A remarkably high proportion of those who now teach and write about the modern Middle East in this country were taught by Albert Hourani. He encouraged the historians he supervised to take an interest in developments in anthropology and sociology. More than anyone else, he was responsible for challenging the notion that the Ottoman period was a dark age of political and cultural stagnation for the Arabs. In his later writings he also increasingly queried the notion that the recent history of the Arabs had to be understood in terms of responses to Western challenges.

LRB 25 January 2001 | PDF Download