Tim Mackintosh-Smith
Arabs
A riveting, comprehensive history of the Arab peoples and tribes that explores the role of language as a cultural touchstone
This kaleidoscopic book covers almost 3,000 years of Arab history and shines a light on the footloose Arab peoples and tribes who conquered lands and disseminated their language and culture over vast distances. Tracing this process to the origins of the Arabic language, rather than the advent of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith begins his narrative more than a thousand years before Muhammad and focuses on how Arabic, both spoken and written, has functioned as a vital source of shared cultural identity over the millennia.
Mackintosh-Smith reveals how linguistic developments--from pre-Islamic poetry to the growth of script, Muhammad's use of writing, and the later problems of printing Arabic--have helped and hindered the progress of Arab history, and investigates how, even in today's politically fractured post-Arab Spring environment, Arabic itself is still a source of unity and disunity.
Audio Rights
UnavailableYale University Press manages the translation rights for Arabs
Film Rights
AvailableContact Luke Speed for more information
Over the course of an extensive, consistently fascinating history, Mackintosh-Smith expertly picks and chooses his details and analyses, providing an admirably complete picture of a consistently misunderstood part of world history and culture... A marvellous journey brimming with adventure and poetry and narrated by a keen, compassionate observer.
Mackintosh-Smith is an unusual Englishman abroad: a writer who lives, as he puts it, in a land not a library, experiencing history in situ. He combines deep learning with penetrating insights delivered with dazzling turns of phrase and illuminating comparisons...[he] has an enviable ability to enrich the big picture with fascinating detail and telling parallels.
[Mackintosh-Smith] writes with wonderful verve. Idioms and irreverence abound... it is rare to encounter the combination of commanding erudition and swashbuckling prose on such a grand scale.
Having admired the author's travels with Ibn Battutah, I wondered if he was up to this more monumental task. A formal history might require him to rein in a highly idiosyncratic, effervescent style. In fact, he is and it hasn't.
Masterly and brilliant. Arabs is a beautifully written narrative and acute analysis, both fresh and original, filled with fascinating characters and ideas, with as much depth before Islam as after and a true feeling not just for the Arab experience in history and faith but also for its language and culture. This book could only be written by a writer with a knowledge of the geography of the Arab soul as well the Arab land.
