Some belated praise is due for Philip Hitti, author of History of the Arabs. The 2002 revised tenth edition reissue (last updated in 1970) brings to the world what may well be the best, and is almost certainly the longest, detailed survey history of the Arab world to date. The timeliness of this reissue couldn't be better.

Forget about contemporary politics, though. Like his shorter The Arabs: A Short History (which is also a fine work), this book covers a span from pre-Islam up to the rise of the Ottoman empire in slightly more than seven hundred small font richly detailed pages. Then follows another fifty pages covering the Turks and the twentieth century, much of which is too fast and sparse to be of great value. This actually is the only significant drawback in this work. What this means, though, is that for anyone looking for just a History, not a polemic on one side or the other, not an apology for Islam or an attack against it, this is the book to read. Although I'd recommend that the beginner start with something lighter, a seriously interested reader would be hard pressed to find a better source.

I consider this neutrality to be a good thing. There are plenty of books covering the politically extremely sensitive subject of Arab history. Hitti is impervious to virtually all of the politics because besides being an intellectually honest historian - taking a warts and all approach to history - he also wrote this book quite a few years ago, 1937 for the first edition. Thus the framework for History of the Arabs has no room for anti-Israel propaganda because there was no Israel at the time (though a couple sentences have been added to later editions, also neutral). And I should add that although the style of writing is a bit old fashioned, it is generally not dull. This book has aged well.

So, what sort of writing is included? What does a warts and all approach look like? Hitti was himself a Maronite Christian Arab from Lebanon, and clearly had great enthusiasm for the history of his people. This much is obvious. It manifests itself in countless ways, from his attention to detail (Hitti respects the intellect of his readers) to his occasional light hearted comments. He takes no sides (yes, I am harping on this point, but these days this is a hard trait to find), and sometimes produces some very picturesque lines. At one point, he comments that Arab philosophers were digesting and expanding on Greek philosophy when Charlemagne and his lords were dabbling in the art of writing their own names. Contrast this to his statement that if the Arab world today was forced to rely today on scientific texts of Arab origin, it would be further back than it was in the eleventh century. Though he writes very highly of Muhammad's accomplishments, he points out quite casually that his favorite wife was so young that she brought her toys along when she moved into his house. Comments like these could be dwelt upon by contemporary attackers or defenders of Islam (In the right context, this is not necessarily a bad thing), but to Hitti they simply add life and color to History. A history that shows staggering highs and frightful lows. A history that covers what was once the pre-eminent civilization of the hemisphere and has failed and fallen since then. A history that has at times shown intellectual rigor and superstitious brain sloth, that has been a model for tolerance and the source of insatiable bigotry. This is History, everyone, and I've seen few writers who handle it better than Philip Hitti.

This book is the rambling memoirs of Usumah ibn-Munqidh, 1095-1188. His lifetime very nearly tracks the time of the First Crusade through Saladin's reconquest of Jerusalem. Usumah was a member of the noble family of Shayzar, but was exiled by his jealous uncle. He became a high-ranking government official in Egypt, then in Damascus.

Usumah's memiors is an invaluable description of ordinary life during the time of the Crusades. Usumah spends more time in battle against other Muslims than against the Crusaders, and often travelled to Crusader lands for business or on diplomatic missions. His descriptions of Western Civilization are fascinating.

I recommend that you understand the basics of Crusader history before reading this book. Read Runciman vol.1 and 2 and Maalouf's "The Crusades Through Arab Eyes." Both Usumah and the editor assume that you already know basically what happened.

I suggest that you keep Runciman vol. 2 handy at all times. Usumah jumps backwards and forwards in time and it is sometimes difficukt to follow him. He also suffers from the medieval curse of obsessing on a topic and writing about it to death. The topics that fascinate him are wounds and hunting, and his discussion of these topics can get a little tedious.

But overall, a really cool book that I highly recommend to my fellow Crusades-freaks.

Usamah calls his book "Kitab al-Itibar" or "The Book of Instructive Example." True to its title, there is much to learn from this book, but what I found very interesting were perhaps things other than what Usamah wanted us to learn. For example, it was interesting to note the Arab perception of Franks, the relationship between Arabs and Franks during the first of two centuries of crusades on the Eastern Mediterranean, and aspects of the life of a prince and some commoners as well. The stories about hunts are numerous and tend to get boring, but they tell us of a rich fauna that is now largely extinct (lions, leopards, etc.). Usamah's talk of old age provides a sobering philosophical view of life.

What an excellent job by Philip Hitti who translated the manuscript from Arabic! Considering that the manuscript was lacking in things such diacritical marks (dots on Arabic letters), punctuation, etc. it is truly an amazing that he was able to pull this book together in the manner its stands. Thanks to Philip Hitti we can enjoy Usamah's book: it is truly a delightful read!

Unlike any other history book, this is a first hand account, day to day life of an Arab Syrian prince in the time of the crusades; He talks about his advantures, feelings and thoughts, it's just like going back in time almost 1000 years. If you like history and especially the crusades, this book is a must. I go back and read this book every once in a while, it's entertaining and informative.

Written in 1943, Hitti's work stands out as scholarship from the days when one could write History about the Arab world. This does not mean that I don't appreciate current analysis; I probably wouldn't be reading books about the Islamic world if not for current history - or perhaps I wouldn't be avoiding them, who knows? But what you will find in Hitti's work is the story of the Arabs as written by someone who's historical axe to grind is apparently no greater than impressing the reader that this is really neat stuff.

To be a bit less facetious, Hitti does have a point to make. He was an Arab Christian moved at a young age by the Arab anti-Ottoman movements of his youth. Probably for this reason (it says so in the introduction) he simply skips the Ottoman period altogether, picking up in the twentieth century after a four century gap. He has the right to pick his subject of course, but I would have liked to read about those years. But in what he does relate, the reader easily grasps the excitement he feels for the history of this subject. Unlike present-day texts, there is no feeling of defensiveness. Hitti is no apologist for anything. He tells the bad along with the good in a lively manner, obviously skipping a lot in a short book, but presenting the history of his subject as he apparently thinks is best. Hitti, I think, understood what many have forgotten - that one needs not love or hate what happened in the past to find that it all still makes fascinating history. In that context, The Arabs: A Short History is probably one of the best starting points for a novice reader in this field.

At just over two hundred pages, this book is the place to start learning Arabic history. Although it is certainly not the most detailed or precise account, its brevity ensures that a novice will not be overwhelmed with strange names and minute details of unfamiliar events.

Hitti's Short History will be quite useful to social studies teachers who want to give their students short articles on Arabic history to read. Each chapter in this book is short enough to serve that purpose. There are also eight nice maps that will help students of all levels develop a better understanding of how Islam changed the world.

Philip K. Hitti, of Lebanese Christian descent, the father of modern Near Eastern studies in the United States originally published this book in 1943 as a service to U.S. government personel and others whose interest was becoming focused on the Middle East.

He portrays a people who had a very rich civilization, whose rulers were studying ancient Greek philosophy at the same time Charlemagne and his advisors in Europe were tyring to learn to write their names. The Arabs rescued the artistic and philosophical treasures of Ancient Greece and ancient Persia and developed standards in Medicine, biology, philosophy, architecture, agriculture that were unprecedented in their day. These achievements Hitti says spread into Europe through Spain and Sicily and were the major factor in sparking the European rennaisance. I particularly enjoyed his description of Abassid Baghdad at its heighth. Consider his description of the daily schedule of the "man of learning" or the institution of the "ghilman" the "beardless young boys" who .....well I won't get into that.

He describes the conditions of non-slave non-Moslems as equal though varying depending on the degree of liberalism of the reigning Caliph. At times Jews and Christians had to wear special clothing and fix devils to the fronts of their houses and could not testify against Moslems in court. But more than a few of them rose to high positions in government, in scholarship, in bootlegging. The Jewish community in Baghdad was very active and large and its chief Rabbi was treated with veneration.

What caused this relatively glorious civilization to die? The mongol hordes, unequal distribution of wealth, emergence of new competitors, epidemics, ethnic strife, rulers spending more time amassing personal wealth and fornicating with slaves than attending to pubilic affairs and finally the conquest of much of it by Ottoman Turkey.

Hitti a few times shows a slight chauvanism. I was dissapointed in his lack of treatment of one of the crucial problems in the Arab world, the sectarian feuds within Islam, particularly Sunni-Shia. If I'm not mistaken Shiism was born out of life of the Caliph Ali and his son Hussein. Hitti says absolutely nothing about this when talking about these two men. He only says that Ali, who ruled from 656 to 661, was very popular but was murdered and that his son Hussein was called "the great divorcer" as a result of his having ruined one hundred marriages by his omniverous fornicating which was his prefered activity in life and he had no interest in the caliphate so he ceded it Muawiyah in return for the payment of a lifetime subisidy.

At the end of the book Hitti writes that the Arab people "have thus taken their place among the forward-marching democratic nations of the world and promise to make further contributions to the progress of mankind." It's hard to pin down when exactly that was written but that's obviously a bit too optimistic a statement in todays terms with most of the Arab world dominated by Western backed corrupt and brutal oligarchies. But perhaps its best to keep in mind Hitti's last sentence of the book:"The achievement of the past is the promise of the present for the future."