After taking control of the Ottoman Empire, the Young Turks decided, in mid-1914, to join the war alongside Germany, unpleasantly surprising the governments of Britain, France, and Russia, who initially underestimated the threat and had no inkling that the conflict with the Turks would ultimately cost millions of human lives.

The war lasted a full four years. It began with the landing at the 'Garden of Eden,' when the Ottomans threatened Britain’s control over the crucial passage of the Suez Canal, and concluded with a historic, sweeping victory on the battlefield of the biblical Armageddon in northern Palestine.

A whole segment of the British army was driven out of Gallipoli and another was captured in Mesopotamia. Additionally, the Turks reestablished their supremacy in the Caucasus, following the October Revolution and the collapse of the Russian Empire, which had horrific consequences for the local population.

Although it sounds incredible, never before had an attempt been made to document the entire history of the Great War in the Middle East. In this seminal work, Roger Ford tackles just this subject, offering an assessment of the cultural consequences that arose as the modern nation-states of the Middle East emerged from the ruins of an Empire that had lasted more than six centuries.