Abu Hakima Ahmad M. History of Eastern Arabia, 1750-1800: The Rise and Development of Bahrain, Kuwait and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia

Khayats, 1965. — xix, 213 p.The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries form a neglected period in the history of the Middle East. The Western orientalist mainly interested in classical Islamic civilization in its Arabic, Persian or Turkish phases, has tended to concentrate on the periods of greatness and originality, and to neglect those of decay and eclipse. The Middle Eastern historian too, not unnaturally, has preferred to lavish his interest and attention on the times of ancient greatness and recent revival, and to turn away from the ages of decline and apparent inaction that lie between them.These attitudes have led to the neglect of much that is important and valuable. Every epoch, said the great German historian Leopold von Ranke, is immediate to God. All periods, the dull and the brilliant alike, are significant in themselves, and deserving of study. There are in any case good reasons for not neglecting the time of eclipse.In the Middle East as elsewhere, the living and the active past is that of yesterday and the day before, not of a resplendent but remote antiquity. Its dullness and quiescence, moreover, are more apparent than real, and the excitement of many discoveries still awaits the historian.It is with some aspects of this last problem that Dr. Abu Hakima deals in the present work. His theme is the rise, in the 18th century, of the *Utub, the ancestors of the present ruling and other leading families of Kuwait and Bahrain. To throw light on this hitherto obscure corner of history, he has been able to assemble a great mass of information from Arabic chronicles, many of them unpublished, from local traditions, and from Western travelers and records, showing great skill and acumen in the discovery, collation and exploitation of these disparate materials. The resulting monograph constitutes a significant addition to our knowledge of Arabian and indeed of Middle Eastern History.