A Concise History of the Middle East

Bibliographic Essay

As we have written this work to introduce the history of the Middle East to college
students primarily and to the public secondarily, the books and other sources that
we recommend are chosen for readability and reliability. The selection has not
been easy, for to quote Ecclesiastes: "Of making books there is no end." Further¬
more, we give special attention to reputable and useful Web sites.
For well-written syntheses of Islamic history, see Ira M. Lapidus, History of Is¬
lamic Societies, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Albert
Hourani, History of the Arab Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1991); and John Esposito, éd., The Oxford History of Islam (Oxford: Oxford Uni¬
versity Press, 1999). Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 3 vols. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1974) is a brilliant work of synthesis, but only ad¬
vanced students can be expected to read all—or even some—of it.
This introductory textbook might be read together with a collection of original
sources in translation; we have several in mind: Marvin E. Gettleman and Stuart
Schaar, eds., The Middle East and Islamic World Reader (New York: Grove Press,
2003); Bernard Lewis, Islam: From the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Con¬
stantinople, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1974); William H. McNeill and
Marilyn Waldman, The Islamic World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1983); and F. E. Peters, A Reader on Classical Islam (Princeton: Princeton Univer¬
sity Press, 1994). Drs. Waldman and William A. Graham edited a useful collection
called Islamfiche, published by the Islamic Teaching Materials Project and distrib¬
uted by Inter Documentation of Zug (Switzerland).

GENERAL RESEARCH AIDS

A good reference tool for students is Jere Bacharach's Middle East Studies Hand¬
book, 2nd ed. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986), which contains dy¬
nastic tables, lists of rulers, maps, chronology, abbreviations, and other aids. For a
more specialized reference book, see Trevor Mostyn and Albert Hourani, eds.,

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