Arabs

Arabs PDF Author: Tim Mackintosh-Smith
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300180284
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 681

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Book Description
A riveting, comprehensive history of the Arab peoples and tribes that explores the role of language as a cultural touchstone This kaleidoscopic book covers almost 3,000 years of Arab history and shines a light on the footloose Arab peoples and tribes who conquered lands and disseminated their language and culture over vast distances. Tracing this process to the origins of the Arabic language, rather than the advent of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith begins his narrative more than a thousand years before Muhammad and focuses on how Arabic, both spoken and written, has functioned as a vital source of shared cultural identity over the millennia. Mackintosh-Smith reveals how linguistic developments--from pre-Islamic poetry to the growth of script, Muhammad's use of writing, and the later problems of printing Arabic--have helped and hindered the progress of Arab history, and investigates how, even in today's politically fractured post-Arab Spring environment, Arabic itself is still a source of unity and disunity.

Arabs

Arabs PDF Author: Tim Mackintosh-Smith
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300180284
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 681

Get Book

Book Description
A riveting, comprehensive history of the Arab peoples and tribes that explores the role of language as a cultural touchstone This kaleidoscopic book covers almost 3,000 years of Arab history and shines a light on the footloose Arab peoples and tribes who conquered lands and disseminated their language and culture over vast distances. Tracing this process to the origins of the Arabic language, rather than the advent of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith begins his narrative more than a thousand years before Muhammad and focuses on how Arabic, both spoken and written, has functioned as a vital source of shared cultural identity over the millennia. Mackintosh-Smith reveals how linguistic developments--from pre-Islamic poetry to the growth of script, Muhammad's use of writing, and the later problems of printing Arabic--have helped and hindered the progress of Arab history, and investigates how, even in today's politically fractured post-Arab Spring environment, Arabic itself is still a source of unity and disunity.

Desiring Arabs

Desiring Arabs PDF Author: Joseph A. Massad
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226509605
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
Sexual desire has long played a key role in Western judgments about the value of Arab civilization. In the past, Westerners viewed the Arab world as licentious, and Western intolerance of sex led them to brand Arabs as decadent; but as Western society became more sexually open, the supposedly prudish Arabs soon became viewed as backward. Rather than focusing exclusively on how these views developed in the West, in Desiring Arabs Joseph A. Massad reveals the history of how Arabs represented their own sexual desires. To this aim, he assembles a massive and diverse compendium of Arabic writing from the nineteenth century to the present in order to chart the changes in Arab sexual attitudes and their links to Arab notions of cultural heritage and civilization. A work of impressive scope and erudition, Massad’s chronicle of both the history and modern permutations of the debate over representations of sexual desires and practices in the Arab world is a crucial addition to our understanding of a frequently oversimplified and vilified culture. “A pioneering work on a very timely yet frustratingly neglected topic. . . . I know of no other study that can even begin to compare with the detail and scope of [this] work.”—Khaled El-Rouayheb, Middle East Report “In Desiring Arabs, [Edward] Said’s disciple Joseph A. Massad corroborates his mentor’s thesis that orientalist writing was racist and dehumanizing. . . . [Massad] brilliantly goes on to trace the legacy of this racist, internalized, orientalist discourse up to the present.”—Financial Times

Arabia and the Arabs

Arabia and the Arabs PDF Author: Robert G. Hoyland
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134646348
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Long before Muhammed preached the religion of Islam, the inhabitants of his native Arabia had played an important role in world history as both merchants and warriors Arabia and the Arabs provides the only up-to-date, one-volume survey of the region and its peoples, from prehistory to the coming of Islam Using a wide range of sources - inscriptions, poetry, histories, and archaeological evidence - Robert Hoyland explores the main cultural areas of Arabia, from ancient Sheba in the south, to the deserts and oases of the north. He then examines the major themes of *the economy *society *religion *art, architecture and artefacts *language and literature *Arabhood and Arabisation The volume is illustrated with more than 50 photographs, drawings and maps.

Reel Bad Arabs

Reel Bad Arabs PDF Author: Jack G. Shaheen
Publisher: Interlink Publishing
ISBN: 1623710065
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 637

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Book Description
A groundbreaking book that dissects a slanderous history dating from cinema’s earliest days to contemporary Hollywood blockbusters that feature machine-gun wielding and bomb-blowing "evil" Arabs Award-winning film authority Jack G. Shaheen, noting that only Native Americans have been more relentlessly smeared on the silver screen, painstakingly makes his case that "Arab" has remained Hollywood’s shameless shorthand for "bad guy," long after the movie industry has shifted its portrayal of other minority groups. In this comprehensive study of over one thousand films, arranged alphabetically in such chapters as "Villains," "Sheikhs," "Cameos," and "Cliffhangers," Shaheen documents the tendency to portray Muslim Arabs as Public Enemy #1—brutal, heartless, uncivilized Others bent on terrorizing civilized Westerners. Shaheen examines how and why such a stereotype has grown and spread in the film industry and what may be done to change Hollywood’s defamation of Arabs.

When We Were Arabs

When We Were Arabs PDF Author: Massoud Hayoun
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620974584
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
WINNER OF THE ARAB AMERICAN BOOK AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR The stunning debut of a brilliant nonfiction writer whose vivid account of his grandparents' lives in Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, and Los Angeles reclaims his family's Jewish Arab identity There was a time when being an "Arab" didn't mean you were necessarily Muslim. It was a time when Oscar Hayoun, a Jewish Arab, strode along the Nile in a fashionable suit, long before he and his father arrived at the port of Haifa to join the Zionist state only to find themselves hosed down with DDT and then left unemployed on the margins of society. In that time, Arabness was a mark of cosmopolitanism, of intellectualism. Today, in the age of the Likud and ISIS, Oscar's son, the Jewish Arab journalist Massoud Hayoun whom Oscar raised in Los Angeles, finds his voice by telling his family's story. To reclaim a worldly, nuanced Arab identity is, for Hayoun, part of the larger project to recall a time before ethnic identity was mangled for political ends. It is also a journey deep into a lost age of sophisticated innocence in the Arab world; an age that is now nearly lost. When We Were Arabs showcases the gorgeous prose of the Eppy Award–winning writer Massoud Hayoun, bringing the worlds of his grandparents alive, vividly shattering our contemporary understanding of what makes an Arab, what makes a Jew, and how we draw the lines over which we do battle.

The Arabs

The Arabs PDF Author: Eugene Rogan
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 9780465094219
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The internationally bestselling definitive history of the Arab world, named a best book of the year by the Financial Times, the Economist, and the Atlantic -- now updated to cover the latest developments in the Middle East In this groundbreaking and comprehensive account of the Middle East, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan draws extensively on five centuries of Arab sources to place the Arab experience in its crucial historical context. This landmark book covers the Arab world from North Africa through the Arabian Peninsula, exploring every facet of modern Arab history. Starting with the Ottoman conquests of the sixteenth century, Rogan follows the story of the Arabs through the era of European imperialism and the superpower rivalries of the Cold War to the present age of American hegemony, charting the evolution of Arab identity and the struggles for national sovereignty throughout. In this updated edition, Rogan untangles the latest geopolitical developments of the region. The Arabs is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the modern Arab world.

The Arabs

The Arabs PDF Author: Maxime Rodinson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226723569
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
"The Arabs is an interpretative essay based upon a great deal of reading and research, and like other writings of the author, brilliant and insightful. Rodinson's response to the question Who are the Arabs? traces the career of the Arab people from their first appearance about twenty-nine centuries ago up to the present day. The purpose of the book is to make the reader aware of an undeniable Arab being, of its historic performance and its contemporary situation, on the basis of a scientifically careful but sympathetic study and statement."--Back cover.

The Dream Palace of the Arabs

The Dream Palace of the Arabs PDF Author: Fouad Ajami
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307484033
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
From Fouad Ajami, an acclaimed author and chronicler of Arab politics, comes a compelling account of how a generation of Arab intellectuals tried to introduce cultural renewals in their homelands through the forces of modernity and secularism. Ultimately, they came to face disappointment, exile, and, on occasion, death. Brilliantly weaving together the strands of a tumultuous century in Arab political thought, history, and poetry, Ajami takes us from the ruins of Beirut's once glittering metropolis to the land of Egypt, where struggle rages between a modernist impulse and an Islamist insurgency, from Nasser's pan-Arab nationalist ambitions to the emergence of an uneasy Pax Americana in Arab lands, from the triumphalism of the Gulf War to the continuing anguished debate over the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords. For anyone who seeks to understand the Middle East, here is an insider's unflinching analysis of the collision between intellectual life and political realities in the Arab world today.

The Rise of the Arabic Book

The Rise of the Arabic Book PDF Author: Beatrice Gruendler
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674987810
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The little-known story of the sophisticated and vibrant Arabic book culture that flourished during the Middle Ages. During the thirteenth century, Europe’s largest library owned fewer than 2,000 volumes. Libraries in the Arab world at the time had exponentially larger collections. Five libraries in Baghdad alone held between 200,000 and 1,000,000 books each, including multiple copies of standard works so that their many patrons could enjoy simultaneous access. How did the Arabic codex become so popular during the Middle Ages, even as the well-established form languished in Europe? Beatrice Gruendler’s The Rise of the Arabic Book answers this question through in-depth stories of bookmakers and book collectors, stationers and librarians, scholars and poets of the ninth century. The history of the book has been written with an outsize focus on Europe. The role books played in shaping the great literary cultures of the world beyond the West has been less known—until now. An internationally renowned expert in classical Arabic literature, Gruendler corrects this oversight and takes us into the rich literary milieu of early Arabic letters.

Arabs and Empires Before Islam

Arabs and Empires Before Islam PDF Author: Greg Fisher
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199654522
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 609

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Book Description
Arabs and Empires before Islam illuminates the history of the Arabs before the emergence of Islam, collating nearly 250 translated extracts from an extensive array of ancient sources. Drawn from a broad period between the eighth century BC and the Middle Ages, the sources include texts originally written in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Persian, and Arabic, inscriptions in a variety of languages and alphabets, and discussions of archaeological sites from across the Near East. More than twenty international experts from the fields of archaeology, classics and ancient history, linguistics and philology, epigraphy, and art history provide detailed commentary on and analysis of this diverse selection of material. Richly illustrated with sixteen colour plates, fifteen maps, and over seventy in-text images, the volume provides a comprehensive, wide-ranging, and up-to-date examination of what ancient sources had to say about the politics, culture, and religion of the Arabs in the pre-Islamic period. It offers a full consideration of the traces which the Arabs have left in the epigraphic, literary, and archaeological records, and sheds light on their relationship with their often more-powerful neighbours: the states and empires of the ancient Near East. Arabs and Empires before Islam gathers together a host of material never before collected into a single volume--some of which appears in English translation for the very first time--and provides a single point of reference for a vibrant and dynamic area of research.