Energy and Middle East History

From the Bronze Age to the era of petroleum, the Middle East has experienced asuccession of energy profi les that helps to explain its political and cultural effl orescences
and stagnations. This presentation will discuss the ways in which chariots, camels, and
crude oil have shaped the region and distinguished it from the surrounding lands of
Europe, India, and Africa.

RICHARD W. BULLIET is Professor of Middle Eastern History at Columbia University
where he also directed the Middle East Institute of the School of International and
Public Affairs for twelve years. Born in Rockford, Illinois, in 1940, he came to Columbia
in 1976 after undergraduate and graduate work at Harvard and eight years as a
faculty member at Harvard and Berkeley. He is a specialist on Iran, the social history
of the Islamic Middle East, the 20th century resurgence of Islam, and the history of
transportation.

His most recent scholarly work is Wheels: A Book about Invention (forthcoming 2015).
His earlier books include Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran (2009),
Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers (2005), The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization
(2004), Islam: The View from the Edge (1994), Conversion to Islam in the Medieval
Period (1979), The Camel and the Wheel (1975), and The Patricians of Nishapur
(1972). He has also written six novels, beginning with Kicked to Death by a Camel
(1973) and ending with Chakra (2014), and is co-author of a world history textbook
The Earth and Its Peoples (6ed. 2014).

Sponsored by the Center for Middle East Studies, R. Stephen Humphreys Distinguished Lecture Series

hm 1/20/15