Consider the challenge of writing a history book of this scope. At what point do you start your history? Which peoples do you include in it? What topics would you give priority? The Arab ethnicity is extremely ancient, after all, and in all eras it has been surprisingly hard to define. Is being Arab defined by race, language, or religion? To contain the scope of this book, Hourani sets limits within two distinct boundaries:
The other element that makes A History a good tertiary resource is that Hourani does provide means for further investigation. Though the footnotes are few, each chapter gets an individual bibliography. If you identify a subject that really piques your curiosity, you can turn to the bibliography that Hourani used to write that chapter and follow his trail of resources. I am so grateful that he structured his bibliography in this way. It can be infuriating to find a book wherein a lot of subjects are covered, and then to find the bibliography is arranged purely in alphabetical order so that you have limited means of knowing which resources are relevant to what topic. There is, of course, a limit in the date range of sources consulted, so this book will not lead you to contemporary scholars like Robert Hoyland.
Following the Arab Spring, September 11th and the growing threat of ISIS, A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani is a fully updated new edition of an ever-popular classic of modern history, with an introduction and afterword by Malise Ruthven.
In a bestselling work of profound and lasting importance, the late Albert Hourani told the definitive history of the Arab peoples from the seventh century, when the new religion of Islam began to spread from the Arabian peninsula westwards, to the present day. It is a masterly distillation of a lifetime of scholarship and a unique insight into a perpetually troubled region.
Ruthven suggests that while Hourani can hardly have been expected to predict in detail the massive upheavals that have shaken the Arab world recently he would not have been entirely surprised, given the persistence of the kin-patronage networks he describes in his book and the challenges now posed to them by a new media-aware generation of dissatisfied youth.
In a bestselling work of profound and lasting importance, the late Albert Hourani told the definitive history of the Arab peoples from the seventh century, when the new religion of Islam began to spread from the Arabian peninsula westwards, to the present day. It is a masterly distillation of a lifetime of scholarship and a unique insight into a perpetually troubled region.
This updated edition by Malise Ruthven adds a substantial new chapter which includes recent events such as 9/11, the US invasion of Iraq and its bloody aftermath, the fall of the Mubarak and Ben Ali regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and the incipient civil war in Syria, bringing Hourani's magisterial History up to date.
Ruthven suggests that while Hourani can hardly have been expected to predict in detail the massive upheavals that have shaken the Arab world recently he would not have been entirely surprised, given the persistence of the kin-patronage networks he describes in his book and the challenges now posed to them by a new media-aware generation of dissatisfied youth.
In a new biographical preface, Malise Ruthven shows how Hourani's perspectives on Arab history were shaped by his unique background as an English-born Arab Christian with roots in the Levant.
This kaleidoscopic book covers almost 3,000 years of Arab history and shines a light on the footloose Arab peoples and tribes who conquered lands and disseminated their language and culture over vast distances. Tracing this process to the origins of the Arabic language, rather than the advent of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith begins his narrative more than a thousand years before Muhammad and focuses on how Arabic, both spoken and written, has functioned as a vital source of shared cultural identity over the millennia.
Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members - mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists - The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age.
This rich and magisterial work traces Palestine's millennia-old heritage, uncovering cultures and societies of astounding depth and complexity that stretch back to the very beginnings of recorded history.
Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world - a genius who ranks as one of the world's great minds. Yet the author of the Muqaddima, the most important study of history ever produced in the Islamic world, is not as well known as he should be, and his ideas are widely misunderstood. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography, Robert Irwin provides an engaging and authoritative account of Ibn Khaldun's extraordinary life, times, writings, and ideas.
The history of the tablets translated in the following book is strange and beyond the belief of modern scientists. Their antiquity is stupendous, dating back some 36,000 years. The writer is Thoth, an Atlantean Priest-King, who founded a colony in ancient Egypt after the sinking of the mother country. He was the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza, erroneously attributed to Cheops. In it he incorporated his knowledge of the ancient wisdom and also securely secreted records and instruments of ancient Atlantis.
In the year 493, the leader of a vast confederation of Gothic warriors, their wives, and children personally cut down Odoacer, the man famous for deposing the last Roman emperor in 476. That leader became Theoderic the Great (454-526). This engaging history of his life and reign immerses listeners in the world of the warrior-king who ushered in decades of peace and stability in Italy as king of Goths and Romans.
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In a bestselling work of profound and lasting importance, the late Albert Hourani told the definitive history of the Arab peoples from the seventh century, when the new religion of Islam began to spread from the Arabian peninsula westwards, to the present day. It is a masterly distillation of a lifetime of scholarship and a unique insight into a perpetually troubled region.This updated edition by Malise Ruthven adds a substantial new chapter which includes recent events such as 9/11, the US invasion of Iraq and its bloody aftermath, the fall of the Mubarak and Ben Ali regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and the incipient civil war in Syria, bringing Hourani's magisterial history up to date. Ruthven suggests that while Hourani can hardly have been expected to predict in detail the massive upheavals that have shaken the Arab world recently he would not have been entirely surprised, given the persistence of the kin-patronage networks he describes in his book and the challenges now posed to them by a new media-aware generation of dissatisfied youth.In a new biographical preface, Malise Ruthven shows how Hourani's perspectives on Arab history were shaped by his unique background as an English-born Arab Christian with roots in the Levant.
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