Dar al-Ilm lil-Malayin remains, for all the newness of its founding, the most active publishing house in the Lebanese capital. The books this house has published — literary, scientific, political, and social — now exceed one hundred, all of them worth reading and rich in benefit.
And the work now being undertaken by Mr. Munir Baalbaki, one of the two owners of this house, together with Dr. Nabih Faris, head of the History Department at the American University of Beirut, in translating the "History of the Islamic Peoples" by the famous German Orientalist Carl Brockelmann — this work, we say, may well be among the most outstanding and greatest undertakings of this young and energetic house.
For Brockelmann's History of the Islamic Peoples is a mighty tome, gathering between its two covers the history of the Arabs and the Muslims from the most ancient ages down to our own day.
Before Brockelmann, writing on the history of the Islamic peoples and states was a kind of perilous venture, for want of sources... And it is a very bold and blessed venture indeed on the part of Messrs. Faris and Baalbaki to undertake the translation of this precious tome into the Arabic language.
The two translators have begun with Brockelmann's first book, "The Arabs and the Arab Empire," which contains chapters on: Arabia before Islam, in which he studies the Arab race, Arab civilization in the Arab lands, social conditions, and the Arab kingdoms; and a chapter "On Muhammad the Messenger" — his youth, his marriage, his mission, his hijra, his stance toward the Jews, his teachings.
And a chapter on the first four Caliphs and the conquests accomplished in their days.
Then a chapter on "the Umayyads," with which the first book comes to a close.
In My Library
The two translators have entrusted Dr. Omar Farroukh with commenting on certain views that conflict with the Islamic point of view...
This is the second edition of the book "The Calamities," whose correction and printing were supervised by Albert Rihani, brother of Ameen Rihani.
"The Calamities" is the title of a book Rihani brought out in 1928; it is a summary of the history of Syria from the first age after the Flood down to the era of the Republic in Lebanon.
And what is in "The Calamities"??
In it is a dark, black history of this nation that so often sings the praises of its history. And what, pray, might the history of this nation be? And who, pray, might our forefathers have been!—
As for our history — as Rihani says — it is the history of a company of people who lived as slaves to tyrannical forefathers.
Our history is dark; it is a history of fanaticisms and of minorities. From the fanaticism of tribes to the fanaticism of families...
And minorities that have never been settled by any sensible settlement since the days of the Umayyads, but were now bait for the hunter among rulers, now a mount for the oppressor, now a sword in the hand of the conqueror, and now prey for the avengers.
As for our forefathers, they ate the whip and paid the tribute...
We come away with a single thought after reading this history, and that thought is this: that we, the grandchildren of those men, must write history a new and splendid page.
A charming title for a book of two hundred and twenty-four pages by Mrs. Madeleine Arqash, which brings back to the reader's mind the memory of the departed figure of women's letters, May Ziadeh—until, turning some of its pages, he is reminded of the letters of Madame de Sévigné to her daughter Madame de Grignan.
Yet despite the resemblance in
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