02070nam a22002411i 4500003000400000005001700004008004100021020003900062040002500101082001500126100003200141245008600173264004600259264001300305300010100318336002100419337002500440338002300465504005100488520123200539651002101771651003601792OSt20190910160634.0190910t20192019enkbof|gr|||| 001 0 eng d a9781784539610cRM 150.00qhardback aPPAKbengcPPAKerda04223a956.911 aReilly, James A.,eauthor. 00aFRAGILE NATION , SHATTERED LAND :bTHE MODERN HISTORY OF SYRIA /cJAMES A. REILLY 1aLondon ; New York :bI.B.TAURIS,c2019.  4c©2019.  axvi, 258 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : billustrations, photographs, maps ;c24 cm.  2rdacontentatext 2rdamediaaunmediated 2rdacarrieravolume aIncludes bibliographical references and index. aThe Syrian state is less than 100 years old, born from the wreckage of World War I. Today it stands in ruins, shattered by brutal civil war. How did this happen? How did the lands that are today Syria survive incorporation with the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century and the trials and vicissitudes of the Sultan's rule for four centuries, only to collapse into civil war in recent years? Arguably it was the Ottoman period that laid the fragile foundations of a state that had to endure a turbulent twentieth century under French rule, tentative independence, a brutal and corrupt dictatorship and eventual disintegration in the twenty-first. Across a diverse cast of individuals, rich and poor, James Reilly explores these fractious and formative periods of Ottoman, Egyptian and French rule, and the ways that these contributed to the contradictions and failings of the rule of the Assad family; and to a civil war which produced the so-called Islamic State. In charting Syria's history over the last five centuries in their entirety for the first time, Reilly demonstrates the myriad historical, cultural, social, economic and political factors that bind Syrians together, as well as those that have torn them apart. 10aSyriaxHistory. 20aSyriaxPolitics and government.