Andalusia Arabia Nusantara: A Historical Travel Of The Middle East And Maritime Southeast Asia

The year 2020 was quite a traumatic year, although nowhere as traumatic as the year 536 that is often mentioned as the worst year in recorded human history. In year 536, the Late Antiquity Little Ice Age gave rise to the worst famine followed by the Justinian Plague that troubled the Byzantine Empire during their attempt to restore the Western Roman Empire. In the year 2020, Global Warming, Sea Level Rise and the Covid-19 pandemic caused a lot of hardships for people and countries throughout the world.There are certainly parallels between various events in history, and I think it is good to be curious about the consequences and legacies of our shared histories. Our lives and built environment have been influenced by not only the events that took place around us, but also the events that took place in a distant land and time. My travels and research while working in the Middle East and Maritime Southeast Asia as an urban planner have inspired me to try in making a connection between the events and histories of these two regions.As an architect by training, I felt humbled by the great architects who created magnificent structures such as the Temple of Hatshepsut, Persepolis, Hagia Sophia, the Umayyad Mosque and the Borobudur Temple, where I spent many hours to photograph. While selecting the building photographs and identifying their construction completion dates, it dawned on me that I could tell a story from a chronological point of view, and thus this book – Andalusia Arabia Nusantara – was born. The book’s contents have therefore been drawn up based on chronology, as follows:The Early Civilisations The Egyptians, the Persians and the GreeksThe Rise of Rome The Romans in the Middle East and Their Rivalry with Sassanid PersiaTheocratic Empires Christianity and Islam in the Middle East, Buddhism and Hinduism in Southeast AsiaThe Abbasids, the Seljuks, the Ayyubids and the Mamluks Middle Eastern Powers at the Time of the Crusaders, the Mongols and the Fall of CordobaThe End of the Roman Empire Ming China, the Founding of Malacca, the Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople, Reconquista and the Portuguese ArrivalThe Golden Age of the Ottomans and the Safavids The Great Rivalry of Two Muslim EmpiresEnter the Dutch The Exit of the Portuguese, the Fall of the Safavids and the Split of Mataram SultanateThe British Dominance A Divided Nusantara and a Century of Weakened Ottomans and Persians20th Century Turmoil The World Wars, Balfour-Sykes-Picot Treaties, the Lebanese Civil War and the Bosnian WarModern Day Cities of Arabia and Nusantara Kuala Lumpur, Beirut, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the New Indonesian Capital CityWith about 100 photographs, this book also provides me with an opportunity to share the architectural beauty of the great historical tourism places that I visited. I hope that one day everyone will be able to visit the places featured in this book and learn their histories. Once we have the chance to learn, perhaps we would have a greater understanding of those whose histories are intertwined with ours. Read more