The Arabs from Alexander the Great until the Islamic conquests : Orientalist perceptions and contemporary conflicts / Ayad Al-Ani.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Al-Ani, Ayad, author.

Series:

Gorgias handbooks ; 54.

Gorgias handbooks ; 54

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Arabs--History--To 622.

Arabs.

Europe--Civilization--Arab influences.

Europe.

Middle East--History--To 622.

Middle East.

Middle East--Relations--Rome.

Rome--Relations--Middle East.

Rome.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (284 pages)

Place of Publication:

Piscataway, New Jersey : Gorgias Press, [2021]

Summary:

This is not a conventional history book. It is rather a study of the sociology of historical writing about a period that, although quite distant in time (330 B.C. to A.D. 670), still influences political discourse about the Arab world, and especially the relationship between the West and the Middle East. This book focuses on the riddle of the disappearance of the Arabs from history before Islam, their sudden appearance behind the banners of the Prophet, and the powerful and traumatic effect this emergence into world history has had on the relationship between the Arabs and the West. Although the mainstream Western historical narrative does not see the Arabs before Islam as a political or cultural force, or even as members of a defined cultural unit, Arab historians and more traditional Western sources do permit a rather different picture once misguiding or obscuring labels have been removed. In this study, Arabia and the Arabs appear as a region and people that enjoyed considerable linguistic, cultural, religious, and political unity centuries before Islam. The appearance of the Prophet was, from this perspective, the culmination of a historical process that had already been long underway – perhaps delayed by Roman interference in the East and the establishment of the Roman diocese of Oriens, but also reinforced by Hellenistic-Roman culture and religious thought. In this scenario, the rise of Islam is in no way surprising or in need of explanation as a retrospective forgery, as the revisionist school would have it.

Contents:

Frontmatter

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The disappearing Arabs before Islam: Beyond Orientalism. Preface to the international edition

Foreword to the German edition

1. Introduction to the problem of de-Arabization

2. Oriens and Arabia without Arabs?

3. In search of the Arab koine

4. Can Non-Europeans think?

5. The Hellenistic-Roman Orient: Dark design, suppression, forgetting and no explanation?

6. Yarmūk: The mysterious end of Rome in Oriens

7. Taboos: The smooth integration of the Arabs/Semites of the Oriens into the Islamic Umma

8. The Pope of Baghdad

9. Orient and Rome?

10. Demarcation, new beginnings and displacement

11. Transgressions: The “Christian” Qur’an

12. Conclusion

13. Appendix. Diffusion: Dilmun, Gilgamesh, al-Khidr and the Qur’an – the power of the imaginary in the Arab region

14. Addendum to the German edition: The return of the Oriental

Plates

Maps

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781463242862

1463242867

OCLC:

1245961664