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A History of the Arab Peoples
 
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A History of the Arab Peoples (Paperback)

by Albert Hourani (Author), Malise Ruthven (Editor)
3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 608 pages
  • Publisher: Faber and Faber; 2nd Revised edition edition (2 Sep 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0571215912
  • ISBN-13: 978-0571215911
  • Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 13.4 x 4.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 375,822 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review
'A masterly summation of the Arab peoples... It is difficult to overestimate the signal importance of this book for this time. Here at last is a genuinely readable, genuinely responsive history of the Arabs.' Edward Said 'If anyone wants to understand the tangled web of likes and dislikes of each other among the Arab peoples or the pull of fundamentalism, here is the place to find it.' David Holloway, Sunday Telegraph 'A splendid achievement... Written with just the right mix of empathy and sensitivity, and a feel for the irony of human history. This is history in the grand style.' New York Times

Product Description
This text covers not only political history, but also culture, society, economy and thought. A distillation of the late Albert Hourani's lifetime of scholarship, it was a bestseller when first published in 1991. This edition includes such recent events as the ongoing crisis in Iraq, the civil war in Algeria and the aftermath of September 11th.

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Customer Reviews

9 Reviews
5 star:
 (3)
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3 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.9 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent introduction to Arab history, 8 Dec 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: A History of the Arab Peoples (Hardcover)
Without doubt this is the best introductory book I have read on the subject of Arab history. Hourani's book is highly informative yet also very readable. The book covers Arab history over a timeline starting from pre-Islamic times right up to recent events in the 1980's and serves as a superb introduction for anyone with an interest in this area of the world. The book studies many aspects of life in detail. For those who are using this study as starting point, will find that Hourani gives them much to think about and provides many refernces for further research. The book also contains useful maps, timelines and family trees. The topic area is vast but Hourani has made skilful inrodes into it leaving the reader feeling informed about the Arab people both past and present.
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful and readable, 20 Jan 2004
By A Customer
In this excellent book, Albert Hourani traces the history of the Arab people from the appearance of Islam, through the rise and fall of the caliphates and the Ottoman empire, to the colonial era of the Europeans and the creation of the nation states that now stretch from West Africa to the Gulf. He gives much insight into the development of culture, law, science and the many strands of religious thought in the region, and into the roots of some of the troubles of the present day. On finishing this book I felt better informed, and would recommend it to anyone interested in the Arab world.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Getting a handle on an enormous subject, 14 Mar 2007
By G. Wearing (kent, england) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: A History of the Arab Peoples (Paperback)
This is one hefty book. The writing style is clear -- it's not turgid or academic, but it's also not sparky or exciting. For me, the first part of the book was quite a slog because it was all new information; once onto a period I knew a bit more about, it was a lot easier to read. It's best to look on this book as a way to get a general feel for the region/subject, rather than to learn about particular countries or episodes in depth.

Of course it's impossible to write history that is 100% free of bias, but this book does well. Hourani avoids rhetoric and doesn't try to frame the whole of Arab history within any kind of grand narrative; attention is paid to the importance and function of all kinds of ideas, ideologies, social groups and so on. A book with a scope as huge as this is never going to please everyone; it's true that he misses out a lot of detail, but well, he had to. Recent terrorist activity doesn't get much attention (though there is a bit in the interesting 2002 afterword by Ruthven), but given the overblown familiarity of the typical western reader with the idea of "Islamic terrorism", I'd say it's useful and in fact important for a book such as this to concentrate on the 99% of Arab life which is not about terrorism.

The book would have been better and probably more reliable if the footnotes and referencing had been more thorough. However, it's a great book for getting a handle on an enormous subject. So give it a try - though in this edition the print's pretty small, so keep your glasses handy! :)
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Informative but insipid
A very informative and educating work indeed, tracing the ideological, political, social and military history of the Arabs. Read more
Published 24 days ago by Bilal Rana

1.0 out of 5 stars A vague history
This is not a history of the Arab peoples - it does not describe why the Moslems expanded, how, when or where. What battles were fought, why or when? Read more
Published 1 month ago by Sk Picot

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book
This book should be (and is in some Universities) mandatory for the study of the Middle East in general and Arab peoples specifically. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Gogol

3.0 out of 5 stars Below par and subtly biased
This book purports to offer the general reader a comprehensive and unbiased overview of the history of the arab peoples. Read more
Published on 8 Sep 2006 by Simon Jaffe

4.0 out of 5 stars "magnum opus"
A fantasic, academic book that nethertheless serves as an excellent introduction to a rather daunting subject to a first time reader of arab history. Read more
Published on 7 April 2006 by Burby

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb, unconventional history
This is a really good grounding in the history of the region stretching from Morocco to Turkey, encompassing 1400 ish years of history. Read more
Published on 27 Oct 2001

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