Jean-Pierre Filiu looks beyond religion and focuses his attention on the processes by which powers and their areas of domination were established over time. His starting point is 395 AD, the year when the Roman Empire was divided into eastern and western halves: at that point, the Middle East emerged as a specific entity, freed from external domination, and a Christianity of the East asserted itself, turned towards Byzantium rather than towards Rome. From this point on, Filiu follows a strictly Middle Eastern dynamics, tracing the rise and fall of powers linked to the three principal poles of Egypt, Syria and Iraq and recounting the procession of empires, invasions and assertions of imperialist ambition that have characterized the region since then. The book closes in 2022, when the men and women of the Middle East are still struggling for the right to define their destiny by telling their stories in their own voices.