Available From UC Press

This sweeping history reorients our understanding of the Middle East, placing the Gulf at the heart of globalized trade and cross-cultural encounters.
 
World history began in the Persian Gulf. The ancient port cities that dotted its coastlines created the first global seaboard, a place from where faiths and cultures from around the world set sail and made contact. More than a history, The Center of the World shows us that contradictions that define our modern age have always been present.
 
For over four thousand years, the Gulf—sometimes called the Persian Gulf, sometimes the Arabian Gulf—has been a global crossroads while managing to avoid control by the world’s greatest empires. In its history, we see a world of rapid change, fluctuating centers of trade, a dependency on uncertain global markets, and intense cross-cultural encounters that hold a mirror to the contemporary world. Focusing each chapter on a different port around the Gulf, The Center of the World shows how the people of the Gulf adapted to larger changes in world history, creating a system of free trade, merchant rule, and commerce that continues to define the region today.

Allen James Fromherz is Professor of History and Director of the Middle East Studies Center at Georgia State University. He is author of Qatar: A Modern History and Ibn Khaldun: Life and Times and editor of The Gulf in World History: Arabia at the Global Crossroads.

"This is an excellent, engagingly written overview of the political and commercial history of a crucial waterway mostly known for the vagaries of the oil that has flowed through it in modern times."—R. P. Matthee, University of Delaware, in Choice

"Remarkably accessible, this book offers an authoritative history of the Gulf, boldly linking the region to the wider currents of global history."—Dale F. Eickelman, author of The Middle East and Central Asia: An Anthropological Approach

"Simply compelling! Allen Fromherz does for the Gulf what Braudel did for the Mediterranean."—G. R. Garthwaite, Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor in Asian Studies and Professor Emeritus of History at Dartmouth College

"The best historical interpretation of the gulf geography . . . A must read for anyone with an interest in the Middle East, Persia, and economic history." —Ansgar Baums, Senior Fellow, Stimson Center