Jihad and Islam in World War I

During 2014-15 the media have reverberated with references to Jihad and Jihadists. A hundred years ago, however, after the Ottoman Empire's entry into World War I, the proclamation of Jihad by the Sultan-Caliph in Constantinople also made the headlines. This book investigates the background and nature of the Ottoman Jihad proclamation in addition to its effects in the wider Middle East -- both among the Arabs and the Turks, and among Sunni Muslims as well as Shi'ites. It brings to light the German hopes for and British fears of a worldwide uprising of Muslims in the colonial empires at that time. This study scrutinises, moreover, the fierce academic debates caused by the Jihad proclamation, in which the 1915 manifesto of Leiden Islam scholar Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje ("Holy War Made in Germany") played a key role. Erik-Jan Zürcher has held the Turkish Studies chair at Leiden University since 1997. He specialises in the history of the late Ottoman Empire and Turkey, having written and edited twelve books on the subject. Since 2008 he has been a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.