Los árabes

In this masterful book, Tim Mackintosh-Smith traces nearly three thousand years of history, bringing to life before us the peoples and tribes of the Arabian Peninsula who conquered many lands and spread their language halfway around the world. Mackintosh-Smith traces the origins of this process to the dawn of the Arabic language itself, long before the advent of Islam, and turns Arabic, both spoken and written, into one of the axes that define the cultural identity shared by Arabs during millennia. Going back to pre-Islamic poetry and the conflicts between the Bedouins and the sedentary peoples of Arabia, the author shows us the birth of Arabic writing, the emergence of Mohammed and the conquests of Islam, the Crusades, the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties, the splendor of al-Andalus, the problems of the Arabic printing press, Turkish rule, colonialism, the rise and decline of pan-Arabism, the modern flourishing of the Arabic language, the Arab Spring, and the rise of radical Islam. This is the definitive history of the Arab people and culture over three millennia; an epic story whose past echoes resonate in the present and are more relevant than ever, both in the West and in the East.