ABSTRACT
The dangers of assumptions about the transmission of ideas have become obvious in the study of the Near East as they appeared to an earlier generation of sceptics who looked at the influence of the ideas of the philosophers on the French Revolution. In Algeria more than any other part of the Near East profound changes were introduced by European agency which affected the lives of the Muslim peoples. According to a widespread view the turning-point for Syrian Muslim Arabs came after the Young Turk revolution of 1908. The Young Turk revolution the Iranian revolution came in two stages; 1906 created a new arena and a conflict between government and assembly; only in 1909 victory confirmed over the shah as it was over the sultan. In 1913 a tribal coalition, led by Shaykh Isa ibn Salih put forward a new claimant to the imamate and threatened to destroy the sultanate which survived in Muscat by the help of British arms.
