1. TEXT by Heinz Halm
CHAPTER 1: PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA
Name and Origin
Ancient South Arabia
Arabia in the Hellenistic Period
Arabs and Romans
Arabia between the Byzantines and Persians
Old Arabic Language, Poetry, and Script
CHAPTER 2: ARABIA AND ISLAM
Arabia on the Eve of Islam
The Prophet Muhammad
The Arab-Islamic Conquests
The Caliphate of the Umayyads (661-750)
The ‘Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad
Al-‘Arabiyya: High Arabic Language and Literature
The Arab Reception of Antiquity
Arabic Numerals and the Zero
Arabization and Islamization
The Mamluks
CHAPTER 3: THE ARAB WORLD FROM 900 TO 1500 CE
Iraq
Syria/ Palestine
Egypt
The Maghreb and al-Andalus
CHAPTER 4: THE ARAB WORLD FROM 1500 TO 1800 CE
The Fertile Crescent under Ottoman Rule
The Arabian Peninsula
Egypt
The Maghreb
CHAPTER 5: THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
The Mashriq
The Maghreb
Strategies against European Intervention: Europeanization, Islamic Renewal, Nationalism
CHAPTER 6: STATE BUILDING AND INDEPENDENCE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
The First World War and the Mandatory Period
The Salafiyya and the Muslim Brotherhood
The Palestine Question
The Second World War and the Establishment of the Arab League
The Founding of Israel and the First Middle East War
Ba’th Party and Nasserism
The Six-Day War (June 1967)
The Sadat Era (1970-1981): The October War, the Infitah, and the Oil Crisis
The Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) and the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988)
The 1990s: The First Intifada and the Gulf War
CHAPTER 7: THE BEGINNING OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
The Second Intifada
The Iraq War
2. APPENDIX: PRIMARY SOURCE READINGS FROM THE HISTORY OF THE ARABS
Readings for Chapter 1
1. A medieval historian on nomadic and sedentary peoples (Ibn Khaldun)
2. The nomads of Arabia in antiquity (Diodorus Siculus, al-Mas’udi)
3. Arabic poetry (‘Antara ibn Shaddad)
Readings for Chapter 2
4. The Qur’an
5. The hadith
6. Muhammad (Ibn Ishaq)
7. A conquest treaty from Spain (‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Musa ibn Nusayr)
8. A dissident opinion of the Umayyads (Abu Hamza al-Mukhtar ibn ‘Awf)
9. The dilemma of a Muslim ruler (Ziya’ al-Din al-Barani)
10. Jahiz on singing girls (‘Amr ibn Bahr al-Jahiz)
11. Reconciling the religious and philosophical sciences (Abu al-Hasan al-‘Amiri)
Readings for Chapter 3
12. Whom to hire to run one’s affairs (Nizam al-Mulk)
13. From the autobiography of ‘Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi (‘Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi)
14. Those boorish Franks (Usama ibn Munqidh)
15. Hard times on the Nile (al-Maqrizi)
16. Problems of married life (Ja‘far ibn Ahmad)
17. Latin and Arabic in al-Andalus (Alvarus of Cordoba)
18. Andalusi poems on forbidden love and the fall of Granada (Anonymous)
Readings for Chapter 4
19. A British traveler on Arabs and Turks in the Syrian desert (William Beawes)
20. Principles of Wahhabism (Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab)
21. The advent of coffee and coffee-drinkers (‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jaziri, Anonymous)
22. A European observer of the Ottoman military (Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq)
23. A French observer of the Moroccan military (Louis Chénier)
Readings for Chapter 5
24. A Sunni modernist on the conversion of Iraq’s Arabs to Shi‘ism (Rashid Rida)
25. The Gulf before oil (Carsten Niehbuhr)
26. A barber of Damascus: Ahmad Budayri al-Hallaq’s chronicle of the year 1749 (Ahmad Budayri al-Hallaq)
27. Aftermath to a massacre (Anonymous)
28. Observing the French in Egypt (al-Jabarti)
Readings for Chapter 6
29. Behind-the-scenes dealings of the early 20th century (Various European diplomats)
30. The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood on politics and religion (Hasan al-Banna’)
31. Israel’s declaration of independence
32. The Palestinian National Covenant
33. The Hamas charter
34. The heady years of Arab nationalism (Jamal ‘Abd al-Nasir)
35. Sadat in Jerusalem (Anwar al-Sadat)
36. Political jokes from Egypt and Syria
37. Impressions of the Lebanese civil war (Mishka Moujabbar Mourani)
Readings for Chapter 7
38. The dark days of Iraqi discord (Ayatollah Sistani)
39. Israel’s mid-life crisis? (David Grossman)
40. A manifesto of the Arab Spring (The April 6 Youth Movement)