Arab Society and Culture: Past and Present

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course aims at introducing students to the history of the Arab world. Through a panoramic view encompassing twelve centuries of Arab history and culture, we look at all sides of this rich and venerable civilization: the beauty of the Alhambra and the great mosques, the importance attached to education, the achievements of Arab science—but also internal conflicts, widespread poverty, the role of women, and the contemporary Palestinian question. We explore how the religion of Islam created a far-flung Arab Muslim world that embraced lands reaching from the shores of the Atlantic to Iraq and the Indian Ocean. Each has its own geographical features and historical traditions, yet certain themes and experiences are common to all: the rise and spread of Islam, the growth of the Ottoman Empire, the expansion of European trade and empire, and in the last decades, the challenge of Islamic resurgence and integration into a new kind of world. We attempt at a clear and comprehensive interpretation of the paths of the Muslim religion, its divisions, its authorities and traditions, its current contradictory powers to unite and to divide. Throughout, social institutions and culture are intertwined with politics and economics. The texts we read in this class are studded with famous names from the past—Ibn Khaldun, al-Ghazali, and Ibn Sina (Avicenna); Saladin and ‘Abd al-Nasir (Nasser)—as well as with those of the recent memory—Hafiz al-Asad and Saddam Husayn; the Nobel Prize winner Najib Mahfuz, the cultural critic Edward Said and popular singer Umm Kulthum.