A History of the Arab Peoples

Title: A History of the Arab Peoples

Author: Albert Hourani

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2013 (First published 1991)

ISBN: 978-0-571-28801-4

Pages: 502

This is a comprehensive description of the Arab societies and their culture which is focussed to the outside world through the converging lens of Islam. The book is not just history. Those who look at it with the sole intention of reading a narrative of the sequence of events like wars and accessions of rulers till the present day would be greatly disappointed. The author goes deeper into the psyche of the societies on whom the study was based and brings out insights noted for their clarity and logic. Albert Habib Hourani is a Middle-eastern scholar based in Oxford, who was born in Manchester to Lebanese Christian parents. His authority on Arab concepts was well accepted in academic circles. The author presents a all-inclusive portrait of the societies which he sets out to describe. Religion, literature, art and culture are also explored by the adroit historian in a great effort to look at the developments in a wider and integrated perspective. At times, the readers may feel a little distracted at the lengthy discourses about religious philosophies in the first period of Islamic expansion, but with hindsight, we conceive of the elegant structure of narration employed by Hourani.

The provenance of Arabia was clearly established only with the life and times of Muhammad, the Prophet. The vigour and charisma of the message he proclaimed and imparted to the people helped them achieve dominance of most of West Asia within half a century of the Prophet’s death. Byzantians and Sasanids, ruling the Eastern Roman and Persian empires were forced to vacate their claims on lands which the Arabs desired to possess. As can be expected, when the whole edifice of empire-building depended on one man, as soon as he is off the scene, it begins to crumble. Confusion reigned among the followers of the Prophet as to who should succeed him. Abu Bakr, his father-in-law became the Caliph, who had no divine authority, but entrusted with the duty of keeping peace and adjudicate on issues. Omar, Uthman and Ali followed him, but not without engendering fierce opposition to their rule. All three of them were assassinated subsequently. At this point, another potentate, Mu’awiyah seized power and ruled from Damascus as the founder of Umayyad dynasty. Medina, from which the first four caliphs ruled, was again relegated to the fringes of the empire, at least in administrative matters, if not religious. The Umayyads could hold the throne for only ninety years when Abu’l Abbas shifted the seat of power to Baghdad under the Abbasid caliphs. Islam spread to North Africa and reached Spain by this time. Another caliph ruled from Cordoba in Spain, meanwhile a Fatimid dynasty was established in Egypt.

After the tenth century, a subtle change came about in the Islamic world. Arabic, the language which assumed prominence over all languages in the regions its power predominated, began to lose ground to local languages again. The most important change was noticed in Iran, where its language, Pahlavi, borrowed the script and many words from Arabic and the Persian language was born. Temporal power also slipped away from Arabia proper and the caliphs. The Seljuk Turks, who were soldiers or slaves brought from Central Asia to serve in the armies of caliphs and who later converted to Islam, held the reins of power. After the last Abbasid caliph was slaughtered at Baghdad in the Mongol raids of 1258, Turks set up their seat of power in Anatolia and the Ottoman empire gradually came into being. Former military slaves in Egypt, called Mameluks established a kingdom there. So by the fifteenth century, we see the Middle East where the ancient seats of power re-established in a different guise and under a new religion.

The next phase was the point at which a Middle Eastern regime exerted the greatest influence ever. The Ottoman empire under Mahmud II captured Constantinople which traditionally marks the end of Dark Middle Ages. The Turkish Ottomans carried the banner of Islam wherever their armies reached. Greece, Balkan states, Bulgaria and even Hungary came under their hegemony. Though their rule was tolerant to minorities by the standards of the time, they were facing revolts and insurrections from their European subjects. The height of Ottoman occupation came in 1815 when they reached till Vienna, but thereafter, the collapse was even more dramatic. Industrial revolution and the changing economic conditions were undermining the viability of Ottoman regime. By 1900, all nationalities split away from their yoke, and those of North Africa fell to the level of colonies of France and Italy. The empire itself was torn down at the end of World War I. The second world war brought independence to Arab states which had become protectorates. The formation of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948 with British and American support roused lasting suspicions about the intentions of western powers.

The author gives a threadbare account of the origins of various groups which share the Islamic heritage, but with different manifestations of guiding principles. Shiis, the most numerous and prominent minority gradually gained identity from twelfth century onwards. Shiis follow the path of Ali, the fourth caliph and the Prophet’s son-in-law and believe in Imams who are men of intellect but divinely guided and infallible. The twelfth imam, Muhammad was believed to have become invisible in 874 and is expected to return as Mehdi, before the Quranically inspired just society is established on earth. There were other minorities as well, like Ibadis, Zaydis and Druzes which lie on the fringes of Islamic society and deemed as such by Sunni jurisprudence in canonical law.

The last 100 years had been a period in which lasting and often violent changes took place in the Arab world. Though Hourani covers the period till 1991, occasioned by his demise, Malise Ruthwen provides a balanced Afterword to extend the arguments till 2012 when ordinary people took to the streets to demand removal of corrupt and oppressive regimes in an event known to us by the euphemism of Arab Spring. Even at the time of this writing, a violent conflagration is raging in Egypt and Syria and it is still premature to hazard a guess on the possible outcome of events. One thing is clear though. The concept of asabiyya loosely translated as the sense of belonging to a cohesive group and clannish spirit, which the author borrowed from ibn Khaldun, a medieval writer, is still alive and forms the prime factor which is poised to shape up the sociopolitical transformation.

Whenever the issue of Arab – Israeli conflict is discussed in secular media, there is often an argument about the current day ingratitude of the Jews towards the Muslims as the Jewish people were tolerated and allowed to live happily in the medieval period only in those countries where Islam was in force. While it is true that they were hunted out and denigrated in Christian lands, we should not read much into the profession of toleration claimed by Muslim sultans. The author says about minorities in Islamic regimes, “They paid a special tax; they were not supposed to wear certain colours; they could not marry Muslim women; their evidence was not accepted against that of Muslims in law courts; their houses or places of worship should not be ostentatious; they were excluded from positions of power. How seriously such rules were applied depended on local conditions, but even in the best circumstances the position of a minority was uneasy, and the inducement to convert existed” (p.67). So much for tolerance!

Hourani’s occasional philosophical remarks are quite captivating. See what he comments about defeat, “Defeat goes deeper into the human soul than victory. To be in someone else’s power is a conscious experience which induces doubts about the ordering of the universe, while those who have power can forget it, or can assume that it is part of the natural order of things and invent or adopt ideas which justify their possession of it” (p.300).

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star