Customer Reviews
Excellent book - By: Gogol, 14 Jul 2008 
This book should be (and isin some Universities) mandatory for the study of the Middle Eastin general & Arab peoples specifically.
Written by Albert Hourani one of the great scholars of the Middle East it is both concise & comprehensive covering centuries of history while presenting the reader with enough detail that they do not feel that they are being cheated by the author skimming over the most important eventsin history.
The book begins with the beginnings of the Islamic faith & the Islamic empire covering thisin rather short chapters before moving onto the Abbasids. While some may feel this is a slightly inappropriate place to start (others Hitti for example, begin with pre Islamic times) It seems Hourani has taken into account much of the Western view that the Middle East has been shaped by Islam & thus, his book should begin where it begins.
The book covers matters of the politics & structure of the various Islamic empires, the culture & arts of these empires, religious sects & revolts & life bothin rural areas &in the built up cities. The impact of the west & the Ottoman empire are also given extensive coverage.
While there are several respected writers on Middle Eastern history I have always personally preferred Houranis books. I have found him honest & impartial when dealing with sensitive issues of history not least modern history
Hourani bent with time - By: Belassis, 22 Sep 2007 
In 1946 Albert Hourani wrote a book called Syria & Lebanon (Oxford University Press) which was interesting & illuminating about the Middle East, including his forthright attention to the negative consequences of the Arab invasion, the advent of Islam, the oppressive & neglectful rule of the Ottoman Empire, etc. In this more recent book, A History of the Arab Peoples, Hourani has become far less objective than he was before, preferring to find blamein everyone but the Arabs, & specifically blaming the presence of Israel for the unwise, incompetent & destructive policies of successive Arab governmentsin the region over the last sixty years. Hourani's mind has become bent with the familiar & lazy scapegoating of Israel & the West heard throughout the Arab world.
Getting a handle on an enormous subject - By: G. Wearing, 14 Mar 2007 This is one hefty book. The writing style is clear -- it's not turgid or academic, but it's also not sparky or exciting. For me, the first part of the book was quite a slog because it was all new information; once onto a period I knew a bit more about, it was a lot easier to read. It's best to look on this book as a way to get a general feel for the region/subject, rather than to learn about particular countries or episodesin depth.
Of course it's impossible to write history that is 100% free of bias, but this book does well. Hourani avoids rhetoric & doesn't try to frame the whole of Arab history within any kind of grand narrative; attention is paid to the importance & function of all kinds of ideas, ideologies, social groups & so on. A book with a scope as huge as this is never going to please everyone; it's true that he misses out a lot of detail, but well, he had to. Recent terrorist activity doesn't get much attention (though there is a bitin the interesting 2002 afterword by Ruthven), but given the overblown familiarity of the typical western reader with the idea of "Islamic terrorism", I'd say it's useful &in fact important for a book such as this to concentrate on the 99% of Arab life which is not about terrorism.
The book would have been better & probably more reliable if the footnotes & referencing had been more thorough. However, it's a great book for getting a handle on an enormous subject. So give it a try - thoughin this edition the print's pretty small, so keep your glasses handy! :)
Below par and subtly biased - By: Simon Jaffe, 08 Sep 2006 This book purports to offer the general reader a comprehensive & unbiased overview of the history of the arab peoples. The period encompassed is roughly that from the advent of Islam to the present day. In fact I found the text failed on two accounts. Firstly the author does not explainin any detail which sources he is using or their validity. It would be useful to have some sense of how accurate the chroniclers were. This is most relevantin two areas: early history (7th century) when comparable sourcesin Europe were scare & those periods when particular empires were dominant i.e. Ottoman - when such records would be influenced & biased by pressures from the Imperial Court. Secondly the author is clearly anti-Jewishin making several statements. For example whilst Israel invaded Egyptin the 1956 Suez Crisis; the Arab states merely "intervened"in Israelin 1947. He also brushes over Nasser's direct provocation of Israelin 1967 (Nasser later revealed that his naval blockade had been designed to lead to war). Numerous further distortions are presentin this book. For example there is the almost complete absence of treatment of anti-Jewish violence practiced even before Israel was created. Finally recent terrorist activity is ignored...Hourani seems to want to keep a rose tinted spectacles view of Arab history. He does a discredit to his subjectin failing to deal with the bad as well as the goodin the region's contribution to civilisation.
"magnum opus" - By: Burby, 07 Apr 2006 A fantasic, academic book that nethertheless serves as an excellent introduction to a rather daunting subject to a first time reader of arab history.
Accesibly written, but manages to cover almost all the influences on the development of the arab peoples i could think of, so when i saw there were no reviews i had to say somthing ;)
