Quotes from Martin Gilbert

The Alliance's bulletin of 1893 expressed genuine enthusiasm in thanking Turkey. It read: 'There are but few countries, even among those which are considered the most enlightened and the most civilized, where Jews enjoy a more complete equality than in Turkey.' The Sultan had proved to be 'a generous sovereign and protector of his Israelite

When ibn Killis was on his deathbed the Caliph, deeply distressed, went to see his Jewish counsellor. The Caliph lamented: 'O Yaqub. How I wish that you were for sale so that I might buy you with my kingdom, or that you could be ransomed, that I might ransom you.'25 He later attended ibn Killis's funeral and laid his former adviser into the grave with his own hands–an extraordinary honour for a Muslim ruler to show to a Jew.

Conference of 1991, when Israel and its Arab neighbours began face–to–face talks to resolve the Palestinian Arab problem. Following the conference, the Syrian Government, headed by Hafez al–Assad, agreed to abandon two decades of implacable resistance to Jewish emigration. All 3,886Jews in Syria were free to leave–for anywhere but Israel.

In 958, Ibn Shaprut mediated between the warring Christian kings of Leon and Navarre. As the caliphate's chief diplomatic adviser, fluent in the colloquial Latin of Christian diplomacy, he managed to bring the two kings to Cordova to sign a treaty in front of the Caliph. These linguistic skills had been seen seven years earlier, after Constantine VII sent the Caliph a copy of Dioscorides

For Churchill, the only way to halt the onward march of Nazism was for all the threatened nations to arm, and to join together under the collective security clauses of the Covenant of the League of Nations. 'Arms and the Covenant' was Churchill's call.

Mind you true tragedy, supreme tragedy are not the worst in life, far from it: the squalid morass of unattempting impotence is the stifling of the soul and hope of man.

The British Government waited uneasily for some intimation of when the German blow in the West might fall.

Don't imagine I am running away from the Dardanelles. I glory in it.'41 On

I watched the daylight slowly creep in through the windows, and saw before me in mental gaze the vision of Death.

The conference began on March 12. Among the experts were Lawrence, Cox and Gertrude Bell; for ten days they passed in review every aspect of the future of the Middle East. Economy was the goal, political stability the means.

When Hogg asked Churchill directly: 'Is there a shadow of truth in any of the accusations made against you,' Churchill replied: 'Not the slightest. From beginning to end it is a monstrous and malicious invention.' Douglas

brought low. The jizya is to be imposed on all of them in full, without exception.

recalled how his visitor stepped from her car and exclaimed

Two German-held villages, Mametz and Montauban, were captured on July 1, as well as a German strongpoint, the Leipzig Redoubt. The human cost of the day's attack was higher than on any other single day of battle in the First World War. Just over a thousand British officers and more than 20,000 men were killed, and 25,000 seriously wounded.

28 German territorial losses

The Jews are forbidden to leave their houses when it rains or snows.34 Jewish women are obliged to expose their faces in public.35 They must cover themselves with a two–coloured izar.36 The men must not wear fine clothes, the only material permitted them being a blue cotton fabric. They are forbidden to wear matching shoes. Every Jew is obliged to wear a piece of red cloth on his chest. A Jew must never overtake a Muslim on a public street. He is forbidden to talk loudly to a Muslim.

it is only experience and disillusionment that make me cautious.

victory will never be found by taking the line of least resistance.

The Jews of Daghestan believed that they were the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes. Their language, Tat, Tatti or Judaeo Tat, was a combination of Persian and Hebrew. They may well have been the descendants of Persian–Jewish soldiers who–in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries–were stationed in the lowlands of the Caucasus by

which he said that it was 'imperative' to raise the issue at Annapolis. Haddad calculated that the amount of land and property that the Jews had been forced to leave behind in Iraq, Egypt and Morocco totalled 100,000 square kilometres, five times the size of the State of Israel.19

André Aciman's letter reflected a widespread concern that, even though the first decade of the Twenty–First Century was closing with a search for reconciliation and understanding between Christian and Muslim societies, Jews who had lived in Muslim lands would not be remembered, nor their hopes for justice upheld.

Judged by every standard which history has applied to Governments, the Soviet Government of Russia is one of the worst tyrannies that has ever existed in the world. It accords no political rights. It rules by terror. It punishes political opinions. It suppresses free speech. It tolerates no newspapers but its own. It persecutes Christianity with a zeal and a cunning never equalled since the times of the Roman Emperors.

All wars end up being reduced to statistics, strategies, debates about their origins and results. These debates about war are important, but not more important than the human story of those who fought in them.

The Times correspondent who reported on the battle commented: 'The estimation of Austrian losses is somewhat difficult as many of the fallen were not discovered until the penetrating odour of decomposed humanity disclosed the presence of bodies in wood or unharvested field.