Arabs: A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires

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.

• Lotharingia: A Personal History of Europe's Lost Country
• The Regency Years: During Which Jane Austen Writes, Napoleon Fights, Byron Makes Love, and Britain Becomes Modern
• The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found
• Chaucer: A European Life
• Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History
• How the Classics Made Shakespeare
• The Global Age: Europe 1950-2017 (The Penguin History of Europe)
• Emperor: A New Life of Charles V
• The Arabs: A History
• The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age