Books by Albert Hourani
“The book is a history of ideas. It’s an intellectual journey into the ideas and thinkers of the Arab world, and the impact they had on their own societies from 1798 to the beginning of World War II. It’s about intellectual renewal and cross-cultural fertilisation. Hourani examines how Arab thinkers were very interested in the potential for renewal in Arabic and Islamic societies and thought.” Read more...
The best books on The Middle East
Fawaz A. Gerges, International Relation
A History of the Arab Peoples
by Albert Hourani
You can’t understand Lebanon without understanding the wider neighbourhood. Hourani was a 20th century British-Lebanese historian and this is his highly readable, bestselling account of the Arab world. It takes the story from the period before the birth of Islam and the Arab conquests up to the mid-20th century. He finds a unity in Arab culture that transcends confessional lines. The Egyptian journalist, Tarek Osman, told us that this focus on Arabism as a coherent identity that includes Christians and other confessions as well as Muslims—rather than, as with many histories of the Arab world, a story about the flow of the different Islamic empires—was Hourani’s uniquely important historical perspective.
Interviews where books by Albert Hourani were recommended
The best books on The Arab World, recommended by Tarek Osman
The Egyptian author and journalist discusses Egypt’s past and present and the main issues facing the post-revolutionary Arab world
The best books on The Arabs, recommended by Eugene Rogan
Eugene Rogan is Director of the Middle East Centre at Oxford University. His research focuses on the social and economic history of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire and the Arab states in the 20th century.
The best books on The Middle East, recommended by Fawaz A. Gerges
The Middle East has been and still is much misunderstood. Here Fawaz A. Gerges, a professor and Middle Eastern specialist at London School of Economics, recommends five pioneering works of history and social science that will help you to understand the evolution of the region’s society and politics.
