The Great Arab Conquests is intended to appeal to both the academic and lay reader, a practice seemingly on the increase. It is not, it would seem, an easy task for someone accustomed to writing only for an academic audience. To make the book accessible to the lay reader, Kennedy has chosen to limit the "scholarly apparatus," contenting himself instead with "noting the main sources used, the origins of direct quotes and the most relevant secondary literature." He has also chosen to write the text in what he calls an "unashamedly narrative" form, a choice of words that indicates a certain discomfort with that form in academic circles. Whatever case may be made against it from a scholarly perspective, the narrative form does result in a more accessible, more fluid, more engaging and enjoyable read.
Academic and critical readers need not be concerned about the narrative form and lack of "scholarly apparatus" in the text itself. There is much of substance in the book, and the text itself is not diluted. The narrative is frequently, though not to the point of distraction, interrupted by qualifications and notes about the often fragmentary, confused and contradictory nature of the sources, as well as about biases. However, the bulk of the more academic discussion is in the preface and foreword, including discussion of the authors' sources, the problems associated with that material, his use of and approach to it, and the state of relevant scholarship. There is also a good bibliography, and extensive notes.
In the foreword Kennedy makes a number of very interesting points about the use of sources. Some of these points are particularly relevant to current anti-Arab/anti-Muslim sentiments. Kennedy notes that historians since the 19th century "have wrung their hands and lamented the disorganization of the material, the apparently legendary nature of much of it and the endless repetitions and contradictions." However, what I find most relevant to today's sentiments are the wide-reaching challenges mounted in the 1970s and 1980s against the reliability of the early sources. "The result of this critical onslaught," Kennedy notes, "was that many historians, even those not convinced by all the revisionist arguments, have been reluctant to take these narratives seriously or to rely on any of the details they contain."
Kennedy argues that there are a number of reasons for a return to the early Arabic sources, including the fact that there exist sources outside of the Arabic tradition, notably the Syriac Khuzistan Chronicle and the Armenian history of Sebeos, "both written by Christians within a generation of the events they describe," that can be used to check against the Arabic literary tradition. There are also Greek, Coptic, and Latin sources, as well as archaeological records that can be used similarly. Kennedy makes brief mention of the archaeological evidence being at times "bedevilled by contemporary political concerns," but fails to discuss the wider implications of the time at which the wide-reaching challenges against the use of the Arabic literary tradition were mounted. It seems not at all unreasonable to suggest that the politics of oil and the rise of anti-Arab/anti-Muslim sentiment in the 70s and 80s may have contributed to the sudden reluctance to take the Arabic tradition seriously.
Article comments
1 - ali soegiharto
when I looked at this book, I remembered that I have a book with the same title only written by another, a retired British General, Sir John Bagot Glubb. Published by Hodder and Staughton, and was first printed in 1963. Is it ok to write a book with a title that existed. I have no intention to disregard the quality of the current book, but merely curiousity of such happening.
2 - Abram Bergen
I think book titles on such a broad topic often overlap. Think of books on WWI or WWII. How often do they share similar titles? There is so much to be written, and so much new scholarship to be brought to bear on the subject, that books with similar titles can be vastly different.
I did a little checking and it appears that the title does not have a subtitle, as Hugh Kennedy's does. Also, Glubb's book focuses only on the first 50 years of expansion. And though I haven't read Glubb's book, I imagine his perspective to be much different from Kennedy's. Glubb was a British General under the British occupation of Arab lands, so his perspective is likely influenced by his personal colonial involvement, whereas Kennedy approached the subject from a strictly academic perspective. However, since I haven't read Glubb's, I cannot comment further. It would be interesting to read them side-by-side.
Thanks for bringing it up.