Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World. By Ussama Makdisi. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019. Pp. xiii, 296, with bibliographical references and index. $29.95 Hardcover/Paperback. ISBN: 9780520385764.
Dr. Ussama Makdisi’s recent publication explores the history of sectarianism and secularism in the Middle East. He strives to demythologize sectarianism in the Middle East through an ecumenical frame which analyses the shifting body-politics of, most prominently Muslims, Christians, and Jews. In order to do this the ecumenical frame not only had to be imagined but also built “out of eclectic Ottoman, European, and Arab materials” (p. 7). The shifting of the balances of power through European encroachment and the Tanzimat reforms created new socio-political issues for the Ottoman Porte and the peoples of the Empire to address.
The title of the book is slightly misleading. In the introduction Makdisi makes it clear that his focus is the Arab Mashriq with passing reference to other regions, e.g., North Africa. Despite this limitation, the book does an excellent job of detailing the causes of the sporadic violence between different ethnic and religious groups of the Empire, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The book is divided into two parts; the first part contains three chapters which work to reverse a popular Orientalist tale that the Middle East is inherently sectarian (and violent). Makdisi begins with the riots and killings on Mt. Lebanon in 1860, noting that “the largest single massacre of Christians in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire across four centuries of Ottoman rule, has not been the subject of a single major study in Arabic” (p. 18). The violence against the Christians of Mt. Lebanon, while appearing to be sectarian, was in fact an episode related more to power shifts and dynamics than to religion (or ethnicity) (p. 55). The second part contains three chapters and an epilogue. While part one deals with defining the region and highlighting episodes of tension and violence, part two is concerned with exploring and analyzing the shifting ecumenical frame as the region and the people contend with European colonialism and, specifically, the European desire to protect Christians in the Middle East. The epilogue discusses the Arab Mashriq from the 1950s to the present and the breakdown of the ecumenical frame, specifically in Palestine.
The Mashriq is often seen and spoken of as a monolith where sectarianism is misconstrued as having been part of the region since time immemorial; Makdisi documents and well-articulates that this is a myth. In fact, the Middle East, especially prior to the nineteenth century, was rather a region where Muslims were granted special status and other religious groups were, more or less, left to their own devices. The entrance of European encroachment in the nineteenth century followed by capitulations of the Ottoman Porte through the Tanzimat reforms (1839–1876) ushered with it a new ecumenical frame in which “Muslim subjects were no longer ideologically privileged in the eyes of the sultan by virtue of their Islamic faith, and yet at the same time were not singled out for protection or alleged solicitude by European powers because they were Muslim” (p. 54). This shift in the equilibrium in turn led to sporadic violence that seemingly was sectarian, but in reality reflected the changes in the balances of power.
The Age of Coexistence takes aim at Orientalist portrayals of the Arab Mashriq, analyzing and providing ample examples of the coexistence, tolerance, and communal spirit that existed in the region prior to European encroachment and later colonialism. Future studies would do well to explore similar themes that would broaden our understanding of the ecumenical frame in other parts of the region, or in the Mashriq but through the other ethnicities or linguistic groups, as well as the ecumenical citizen in this age of the nation-state. Ultimately, Makdisi has written an excellent book and provided an innovative theoretical framework for understanding the Arab Mashriq in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Sean E. Swanick
Duke University