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Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939, by Albert Hourani
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Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1939 is the most comprehensive study of the modernizing trend of political and social thought in the Arab Middle East. Albert Hourani studies the way in which ideas about politics and society changed during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, in response to the expanding influence of Europe. His main attention is given to the movement of ideas in Egypt and Lebanon. He shows how two streams of thought, the one aiming to restate the social principles of Islam, and the other to justify the separation of religion from politics, flowed into each other to create the Egyptian and Arab nationalisms of the present century. The last chapter of the book surveys the main tendencies of thought in the post-war years. Since its publication in 1962, this book has been regarded as a modern classic of interpretation. It was reissued by the Cambridge University Press in 1983 and has subsequently sold over 8000 copies.
- Sales Rank: #433082 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Cambridge University Press
- Published on: 1983-08-31
- Released on: 1983-06-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .87" w x 5.43" l, 1.29 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 406 pages
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
'This classic work is as fresh and interesting as when it was first published thirty years ago. It continues to command the field.' Charles Issawi, Princeton University
From the Back Cover
This is the most comprehensive study of the modernizing trend of political and social thought in the Arab Middle East.
About the Author
Albert Hourani was Emeritus Fellow, St. Antony's College, Oxford. He died in 1993.
Most helpful customer reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
The genesis of Arab modern thought
By Hussain Abdul-Hussain
This book is an extensive version of Hisham Sharabi's Arab Intellectuals. It highlights the reaction of the Arab intellectual circles to the expanding European influence that had reached the Arab world by the early 19th century.
Hourani, however, presents a more thorough description of the life and thought of the most prominent Arab thinkers of the time including Jamaluddine Al-Afghani and Muhammad Abdo among others as opposed to Sharabi's brief account on the life and works of these people.
Despite the academic nature of this work, grasping what's in it is easy and not at all complicated. Hourani's narration is well-researched and elegant while his translation of the original texts is also remarkable. The end result is an accurate account that invites the admiration of the readers.
This book is so much needed for those who are interested to understand the evolution of Arab thought over the past two centuries and how this evolution was interrupted with the discovery of oil and the advent of imperialism.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
A Progress Interupted
By L. King
A well written exposition on the influence and reaction to the European Enlightenment during the closing chapters of the Ottoman empire through the eyes of its intellectual elites.
It begins with a wonderfully nuanced view of regional Arab differences then continues with the ideas and personalities of the 1st generation of reformers of the 1800s, Rifa'a al-Tahtwai an Egyptian writer who wrote about reconciling French and Islamic philosophic ideas; Khayr al-Din a Circassian and career politician in Constantinople who, after serving as Prime Minister of Tunis in the 1870s became Grand Vizier in 1878 and along with Midhat Pasha promoted the 2nd wave of Tanzimat reforms; and the influential Lebanese Christian novelist and commentator Butrus al-Bustani originally Maronite but converted to Protestantism by American missionaries and who embodied their ideals of progressive reform in an Arabized context. This is followed by a full chapter on the somewhat wild and peripatetic Jamal al-Afghani who, though he wrote little down was, in his unfruitful search for an ideal Islamic ruler in the mode of Hobbes' Leviathan.
However it is Muhammad `Abduh, a confidant of al-Afghani in Paris, later Mufti of Egypt and a director of the prestigious Islamic Al-Azhar Univerity that Hourani selects as a pivotal figure. He represents the liberal progressive POV for his day. In practical terms he issued a wide range of modernizing fatwas and in 1856 established a unified system of courts that were based on secular law yet drawing from Sharia. `Abduh's influence whose influence in turn is felt on Qassim Amin, Lufti al-Sayyid, Ali `Abd al-Raziq, the populist democrat S'ad Zaghlul who represented Egypt at the Paris 1919 peace conference and subsequently became Prime Minister representing the Waqf party, Rashid Rida and Taha Husayn.
Amin wrote two heavily criticized books on the emancipation of women, arguing that the practice of seclusion reflected a lack of respect and trust by men and that veiling fails its objective of preserving virtue as it objectifies women as sexual objects of desire. The key to Arab progress lay in women's education, albeit for the purpose of raising better children - the same limitation also appears with Western progressives too. Sayyid's central concern was freedom, a quality he found lacking in Egypt's judiciary but flowering in the newly established press due to the Capitulations which protected their mainly Christian (often Lebanese - see pp 200) publishers and the more liberal governance of Lord Cromer who saw a free press as a useful safety valve for public feeling. Egyptians had dual loyalties - to Islam and to Egypt. al-Raziq (1888-1966) was a bit of a curiosity as reaction to his controversial book was the opposite of what one might expect from a liberalizing society. He argued that the Prophet (pbuh) instituted none of the artifacts of a state - neither a budget or a regular administration, therefore Islam was purely a religion and not political, the various caliphates nonsequitors. His critics declared him unfit for public positions and he lived the rest of his life in obscurity.
Rida represents the more illiberal of `Abduh's intellectual children, and Rida's intellectual children in turn include Hassan al Banna of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hajj Amin al Hussayni. Hourani also mentions that Rida was featured at Hussayni's 1931 World Islamic Conference in Jerusalem. Whereas `Abduh took a halcyon view of the Salaf (first generations), Rida, a Syrian, was more of a literalist. He approved the Saudi takeover of the Hejaz. Shiism was "full of fairy tales and illegitimate innovations" (pp231), for which he blamed early Jewish converts to Isalm, and he opposed Sufi mysticism as "innovation", for which he accused "secret Zoroastrians" for corrupting Islam. Like `Abduh he was in favour of adopting European scientific progress, arguing that Muslims were previously advanced in the sciences, so rather than innovating Muslims would simply be reclaiming what was originally theirs. Women required legal guardians which would encourage them in virtue and in their duties to be wives and mothers. Employing circular reasoning, Islam was a singular truth requiring unity amongst Muslims; conversely agreement would be a sign of truth. Rida is focused on twice, in Ch 9 , and in Ch XI on "Arab Nationalism". Ch 9 is also worth reading on its own as it hilites the vast gap between professed ideas and actual events. While Christian Arabs advocated secularism to protect their new found freedoms, their Muslim counterparts argued that it was impossible to separate Arab national culture from Islam because Arab history was essentially Islamic (pp296-297). In contrast Taha Husayn felt that Egypt as a Mediterranean country was more oriented in it's history towards Europe than the East and that the Enlightenment was held back in Egypt by four centuries due to Ottoman misrule.
Unsettled by growing European economic, scientific and political success and intrusions into the Ottoman domain, each of these individuals in turn try to create their own balance between wattaniya (nationalism), `assabiya (group conciousness) and European egalitarianism. Their overarching argument is that Islam being a rational political system was not only compatible with main Enlightenment values but through itjihad had in fact anticipated them, thus there was no bar to adopting scientific progress. The late Ottoman malaise was therefore only a contemporary aberration that could be easily overcome through revivalism of a idealized past, though there was wide disagreement as to what that consisted of.
Only the epilog on post 1939 development disappoints. For one, it does not articulate why he considers 1939 a particularly watershed year for the Arab world. Secondly he brings out a flaw in his early discussions, the lack of coverage of the Magreb, and does a rush job of trying to cover Algeria and Tunisia and little of Morocco while squeezing in a small reference to Zionism and Israel. Surprisingly there's a degree of praise before the de rigueur denouncement on behalf of the Palestinians, no coverage of the parallel disappearance of Jews and Christians and then the astonishing premise/revelation (pp354) that the success of Zionism threatens the entire Arab concept of the umma, though this is pushed aside and is not central to the book.
Overall the presentation of the individual patterns of thinking fascinate and inform, though without an interest or connection to the region the general reader will likely find it meandering. Nevertheless, for the right audience, it is an extremely useful tool to understand the era's attraction to western material progress which was counterbalanced/restrained by the fear of the loss of dearly held traditions. And thus the reluctant desire to tread cautiously forward.
Well worth owning. Recommended.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Probably the best of its kind
By Gogol
Hourani and Hitti have always been the darlings of modern Western (American at least) thought on the Middle East and while Hitti may cloud much of what he writes with a bizzare form of Lebanese nationalism that is equally as far fetched as Turkish, Arab, Persian and Slav nationalism that have done little but bring misery to those nations. Hourani on the other hand is a little more down to earth and while this book may have its faults until someone else comes out with better it remains the best of its kind.
The book covers the history of Arab reform in the latter part of the Ottoman Empire, I have no idea what point a previous reviewer was trying to make about the Portuguese conquest of parts of Moghul India (he seems to have failed to point out the Portugues also had colonies in present day Morocco and Muslim East Africa also) as around the same time the Ottomans (who he wrongly calls a 'Turkish' empire) had conqured much of Eastern Europe and their Tatar allies much of Russia. If only Americans would stop to look beyond their own narrow history and even give a glance to Europes history.
Hourani points out the foundations of the Arab nationalist movement were from to some extent a Christian background and how the teachings of Islamist reformers such as Afghani and Abduh (formerly a darling of the Ottoman Caliphs) became one and the same with the ideas of pan-Arabism and Arab nationalism.
Hourani gives extensive detail into the lives of Afghani and especially Abduh and just where they took much of their inspiration from. One fault I do feel I have with this book is he covers little of the the structure of the Ottoman empire that the myth of Arabs being some kind of 'colonised people' is just a complete nonsense and that the roots of Arab nationalism are far more complex than that. The book however does give some insight and does act as a useful introduction to modern Middle Easter thought. I would definately recomend this book to anyone who realy is serious about wanting to know about the roots of some of the modern conflicts in the Middle East.
Not the be and and end all but without doubt a very good place to start.
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