This course aims to improve students’ understanding of Middle East politics in general and to provide a comprehensive introduction to contemporary politics in the Levant as it is generally named as core Middle East. For this aim, while providing an overview of the history of the Levant (specifically Lebanon, Syria and Jordan) since the Ottoman Empire till today, the course intends to touch upon the formation of the modern political system in the region, state structures in the Levant, workings of the government, major political-economic-social developments, state-society relations, nature and working of society and confessional system, role of different alliances at domestic and regional level and the impacts of regional and global developments in the region.