''History of the Arabs'' is a book written by

Philip Khuri Hitti Philip Khuri Hitti (Arabic: فيليب خوري حتي), (Shimlan 22 June 1886 – Princeton 24 December 1978) was a Lebanese-American professor and scholar at Princeton and Harvard University, and authority on Arab and Middle Eastern history, Isl ...

and was first published in 1937. Hitti spent 10 years writing this book A Talk With Philip Hitti
/ref> According to Hitti's own account, in 1927 the editor

Daniel Macmillan Daniel MacMillan ( gd, Dòmhnall MacMhaolain; 13 September 1813 – 27 June 1857) was a Scottish publisher from the Isle of Arran, Scotland. MacMillan was one of the co-founders of Macmillan Publishers along with his brother Alexander in L ...

, the brother of Harold Macmillan, wrote to Philip Hitti asking him to write a history of the

Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...

s. Hitti agreed, estimating that it would take him three years to complete the book, but the task actually took him 10 years. Although its editor originally hesitated to publish even a hundred copies of this book, the book has gone through ten published editions since then. In his ''History of the Arabs'', Philip Hitti denies the idea of an Arab army destroyed by

Charles Martel Charles Martel ( – 22 October 741) was a Frankish political and military leader who, as Duke and Prince of the Franks and Mayor of the Palace, was the de facto ruler of Francia from 718 until his death. He was a son of the Frankish statesm ...

, stressing that the caliph had just died and that these Arabs preferred Spain to more northerly areas. For him, it is not the defeat of the Arabs which enabled the possibility of the

Occident The Occident is a term for the West, traditionally comprising anything that belongs to the Western world. It is the antonym of ''Orient'', the Eastern world. In English, it has largely fallen into disuse. The term ''occidental'' is often used to ...

, as if the Arabs had to be defeated so that the Occident could exist. Instead, it is the transmission of the knowledge of the Mediterranean basin and beyond, and thus the dialogue between the two banks of the Mediterranean, which leads to the foundation of the Occident.

Reviews

''History of the Arabs'' has been described as an excellent work while keeping in mind that its bulk was written in 1937 making the citations hard to use.

References

, ''History of the Arabs, Revised: 10th Edition'', Palgrave Macmillan; (September 6, 2002) Non-Islamic Islam studies literature History of the Middle East History books about the Middle East 1937 non-fiction books {{MEast-hist-book-stub