Hourani

Transcription

How were the rich political, social and cultural institutions of Arab life created? Albert Hourani, a British-Lebanese historian who specialised in the study of the Middle-East set out to answer this question in his book, A History of the Arab Peoples, which traced the history of the Arab-speaking parts of the Islamic world from the rise of Islam in the seventh century, up until the book’s publication in 1991. Previous scholars had depicted the Arab world as one dominated by a single, uniform culture – but Hourani painted an altogether different picture. Unlike previous works, that focused on the ‘Golden Age’ of the first three centuries of Islam, Hourani argues that Arab civilisation did not decline between the eleventh and the eighteenth centuries. He thought that it continued to show intellectual and cultural vitality. Hourani took issue with the idea that a common language – Arabic – and religion – Islam – had created a single, unchanging culture. He argued that they had actually produced diverse and individual societies and experiences across the Middle-Eastern region. How could such a varied world develop from such common origins? Let’s think about the growth of a tree. From a single seed, the tree grows – but the branches are not identical. They develop uniquely, due to a number of varying factors. The tree is on the edge of a forest – and part of it is overshadowed by the forest canopy. The branches in the shade twist and stretch towards the sunlight and therefore form a different shape to the branches on the sunny side of the tree. Heavy winds can break a branch, but the rest of the tree will continue to grow as usual, unaffected. Just as the branches of the tree were formed from a common source – the seed – the multidimensional Arab world was also formed from a common source – from religion and language. But, as the tree analogy shows, this common source does not mean that a monolithic and uniform culture will emerge. Just as the tree is influenced by the environment around it, cultural and intellectual factors shaped the Arabic-speaking parts of the Islamic world. Despite these varying differences, the essential unity of Arab society remains in tact. In Hourani’s view, despite the shifts in political power that occurred in the Arab world in the second millennium, each successive dynasty should be seen as branches on the same tree. A History of the Arab Peoples was Albert Hourani’s most popular work. It provides an introduction to the history of the Middle East – and was an international bestseller. A more detailed examination of Hourani’s ideas can be found in the MACAT analysis.