What is the relationship between thought and practice in the domains of language, literature and politics? Is thought the only standard by which to measure intellectual history? How did Arab intellectuals change and affect political, social, cultural and economic developments from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries? This volume offers a fundamental overhaul and revival of modern Arab intellectual history. Using Hourani's Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge, 1962) as a starting point, it reassesses Arabic cultural production and political thought in the light of current scholarship and extends the analysis beyond Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and the outbreak of World War II. The chapters offer a mixture of broad-stroke history on the construction of 'the Muslim world', and the emergence of the rule of law and constitutionalism in the Ottoman empire, as well as case studies on individual Arab intellectuals that illuminate the transformation of modern Arabic thought.

This book is a most comprehensive study of the modernizing trend of political and social thought in the Arab Middle East.

Cutting-edge scholarship on post-war Arab intellectual history that challenges conventional thinking about authoritarianism, religion and revolution in the modern Middle East.

Leading scholars discuss how 'Islam' and 'liberalism' have been entwined historically and politically and how Muslims have thought about this longstanding relationship.

Examines the 'Nahda', a cultural renaissance in the Arab world, through the utopian visions of Arab intellectuals during the nineteenth century.

Leading scholars discuss ideology and hotly contested post-structuralist theory.

Explores the many facets of Arab political thought from the nineteenth century to the present day.