The making of the modern Middle East
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Why does the book start with Abdulaziz’s 1902 raid on Riyadh?
Welcome back to the History Extra Podcast. Today's Middle East is marked by ongoing conflict and violence, but how did we get here? In his latest book, The Cauldron, historian Simon Seabag Montefiore sets out to explore how the region and its divisions came into being. Speaking to Charlotte Vosper in a conversation recorded in June 2026, Simon offers his take on the key forces and figures that forged the region.
You begin the book with Abdulaziz's raid on Riyadh in nineteen oh two. The beginning of his conquest of the kingdom that would become Saudi Arabia. Why did you decide to start your history of the modern Middle East there?
Virtually all histories of the Middle East or the Arab world start in the sort of traditional Levant. They start, you know, in Jerusalem, or they start in Lebanon, or in Syria, or in Constantinople, or in Cairo, but anywhere but Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabia is really the center of the Middle East. It's Mecca and Medina, is there. But also it's just an original place to start and a Signal that this is very much Arab-centric, about Arabia, where it all started. And it's one of the best stories in the book. I mean, 30 or 40 people conquer Riyadh in a sort of dawn raid, led by Abdulaziz Ibn Saud himself, and they kill the governor, they seize it. It's an old-fashioned battle. It's like something out of Lawrence of Arabia.
Yeah. Yeah. So I like to start with that sort of thing. sort of excitement, but there's a sort of message behind it because the Gulf and Arabia is now the center of the Arab world.
So we begin, like we say, in Riyadh in nineteen oh two. Can you set the wider scene for us? What powers are at play in the Middle East at the turn of the twentieth century?
Yeah, well when the book starts, it's really another world from today. And that's really one of the the points of the book, is to just understand how recently the Middle East has been created and how it was created, and it's so different from everyone expects. That's the point of the book. So when it starts in nineteen hundred essentially, half of the Middle East is ruled by the Ottomans, the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid, who rules in Constantinople. And half of it is British. And Britain rules the Trucial States, which is the eastern side of Arabia. So places like UAE and Oman and Aden, which is Yemen, are all British. And Britain also controls Egypt. France controls Algeria and Tunisia. And so those are the powers at play.
And there are virtually no independent Arabs. Arab states. The only independent Arab states really are those within Arabia. And there, especially in Najd, in the centre of Arabia, there are battles between rival chiefs, rival sheikhs of different sheikhdoms.
So we've got this imperial system essentially at play. Then we get to World War One. And those imperial powers fight each other. Why do you think World War One was such a significant turning point for the Middle East?
Well, first of all, everyone forgets that there was a large part of World War One was fought in the Middle East, which no one knows about. But Britain had some major disasters in the Middle East during World War One and it's often forgotten how resilient the Ottoman Empire was. You know, it won victories. It defeated Britain at the Dardanelles at Gallipoli, it defeated Britain at Kut in Iraq. So the Ottomans were pretty pretty formidable in fact. Surprisingly, because everyone thought that it was just a ramshackle empire that would collapse. And of course, it was so important because out of World War One, the Middle East that we know today was formed out of these battles. And most of World War One is really thought we think of it as a sort of series of British promises to the Arabs and the Jews.
But actually, they made promises to everybody. And none of these promises would have been made at any other time. They were all a result of the desperate state of the war on the Western Front and the desperate urge by Britain and France to find a way to accelerate the war towards some sort of result in the Middle East.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why does the book start with Abdulaziz’s 1902 raid on Riyadh?
0:05–5:07
2
How did World War I reshape the political map of the Middle East?
5:07–10:29
3
What was the significance of the 1917 Balfour Declaration for the region?
10:29–14:53
4
Why did pan‑Arabism emerge after World II and how did it evolve?
14:53–20:51
5
How did the 1979 Iranian Revolution change the balance of power?
20:51–27:20
6
Why has democracy struggled to take root in the Middle East?
27:20–32:02
7
In what ways did the 9/11 attacks reshape Middle‑Eastern politics?
32:02–37:41
8
What are the main factors driving today’s ongoing turbulence in the region?
37:41–43:05