Arabs: A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires is a 2019 non-fiction book by British author and Arabist Tim Mackintosh-Smith. The book was written over nine years in Sanaa, Yemen, and during the last four years, the author was confined in his neighbourhood due to the eruption of the Yemeni Civil War. Covering the history of Arabs from their first known mention in 853 BCE up to the present, the book uses Arabic language as a unifying factor to tell the story. Arabs was met with dozens of reviews and mentions, the vast majority of them favorable.
Background
Mackintosh-Smith is an Arabist, travel writer and Arabic translator. He is a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and an emeritus Senior Fellow of the New York University Library of Arabic Literature. He views himself as a post-Orientalist, a term referring to Palestinian scholar Edward Said's book Orientalism. In his early twenties, he received a degree in Arabic studies from the University of Oxford and later moved to Yemen. He considers Yemen his adoptive country and has lived there for over 35 years. He reads and speaks Arabic fluently, with a Yemeni accent. His house in the capital Sanaa is a "medieval tower".
Mackintosh-Smith wrote several travel books including two about Yemen and a trilogy associated with Moroccan medieval explorer Ibn Battuta, which earned him the 1998 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the 2010 Oldie Best Travel Award and the 2010 Ibn Battuta Prize of Honour. The BBC produced a television series about his journey following the footsteps of Ibn Battuta.
In 2009 Mackintosh-Smith was commissioned by Yale University Press to write a book about Arab history, although he initially declined the task, because it was "too much work". He estimated it would take him 5 years, but eventually he needed about 9 years. The Yemeni Civil War (2015–present) confined him in his neighbourhood for more than 4 years. It was during this time of "neighbourhood arrest", with mortar shells and missiles falling around, and daily reverberating chants of "Death to America" that he wrote his Arabs. Due to total power cuts in Yemen during the war, the author used a solar panel powered laptop to write the book. Fleeing the war temporarily, Mackintosh-Smith has been staying in Kuala Lumpur since late 2019.
The book cover was designed by Alex Kirby. The choice to use gold foil patterns was meant to give it the look of "the definitive volume on the subject". Kirby said the inspiration for the cover came after he had gone through "dozens of books and sites featuring Islamic calligraphy, patterns and motifs". The cover design was chosen for the Association of American University Presses 2020 Book, Jacket, and Journal Show.
The audiobook was read by Ralph Lister, and is 25 hours 34 minutes long.
Content
The title of the book refers to Arabs without using the definite article "the" (Arabs instead of the Arabs) because, according to the author, the meaning of the word has repeatedly changed over time, making it "misleading" to use. The subtitle is partly inspired by Quranic verse 49:13: "O mankind, We have created you from male and female, and made you into peoples and tribes, that you may know one another. [emphasis added]".
In addition to the foreword, introduction and afterword, the book is divided into six main parts that cover the three main "waves of unity" of recorded Arab history with each taking about the same number of pages. The first wave (900 BC to AD 630) contains parts on "Emergence" and "Revolution", the second (630 to 1350) contains "Dominance" and "Decline", and the third (1350 to now) covers "Eclipse" and "Re-emergence".
The books opens in the foreword by asking a central question that would form the main theme of its thesis, namely about the causes of Arab unity and disunity. The author highlights the ambiguity associated with defining the meaning of the term "Arab" and notes the importance of Classical Arabic language in uniting this ethnic group, and thus the need to study its history. He considers language to be the "defining feature" of Arabs, calling them "arabophones" and referring to the Arab world as the "Arabic world". He emphasizes the importance of studying Arab history from the beginning, with the first mention of them in 853 BC, rather than from the rise of Islam as Albert Hourani did. At the time of writing this section in 2017, the time between then and the year 582 when, according to Islamic tradition, Muhammad, still a boy, was first recognized as prophet is exactly the same as between that and 853 BC (1435 years), meaning the rise of Islam lies in the middle rather than beginning of Arab history. Starting from the beginning is necessary in order to "de-islamize" and "re-arabize" the history of Arabs.
Emergence 900 BC – 600 AD
The first definitely known mention of Arabs in history dates to 853 BC in an Assyrian text which mentions a man named Gindibu, an Arab chieftain who owned 1,000 camels and helped King Shalmaneser III defeat his enemies. Arabs were marginal compared to Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians and Romans in the north and Sabaeans in the south. The Sabaeans and other South Arabian people did not speak Arabic; rather, their language group is Old South Arabian, which is as different from Arabic as German is from Italian. The abundance of Arabic dialects suggests the language was not unified at the time, and that Arabs were a mixed group genetically and linguistically, which is one possible etymology for the word "Arab".
Reviews
Arabs received dozens of reviews and mentions, the vast majority of them favorable.
Favorable
In a review published in The Guardian, Ian Black spoke favorably of the book, citing different passages that span the centuries of Arab history. He was particularly fascinated by the author's ability to combine "deep learning with penetrating insights delivered with dazzling turns of phrase and illuminating comparisons". He praised Mackintosh-Smith's use of analogies between past and present, which in addition to the attention paid to details helped to forge a "richly detailed chronicle of Arab language and culture". Steve Donoghue of The National reviewed it favorably, describing it as "a thoroughly remarkable achievement". While he found the first part of the book "haphazard" due to the gaps in documentation of early Arab history, the subsequent parts starting from the rise of Islam were "more readable". "[T]he bulk of this astounding book portrays grand personalities, national journeys and thrilling adventures, all seen through the prism of Arabic language," he added. Donoghue also wrote for Open Letters Review where he listed Arabs as one of the best 2019 history books and described it as "immersive".
In the New Statesman, Shiraz Maher called the book "extraordinary", noting its "original and interesting" use of the Arabic Language to chronicle the history of Arabs. He also praised it for avoiding Islamo-centrism in that it gave equal coverage to Arab history before, during and after the advent of Islam. Of particular interest to Maher was the author's direct addressing of modern controversial topics. The book was hailed as an excellent source for experts and non-experts alike. In The Spectator, Anthony Sattin referred to the book as "magisterial", "brilliant" and "important", emphasizing many of the same highlights as Maher. He added that Mackintosh-Smith is a "worthy successor" to historians Philip Hitti, Albert Hourani and Eugene Rogan who wrote influential works about Arab history. Sattin added:
[Arabs] is a book of vast scope and stunning insight, which manages to discuss even the seemingly intractable issues between Sunnis and Shi’ah and the intricacies of Arabic with a light touch, an easy style and a telling detail. Language emerges as the key to Arab identity, so it is not by chance that there are more entries for Arabic in the index than for anything else.
Another reviewer who compared Mackintosh-Smith to Albert Hourani was Robert Irwin. Writing for Literary Review, he said that Arabs was even more remarkable than Hourani's "great study" A History of the Arab Peoples. Irwin found the author's coverage of the Pre-Islamic era unusual, and his focus on the influence of ancient Arab Kingdoms over Islam as "careful and original". He added:
[Arabs] is a passionate and highly original meditation on Arab history in which etymological insights, snippets of poetry and historical anecdotes (a large number of which are apocryphal) are used to shed light on the Arabs’ past and their uncertain future [...] Although Mackintosh-Smith's book is perfectly scholarly, it is not a dutiful plod through a succession of slaughtered sultans and viziers or a tallying of gains and losses in forgotten battles in unpronounceable places. On the contrary, Arabs keeps throwing out brilliant insights, like sparks from a Catherine wheel.
Robert Irwin, for The Times Literary Supplement, named the book as his favorite of 2019, and described it as "exhilarating" despite its melancholic conclusions. The Penang Institute, which hosted an event for the author, said the book was "widely acknowledged to be the best single-volume history of the Arabs in the English language". During the event, Gareth Richards described the book as a "really superlative book". "It's really a book that betrays tremendous knowledge, mastering a huge range of sources. It's written very compellingly, beautifully erudite, and [...] it's also very very witty [...] it's really history at its best," he added. Noting that it took the author 9 years to write, he called it his magnum opus. In a brief review, Kirkus Reviews described the book as "[a] marvelous journey brimming with adventure and poetry and narrated by a keen, compassionate observer". Another short review was written by Jon Grand for The Book Stall Newsletter where he described the book as essential for understanding Arabs.
Listed in The Evening Standards best summer holiday reads for 2019, Arabs was described as an "erudite study" that "was worth the wait". It was also listed by The Bookseller as Editor's Choice for history, where it was described as an "extraordinarily comprehensive history of the Arabs and their culture". In Open, Keerthik Sasidharan listed Arabs as one of the 4 best books he read in 2019. He described it as a "marvel of lucidity" and "a lesson in how to be scholarly without being pedantic, on how to think about history". To him, Mackintosh-Smith is a "patient lover" who explores obscure parts of the vast Arab world and history. Tufts University listed the book in their 2020 Summer Books Recommendations, with Taylor McNeil describing it as a "magisterial book" that is "always clever, witty, and erudite". He expressed his sadness for finishing the book, and vowed to reread it. "[T]his is no rote recounting of history, but a deep and compelling take on who the Arabs are—and are not—and on the constant tension between unification of the Arabs as a people and their inevitable conflict and dissolution," he added.
In The Irish Times, Darragh Geraghty named the audiobook version of Arabs as one of 35 best listens during the COVID-19 lockdowns. He described it as surprisingly engaging, and praised its focus on Arabic culture and language rather than Islam. The Boston Athenæum also recommended reading the book. Jamil Sherif of Salaam hailed the book as a "masterpiece of historical explanation" and "monumental work of scholarship and erudition", emphasizing the author's sense of humour and ability to link past and present. In The British-Yemeni Society Journal, Noel Brehony reviewed the book favorably. He mentioned that Arabs "has been widely praised" and cited a passage from Ian Black's review in The Guardian. Viewing it as the successor to Hourani's book on the same topic, he praised the book's use of words to "enlighten, entertain and inspire". He added: