The history of the Middle East is interesting for many modern scholars because of its diversity and dependence on the development of Islamic society. In his article, Albert Hourani, the leading historian of the Middle East, focused on answering the question about the main aspects and periods in the history of the Middle East that need to be included in scholar writings and researches (Hourani 126).
In this context, Hourani chose to discuss such main themes in the article as the French scholars’ contribution into the discussion of the Arab world’s history; the possibility to discuss the Muslim people as a whole; the definition of the Islamic society; the division of the Middle East history in periods according to unifying themes; and the Ottoman Empire’s impact on the history of the region.
Hourani started by discussing differences in the British and French scholars’ approaches to describing the Middle East’s history. From this point, the contribution of the French scholars to the knowledge in the area seems to be significant. Focusing on the scholarship traditions, Hourani stated that the scholar writings are important for understanding the principles of the evolution in the modern Middle East (Hourani 126).
However, to focus on the history of the Middle East, it is necessary to define it as well as to define Islamic society. Thus, the author paid attention to the impossibility of discussing the Muslim world as a historically unitary field (Hourani 127). Furthermore, Hourani noted that concentrating on writing the history of the Islamic society, it is necessary to pay attention to the Pre-Islamic societies and finally determine the Arabic-speaking people as the target for the research.
The division of the history of the Middle East is one of the main topics discussed in Hourani’s article because the historian is inclined to assess the relevance of analyzing this or that period in the context of its impact on the modern situation in the region. Thus, the period of the 19th-20th centuries is considered as obviously influential, but scholars need to pay more attention to the period of the Ottoman Empire because the legal, control and social structures typical for that period influenced the development of the region more than the European traditions characteristic for the period of the French and British rule (Hourani 129).
Focusing on the role of the older traditions, Hourani attempted to determine the unifying themes in different periods in order to consider the history of the region completely. The historian noted that it was relevant to focus on such periods as the development of the Islamic society, the Ottoman rule, and the period of the European expansion (Hourani 130). However, the history of the Arab world is diverse, and it is also important to concentrate on the modern period in the context of discussing Middle Eastern history as the history of the Arab world.
In his article, Hourani raised many important questions about the presentation of the history of the Middle East in the scholarship in order to understand what factors led to the development of that phenomenon, which is known today as the Arab world. Therefore, the key themes in Hourani’s article are associated with the author’s discussion of the impact of different historic periods on the Islamic society’s progress and with the approaches to discussing these periods and their role in the literature on the Middle Eastern history.
Works Cited
Hourani, Albert. “How Should We Write the History of the Middle East?” International Journal of Middle East Studies 23.2 (1991): 125-136. Print.