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Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss , eds. Arabic Thought Beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda . Cambridge, England : Cambridge University Press , 2016. xxiii + 437 pages, contributors, abbreviations, bibliography, index. Cloth US$120.00 ISBN 9781107136335 .
This book is a valuable and intelligent reexamination of the roots of modern Arabic political thought in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. It is a collective work, framed and edited very ably by Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss. It is based on a conference at Princeton University in October 2012 marking the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Albert Hourani's seminal work: Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1939. Hanssen and Weiss's book title is slightly misleading in that it does not really cover Arabic thought beyond--i.e. after--the liberal age; but the editors do promise a second volume which will do just that (xv).
The volume provides a valuable exegesis of Hourani's thought and an assessment of his role in the making of modern Middle East studies. It also presents an extremely rich revisiting and broadening of research on the various thinkers of this bygone period, which is often referred to in Arabic with the term Nahda (awakening, rising). In addition to the thought leaders examined by Hourani, the authors in this volume explore additional currents of thought in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Syria, Egypt, Palestine, and India.
For the general reader, the book raises a number of timely questions...