Albert Hourani | |
|---|---|
| Native name | ألبرت حبيب حوراني |
| Born | Albert Habib Hourani (1915-03-31)31 March 1915 Manchester,Lancashire,England,United Kingdom |
| Died | 17 January 1993(1993-01-17) (aged 77) Oxford,Oxfordshire, England,United Kingdom |
| Resting place | Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford |
| Occupation | Civil servant, historian, lecturer |
| Alma mater | Magdalen College, Oxford |
| Years active | 1946–93 |
| Notable works | A History of the Arab Peoples(1991) |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 1 |
| Relatives | George Hourani (brother) |
Albert Habib Hourani,CBE (Arabic:ألبرت حبيب حورانيAlbart Ḥabīb Ḥūrānī; 31 March 1915 – 17 January 1993) was a liberal[1]Lebanese Britishhistorian, specialising in thehistory of the Middle East andMiddle Eastern studies.
Hourani was born inManchester, England, the son of Soumaya Rassi and Fadlo Hourani,[2] immigrants fromMarjeyoun in what is nowSouth Lebanon (seeLebanese diaspora). Fadlo had studied at what later became theAmerican University of Beirut and settled in Manchester as a cotton merchant.[3] Albert's brothers wereGeorge Hourani, philosopher, historian, and classicist, andCecil Hourani, economic adviser toPresident of TunisiaHabib Bourguiba. His family had converted fromEastern Orthodoxy toScottish Presbyterianism and his father became an elder of the local church in Manchester. Hourani himself, in turn,converted to Catholicism[broken anchor] in adulthood. Fadlo had extensive business contacts with the Levantine community both in Manchester and in the Ottoman Empire, and Cecil Hourani commented on the household's mixed Anglo-Levantine culture:
"... to my earliest memories in Manchester there were two faces: the one Near Eastern, Lebanese, full of poetry, politics, and business; the other partly Scottish Presbyterian, full of Sunday church-going and Sunday school, partly English through an English nanny and a succession of English and Irish cooks and maids."[4]
Fadlo Hourani tried to enroll Albert into apreparatory school in Manchester but it did not accept him as it did not take 'foreigners'; Fadlo instead opened analternative school in which Albert studied until the age of fourteen.[5] He later studied atMill Hill School, London[6] before attendingMagdalen College, Oxford, where he studiedPhilosophy, Politics, Economics and History (with an emphasis oninternational relations in the politics section of the degree), graduatingfirst in his class in 1936.
The academicH. A. R. Gibb was among his mentors.[7]
He taught in 1938–39 at theAmerican University of Beirut, the first time he had lived in an Arabic speaking country[8]InWorld War II he worked at theRoyal Institute of International Affairs (aka Chatham House) and in the office of the BritishMinister of State inCairo. When in Cairo, Hourani rented a room inPaul Kraus's house; in 1944 Kraus was found hanged in his bathroom for an alleged suicide.
After the war's end, he worked at the Arab Office inJerusalem and London, where he helped prepare the Arab case for theAnglo-American Committee of Inquiry.[9] Although he developed a liberal Arab nationalist sensibility as his education about the Middle East deepened, Hourani described himself as originally an unquestioning English liberal.[10]
He began his academic career, which would occupy the rest of his life, in 1948, teaching atMagdalen College,St. Antony's College (where he created and directed the college's Middle East Centre), theAmerican University of Beirut, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard. He ended his academic career as Fellow of St. Antony's and Reader in the History of the Modern Middle East at Oxford. Hourani trained more academic historians of the modern Middle East than any other university historian of his generation. Today his students can be found on the faculties of LSE, Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, MIT and the University of Haifa, among others.He was appointed CBE in the1980 Birthday Honours.
According to historianRashid Khalidi (quoted from within a series of essays gathered originally for a conference in Hourani's honor), "Hourani's students, and their students, have over the last few decades effectively populated and then produced the core of the field of modern Middle East history in North America and Europe, and parts of the Middle East and other regions as well (2016)".[7]
Hourani's most popular work isA History of the Arab Peoples (1991), a readable introduction to thehistory of the Middle East and an international best seller.Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1789–1939 (1962) is one of the first scientific attempts at a comprehensive analysis of thenahda, the Arab revival of the 19th century, and the opening of the Arab world to modern European culture; it remains one of the major works on this subject.Syria and Lebanon. A Political Essay (1946) andMinorities in the Arab World (1947) are other major works. He also wrote extensive works on theorientalist perspective on Middle Eastern cultures through the 18th and 19th centuries, and he developed the influential concept of the "urban notables" – political and social elites in provincial Middle Eastern cities and towns that served as intermediaries between imperial capitals (such asIstanbul under the Ottoman Turks) and provincial society.
The top book prize in theMiddle Eastern studies field is named theAlbert Hourani Book Award and it is given annually by theMiddle East Studies Association of North America (MESA). Hourani was an Honorary Fellow of both MESA and theAmerican Historical Association (AHA).
Among his students areAbbas Amanat,Nazih Ayubi,Aziz al-Azmeh,Michael Gilsenan,Rashid Khalidi,Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot,Roger Owen,Ilan Pappé, andAndré Raymond (and others).[7]
In 1955 Hourani married Christine Mary Odile Wegg-Prosser (1914–2003), while teaching at Magdalen College, Oxford. He died in Oxford in 1993 at the age of 77. His widow died in 2003 at the age of 89. Both are buried inWolvercote Cemetery in Oxford.
They had a daughter, Susanna Hourani, who became professor ofpharmacology and Head of Department in the School ofBiomedical andMolecular Sciences of theUniversity of Surrey.
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