A History of the Arab Peoples

by Albert Hourani

Book Overview

"Here at last is a genuinely readable, genuinely responsive history of the Arabs."--Edward W. Said, Los Angeles Times Book Review Upon its publication in 1991, Albert Hourani's masterwork was hailed... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1567312160
• ISBN13: 9781567312164
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: MJF Books
• Length: 551 Pages
• Weight: 2.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A good overview on Arab history since the coming of Islam.

This book by Hourani is an excellent work of scholarship regarding the Arab peoples and their history after the rise of Islam and founding of the caliphates, with a very small few pages dedicated to pre-Islamic Arab history. The book starts in the time shortly before Mohammed, to his revelation and the caliphates: Rashidun, Ummayad, and 'Abbassid (with some other dynasties getting coverage such as the Fatimids and hafsids). it eventually makes its way through the Ottoman era and modern Arabic-speaking countries (ending around the time of the 8-year Iran-Iraq War and even longer Lebanese Civil War). For anyone interested in the history of the Arabs, and the Middle East in general, this is a critical introduction.

a history of the people

When Hourani titled his book, "History of the Arab Peoples," he was being honest and literal--- the book is literally a history of the peoples, including the development of their interpretations of Islam, the formation of various schools of thought on the Islamic law and how literally it was to be interpreted, the conflict between secularism and fundamentalism and nationalism in the post-imperial period. This is not a book about wars, nations, or heroes: the Crusades are barely mentioned, Salah-al-Din gets scant mention, as do Timur, the Mongols, or other great conquerors mythologized in Western poetry and children's stories. Rather, this is a book about society, about urbanization, about economic migration, about the development of political and national consciousness, about the development of literatures, about the use of colloquial versus classical Arabic in poetry, about the rise of Ottoman bureaucracies, and the basis of their legitimacy and power. In short, this book is a history of the peoples: what shaped their intellectual development, the history of their cultures, etc. I think this is the right emphasis, because the political history (at least for the past 100 years) was mostly imposed by outsiders and is therefore (in my opinion) superficial, and is still in a state of fast flux and definition (e.g. what will be the political outcome in Iraq?), whereas a study of the core Arab / Islamic identity seems to be a more solid foundation from which one can attempt to understand the political structures that have been built. Put another way, Hourani's book will never go out of date, whereas a book that attempted more to explain the current politics of the Middle East would only survive as long as the next treaty or revolution. Yes terrorism is completely unemphasized, but that is appropriate to the purpose of this history, and does not diminish from its importance or usefulness at all: you will not achieve any understanding of the Arab peoples by studying terrorism, but you will go a long way toward understanding terrorism by studying the history of the Arab peoples. I agree with previous reviewers that more exposition of the differences in the Islamic schools of thought would have been helpful, as would have been a glossary (versus having to flip to the first reference to that word in the text). I would have also liked more emphasis on scientific, technological, financial and economic innovation, as opposed to the emphasis mostly on philosophical innovation. The treatment of debate on the proper role of logic and argument in the study of Islam is quite good. Finally, the author adopts a secular, non-Western viewpoint that is quite refreshing and appropriate.

Interesting and concise

This is a concise introduction to the history of the Arab people. It is fairly easy to read, yet comprehensive; interesting, yet dispassionate. Albert Hourani does an excellent job presenting an overall picture of Arab history and society. I particularly enjoyed how this book considers history as more than a mere collection of events and dates or the conquests of kings. Rather, for every historical period, it attempts to paint a picture of the lives of ordinary people. Thus we learn about education, religion, law, marriage, and other aspects of society. This is a major strength of the book. Naturally, in a book about Arab history, a great deal of emphasis is put on Islamic religion, which is perhaps the most potent force shaping Arab history and culture. In a way therefore this book also offers an excellent introduction to Islam and Islamic history. Nevertheless, I would have liked to see more material about pre-Islamic times. Furthermore, while the title "Arab peoples" acknowledges the fact that most of the modern-day "Arabs" are descended from non-Arabs who at some point adopted Arab language and culture, this point is not made explicit in the text, and the pre-Arab history of these peoples is ignored. Having said that, I admit that it is impossible to include any more information about Arab history in the same number of pages (500), making this book a definite accomplishment. It is an excellent and readable introduction to Arab history, and a lead to other more specialized books (listed in the 27-page bibliography). The index alone reads like a who's who in Arab history.

The only book with such a broad scope.

To those who say this is a boring book, or there isn't any history I laugh. This is the most complete chronicle of Arab History to date. Boring? yes if you're used to reading your history in the tabloids. The book covers thirteen centuries of history in 458 pages. It starts in the seventh century, introducing the Arab world at its first critical turning point: the coming of the Prophet Muhammad. Before the Prophet the people lived in a state of jahiliyya (or ignorance of religious truth). After giving a good background on the Prophet the book moves swiftly to describe the Arab world after his death. He does this in such a way as to include sociology, politics, religion (of course), culture, war, alliances, and literature. No other author can claim such a comprehensive outlook on the situation as Hourani. Next his analysis takes the same broad scope on the Ottoman age and discusses the last, great empire of the Arab world (although they are not Arab). He discusses how the Arab people responded to these outside rulers and finally how the Ottoman empire responded to the growing power of the European empires. He goes on to discuss how the European empires controlled the Arab world, how they fought over the land and trade routes, and how the Arab world responded to this. He discusses how education was very much Europeanized (especially in the Magrib, or northern Africa, where Arab culture did not affect the culture as much from the beginning). In the last part he discusses the age of nations and the conflicts which aroused from having been colonized (not in the sense you would think however, instead of purely blaming the colonizers he merely shows how this created great differences in the culture and political and religious ideals of the people). He discusses the importance of the creation of Israel, the successive wars of 1967 and 1973 between the Arabs and Israel, the fight between Mauritania and Morocco and Spain over the Western Sahara, the Lebanese Civil War, and the Iran-Iraq war. This is essential information to understanding the modern Arab world. You will not find a book with more information and less bias on the subject. If you are interested in the problems of the region today, you must read this book.

Excellent survey

Albert Hourani provides an excellent survey of Arabic and Islamic history beginning with the onset of Islam during the early seventh century and ending at the 1980's, before the first Gulf War. In each epoch, Hourani not only covers the political history in question, but also social, philosophical and religious developments.Although the book is entitled "A History of the Arab Peoples," it also covers a great deal of Persian and Turkish/Ottoman history. Despite the tremendous scope of time and space - over 1300 years and spanning from Spain to the East Indies - Hourani furnishes the reader with a solid view of the many currents that underlie modern Islam.I hope that this book will help provide a more nuanced understanding of the Islamic and Arab world - a world that is often viewed as monolithic by the West. Aided perhaps by the survey nature of the text, the political bent of the book will be viewed as "balanced" by most non-partisan readers.

An excellent book

I think this is an excellent book and Mr. Hourani should be given the full credit of writing a master-peace on this complex subject. I do think, however, that the name of the book is a bit misleading and it would have been sufficient to call it "The Arab People" in order not to confuse those who are looking for a day by day description of Arab history. I highly recommend this book.