Eugene Rogan, The Arabs: A History, London: Allen Lane, 2009 When the late Anglo-Lebanese historian Albert Hourani published his A History of the Arab Peoples in 1991, he gave an authoritative answer to the question of how to write the history of the Arabs. Written in a measured, sober style, Hourani produced a version of Arab history that has held its own for two decades, well after its author's death in 1993. However, a new version of Arab history has now appeared that threatens to dethrone Hourani. Eugene Rogan's The Arabs: A History is a product of the same institution that Hourani presided over for many years, the Middle East Centre at St. Anthony's College in Oxford, and Rogan pays tribute to the generations of scholars, including well- known figures like the literary critic Mustafa Badawi and historian Roger Owen, who have contributed to this distinctive institution. But there the relationship between the two works ends, with Rogan having produced a book that addresses the reader in a way distinct from Hourani's academic manner. Hourani's book begins with adescription of Arabia and the eastern Mediterranean before Islam, "the world into which the Arabs came," that is reminiscent of the writings of the French historian Fernand Braudel, history being seen as embedded in patterns of settlement and trade. "For many centuries, the countries of the Mediterranean basin had been part of the Roman Empire," Hourani wrote. "A settled countryside produced grain, fruits, wine and oil, and trade was carried along peaceful sea routes. By the early seventh century there existed a combination of a settled world which had lost something of its strength and assurance, and another world on its frontiers which was in closer contact with its northern neighbours and opening itself to their cultures." That other world was the world of the Arabs, and Hourani goes on to consider the nature of Arab society, the advent of Islam and the subsequent Arab conquests, and the rise of the new civilisation that replaced Byzantine and Persian rule in the near east and eastern Mediterranean. By contrast, Rogan begins his history centuries later with the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517 CE. Where Hourani is analytical, Rogan is dramatic, even cinematic, preferring the immediacy of events to the description of underlying patterns. "The hot summer sun beat down upon al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghawri, forty-ninth sultan of the Mamluk dynasty, as he reviewed his troops for battle," Rogan writes in opening The Arabs: A History. "Since the founding of the dynasty in 1250, the Mamluks had ruled over the oldest and most powerful Islamic state of its day. The Cairo-based empire spanned Egypt, Syria, and Arabia. Qansuh, a man in his seventies, had ruled the empire for fifteen years. He was now in Marj Dabiq, a field outside the Syrian city of Aleppo, at the northern-most limits of his empire, to confront the greatest danger the Mamluks had ever faced... The date was August 24, 1516." There is little room here for analysis of Mamluk economy and society. Instead, the book provides brightly coloured pictures, including Qansuh's "light turban to protect his head from the burning sun of the Syrian desert," the "regal blue mantle over his shoulders, on which he rested a battle axe, as he rode his Arabian charger to review his forces," and the "forty descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, who wore copies of the Qur'an enveloped in yellow silk cases wrapped around their heads." Later, a source is provided for all this detail in the chronicles of the contemporary historian Ibn Iyas, and Rogan comments that while "the Mamluks upheld medieval military values... the Ottomans represented the modern face of sixteenth- century warfare." It dawns upon the reader that the important point to take away lies not in the illustrative detail but in the fact that the Mamluks were outclassed by the more modern Ottomans. Why was this so? Ignoring the military campaign, Hourani provides the answer. By the middle of the 15th century, Cairo's population was half of what it had been 100 years earlier as a result of plague, undermining state resources and revenues from taxation. Meanwhile, European countries were taking over the textile trade, and European navigation was expanding in the Mediterranean. Under these circumstances, Mamluk power was open to challenge from new dynasties, foremost among them the Ottomans, "which were able to find the resources, the manpower and wealth, to create large and effective armies, control a productive countryside and take its surplus, and foster the manufacture and trade of cities." In the light of such underlying forces, Qansuh's appearance on August 24 1516 is of little real significance, even if it does contribute to a dramatic story. In his introduction to The Arabs: A History, Rogan writes that his aim has been to write Arab history "using eyewitness accounts of those who lived through the tumultuous years of Arab history: chroniclers in the earlier periods give way to a wide range of intellectuals, journalists, politicians, poets, and novelists, men and women famous and infamous." But eyewitness accounts are double-edged swords in that eyewitnesses only see what they are in a position to see, it then being up to the historian to frame and make sense of their testimony. While it is interesting to read Ibn Iyas's account of events on the battlefield in 1516, their true significance is given by studying the trade figures. Rogan's history is full of drama, but the emphasis on first-hand experience can leave one thirsty not for more eyewitnesses, but for more explanation. He relies on Al-Jabarti's famous chronicle in describing the French invasion of Egypt in 1798, quoting from it to give a sense of the drama of the French arrival and how it was viewed by Egypt's population. However, naturally he then goes on to say that "Napoleon's real reasons for invading Egypt in 1798 were geostrategic," having to do with events in Europe, and these "real reasons," presumably the concern of the historian, were neither apparent to Al-Jabarti nor to other contemporary Arab writers. Later, in writing about the 1956 and 1967 wars, Rogan is similarly concerned to see these through Arab eyes, or at least the eyes of his eyewitnesses. Egyptian writer Nawal al-Saadawi is brought on to provide an eyewitness account of the Suez aggression, and Rogan's view, supported by al-Saadawi, is that the "Egyptian people" were "electrified" and volunteered "en masse to join the national effort." Rogan does not point out that memoirs are designed to cast the past in a particular light, acting to reinforce the credentials of their authors. Hourani is both more measured and more circumspect: while the Suez crisis "increased the standing of 'Abd al-Nasir in the surrounding Arab countries... [it] also deepened the split between those who supported him and those who regarded his policies as dangerous." Rogan quotes from Sadat's memoirs to provide insight into Nasser's state of mind in May 1967. "'Now with our concentrations in Sinai,' Nasser reflected, 'the chances of war are fifty-fifty. But if we close the Strait of [Tiran], war will be a one hundred percent certainty.' Nasser turned to the commander of his armed forces and asked, 'are the armed forces ready, Abdel Hakim [Amer]? Amer was positive: 'on my head be it, boss! Everything's in tiptop shape.'" Of the 1967 war, Hourani writes thatwhen Nasser asked the United Nations to withdraw from Sinai and closed the straits of Aqaba to Israeli shipping, "it may have appeared to him that he had nothing to lose: either the United States would intervene at the last moment... or, if it came to war, his armed forces, equipped and trained by the USSR, were strong enough to win." What appears in Hourani as a reasonable assessment of risk appears in Rogan more like a wild gamble, and reading the latter account one wonders about the eyewitness. Does Amer come across as quite so insouciant in the Arabic version of Sadat's memoirs? Reviewed by David Tresilian
