in 539 BC.
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Rome’s legionaries conquered most of Asia Minor (most of Turkey) in 188 BC, and as they moved south they easily swept aside the divided fiefdoms and city-kingdoms that the Middle East had become. Syria and Palestine fell, if not without a fight then without too much difficulty. In a classic pincer movement, Rome conquered the Phoenician/Punic port of Carthage (see the boxed text, Click here) and much of Libya, leaving Egypt surrounded and, soon, suing for peace. When Cleopatra of Egypt, the last of the Ptolemaic dynasty, was defeated in 31 BC, the Romans controlled the entire Mediterranean world. This left the Middle East almost wholly within the Roman realm. Only the Sassanids in Persia held Rome at bay.
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The Persian Empire, by Lindsay Allen, a landmark study of the empires that gave us Cyrus the Great, is littered with epic battles and enlightened rulers.
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Foreign occupiers they may have been, but the Romans brought much-needed stability and even a degree of prosperity to the region. Roman goods flooded into Middle Eastern markets, improving living standards in a region