This newly released March 2019 630-page book is a book that rewards patient reading. Mackintosh Smith is well versed with the Arabic sources and has given us a romp through Arab history. Foreword and Introduction are confusing to a certain extent. The first part of the book explores the origin of Arabic as a language, the process by which it became the lingua franca of the Arab world and the important role it played to unify the different tribes that inhabited the Arab world.
The second part of this book is on the Prophet, the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties.
The third part is a quick romp through the decline of the Arab world to its reawakening from 1800 to now. The prognosis is bleak.
Readers looking for a less structured history of the Arabs or already familiar with Arab history will derive joy from this book. Other types of readers may prefer to start with The Arabs by Eugene Rogan for a history starting from the 16th century Ottoman conquests to present, and Sowing the Wind by John Keay.
I can’t give this book 5 stars.
This book has a strange way of citing endnotes. It does not tell the reader which sentence in the text has an endnote. The end result is a huge distraction to the reader. I hope such ‘ stylish’ presentation is not repeated by Yale University Press in future books.
Quotes are liberally given without some background info on the source documents. To non – experts on Arabic literature this is quite frustrating. I look forward to more books by Tim Mackintosh-Smith.