Christopher de BellaigueCritiques

In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs made me want to travel through the Middle East if only to see the Rose Garden of the Martyrs, the seven thousand graves, each with a photograph of the dead man buried below. That must be an impressive sight.
Through riding in a taxi and listening to the radio De Bellaigue offers up a snapshot of current events: Saddam's activities burning oil wells in Kuwait, Colin Powell's outward facing response to send more troops in aground campaign without telling the public what that really means. And speaking of taxis, what is it about taxi drivers? They are by turns an opportunity for confession and a source of information. There are little Easter egg surprises within In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs. The mini explanation of Rumi's birth into the world of poetry was one such treasure. The personal details of how De Bellaigue met and courted his wife, Bita. Speaking of De Bellaigue's wife and in-laws, I had to wonder how his personal life with them altered his journalistic approach to writing In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs. The language was far more introspective and dare I say romantic?

Interesting take on writing history. Tells parts of the stories of key monarchs and advisers in the era when the Ottomans were moving into southeast Europe in the 16th century.
The writing style is clearly not academic - with a very relaxed and informal presentation. This should make the content more accessible to the lay reader, but the author throws in a plethora of arcane terms for the titles of local nobility and military terminology. I spent more time in Google than I would have liked. My personal favourite was "maniple" for a small unit of soldiers. The dictionaries I checked indicate the term has not been used since ancient Roman times. Couldn't the author have used unit, troop, or some other term??
I learned about the life and times of Suleyman the Magnificent, but I could have enjoyed the journey more.

In these frankly, traumatic times where various parties are taking more umbrage at each other’s point of view and the language is becoming more provocative one of the accusations levelled against the Muslim world is that they are failing to adapt to a modern world and modernise their culture. This has not always been the case though, as back in the nineteenth century the Muslim world embraced change and modern practices, medicine and universal suffrage. In this book on the Islamic Enlightenment, de Bellaigue goes back over 200 years to take us through the history of the region and the politicians, scientists and writers who have been key to driving the change in the region.

This is not a book you can rush, as de Bellaigue takes enormous pains to find the movers and shakers who drove through the change in this Muslim world and tell their story. It is full of complex tales and he is equally critical of the Muslim countries and of the Western states that carved up the region for their own ends whilst using the local political leaders to continue to oppress the populace. The amount of research that has gone into this makes for incredibly dense prose and I found it quite challenging to read. I also felt that sometimes the narrative of the stories of the people got lost in the detail. Will probably become a standard text in its time, but it is possible more for the specialist rather than the general reader.

"Ik hoop dat ik heb laten zien dat veel van de ideeën, zoals de waarde van het individu en de voordelen van wetgeving, wetenschap en representatieve overheid, snel werden overgenomen - zo naadloos zelfs dat ze nu authentieke kenmerken zijn van het islamitische denken en maatschappij”. Dit schrijft Christophe de Bellaigue in de slotconclusie van zijn boek. En dat doet toch wel de wenkbrauwen even fronsen. Want eigenlijk heeft hij ons net meer dan 300 bladzijden lang meegenomen op een tocht waarin hij keer op keer moet toegeven dat de voortdurende pogingen om de Westerse moderniteit te introduceren in de islamitische gemeenschap van het Midden-Oosten mislukt zijn. Eindeloos is de lijst van heel boeiende figuren die hij opvoert die geworsteld hebben met die moderniteit en geprobeerd hebben tot een integratie van westerse waarden te komen, sommigen helemaal in overeenstemming met de islam, anderen helemaal buiten het geloof. Dat gaat dan van autoritaire figuren als Muhammed Ali Pasha in Egypte, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Turkije, sjah Reza Phalevi in Iran, tot expliciet islamitische denkers en bestuurders, zoals Rifaa al-Tahtawi in Egypte, Namik Kemalj in Turkije, en Mirza Tahi Khan Karahani in Iran. Op Ataturk na zijn al deze figuren jammerlijk mislukt in hun opzet en de meesten van hen hebben het ook moeten bekopen met hun leven. Op geen enkel moment in de periode die de Bellaigue beschrijft, kan je spreken van een waarlijk “Islamitische Verlichting”, hoewel hij mordicus anders beweert. Eigenlijk kan je zijn boek dus een mislukking noemen, en dat komt vooral omdat hij voortdurend termen als Verlichting, moderniteit, industrialisering, rechtsstaat door elkaar haalt. Natuurlijk hebben die termen met elkaar te maken, maar ze dekken absoluut verschillende ladingen.
Dit boek zit dus conceptueel verkeerd in elkaar en geeft de lezer dus helemaal niet wat het belooft. Maar desalniettemin is dit toch een bijzonder interessant boek. Want hoe dan ook beschrijft De Bellaigue hoe het islamitische Midden-Oosten sinds het einde van de 18de eeuw geworsteld heeft met de Westerse moderniteit en geprobeerd heeft die in eigen termen te vertalen en toe te passen. Dat Midden-oosten was dus zeker niet passief en achterlijk zoals het in sommige oriëntalistische visies (nog altijd) naar voren komt. En het is de grote verdienste van de auteur dat hij aan die pogingen een gezicht geeft, ze vertaalt naar mensen van vlees en bloed; veel van de door hem besproken figuren waren mij onbekend en de korte biografieën van bijvoorbeeld de Egyptenaar Mohammed Abdul en de Perzische feministe Fatima Baraghani, nodigen uit om meer over hen te weten. Ook zijn globale, onderliggende these kan ik bijtreden. Namelijk dat het Westers imperialisme zo’n schok heeft teweeg heeft gebracht in de erg besloten islamitische wereld en op zo’n korte tijd alle mogelijke maatschappelijke domeinen in crisis heeft gestort, in combinatie met een uiterst vernederende, hooghartige en opportunistische opstelling van het Westen zelf, dat het maar logisch is dat de islamwereld van de weeromstuit koos voor het meest reactionaire en gewelddadige radicalisme.
Bijkomende zwakheden van dit boek zijn dat de Bellaigue zich hoofdzakelijk beperkt heeft tot de periode van de 19de eeuw en begin 20ste eeuw, en dan plots in zijn slotconclusie de sprong maakt naar vandaag. De focus op landen als Egypte, Turkije en Iran is zeker gerechtvaardigd, maar daardoor blijven interessante islamitische landen als Maleisië en Indonesië en hun vertaling van de westerse moderniteit volledig buiten beeld, en ook dat is een gemiste kans.½

My friend Mark suggested this book for our group back in 2006. Mark had travelled through the country during the days of the Shah, smoking hash and driving a VW Bus on his way to Afghanistan. He related how in certain hamlets, firewood was a dollar a night and the hash was free. It was around 2006 that the rumbles about preemptive strikes agsinst Iran first rumbled from Seymour Hersh and others. The book is masterful in detailing the contradictions of a progessive theocracy, the schizoid tensions of the educated classes and the waves of reforms and retractions between the mullahs and the minsiters. This is a fascinating glimpse.

This is a dense and sometimes difficult read, but ultimately a rewarding one. I felt like I learned a lot from it, and it made me eager to read more about the Ottoman Empire and the international politics of the late nineteenth century.

Perhaps the best book I have read about Iran is “In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran” (2004), by Christopher de Bellaigue, a British journalist and author, who, by his own admission, greatly benefits from his Iranian wife and in-laws. Mr de Bellaigue looks into the recent history of Iran, largely post-revolution, but with escapes further back into the 20th Century, to sketch the Pahlavi-dynasty background that provided the framework. And he does this superbly, through a mix of scholarly knowledge and deep-digging interviews with a broad range of people, many of whom keep on coming back in the book, with yet more details, more revelations.

One of the main subjects is the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, which is being analysed from the memories of veterans, from tracing down a famous commander who didn’t survive, and from Mr. de Bellaigue’s own extensive research. He puts into perspective the role of the various factions, inside as well as outside Iran, in such a way that you actually think you start to understand the issues that were at stake. His excursion into Orwell’s account of the Spanish civil war, and comparing and contrasting this with the Iran-Iraq war, is well chosen.

But the book also addresses other subjects, from daily Iranian life, to a brilliant chapter on the traditional sports club and the ‘thick-necks’, the gang-like heavyweights that used to dominate the bazaars, and the complex issue of their loyalty to one or another regime, starting with that of the Shah’s. All in all he paints a picture of what moves present day Iran, what is good (the revolution) and what is not so good (the aftermath of the revolution, the politics, the backroom-deals, the corruption, unaccounted-for murders), and what is important (somehow, religion is pervasive, in a way we Westerners don’t fully understand, appreciate it). And he does this with a pleasant writing style, helped by a healthy sense of humour, including some self-depreciation. Read this book, even if you don’t plan to travel to Iran; it helps you understand this country better, and it certainly helps you to read the news from Western news agencies in a different way.

This is a fascinating book, although I'd say it's much more history and reporting than it is memoir. But that's not really a complaint. I guess there's enough of a memoir component to justify the subtitle. At any rate, de Belaigue is an English journalist who, at the time of the publication of this book in 2004, had been married to an Iranian woman and living in Tehran for several years (according to Wikipedia the couple now lives in London).

At any rate, de Bellaigue provides many first-hand accounts of what daily life was like in Tehran 10 years ago. (I don't imagine it's changed much, but what do I know?) But, as I mentioned, that's only one element of the book. Most importantly de Bellaigue provides an in-depth social and political history of Iran, and the Iranian Revolution that toppled the Shah and eventually brought the Ayatollah to supreme power, bringing us from those events right up to the time of the book's writing. Also, the causes and execution of the years-long, horrific war with Iraq are explained clearly and in-depth, as well. But rather than just providing straight history, de Bellaigue uses his journalistic skills to offer up portraits of and interviews with several Iranians, often people who took part in the Islamic Iranian Revolution, served the government in ways often unsavory, and are, for the most part, now in calmer retirement. Also, de Bellaigue provides plenty of historical context, going back as far as the early days of Islam in Iran, and explaining the Shia-Sunni split. There's a lot to take in, but the way de Bellaigue personalizes events, both through his own eyes and those of his interview subjects, works very, very well.

Basically, de Bellaigue describes the Revolution as a thugocracy, even from its earliest days. And then it got worse. de Bellaigue describes how, at least in his own view, the Revolution has subsequently imploded and betrayed even its own fundamentalist beliefs under the weight of hubris, greed and decadence. There has always been a give and take between reformers and hard-line Muslim fundamentalists, but the latter have always, in the end, employed ruthless means to retain ultimate control.

de Bellaigue's status as a Westerner who had lived in Iran for many years and who speaks Persian allowed him to present life in Tehran from the inside out, to show us the culture and the attitudes in fascinating ways and perspectives that neither a visiting Westerner nor even an Iranian could have managed. Given de Bellaigue rather dour and caustic attitude about the direction the Revolution had taken, it's not a surprise to me that he no longer lives in Iran. I have no idea whether the publishing of this book had anything to do with his leaving the country, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

Patriot of Persia: Muhammed Mossadegh and a very British coup by Christopher de Bellaigue

I was going to start this review by commenting that there were two misleading things about the title: the first is that this is in fact a biography of Mossadegh's life rather than an account of the coup, the second that the description of the coup itself focuses on the CIA role without any mention of UK involvement (although there is coverage of the British persuading the US that a coup was necessary). But as I looked for the touchstone I discovered that the US subtitle of the book is "MM and a tragic Anglo-American coup", different in both tone and content from the UK one.

Anyway, to the review. In some ways this has quite an old-fashioned approach to biography writing, literally starting with Mossadegh's birth and ending with his death, and packing the author's analysis quite closely around the facts of Mossadegh's life. This is exacerbated by de Bellaigue's style of writing, which is fabulously elliptical and impressionistic - especially in the early chapters I felt that other biographers would squeeze a paragraph out of the information he was putting into a sentence.

Six-foot-three of glowering, muscle-bound ambition, Reza Khan crushed the shell of Qajar power. He wrote no foreign language, and barely his own; his culture was cards and wenching, though later he acquired the genteel vices of opium and extortion. ... Iran seethed as he started his ascent. Banditry and insurgency threatened the whole flimsy structure. It was one of those times when the Persian longing for a strongman capable of dragging the country back from the precipice seems like the summit of logic and good sense.

de Bellaigue loves a good anecdote, quote or nickname (Brainless Shaban, Icy Ramazan, Sugar-lip Zeynab) - anything that creates an image in the reader's mind. All this makes the book an enjoyable read, although there are a couple of downsides - because it's so elliptical there were times when I would have liked a statement to be more backed up with argument (eg, in above, 'the Persian longing for a strongman'?), and I occasionally worried that I was coming away with an impression of what had happened rather than detailed knowledge.

But in any case, the story is interesting and important. Overall it's a portrayal of Mossadegh himself, with plenty of complexity and contradictions. de Bellaigue shows us his strong adherence to his values and integrity, his love for political theatre, his vision but also his fussiness over details, and demonstrates how these made Mossadegh so popular among the Iranian people but also so frustrating to his political colleagues and opponents, and how it led him to miss opportunities to make compromises. de Bellaigue thinks, for example, that it would have been possible to reach an acceptable compromise with the British over Anglo-Iranian Oil (now BP) which would have met Iranian requirements and averted the coup. That doesn't mean that the book is not critical of the UK and US approaches, far from it. But reaching a compromise would actually have achieved Mossadegh's ends better than nobly standing above the fray. Certainly, without the coup, the modern Middle East could look very different.

Wealth distribution; a military under civilian control; modestly enhanced rights for women in the face of clerical unease; these were the most visible parts of a modernisation programme which would have brought Iran substantially closer to a secular, constitutional regime. The final year of Mossadegh's premiership is a salutary episode in modern Middle Eastern history - an opportunity spurned because of the British obsession with lost prestige and the American obsession with Communism.½

A very good, highly readable account, told almost completely from the Mossadegh point of view. Although it's title alludes to the coup of 1953, this is a very good account of Iranian politics in the first half of the twentieth century. The subject could have been very difficult to follow with the contrary nature of Iranian politics & the fluidity of events, but this account took it all in its stride. A good book on a very important figure in 20th century middle eastern politics.

A highly readable biography about Iran's gray eminence Muhammad Mossadegh. Contrary to his noble family tradition and his relatives, Muhammad Mossadegh, trained as a lawyer in Switzerland, tried to install good government in corrupt and backward Persia. In a volatile environment, he tried to modernize his country, as minister in multiple government or in private opposition. Similar to another rich old boy in Britain, he was in the privileged position to decide whether he wanted to participate in politics. In contrast to Churchill, his chief weapon was inaction, of dramatically falling ill or going on hunger strike. His Schmerzensmann showmanship carried the public with him, forcing his political opponents to adopt some of his policies.

Unfortunately, the British corporate interests were not willing to play this game. Muhammad Mossadegh's altogether quite sensible demands were deemed unsuitable. In their short-term greed, the British corporations together with the American CIA undermined the secular movement in Iran because those secularists weren't as pliable as the puppet dictators. In the end, the undermining of the secular institutions and the support for the dictators meant that only the religious fanatics remained popular. The supreme irony is that the very conservative nature of Muhammad Mossadegh led him not to go effectively resist the CIA triggered putsch as fighting back would have handed control to the rabble. In all their difference, Mossadegh remained an aristocrat not a true man of the people.

Unfortunately, as recent events in Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt and Syria confirm, Great Britain and the United States still prefer to work with dictators or the military instead of with the quarrelsome secular forces which in the long run tends to benefit religious extremists.

I found this book Illuminating and if the narrative swirls this is a good reflection of the confused histories, identities and affiliations of the region. De Bellaigue is criticized when an article he we writes for the New York Review of Books appears skewed to the Turkish state in the matter of the1915 Armenian "genocide". To redress the balance he spends 3 years in the region of Varto, trying to understand the people and politics of Eastern Anatolia better.

And so we learn of the 1915 deportations, story so confused that de Bellaigue still cannot come to a firm conclusion as to whether the massive killings were premeditated, spontaneous opportunism, the settling of grudges or some combination of all 3, at least in the Varto area. We learn of the confused identities of Kurds and Alevis, the history of the PKK in the area and of many local squabbles, deceptions and feuds. It's fascinating stuff, and if one message comes out its that everyone has their own version of truth and that the empirical truth is very hard to pin down

But the book could do with an index and a chronology as the links between some of the characters are hard to remember. But it's a fascinating read½

Intent is good - elucidate important and difficult historical, political, ethnic issues of the region by focusing on small town of Varto. There are many versions of each story, depending on who tells it. But the author's narrative becomes lost as he winds and twists through the plethora of people and place names, events, etc. Lack of any index does not help. It became a chore to get through this book even though it is only a moderate 264 pages. The author wrote this as a corrective response to his own earlier essay in N.Y. Review of Books, which the author admits rested on Turkish or pro-Turkish sources. Whether this now is an over-correction is difficult to say, but possible. The entire subject of Turkish-Armenian-Kurdish relations is complex, bloody, sad. Need to look elsewhere to continue to try to understand all of the complexities.

This memoir reads like a compilation of thorough newspaper articles or short stories, I never quite knew where the book was going next. It contains snapshots of Iranian life, histories of people involved in the Revolution and people who oppose its growing hypocrisy, and the reflections of a foreigner trying to understand and be understood. I found it very enjoyable to read, an absorbing glimpse into the lives of people who are motivated in ways foreign to my experience and a testament to the difficulty of turning a revolution into a stable government worthy of its citizenry.½