Book Summary and Historiography
The writing of history is an art, not a science, and writing the history of the Arab world is no different. Here I would like to explain my views on the writing of Arab history, and also provide a summary of the book’s contents below.
Questions of how to write history usually revolve around two points of departure. One key point of debate has been the dichotomy between political and military history and a greater emphasis on social, cultural and economic issues. Once upon a time, real history was about kings and wars. Rulers and wars still have their place, but they no longer occupy the field.
A second dichotomy which arises in the writing of history is that of chronology versus topicality. Given that history is linear by its very nature, the chronological approach is the most straightforward, but it can lead to distortions where the discussion of a key historical development cannot be divided upon the same temporal lines as the surrounding narrative. These two issues tend to converge, as although political and military histories do usually lend themselves to a chronological narrative, societal evolution or economic changes do not.
To an extent, the choice of approach may be determined by the kind of book one is attempting to write instead of the nature of the subject matter. That was certainly the case with my book, which bills itself as a general history of a specific region, intending to be read by non-specialists, readers who are otherwise educated but not familiar with the Arab world. As I was charged with writing such a general history in 250 pages, my decision to structure the book as I did was framed by a specification of scope and a limitation of space.
I therefore decided to structure the book around a mixed chronological/topical approach, with the greatest emphasis given to a chronological history focusing on political and military events. It is my belief that readers first need to develop a chronological structure in their minds of the flow of a subject’s history first, and then only later fill in the gaps with more topical history focused on social, economic and cultural issues. This is not to downplay the importance of other kinds of history, but I do believe that for the typical reader the topical discussion will become an undifferentiated mass without contextual understanding.
This can be seen in the chapter structure of my book. Chapters one to three cover the time period from pre-Islamic Arabia through the rise of Islam and the Umayyad and Abbasid empires. These chapters are largely political and military history, with some cultural elements related to pre-Islamic Arabian culture and the religion of Islam. Chapter four, “Islam, Law and the State,” goes back and fills in some of the substantive gaps during this period, covering the topics suggested in the chapter title. Chapters five and six revert to the chronological narrative, followed by chapter seven, “Society, Culture and the Life of the Mind,” which very broadly surveys the formation of Islamic and Arab culture and civilization up through the rise of the Ottoman empire in the 16th century. Chapter eight then – as one might deduce – deals with the Ottoman empire, and is primarily focused on political and military history. The last three chapters bring us up to the end of the 20th century, and are probably about 90 percent political, geopolitical and military history.
History itself, of course, does not divide itself naturally into these categories. Historians do that. Consciously or not, a writer of history establishes a periodization scheme based on a conceptual understanding of the narrative as a whole. In doing so, a historian may thus structure the reader’s understanding of the subject matter simply through the designation of when a chapter begins, and when it ends.
So I will state my reasoning forthrightly – I believe that the framing phenomenon for modern Arab history is the collision of Arab societies with the contemporary world created and dominated by European civilization. To me it is clear that how Arabs write and speak about history today is framed by two fundamental frames of reference. The first is the rise of Islam culminating the “Golden Age” believed to have been achieved by the early Islamic caliphs between the seventh and tenth centuries, or the first 300 years after Muhammad. The second is the modern age, inaugurated by Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, following by a succession of attempts by Arab and Islamic states and movements to renew the Islamic nation – or alternatively, the Arab nation – to its rightful place, “rightful” being framed within the historical memory described above. The Ottoman reformers of the 19th century, the Arab nationalists of the 1950s and the Islamists of today have little in common ideologically, but this basic framework they share. Most of my chapter divisions are made to fit within this framework – before Islam, the rise of Islam, the decline of Islam, the rise of the West, and the modern reaction.
All that explained, I would estimate that 75-80 percent of the book is political, military or religious history. For those who prefer a different mix, well, this is a general survey. When I talk to people about Arab history, historical events seem to come out of nowhere, so I have no problem defending this approach. If you want more depth, then you will need to read more books. But I do hope you start with mine.
Chapter One, “The Arabs in Antiquity,” covers about a millennium and a half, starting with a very general overview of Mesopotamian history and moving on to the centuries before Christ in which the earliest traces of Arabian culture exist. A subsection is then devoted to south-central Arabia and then another to northern Arabia and Greco-Roman Syria. Two subsections cover the place of Arabia in the ancient world order and Arabian culture prior to Islam.
Chapter Two, “The Rise of Islam (A.D. 610-661),” covers the life of Muhammad, his immediate successors and the founding of the Islamic caliphate. It also discusses the leadership crisis which led to the Sunni-Shia split, which of course is still with us today.
Chapter Three, “From Arab Empire to Islamic Caliphate: The Umayyads and the Abbasids (661-945),” covers the first two Islamic empires. It is this period which is usually referred to as “the Golden Age of Islam.”
Chapter Four, “Islam, Law, and the State,” addresses the formation of the Islamic concept of state, the rise of the ulema, or Islamic clerical class, and the essential elements of Islamic law.
Chapter Five, “The Arab West: North Africa, Sicily, and Spain,” very broadly covers this region from the end of the seventh century until Spain’s final victory over the Moors in 1492. Chapter three’s coverage, where they overlap, primarily focuses on what is now the core of the Middle East – the Levant, Iraq, Egypt and Arabia.
Chapter Six, “Arab Sunset, Turkish Dawn: The Struggle for International Islam (945-1517),” covers these same areas from the effective collapse of Abbasid power in the mid-tenth century through the rise of the Mamluks, who preceded the Ottomans. This period is one of the most difficult in Arab history to understand – and write – because of the multiplicity of caliphates and states. In between the Abassids and the Mamluks, here I also deal with the Persian Buyids, the Shia Arab Fatimids, the Seljuks and the rise of the Turkic military class, the Crusades and the Latin states, the Zengids, Ayyubids and Mongols. Perhaps needless to say, none are covered in any great depth.
Chapter Seven, “Society, Culture, and the Life of the Mind (661-1517),” discusses the key elements of Arab civilization not covered in chapter four. This includes the Arabization of the Middle East, Arab science, mysticism and philosophy, and the development of Arabic writing and literature.
Chapter Eight, “The Ottoman Age (1517-1798),” covers Ottoman history with an emphasis on the Arab world from the Ottoman victory over the Mamluks in 1517 (thus ending the era begun in chapter six) and Napoleon Bonaparte’s crushing of the sclerotic Ottoman-Mamluk state in Egypt in 1798, thus bringing the modern world crashing down on Arab societies. It includes a general sketch of the rise and fall of the Ottoman empire, Arab societies under Ottoman rule, and the two areas which the Ottomans never entirely ruled – Morocco and Arabia (includes the rise of the Saudi-Wahhabi movement).
Chapter Nine, “Sick Man of the Middle East: The Arab World in the Age of Ottoman Decline and European Ascendance (1798-1920),” picks up where the previous chapter left off and takes us to the end of World War I. The five subsections of this chapter focus on Muhammad Ali’s Egypt, the Tanzimat reforms (intended to save the empire), the struggle for Arabia (continuing the Saudi story from before), the rise of Zionism and the seeds of Arab nationalism, and the creation of the modern state system in the region after the Great War.
Chapter Ten, “The Hope of Revival: Arab Nationalism, Secularism, and Socialism (c. 1920-1950),” focuses on the Mandate System, the Jewish-Arab struggle for Palestine, the triumph of Ibn Saud and the founding of Saudi Arabia, and the growing conflict between Islamist movements and Arab nationalists.
Chapter Eleven, “Hopes Betrayed: The Contemporary World,” focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, socio-economic development (more the lack thereof), the Islamic resurgence following 1967 and more recent conflicts up through 2003.
I then conclude the book with a section entitled “Conclusion: Reflections, Present and Future.” It is in this section in which, among other things, I boldly and presciently predicted that there would not be peace in the Middle East.
So now you have the basic outline of the book, and understand why I wrote it the way I did. I hope this much wets your appetite for more.
Sincerely,
Kirk H. Sowell