Shorter Notices
The Arabs : A Short History. By Philip K. Hitti. (Macmillan. 10s. 6d.)
PROFESSOR HIM has condensed his monumental History of the Arabs, which was published here in 1938, into a brief outline history for the general reader. The result is a useful piece of popularisation. The original work was readable as well as scholarly, but was too long and detailed to find much of an audience outside the ranks of historians ; it also suffered from being one of the heaviest (avoir- dupois) tomes for its size that can ever have been produced. The present work, like its parent, is concerned with the great days of Arab civilisation in the Middle Ages, and though it carries the narrative down to the fall of the Mamluks it makes no attempt to plot the events during the confused centuries of Arab decadence. A
few new pages which are added as a postscript, and an elegant phoenix on the dust-cover suggest Professor Hitti's belief in the possibility of an Arab renaissance. Whether the Arabs are likely to recover as much intellectually as they have politically during the last century is a matter for speculation. Arab civilisation at its best, of which Professor Hitti draws a clear and enthusiastic picture, was as cosmo- politan as any that the world has known, but "it was Arabian neither in its origins and fundamental structure nor in its principal ethnic aspects." Persians, Greeks, Jews, and many others were brought in to serve the Arab aristocracy which ruled in Damascus, Baghdad and Cordova, and the equality of Islam absorbed more than its founders could digest. Professor Hitti's short book shows what a fascinating culture Islam produced at its zenith, and this may help English readers to understand why the racial and religious heirs of the Caliphs today feel they have something of value to the world to revive.
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