History of the Arabs, Revised: 10th Edition

Rating:
Summary: Simply the best history survey of the Arabs
Review: Some belated praise is due for Philip Hitti, author of History of the Arabs. The 2002 revised tenth edition reissue (last updated in 1970) brings to the world what may well be the best, and is almost certainly the longest, detailed survey history of the Arab world to date. The timeliness of this reissue couldn't be better.

Forget about contemporary politics, though. Like his shorter The Arabs: A Short History (which is also a fine work), this book covers a span from pre-Islam up to the rise of the Ottoman empire in slightly more than seven hundred small font richly detailed pages. Then follows another fifty pages covering the Turks and the twentieth century, much of which is too fast and sparse to be of great value. This actually is the only significant drawback in this work. What this means, though, is that for anyone looking for just a History, not a polemic on one side or the other, not an apology for Islam or an attack against it, this is the book to read. Although I'd recommend that the beginner start with something lighter, a seriously interested reader would be hard pressed to find a better source.

I consider this neutrality to be a good thing. There are plenty of books covering the politically extremely sensitive subject of Arab history. Hitti is impervious to virtually all of the politics because besides being an intellectually honest historian - taking a warts and all approach to history - he also wrote this book quite a few years ago, 1937 for the first edition. Thus the framework for History of the Arabs has no room for anti-Israel propaganda because there was no Israel at the time (though a couple sentences have been added to later editions, also neutral). And I should add that although the style of writing is a bit old fashioned, it is generally not dull. This book has aged well.

So, what sort of writing is included? What does a warts and all approach look like? Hitti was himself a Maronite Christian Arab from Lebanon, and clearly had great enthusiasm for the history of his people. This much is obvious. It manifests itself in countless ways, from his attention to detail (Hitti respects the intellect of his readers) to his occasional light hearted comments. He takes no sides (yes, I am harping on this point, but these days this is a hard trait to find), and sometimes produces some very picturesque lines. At one point, he comments that Arab philosophers were digesting and expanding on Greek philosophy when Charlemagne and his lords were dabbling in the art of writing their own names. Contrast this to his statement that if the Arab world today was forced to rely today on scientific texts of Arab origin, it would be further back than it was in the eleventh century. Though he writes very highly of Muhammad's accomplishments, he points out quite casually that his favorite wife was so young that she brought her toys along when she moved into his house. Comments like these could be dwelt upon by contemporary attackers or defenders of Islam (In the right context, this is not necessarily a bad thing), but to Hitti they simply add life and color to History. A history that shows staggering highs and frightful lows. A history that covers what was once the pre-eminent civilization of the hemisphere and has failed and fallen since then. A history that has at times shown intellectual rigor and superstitious brain sloth, that has been a model for tolerance and the source of insatiable bigotry. This is History, everyone, and I've seen few writers who handle it better than Philip Hitti.