Barnaby Rogerson has written a dozen books about North Africa and Early Islam over the last thirty-five years, along with hundreds of articles and essays. His latest work brings all this together, The House Divided: Sunni, Shia and the Making of the Middle East. Rory Stewart has described it as: "A Masterly engagement with the most delicate and important of subjects – filled with gentle empathy, learning and rare balance."

His day job is running Eland Publishing with his partner Rose Baring, which specializes in keeping the classics of travel literature in print. The hundred and seventy titles of this growing list can be viewed at www.travelbooks.co.uk.

More on Barnaby's new book: The House Divided

At the heart of the Middle East, with its regional conflicts and proxy wars, is a 1400-year-old schism between Sunni and Shia. To understand this divide and its modern resonances, we need to revisit its origins: to become familiar with ‘The House’ of Prophet Muhammad, the accidental coup after his death that set aside the claims of his son Ali, and the slaughter of Ali’s son Husayn at Kerbala.

These events, known to every Muslim, continue to influence Middle East politics. The House Divided follows these narratives through the first caliphates and the medieval empires forged by Arabs, Persians and Turks, to the contemporary Middle East. It shows how a dynamic range of identities – fuelled as much by ethnic, dynastic and national rivalries as by religious differences – have shaped the region.

In 1979 this already complex world was jolted by the seismic shift of three revolutions – in Iran, Mecca and Afghanistan – whose effects are still being played out. Rogerson’s original and intimate approach takes the modern chessboard of nation states and looks at each through its particular perspective.

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