“... record of the Indian Ocean region in this period.The embassy set sail from the port of Bandar Abbas, near the Hormuz Strait, and two weeks later arrived at the ‘strongly fortified’ and well-appointed port of Muscat. The ship paid a 3 per cent cargo tariff to moor for three days, collecting fresh water and provisions. Muhammad Rabi’ noted that ‘one ...”

“... February between General Mamdouh Shahin, a senior SCAF figure with a broad mandate, and General Abbas Kamel, the director of Sisi’s office, suggest the extent of military influence even over the corrupt fiefdom of the Interior Ministry. The recordings reveal that Shahin had contacted Mohammed Ibrahim, the interior minister, to discuss reclassifying the ...”

“... 17th century, it seemed that the study of Arabic – as well as other languages, including Syriac, Ge’ez and Coptic – was a natural, even essential, continuation of this process. Scholars believed that a knowledge of these languages would enhance their understanding of Hebrew, but Arabic was also vital for missionary activity, which greatly intensified in ...”

“... state sanctities’. Overnight, the billboard vanished. It reflected, as the reformist journalist Abbas Abdi observed on Twitter, the ruling system’s ‘contradictory and blocked sensibility’, its wish to co-opt such women and its wish to impose morality policing at the same time.More than two hundred people have been killed since the protests began in ...”

“... 877. They caught him off guard and the men of Wessex disorganised. He got away, but had to go into hiding, which is the reason he found himself, according to the legend, in the peasant’s hut brooding on the affairs of his kingdom – brooding so much he neglected the menial task given to him and burned the cakes. He showed proper ...”

“... became Hizbullah’s leader in 1992, after Israel assassinated his predecessor, Sheik Abbas al-Musawi. He was 31 years old, and though he had been a leader in Hizbullah’s shura council for five years, he was little known outside the movement’s inner circles. To say that he proved more capable than al-Musawi is an understatement: Nasrallah was ...”

“... the magnificently illustrated 13th-century Crusader Bible, which belonged to both Louis IX and Abbas the Great; the 15th-century Gospel Book made for an Ethiopian princess, which Greene coveted for a decade before the owner agreed to part with it; the printer’s proof of Eugénie Grandet, its typed text surrounded by tiny handwritten revisions spilling ...”

“... air defence installations and military communications facilities. That day, the US bombed Bandar Abbas, Iran’s southern fleet headquarters and the navy’s largest port. On 4 March, it sank the Iranian frigate Dena off the coast of Sri Lanka as it returned from a multilateral naval exercise in India that was mostly a diplomatic mission. All but 32 of its ...”

“... make concessions until all Palestinian terrorists are imprisoned or dead, but that the US should go after countries like Iran and Syria. Israel is thus seen as a crucial ally in the war on terror, because its enemies are America’s enemies. In fact, Israel is a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue ...”

“... Israeli colonisation. The Jews were not colons in the French Algerian mould. They had nowhere to go back to. They had been gassed and burned out by Hitler; the US and Britain had limited the number of Jewish refugees they would accept. The Jews would resist being driven into the sea. He told the Israelis that they should cultivate the friendship of ...”

“... out of the way. In the course of his military career, Barak also acquired a few habits that do not go down well in a parliamentary democracy. He is authoritarian, inflexible and secretive. He was referred to as ‘little Napoleon’ in his élite army unit, and his party colleagues have had little difficulty in understanding why. In any case, the name seems to ...”

“... onslaught of ‘facts on the ground’. And in any case, the ramifications of a one-state solution go far beyond Israel’s existential crisis. To consider the future of the settlements under a two-state solution is to understand that it is not a solution at all. In theory they and their 200,000 residents could be absorbed into the Palestinian state with ...”

“... would ‘whip the hell out of them’. Israel, he said, ‘will not be alone unless it decides to go alone’. A number of influential politicians, including the state’s founder, David Ben-Gurion, believed that going to war was a mistake, particularly without American backing. But Eshkol was a weak leader, viewed with contempt by Israel’s aggressive young ...”

“... revolution,’ he told me, ‘regardless of our sectarian differences. I studied in the classes of Abbas al-Musawi, the founder of Hizbullah. He wanted us to abandon some of our beliefs but we didn’t.’ Hussein’s father went to Iran too, taking with him Hussein and his younger brother Abdul-Malik. They spent time in Qom, which shaped their revolutionary ...”

“... the 2006 war, he told me, Israeli strikes had destroyed 130 houses – people didn’t want to go through that again. ‘We don’t know what’s going to happen,’ he said. ‘No one came and told us what to do. We don’t know if we should stay or leave, parents don’t know what to do with the children. It’s like the last war, and we are caught in ...”