An Analysis of Albert Hourani’s A History of the Arab Peoples J. A. O. C. Brown with Bryan R. Gibson Copyright © 2017 by Macat International Ltd 24:13 Coda Centre, 189 Munster Road, London SW6 6AW. Macat International has asserted its right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the copyright holder of this work. The print publication is protected by copyright. Prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, distribution or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, me- chanical, recording or otherwise, permission should be obtained from the publisher or where applicable a license permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom should be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Barnard’s Inn, 86 Fetter Lane, London EC4A 1EN, UK. 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CONTENTS WAYS IN TO THE TEXT Who Was Albert Hourani? 9 What Does A History of the Arab Peoples Say? 10 Why Does A History of the Arab Peoples Matter? 11 SECTION 1: INFLUENCES Module 1: The Author and the Historical Context 15 Module 2: Academic Context 20 Module 3: The Problem 24 Module 4: The Author’s Contribution 28 SECTION 2: IDEAS Module 5: Main Ideas 33 Module 6: Secondary Ideas 38 Module 7: Achievement 42 Module 8: Place in the Author’s Work 46 SECTION 3: IMPACT Module 9: The First Responses 51 Module 10: The Evolving Debate 56 Module 11: Impact and Influence Today 60 Module 12: Where Next? 64 Glossary of Terms 69 People Mentioned in the Text 77 Works Cited 81 THE MACAT LIBRARY The Macat Library is a series of unique academic explorations of seminal works in the humanities and social sciences – books and papers that have had a significant and widely recognised impact on their disciplines. 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CRITICAL THINKING AND A HISTORY OF THE ARAB PEOPLES Primary critical thinking skill: EVALUATION Secondary critical thinking skill: INTERPRETATION Few works of history make as well-structured a case for the importance of studying continuity, rather than change, than Albert Hourani’s A History of the Arab Peoples. Hourani’s work had three major aims: to refute the idea that Arab society stagnated between 1000 and 1800; to study the period through the lens of diverse Arab, rather than Muslim, history; and to stress intellectual and cultural continuity. All of these intentions were the product of the author’s evaluation of a great mass of secondary sources, many of them devoted to arguing for ideas that contradicted his, and it demanded considerable skill to synthesize from them a coherent and well-evidenced counter-argument. Hourani was able to do this largely because his grasp of the relevance and adequacy of his predecessors’ arguments was second to none; his achievement lies in his ability to reject the reasoning of other historians while still making good use of their evidence. In this task, he was aided by an interpretative skill almost equal to his powers of evaluation; A History of the Arab Peoples is also a monument to the importance of properly understanding the meaning of available evidence. ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF THE ORIGINAL WORK British historian Albert Hourani was born in Manchester, England, in 1915. His parents came from the Lebanon, so he grew up speaking both Arabic and English. Hourani graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford, and during World War II travelled across the Middle East, working for the British Foreign Office. He dedicated his post-war academic life to studying the Arab world, bringing his intimate knowledge of the region to his later work in the field of Middle Eastern Studies. Hourani died in 1993 at the age of 77. ABOUT THE AUTHORS OF THE ANALYSIS Dr J.A.O.C. Brown was awarded his doctorate by the University of Cambridge for a thesis on Anglo-Moroccan relations in the 18th and 19th centuries. Dr Bryan Gibson holds a PhD in International History from the London School of Economics (LSE) and was a post- doctoral research fellow at the LSE’s Centre for Diplomacy and Strategy and an instructor on Middle Eastern politics in the LSE’s Department of International History and the University of East Anglia’s Department of Political, Social and International Studies (PSI). He is currently on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University. 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This is the learning of the future.’ Rt Hon Charles Clarke, former UK Secretary of State for Education ‘The Macat analyses provide immediate access to the critical conversation surrounding the books that have shaped their respective discipline, which will make them an invaluable resource to all of those, students and teachers, working in the field.’ Professor William Tronzo, University of California at San Diego WAYS IN TO THE TEXT KEY POINTS • Albert Hourani was a scholar of the Middle East. He was born in Manchester, England, in 1915, the son of Lebanese immigrants. • A History of the Arab Peoples offers a broad outline of the Arab civilization, from the founding of Islam in the seventh century right through to the twentieth century. • Instead of being a traditional political history, A History of the Arab Peoples focuses more on the cultural, economic, and social developments that had a profound impact on the formation of the Arab civilization. Who Was Albert Hourani? Albert Hourani was a highly respected historian of the Middle East and is considered to be one of the founding scholars of Middle East Studies. Hourani was born in 1915 in Manchester, England, where his Lebanese Christian parents had emigrated to trade textiles. Despite where they lived, the Hourani family spoke Arabic at home. They valued education highly, and the teenage Hourani attended an English school in London. He went on to study at Magdalen College at the University of Oxford. 9