Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1939
by Albert Hourani
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Book Summary Information
Author: Albert HouraniEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1983-08-31
ISBN: 0521274230
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Book Reviews of Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1939
Book Review: Probably the best of its kind
Summary: 4 Stars
Hourani and Hitti have always been the darlings of modern Western (American at least) thought on the Middle East and while Hitti may cloud much of what he writes with a bizzare form of Lebanese nationalism that is equally as far fetched as Turkish, Arab, Persian and Slav nationalism that have done little but bring misery to those nations. Hourani on the other hand is a little more down to earth and while this book may have its faults until someone else comes out with better it remains the best of its kind.
The book covers the history of Arab reform in the latter part of the Ottoman Empire, I have no idea what point a previous reviewer was trying to make about the Portuguese conquest of parts of Moghul India (he seems to have failed to point out the Portugues also had colonies in present day Morocco and Muslim East Africa also) as around the same time the Ottomans (who he wrongly calls a 'Turkish' empire) had conqured much of Eastern Europe and their Tatar allies much of Russia. If only Americans would stop to look beyond their own narrow history and even give a glance to Europes history.
Hourani points out the foundations of the Arab nationalist movement were from to some extent a Christian background and how the teachings of Islamist reformers such as Afghani and Abduh (formerly a darling of the Ottoman Caliphs) became one and the same with the ideas of pan-Arabism and Arab nationalism.
Hourani gives extensive detail into the lives of Afghani and especially Abduh and just where they took much of their inspiration from. One fault I do feel I have with this book is he covers little of the the structure of the Ottoman empire that the myth of Arabs being some kind of 'colonised people' is just a complete nonsense and that the roots of Arab nationalism are far more complex than that. The book however does give some insight and does act as a useful introduction to modern Middle Easter thought. I would definately recomend this book to anyone who realy is serious about wanting to know about the roots of some of the modern conflicts in the Middle East.
Not the be and and end all but without doubt a very good place to start.
Summary of Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1939
Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age is the most comprehensive study of the modernizing trend of political and social thought in the Arab Middle East. Albert Hourani studies the way in which ideas about politics and society changed during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, in response to the expanding influence of Europe. His main attention is given to the movement of ideas in Egypt and Lebanon. He shows how two streams of thought, the one aiming to restate the social principles of Islam, and the other to justify the separation of religion from politics, flowed into each other to create the Egyptian and Arab nationalisms of the present century. The last chapter of the book surveys the main tendencies of thought in the post-war years. Since its publication in 1962, this book has been regarded as a modern classic of interpretation. It was reissued by the Cambridge University Press in 1983 and has subsequently sold over 8000 copies.General Books
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