A History of the Arab Peoples

This survey follows Arabic-speaking societies from the rise of Islam through the caliphates, the medieval cities, and the long Ottoman centuries into European domination and the nation-states of the twentieth century. Hourani gives as much weight to towns, scholars, merchants, and peasants as to dynasties: law and learning, sects, trade routes, and the later pressures of empire, oil, and nationalism. Egypt, the Maghreb, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula stay in view together. The book is a social and political synthesis of the Arab world, not a biography of the Prophet and not a military chronicle alone.

Bound in blue buckram blocked in black and gold with Arabic script. Pale blue endleaves printed with map by Reginald Piggott. Black slipcase.