Vol 13, No 4 (2021): History of the East: religion, politics, international relations

The author examines the religious and political course of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876-1909), aimed at strengthening the unity of the Ottoman state and society based on the principles of Islam, and the implementation of this strategy in the Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The research is based on reports of contemporaries, as well as research works in Russian and English. Particular attention is paid to the strategic role of Ottoman Syria (including Lebanon and Palestine) in the context of strengthening the religious authority of the Sultan as the caliph of all Muslims and recruiting prominent ideologues and supporters of Islamic traditionalism from the Syrian vilayets to serve the Sultan. The author especially examines the role of wo representatives of the Muslim intellectual elite: the Sufi sheikh Abu-l-Huda al-Sayyadi as a close associate of the Sultan who provided patronage to the conservative ulama, as well as Ahmad Izzet Pasha al-Abid, who became the main inspirer of the Hejaz Railway. The article also reveals the features of the state policy towards religious minorities (both Muslim and non-Muslim) and migration processes in the Syrian provinces. With the weakening of the international positions of the Ottoman Empire and the strengthening of foreign interference, Syria set an example of relatively successful modernization based on Islamic tradition. At the same time, confessional identity continued to dominate over ethnicity, and the emerging feelings of Arab and Syrian patriotism did not conflict with the principle of Islamic unity of the subjects of the Sultan-Caliph.

The article is based on the information published in foreign and Russian sources and media, as well as on the basis of the author’s own research and interviews carried out in Syria. The aim of the work is to study the situation of Syrian Christians after the events of the Arab Spring-2011. This is the scientific novelty of the topic. The article is devoted to the problems that not only touched, but most dramatically affected the life of Christians in Syria, who traditionally presented at least 12% of its population (and much more in the past). They are representatives of the “most indigenous” religion in the Syrian Arab Republic (SAR). The work also traces the role of Christians in the history and socio-political life of Syria, analyzes their current situation, evaluates the events of recent years and draws appropriate conclusions. In particular, the author believes that the Arab Spring led not only to huge human and economic losses, but also to serious ethno-confessional structural changes in the society of the SAR. With the possible disappearance of this native part of the Syrian population, who lived here and represented almost all the inhabitants of that region before the Islam, the republic may lose not only 12 percent of the most educated and active part of its population, but also its tourist attractiveness in the eyes of the whole world. Although Syria has always been considered the cradle of Christianity it could lose its reputation as one of the most tolerant countries of the Arab world.

The middle of the XIII century - the apogee of power of the unified Mongol Empire. In 1241-1242, the first, bloodiest and most destructive Mongol invasion into Europe took place. Certainly, it was vital for the Europeans to find an answer to the question: what did the invaders want, what goals did they pursue? In this article, the author shows that, due to the abundance of contradictory information and the acute lack of an objective understanding of the new enemy at first, European political and ecclesiastical figures attributed many goals to the Mongols (at least eighteen!), of which only three were fully confirmed - an attack on Russia, Poland, and Hungary, and the rest were either not realized for some reason, or arose in minds of the Europeans themselves. All these “goals”, identified in various official and unofficial European sources, mainly dating from the middle of the XIII century, are discussed here taking into account information from synchronous Eastern sources. Despite well-known ideas of a “world-building monarchy”, perhaps actually hatched by the Mongol khans, events in Europe suggest that their main goal there was to punish the Hungarian king Bela IV, who refused to hand over the Polovtsians hiding in Hungary to the Mongols.

The purpose of the article is to study the events of the “big game”, their reflection and comparison in Russian and English historiography. For its implementation, considerable amounts of materials related both to the time of these events and to modern authors were used. Since the research concerns the topic of political rivalry between the two states, the observation of a subjective attitude in some works is not unexpected. However, the works presented in the article generally stand up to historical objectivity. The “Big Game” is an important event in terms of what is essentially a forerunner of subsequent global conflicts, primarily the “cold war”.