front cover of Capital Cities of Arab Islam
Capital Cities of Arab Islam
Philip Hitti
University of Minnesota Press, 1973
Professor Hitti, the distinguished authority on the Islamic world, views the highlights of Arab history through the windows of the capital cities where those events occurred. The account focuses on six cities -- Mecca, the religious capital; Medina, the caliphal capital; Damascus, the imperial capital; Baghdad, the intellectual capital; Cairo, the dissident capital; and Cordova, the European capital. The approach is historical rather than geographical, and the book is addressed to the student and the cultured layman rather than the specialist. Tourists to the Middle East and Spain also will find the book especially interesting.The author describes the physical settings of the cities, the primary occupations of the people, and the significant monumental structures. He discusses such modern history of a city as is relevant to the story, but the emphasis is on the period of Arab ascendancy -- roughly, the seventh to the thirteenth century. In addition to Arabic sources, he quotes Europeans’ descriptions where appropriate (such descriptions are rare because Europeans were not allowed in such cities as Mecca and Medina). As he makes clear, the six cities were more than capitals; they left their indelible imprint not only on the subsequent history of the Arabs and other Moslems but on the development of civilization at large.
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front cover of Islam
Islam
A Way of Life
Philip Hitti
University of Minnesota Press, 1970
Professor Hitti, the distinguished orientalist, writes vividly and on a basis of lifelong scholarship about Islam, showing that it is not only a religion but also a state and a culture and that in these overlapping and interacting aspects it is a whole way of life.Writing of Islam the religion Professor Hitti describes it as a system of beliefs and practices initially revealed by Allah to Muhammad in the seventh century, enshrined in the Arabic Koran, complemented by tradition, and modified through the ages in response to changes in time and place.Islam the state, he shows, is a political entity with an aggregate of institutions based on koranic law, founded by Muhammad in Medina, developed by his successors (caliphs) at the expense of the Persian and East Roman empires to a height unattained in either ancient or medieval times, and then fragmented into splinter states in western Asia, northern Africa, and southwestern and southeastern Europe.Islam the culture, he explains, is a compound of varied elements -- ancient Semitic, Indo-Persian, Hellenic -- synthesizes under the caliphate and expressed primarily through the medium of the Arabic tongue. Unlike the other two, Islam the culture was mainly formulated by conquered peoples rather than by Arabians. From the middle of the eighth century to the end of the twelfth century, it was unsurpassed in its literary, scientific, and philosophic output. In the final chapter, discussing the confrontation of Islamic culture with modernity, the author maintains that the world can view with gratitude Arab contributions to the past and can look with hope to their accomplishments in the future.
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