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Only Five Cigarettes to the Oasis
Strange that real land rarely looks the way it does on maps. Those
marvelously straight lines that section the globe are never quite so perfect
on the ground. Which brings up the concept of the border. The border as
a
line is something rather modern. Rome had what it called the limes of
its
empire. These were the approximate regions where Roman control waned.
Not
until Hadrian, in the second century AD, did actual walls mark the specific
limits of empire. Hadrian’s Wall still stands across Northern England,
dividing what then was Romanitas from the beyond.
Muslim border thinking reflects Muslim thinking on time. A distance may
be
said to be two cigarettes; that is, the time it takes a man walking to
smoke
two cigarettes. The notion of a band of time, as noticed by Bernard Lewis,
made the specificity of time-keeping less important in Islam. Frontiers
generally marked approximate areas beyond which a ruler could not collect
taxes. The sultan’s writ extended only so far. Not until the 19th
century and
the “Great Game” played out between England and Russia did borders
loom into
view as essentials. Joint border commissions were established by the “Great
Game” players to determine where the influence of Russia ended and
that of
the England began. Hence there are a number of peculiarities on the map
of
Central Asia. This is why, for example, Afghanistan connects tenuously
with
China, providing an absolute barrier to Russian expansion south and English
penetration north from India. Afghanistan has been a frontier for many
years.
Rigid angles slashed across the desert dividing Iraq from Jordan are
lines
drawn on a map by British politicians after WW1. In 1912 Saudi Arabia,
Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Israel did not exist. Most of the Levant languished
under the Ottoman Empire. From 1914 to 1918 Europe blew itself to pieces.
WW1
ended with the Treaty of Versailles – labeled by Archibald Wavell
as “a
peace to end peace” – and Europeans turned next to piecing up
the Middle
East. The complexity of the theories behind the lines is voluminous. But
theories mean little if the reality they purport to create is a failure.
The
border lines are still bold and often straight and terribly fragile. The
20th
century creation of the Middle East has proved neither a theoretical nor
a
practical success. Perhaps a fuzzy region with a general label is superior
to
too much definition.
James Clark
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(c) 2002 Millennium Relief & Development Services, vol. 2 no. 11
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