A History of the Arab Peoples

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.