This book provides first-hand, solid information about who Arabs are, how they interact within Arab society, their mores, customs, habits, cultural obligations, and taboos. This is a must-read for Americans in the post-September 11 era to understand Arab perceptions of Americans, what they find positive and admirable about the West, and what they find offensive and unacceptable. Book jacket.
This book, a milestone of Islamic scholarship, calls attention to those aspects of Arab Islamic culture that excite modern controversy. Professor Khalidi examines the classical period, when the basic cultural patterns of Islamic civilisation were established, the various branches of religious and non-religious scholarship defined, and the religious lifestyles had become embedded in the subconscious of an ancient society. The topics covered are: The Foundations; God and His Community; Islamic Paideia; Attitudes Towards the Past; The Mystic Quest; The Place of Reason; The World of Nature; The Governance of the Umma; Ibn Khaldun: The Great Synthesist; Past and Present in Contemporary Arabic Thought.
This volume explores Arab cultural life since World War II. Chapters cover topics such as radio/TV, the press, cinema, music, theatre, popular religion, belly dance, western consumerism, sport and the Arabic language.
This text examines the important role religion plays in the Middle East and how it shapes people's personalities in the Arab world by informing both their belief systems and their lifestyles.
In this book thirteen eminent authorities provide a long-overdue and highly rewarding survey of Islamic culture and history, from the days of the Prophet Muhammad to modern times. The names of the contributors and their academic affiliations appear on the back of this book jacket. Their specific subjects cover: the faith of Islam and the people who embraced it; Islamic art and architecture; the growth and culture of urban Islam; the mystic path of the Sufi tradition; Islamic literature; Islamic music--its philosophy theory, and practice; Islamic contributions to the development of science; strategy, tactics, and weapons in Islamic warfare; the golden age of Cordoba and Granada; the flowering of Iranian civilization; the rise and fall of Turkish domination; Muslim India; problems and prospects of the 19th and 20th centuries. The comprehensive text is supplemented with close to 500 illustrations, 160 of them in color.
A spirited defense of Arab identity from a time of political unrest In ninth-century Abbasid Baghdad, the social prestige attached to claims of Arab identity had begun to decline. In The Excellence of the Arabs, the celebrated litterateur Ibn Qutaybah locks horns with those members of his society who belittled Arabness and vaunted the glories of Persian heritage and culture. Instead, he upholds the status of Arabs and their heritage in the face of criticism and uncertainty. The Excellence of the Arabs is in two parts. In the first, Arab Preeminence, which takes the form of an extended argument for Arab privilege, Ibn Qutaybah accuses his opponents of blasphemous envy. In the second, The Excellence of Arab Learning, he describes the fields of knowledge in which he believed pre-Islamic Arabians excelled, including knowledge of the stars, divination, horse husbandry, and poetry. By incorporating extensive excerpts from the poetic heritage—“the archive of the Arabs”—Ibn Qutaybah aims to demonstrate that poetry is itself sufficient evidence of Arab superiority. Eloquent and forceful, The Excellence of the Arabs addresses a central question at a time of great social flux, at the dawn of classical Muslim civilization: What does it mean to be Arab?
This set re-issues 4 volumes originally published between 1985 and 1991. They Examine the historical process of social formation that gave rise to the communal consciousness of the Arab nation and determined its sense of identityPresent detailed analysis of resources in the Arab world, including population, employment, oil and water suppliesDiscuss dimensions of Afro-Arab co-operation and the future of Afro-Arab RelationsAnalyse the relations between state and society in the Arab World.
