Albert Hourani

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Albert Habib Hourani (born March 31, 1915 in Manchester , † January 17, 1993 in Oxford ) was an orientalist , an expert primarily on the history of the Middle East .

Life

Hourani was born in Manchester , England to immigrants from southern Lebanon . His family had converted from Greek Orthodox to Scottish Presbyterianism and his father was a deacon at the local church in Manchester. Hourani himself converted to Catholicism when he was an adult.

Hourani attended schools in Manchester and London before enrolling at Magdalen College where he studied philosophy , political science and economics . He graduated as the best of the class in 1939. During the Second World War he worked at the Royal Institute of International Affairs , in the office of the British Foreign Office in Cairo and as a government attaché at the British Army Headquarters there. After the end of the war, he was involved in preparations for the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry .

His academic career, which occupied him for the rest of his professional life, took him from 1948 to Magdalen College and St Antony's College (where he founded and directed the Middle East Department) and to the American University of Beirut . He also taught as a visiting professor, including at Harvard and Chicago .

Hourani married Odile Wegg-Prosser (* 1914) in 1955 while teaching at Magdalen College. He died in Oxford at the age of 77 , his wife Odile Hourani in 2003.

His most popular works are A History of the Arab Peoples (1991, published in German as Die Geschichte der Arabischen Völker in several editions), an easy-to-read introduction to the history of the Arab world and the Middle East . Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1789–1939 (1962) is one of the first scientific attempts at a comprehensive analysis of the nahda , the Arab rebirth in the nineteenth century and the opening of the Arab world to modern European culture, and is still one of the most important works on this Area. Syria and Lebanon (1946) and Minorities in the Arab World (1947) are other important books by Hourani. He also wrote extensive works on the Orientalist views of Middle Eastern cultures during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Publications

  • Albert Hourani: The History of the Arab Peoples. (Translation from English by Manfred Ohl and Hans Sartorius under the title A History of the Arab People . Warner Books 1992. ISBN 0-446-39392-4 ). Fischer Tb, 2002. ISBN 3-596-15085-X
  • Albert Hourani: Islam in European Thought. (Translation from English by Gennaro Ghirardelli under the title Islam in European Thought. Cambridge University Press 1992. ISBN 0-521-42120-9 ). Fischer Tb, 1994. ISBN 3-10-031831-5
  • Albert Hourani: Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939. Cambridge University Press 1983. ISBN 0-521-27423-0 (English)
  • Albert Hourani, Philip S. Khoury, Mary C. Wilson: The Modern Middle East: A Reader. IB Tauris & Co Ltd 2004. ISBN 1-86064-963-7 (English)

literature

  • Abdulaziz Al-Sudairi: A Vision of the Middle East: An Intellectual Biography of Albert Hourani. IB Tauris & Co Ltd, 2001. ISBN 1-86064-581-X (engl.)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hourani, Albert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hourani, Albert Habib (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English Middle East scholar
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Manchester , UK
DATE OF DEATH 17th January 1993
Place of death Oxford , UK