Wrecked Maps… Histories Wildfire

A person begins writing the stages of history when he finishes drawing the borders of geography, which are often drawn with blood, and where the map ends, history begins, and at the point where the friction of space and time erupts, war breaks out, and from the wreckage of maps and the wreckage of dates, man rebuilds his world, and so it was.

Accordingly, Vladimir Putin moved his forces towards Ukraine - according to the Russian version - with geopolitical motives, the map of Ukraine is troubling to Russia, the encroachment of the borders of the Atlantic map towards the east - from a Russian point of view - justified moving the borders of the map in Donbass and Crimea, and recalled the history of the advance of the Nazis in Barbarossa easting. As for the West, while recognizing that moving the map calls for history, it believes that the history that was recalled here is the history of the Soviet advance to the west, and that Putin plays a Soviet role with Tsarist specifications.

The narrations are different, but they unanimously agree that maps call for maps and reformulate dates, and that dates call for dates and redraw maps, and that the blood that used to draw the boundaries of the pastures of the Bedouin tribes and write their history in ancient times is still today demarcating the boundaries of the map and writing the stages of history, even if the tactics differed. and means.

In ancient times, human migration was not from a wood hut or a house of poetry to a mud house and a stone palace, to iron and cement buildings and technology cities. Suffering, blood, and wars formed the boundaries of geography and the paths of history, as history begins at the moment when a person feels the pressure of geography on his movement, and time becomes restless in attempts to get rid of the restrictions of place, which requires breaking the boundaries of the map, and from breaking those borders the path of history is formed, which is based in the movement It rebounds by temporarily redrawing the boundaries of the map until it revolts against it again.

In migrating from the geography of the forest to the edges of light, and from the geography of the desert to the banks of the water, man was reshaping the wood of the forest in the form of spears to help him confront those who obstruct his journey in which he ventured in search of his personal and collective dream in a better map, unaware - perhaps - that he was motivated by The search for a better map began to shape its history in the same way that it formed tree branches in the form of spears that eventually ended up in intercontinental missiles carrying nuclear warheads, to intertwine the vital relationships between physical geography and military history in the human journey from caves and jungles to urban gatherings, and in his transition from dependence on Hunting to agricultural production and then to the stage of commercial, industrial and technological life that crossed the borders and shortened the stages and reached a stage of vanity that announced the globalization of the map and the end of history at the end of the twentieth century.

Centuries ago, the European went out on exploratory trips that turned into colonial waves towards the new and old worlds, and the exit was in search of warmth, energy and broader resources, and these same engines - with some difference - that moved the major human migrations that came out of Central Asia in the west, and from Northern Europe in the south And to the west, and from the south of the Arabian Peninsula towards the east and north, which in total were not peaceful migrations, but the war was present in it, and when the war came, geography attended and history attended, and the interaction of the presence of geography and history continues, with geography attempts to restrict the movement of history and history attempts to move the borders of geography .

In other words, we can talk about geography that tends to stability, a stability that moves history as history is a protest movement against the immobility of the map, whose borders contribute to formulating new determinants of history, which, in turn, seek to restrict its movement, but it soon explodes in the face of those determinants. Which is originally a “geographical authority” that wants to frame the movement of history that is trying to “revolution” - again - on the authority of geography, to continue these interactions in which the borders of the map contribute to the explosion of the conflicts of history, and in which the movement of history redraws the borders of the map, within a conceptual matrix that does not There is talk about geography only in conjunction with history, where geography becomes history engraved on the skin of the place, and history becomes geography carved on the course of time, and here politics and war appear as the most prominent common factors between map and time, between geography and history, between West and East, power and resistance, in the adventure of man. In charge of searching for a better place and a more beautiful time.

The talk here is a talk about the triad of geography, history and man, as the sides of the triangle are not complete without its third active side, which is the person who occupies the adverbs of place (geography) and time (history), and he who influences and is affected by time and place and controls the rhythm of the processes of influence and influence between them, and he is present in History attempts to reshape geography, and the present in geography attempts to reshape history, in a succession of processes of influence and influence between the past of history and the present of geography and the presence of man.

If we are talking about the borders of the map, then we are talking about political geography only, but geography is a deeper concept than just borders on a map, where the climate, its condition, the land and its surface are included in physical geography, which had decisive roles in the outbreak of wars throughout history, and had a role in resolving the results of battles Comma, as in World War II and the story of the Nazi armies’ perishing because of the snow, and the help of the airspace for the Allies to land on the coasts of Normandy in northern France, and as happened to the Roman army that invaded southern Arabia (Yemen) before Islam, where most of the soldiers died of thirst in the desert, and as It was in the battles of early Islam between Muslims and Quraish, where water played a role in tipping the balance of Muslims in Badr, and the mountain topography played a role in the course of the Battle of Uhud, and sandstorms had their role in the defeat of Quraish in the Battle of the Trench, and these are the battles that - despite their smallness - changed the course of The history of the Middle East, Central Asia, Eastern Europe and North Africa, and its effects transcend bordersThe map, to reshape the history of the region and the world.

Here, the impact of physical geography appears in redrawing the boundaries of military geography, which, of course, paves the way for redrawing the boundaries of political geography, according to which military and political histories are reshaped, in a network of continuous interactive relationships.

Returning to the Ukrainian event, talking about it is a talk about geography and history par excellence, it is a talk about political geography and political history that interact together within the framework of this event, as the role of political geography (moving the borders of the Atlantic map to the east) in that event cannot be overlooked, according to the Russian narrative that The West denies it, and the role of political history (restoring the glories of the Soviet Union) cannot be neglected, according to the Western narrative that Russia denies, as geography appears to be a convincing reason for the outbreak of war, according to the Russians, while history appears to be a strong motive for its ignition according to Westerners, and between the two narratives lie the most important reasons for this War, and the causes of most wars, namely the fear of the encroachment of “enemy geography” and the greed for the revival of “friendly history.” From the instincts of fear and greed, human activity moves, and it is the activity that reshapes geography and reproduces history through a number of factors, foremost of which is war. And man is present at the heart of its equations, considering that he is the one who repeats itPlowing geography to grow seedlings of a new history that reshapes geography, which in turn reshapes it, according to disciplined and undisturbed traditions, revealed by sociologists, anthropologists, history and geography, and the Holy Qur’an summarizes it in the verse:

“And if God had not pushed people to each other, the earth would have been corrupted.” And in order for “geography” not to be corrupted by static stability, history must move, and in its movement, he plows for geography, stirred and prepared its soil, to receive new seeds, and then another stage begins in which tears, blood and pain begin, but in which there is a transformation and a becoming and lives.