With eyes of a British traveler .. Three thousand years of Arab history

Imran Abdullah

The writer and British traveler Tim Mackintosh-Smith opened his new book, "Arabs Three Thousand Years of History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires", from Sanaa, where missiles and missiles are now being played and slept on guns.

Smith is fluent in Arabic, and after studying at Oxford, he traveled to settle in the well-known capital of Yemen, where he is passionate and deeply attached.

This is reflected in his writings, which he describes as "not dry," like the writings of the usual Western researchers. In one chapter of the book, a funny comparison is made between pre-Islamic poetry, pop music festivals and pop.

But Sanaa, which Smith knew, is no longer the same. Bombardment, destruction, blood and Huthi soldiers on earth and Saudi planes in the sky do not resemble Sanaa dating back to the ancient Arabs before Islam.

In his book, Smith dates back to pre-Islamic times. Three thousand years ago, the first Arab dynasties formed the Arab civilization, including Saba and Hamir.

He believes that the story of the Arabs is the story of nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes and settled urban peoples alike, who have collected one tongue and one religion.

Smith studies the social and economic changes (which were the domestication of camels and the restoration of beauty) and formed the Arab world before the advent of Islam.

Perfumes and precious stones were the distant history of oil and gas in our time, and Arabs always challenged their Assyrian, Persian, Roman and Mongol neighbors and fought wars behind legendary leaders, knights and preachers who were on horseback with light weapons.

The great paradox was the success of the Arab cavalry and conquests across continents by spreading their language and their beliefs in the great Islamic world, which now includes diverse peoples such as Persians, Turks, Tajiks, Berbers and Afghans, but successive Arab migrations from the peninsula led to cultural desertification in the cradle of Islam.

Smith was influenced by the writings of Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta (d. 779 AH / 1377 AD). He was keen to establish a good relationship with his Yemeni surroundings and teach children English and music.

Prominent stations of Arab history
Smith believes that the great conquests of Arab history passed through prominent stations beginning with the spread of Arabic across the Arabian Peninsula in the centuries before Islam. At a later stage, he tells the tales of Arab knights who leave the desert in the 7th and 8th centuries to open the Old World.

While Smith explains this departure and opening in traditional Islamic history as a religious mission, he sees it as a continuation of the ancient Arab tradition of raids and looting, and even more finds a dark historical continuity in the present time of this violent tradition of "pillaging" contemporary dictators such as Bashar al-Assad .

In this comparison, Smith ignores the fundamental differences between the old looting of the Arab bandits and the expansion of the Islamic civilization, which brought with it knowledge, rules and administrative systems, and did not loot the open cities.

Elsewhere in the book, the author refers to the first date of an Arabic inscription known in 853 BC, 1400 years before the mission of the Prophet Muhammad.

In the view of the different tribes and peoples united during the stage of major conquests from the Gulf to North Africa through the same Arabic writing, and echoed the words of the Arabs of the Koran, which "was not only the Bible of Islam, but was the founding text of the Arab," considering that the Arab and Islamic history are closely linked together.

Smith attempts to enrich the picture with astonishing detail, pointing to the arrival of Arab power in its peak in the ninth century AD when the Abbasid dinar was equivalent to the US dollar today - in its universality and spread - as it indicates intellectual creativity, citing Arabic vocabulary such as alcohol, algebra and algorithm, To become "a new Latin language".

Arabs in modern times
The book is not limited to the history of the ancient Arabs, the subject of the Arabs during the three thousand years, including the modern times, which began the French campaign on Egypt in 1798, carried with it the printing press, and national ideas attributed to the "hope of hope" short and disappointing, Egyptian Nasser.

In another portrayal of the Arabs of the 21st century, Smith compares the attack of supporters of the Egyptian regime to the appearance of beauty in Tahrir Square in the January 2011 revolution, and among the protesters demanding freedom in a country that has long known dictatorship.

Smith considers that the only success of the Arabs in this era is the Arab Spring, which started from Tunisia (the closest to Europe) but was relatively successful and turned into a dark winter or autumn Arab Egypt has returned to the model of more dictatorship than the time of former President Hosni Mubarak.

The Gulf sheikhs, who build skyscrapers and shopping malls, have become absolute kings. In Syria, the country suffers from the scourge of war and devastation in one of the unfinished chapters of suffering, while Palestinians continue to suffer the consequences of the Balfour Declaration and the imperialist division of the Middle East.

In his visit to Mauritania, the most remote Arab country from Yemen, the author hears the rhythms familiar to the Yemeni dialect he knows. Even in Spain, the author refers to the effects of the Arabic language that remained for eight centuries in Andalusia.

Smith believes that the growth of written Arabic - in modern times, especially in the European Renaissance - has slowed down, but the gap in the 19th century and in the current digital age has narrowed. However, it shows that the current threat to Arabism comes from two completely different sources: oppression and tyranny, On the era of "misinformation technology", especially in the Arab world.

The Arab Twitter wars are part of a contemporary Arab scene that can be compared to the graffiti and tombstones of the pre-Islamic era. It is assumed that living amid the gloom and despair of the present Arab world is an example of the schism that the Qur'an requires believers to avoid.

"We do not need democracy, we need a strong leader," he said, referring to people who do not want freedom, but want a model of dinosaurs or powerful autocrats, citing confessions from Iraqis and Libyans.

Smith believes that the sun of Arab civilization fell into the hands of dictators, and democracy has not found fertile ground in the Arab world.

Smith's first book, "Yemen: Journeys in the Earth's Dictionary," won the Thomas Cook Prize for Travel and Travel Books in 1998. His next book, or journey, deals with the travels of Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta in the 14th / 8th century AH through the ancient Muslim world.

Both works are major New York Times books, and his book "The Thousand Columns Hall" depicts the scenes of the adventures of Ibn Battuta of India and was published in 2006.

In May 2011, Smith was selected by Newsweek magazine, one of the best travel and travel book of the last twelve percent.

In August 2010, Smith published the series "Access to Land: On the Edge of Islam." Ibn Battuta and Moroccan tours from Zanzibar to the Alhambra Palace (now Spain) and even to China and Timbuktu followed the Ibn Battuta Prize from the Arab Center for Geographical Literature.