- silence

- Now, the expansion of Islam.

- So when we look at the expansion of Islam, you see that it is quite different.

- We have the holy cities along the Red Sea, or almost. We are therefore outside of the Mediterranean.

- It is true and indisputable that a part became Muslim and there is a large part of Islam that is marginalized, especially its center.

- Similarly, Jerusalem and Alexandria were also marginal.

- So, these are elements on which I’d like to draw your attention.

- So we have a second map of the expansion of Islam, where we see it going very far out there and in Andalusia, it is more accurate than the previous one from this point of view.

- So all these elements show each time that things go over the edges of what is called the Mediterranean

- and the three great monotheisms go over the narrow borders of a Mediterranean reduced to its Western and Eastern basin.

- So after Diocletian, and especially after Theodosius, the Roman Empire was divided into two parts. I'll also show you a contradiction within the Roman Empire.

- And in this Roman Empire there was Justinian, who tried to put together the rest of the Empire from the Eastern part.

- I found a map in Arabic. I thought it was interesting to show it.

- And you can see very well that the empire of Justinian is largely present, where? On Pontus, the Black Sea.

- And Egypt once again has a small part that is around the Red Sea.

- So even the Roman Empire who is supposed to be a Mediterranean empire in the sense of a Western and Eastern Mediterranean goes twice over the edges.

- This is also the Justinian Empire, there is the first part which was Eastern and that conquered a West part, that is to say, Italy and North Africa.

- It is quite clear that it is the Eastern part that conquered the Western part.

- silence

- So we see here the Macedonian Empire.

- So when the Byzantine Empire was reduced, it got there with what is now Turkey, and then across in Greece, the Balkans and southern Italy.

- So this Macedonian Empire, though it was a great empire, is centered on two seas that are down here the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea high there.

- You see that there is a full slide out of the Mediterranean as we understand it.

- So now we can continue to draw parallels with religious centers.

- silence

- Here we have Constantinople which is located at the edge of the Black Sea and the Marmara Sea. So Constantinople...

- silence

- Here you have Constantinople. You see very well that it is not in the Mediterranean in the proper sense, it straddles the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.

- So what is interesting here is to see that Constantinople was then a religious center. So the religious center was not in the Mediterranean.

- Still at the same time we see the Fatimids down here and we see the Abbasids there.

- The Fatimids are in Egypt. So the Fatimids are a religious center that is at the edge of the Nile and so at the limit. Here are the Fatimids.

- You see that the Fatimids, from Cairo, are outside of the Mediterranean. And the Abbasids are in Baghdad, which is obviously not in the Mediterranean.

- So we have three religious centers that are Baghdad, Cairo and Constantinople.

- These three cities are religious centers because there was al-Da'wa al-Fatimiya, there is the Abbasid Caliphate and obviously there is Constantinople, and all three are outside of the Mediterranean in the usual sense.

- And now Judaism, which is generally less well known and we see that around Baghdad there are Pumdebitha, Nahardea and Sura, where I show you, next to Baghdad.

- And in those places was the site of Jewish power with the famous Gaone.

- So, well, with this quick overview and the inconsistencies observed comes the certainty that it’s necessary to redefine some notions commonly accepted.

- This redefinition is not a purely intellectual act.

- It avoids misperceptions that distort the analysis, as we saw it, and the understanding of realities.

- An ordinary map of the Mediterranean, there is a map that you can find everywhere, you see it has the Red Sea at the bottom on the right. And the Black Sea above.

- So once again we see it goes over the edges.

- Now the third point, expanding the concepts.

- Rather than limit ourselves to the narrow vision of a Mediterranean confined in two basins, let’s examine geography and geology.

- They are eloquent and respond much better to the realities of History than prejudices commonly conveyed.

- They teach us that the Mediterranean in the narrow sense is only a part of a wide area between Africa and Eurasia and that put them in touch. You see?

- Here you see well the Eurasia to the north, you have Africa to the south and you have a sea which consists of four basins,

- which are the Black Sea, the Western Mediterranean, Eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

- And therefore this concept of Mediterranean should be extended in my opinion to the four basins formed by these four parts.

- Here, if we look closer we see that.

- This block here, historically, has always been linked and from a religious point of view they had strong relations.

- So that we arrive at the following conclusion.

- First, the four basins of the sea meet in pairs in straits or in narrow isthmus. You see that each time there is a narrowing.

- The three necks are privileged crossings from one continent to the other and from one sea to the other.

- They are therefore essential strategic and commercial areas.

- Therefore, they are historically constituted with empires centers and religious centers.

- Their possession caused wars, and the transition from one power to another changed the balance of continents.

- And finally, no power so far has been able to simultaneously control the four basins.

- I’m going to illustrate this with some historical examples and I will end with this.

- So this is the first place, where is the first strait, strait of Sicily around which was built the Roman Empire and where the Carthaginian Empire could have been built.

- The second point...

- silence

- It is a prime example that we can give, an example of the first conflict that took place between Rome and Carthage for the control of the Mediterranean.

- The fight happened substantially in the middle...

- silence

- We clearly see here that Rome and Carthage fought around Sicily for the control of the Mediterranean.

- We would have had an empire of this classic shape of the Mediterranean whoever won.

- Now we come to the greatest extent of the Roman Empire. This one.

- You see that it was really something colossal, centered on the classic Mediterranean but still clearly going over on the Black Sea.

- And in the south there is one thing we talk about very little. It’s that in 24 BC, Aelius Gallus, who was a general of Augustus, came to Yemen.

- He besieged Mareb, that is to say the city of Saba. He failed and returned by the port of Leukokome.

- So it is a fact that the Romans also aspired to conquer the Red Sea while having strong positions in the Black Sea.

- Thereafter, I sum up, the Roman Empire tried to come to an agreement with Axum, that is to say with Ethiopia, to share the control of the Red Sea.

- After the Roman Empire at its height, the Byzantine Empire remained as you see in these two basins that are the Black Sea and the Western Mediterranean.

- What is striking compared to the old map I showed you earlier, it’s this. Here you have a Seljuk power.

- That is to say that when they were forced to accept the Turks, they let them go inside but they kept the entire border of the sea,

- because it was essential to control all the economy. They wanted to keep especially the seaside.

- So they made this compromise with the Seljuk Turks, who had no choice of course.

- The Ottoman Empire, which is the natural successor of the Byzantine Empire, tried in many ways, remember the map of the Empire of Justinian, to restore the Justinian Empire.

- They controlled the Black Sea. They largely controlled the Red Sea but could not control the Western basin. As I told you, nobody controlled the four basins.

- And now a second type of empire.

- Empires that are centered around the Isthmus of Suez. And it is in fact the Egyptian Empires. Egypt had empires several times.

- This is the Empire of Egypt of the Middle Kingdom.

- This is the empire that dominated the north up to Byblos, that dominated the Syrian coast and of course the Nile valley, and that went down to the sixth cataract in Sabaloka.

- This is a first Egyptian Empire. A second Egyptian Empire is the empire of Ptolemy.

- Again it is going over on both sides, going up to Cyprus and even in Sicily. And always with the same policy.

- This time the first center of the empire was around Sicily. The second center is here around the Isthmus of Suez. This same Isthmus of Suez where we find the Fatimids.

- The Fatimids are in the same way on the Syrian side and the Egyptian side. But the Fatimids were obviously a religious power, so a religious power centered around Egypt.

- It was replaced by Saladin and the Ayyubids. And after them came the Mamluk sultans. And the Mamluk sultans you see there have again the same extension.

- And Mamluk sultans after the fall of Baghdad in 1254 fled to Cairo. So the Caliphate power has been in Cairo until the arrival of the Ottomans during 2 centuries and a half.

- So there was a religious center in Cairo. Not forgetting of course al-Azhar.

- silence

- And to finish, the Muhammad Ali Empire of course, that you see there, and which was also based on both sides and going down to Suakin.

- He could not control Aden because the English got ahead. But we still have this balance on the two basins.

- Finally, you see that you have powers around these three basins. And you did not ask me the question but that's because I've not let you speak.

- One can also have an empire on one side and on the other side to Bab-el-Mandeb, and on the side of Jab-al-tare one can also have an empire.

- But actually all these empires were, even if they had a religious power, were secondary empires in History.

- Here you have the case of the Almoravids, al-Murabitun, and then al-Muwahhidun, the Almohads, who both have been in Spain and Maghreb, with a religious feature too.

- And on the other side we have down here Bab-el-Mandeb, we have the ancient dynasties before Islam who had a power on both sides of the Red Sea,

- at the time of what we call Arab-el-Fil, war of the elephant, when Abraha and Ethiopians tried to dominate both sides of the Red Sea. These are empires which were transitory.

- So, in conclusion, we are naturally led to bring in a wider range 3 traditional seas that were and remain places of intense exchanges.

- These expanded definitions answer several of the questions we asked.

- In particular, they give back to Alexandria and Egypt the central position accorded to them by History but that the traditional geographical representation doesn’t.

- The Ottoman sense of colors had described theses marine areas as Kizildeniz, the Red Sea, Akdeniz, the White Sea, Karadeniz, the Black Sea.

- And by a curious turn of events, it turns out that the three colors assigned to these seas, red, white and black, are those of the Egyptian flag. Thank you.