検索キーワード： 制作 "Hourly History" 中東

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 marked a number of significant historical turning points. It saw the end of the last vestige of the Roman Empire, which had been founded more than 1,400 years before, and marked the beginning of a period of dominance for the growing Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, this moment marked the end of the Middle Ages in Europe and the beginning of the Renaissance, as the fall of Constantinople was directly linked to both these events.

Almost half a millennium later, in 224 CE, a new Persian dynasty, the House of Sasan, challenged the waning power of the Parthian Empire, restoring the Persians to dominance. Emperors in the ancient world lived an exalted but often precarious existence, and this was true for the monarchs, or shahs, as they were known, of the Sasanian Empire. Some of the Sasanian shahs were mighty leaders, adept in battle and in governance, but that was no protection against the threat of assassination.

The politics and recent history of the Middle East can seem baffling to outsiders. Nowhere was that more evident than during the Lebanon War that raged in 1982. Even contemporary reporting often made fundamental mistakes, and there was little general understanding of what was happening and why. This conflict involved a bewildering number of groups and influences from different parts of the world. The precipitating event was the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador in London, carried out by members of a Palestinian terrorist group.

The State of Israel was founded in conflict, and in the first ten years of its existence, it was involved in two major wars with its Arab neighbors. The First Arab-Israeli War began almost the moment that the new state was announced in May 1948. Although it barely had time to create armed forces, somehow Israel survived a simultaneous invasion by armies from four Arab states during that conflict. In 1956, Israel found itself at war again, this time fighting alongside Britain and France, who had launched an invasion of Egypt after fears that the Suez Canal might be closed.

When the establishment of the State of Israel was announced on May 14, 1948, it seemed to many people that the new nation could not survive for long. The haste with which it was created meant that Israel lacked the infrastructure of government, and its armed forces consisted of little more than a handful of lightly armed former guerilla fighters. Ranged against it were some of the most powerful nations in the Arab world, including Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Syria.

In 1973, Israel would face the greatest challenge to its very existence. Egypt and Syria launched massive simultaneous invasions intended to recapture territory occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War. Israel was taken completely by surprise by this attack, launched on the day of one of the most important Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur. Israeli intelligence, which had proved so effective in previous conflicts, failed to provide any warning, and the armed forces of Israel were completely unprepared to face this onslaught on two fronts. This is the story of the Yom Kippur War.