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In The Center of the World: A Global History of the Persian Gulf from the Stone Age to the Present (University of California Press; September 2024), scholar and historian Allen James Fromherz offers the first single-authored history of the Persian Gulf in English since 1928. Revealing the rich, complex, and contradictory history of the region, Fromherz illuminates its modern-day triumphs, struggles, and role in wider global dynamics. Taking readers from the ancient port cities dotting its coastlines to the trade routes of the Gulf itself, Fromherz delves into its history of trade, wealth, and rivalry, explaining how it has remained at the global crossroads for over 4,000 years, and revealing:
- Despite being surrounded by some of the world’s most powerful empires, it has avoided domination and control by any global superpower for over four millennia
- The Gulf region’s current wealth and success far pre-dates the discovery of oil
- Not only a rich source of oil, the Gulf is also the key to Eurasia, encompassing a strategic waterway with globally significant trade routes
- Understanding the ancient history of the Gulf region is the key to ending many modern-day conflicts, including that of Israel-Hamas
In The Center of the World, Fromherz reveals a world of rapid change, fluctuating centers of industry, a dependency on uncertain global markets, and intense cross-cultural encounters that hold a mirror to the contemporary world. Focusing each chapter on a different port around the Gulf, the book shows readers how the people of the Gulf have continually adapted to larger changes in world history— ultimately creating a system of free trade, merchant rule, and commerce that continues to define the region today.
Bio

Dr. Allen Fromherz is Professor of Middle East, Gulf and Mediterranean history and Director of the Middle East Studies Center at Georgia State University. He was a NYU Abu Dhabi Senior Humanities Fellow, a Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center fellow and spent a year teaching at Qatar University, where he wrote Qatar, A Modern History (IB Tauris and Georgetown University Press). He also edited The Gulf in World History: Arabia at the Global Crossroads, Edinburgh (2020) and co-edited Sultan Qaboos and Modern Oman, 1970-2020 (Edinburgh University Press, 2022). His latest book, a culmination of his studies in the Gulf is The Center of the World: A Global History of the Persian Gulf from the Stone Age to the Present (University of California Press, 2024). This year he co-founded, with Dr. Abdulrahman al-Salimi, the Monsoon Book Prizes on the Gulf and the Indian Ocean World. In addition to the Gulf, Dr. Fromherz specializes in the western Mediterranean, including North Africa and the Maghrib, co-editing the Edinburgh Series on the Maghreb, writing the biography, Ibn Khaldun, Life and Times and the book The Near West: Medieval North Africa, Latin Europe, and the Mediterranean in the Second Axial Age. His first book, The Almohads: The Rise of an Islamic Empire (IB Tauris), was based on his dissertation written under the supervision of Professor Hugh Kennedy at the University of St. Andrews in 2006.