Fathers and Sons The Rise and Fall of Political Dynasty in the Middle East

In December 2010, a revolution began in Tunisia that rocked the Arab world and ripped up the political rulebook of the Middle East. For generations, power in the Arab world has been monopolized by monarchs or military men. The idea of dynastic power had become so deeply entrenched that, in the twenty-first century, presidents began to act like kings and appoint their sons to succeed them. Yet, this father-to-son transfer of power has absolutely no basis in Islam. To understand how the countries of the Middle East came to be ruled by a system that is distinctly un-Islamic, Fathers and Sons: The Rise and Fall of Political Dynasty in the Middle East traces the history of power in the Arab world from the Prophet to the present and reveals the story behind the headlines of the Arab Spring.

M. E. McMillan is the author of The Meaning of Mecca: The Politics of Pilgrimage in Early Islam. She studied Arabic at Pembroke College, Oxford, UK, and holds a doctorate in Islamic History from the University of St Andrews, UK. She has worked as a translator for the United Nations in New York and in Geneva.

1. The Prophet's Lost Legacy
2. From Companions to Caliphs: The Prophet's First Successors
3. Dynasty: The Historical Origins of the One Party State
4. Preserving Privilege: The Consolidation of the One Party State
5. Living By Other People's Rules: The Era of the Europeans
6. On the Wrong Side of History: The Making of the Modern Middle East
7. Patterns of Power: The Military and The Monarchy
8. Colonized From Within: The New Imperialists
9. Reclaiming the Prophet's Legacy
10. Towards a Different Future