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A review by lpm100
The Arab Mind by Raphael Patai
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Book Review
"The Arab Mind"
5/5 stars
"The detailing of a VERY different conceptual space"
*******
Of the book
-322 pps/20 chapters= 20pps/chapter
-587 point citations for 322 pages of text.1.8/per (=well sourced)
-10 hours of reading time
This book is just a little bit too busy.
Preface to the 1976 edition, one to the 1983 edition, and then another full preface on a personal note; At the end, we have a 1983 postscript that consists of 8 parts and 46 pages. And then TWO appendices after that, one about the judgment of historians Spengler and Toynbee and the other--a comparison of the Arab world and Spanish America.
It must be clear that this author was actually someone who:
1. Lived in Arab countries for many years--not merely an armchair academic. (He puts me in mind if somebody like Eric Harper or Ernest vanDenhaag.)
2. Spoke and taught Arabic in what later became the State of Israel. (The author is deceased, and he was born in such a way that he was teaching Arabic in the 1930s; also, a lot of his observations are from before the '70s, and so they are out of date with respect to demographic numbers. But, a lot of what he says still makes sense in the present day).
3. Completed two PhDs
4. Portrayed the Arabs actually very sympathetically, but a lot of what he observes people will find unflattering--Which does not make it any less true.
*******
This book was originally published in 1973, revised in 1983, and republished in 2002. (Author died in 1996.)
In spite of its age, I think it is still worth reading because:
1. It was written just before it became fashionable to assume that all human beings are the same and all cultures are equal in every way and it is "racism" to say anything otherwise; lot of failed initiatives and blood and treasure have been wasted going to places and assuming that the Arabs are tabula rasa.
2. It is a snapshot of what a perceptive observer saw at that time. (And perceptive observers are a rare thing.)
3. Some of what is written here is testable; some of it may be explanation that has stood the test of time.
*******
Second order thoughts, first:
1 It seems like when you study great civilizations, they have a lot of resonances to each other.
a. It seems like, by this book, the Arab civilization has a Bedouin/tribal substrate. And in Arab eyes, they are the things to be emulated. (India is a society with an Aboriginal substrate and a superstructure created by invasions from 20 centuries ago. )
b. China is a society with a glorious past that they keep replaying over and over because in their mind, the perfect days were in the past at some indeterminate point. And that seems to be the exact same thing that is repeating itself in the Arab world. It feels like they have a very schizophrenic relationship with modernity.
c. Closed civilizations have a VERY HARD time with the fact that they are not the center of the world once they wake up. (Japan only found out the emperor was not Divine in 1945; China/The Middle Kingdom only became aware that it was not in the center of the world around 1979.)
2. Surprisingly, Arabs in the United States have some of the highest rates of interracial marriage--but WHITE/ASIAN ONLY. (Andrzej Kulcycyzski: over 80% of them have non-Arab spouses, and by the third generation only 1% of them are married to each other.) Their interfaith marriage is 39%.
3. The section on "unity and conflict" was very eye-opening. I couldn't even pull all of the good quotes out of it because they were so many, and I think the upshot is: factionalism and protracted and bloody antagonisms are idiosyncratically Arab and pre-Islamic.
They do not depend on any colonial power or, indeed, anything except the Arabs themselves. If it was not *these* two factions fighting against each other, it would just be *those* two.
4. Intra-Arab fighting used to be mostly/symbolic ceremonial, and with a minimum of bloodshed; but the addition of Western weapons has made them much more deadly than they would otherwise have been.
5. The book was written at a time when the number of children per Arab woman was 9; today, it is just barely over 3. Dramatic improvements in primary and tertiary education have been observed.
*******
For brevity, I will present direct quotes from two sources:
1. Arabic proverbs/Quotes from other authors;
2. The most striking observations of the author, as direct quotes.
*******
>>>Proverbs:
(p.28) Character impressed by the mother's milk cannot be altered by anything but death.
(p.44) I against my brothers; I and my brothers against my cousins; I and my cousins against the world.
(p.85) Blood demands blood.
(p.155) Labor for This World of yours is if you were to live forever; and labor for the Other World of yours as if you were to die tomorrow.
(p.117) The shared kettle does not boil.
(p.117) Better a mat of my own than a house shared.
(p.134) Whenever a man and a woman meet, the devil is the third.
(p.263) [Edward Atiyah] Until 1798, when Napoleon set foot on Egyptian soil, the Arabs were still living in the Middle Ages.
(p.265) They live in a splendid past as an escape from the miserable present.
(p.297) Piety and virtue lie in obedience and conformity, while nothing is more repugnant than change and innovation.
(p.302) [Hans Tütsch] Proud peoples with a weak ego structure tend to interpret difficulties on their life path as personal humiliations and get in tangled and endless lawsuits or through themselves into the arms of extremist political movement.
>>>Author:
(p.29) A man who has only girl children is derided as an abu banat ("father of daughters").
(p.31) A boy is breastfed for 2 to 3 years; a girl, for one to two.
(p.34) This comforting and soothing of the baby boy often takes the form of handling his genitals.
(p.14) The world, in the traditional Arab view is divided into two parts: "House of Islam," and an outer one, "House of War."
(p.36) In the meantime clashes occur, and with them comes the bitter taste of the father's heavy hand, the rod, the strap, and at least among the most tradition-bound Bedouin tribes, the saber and the dagger whose cut or stab is supposed, beyond punishing the disobedient son, to harden him for his future life.
(p.67) The intention of doing something, or the plan of doing something, or the initiation of the first step toward doing something - - any one of these can serve as a substitute for achievement and accomplishment.
(p.75) This means, of course, that to the mind of Muhammad, The Exodus of the Children of Israel from Egypt (13th century BCE) and the foundation of Xtianity were practically simultaneous events. [Talks about the use of aspect in Arabic, as opposed to tense.]
(p.79) Among the Arabs, with their typical ahistoricity, the heroic age is actually timeless.
(p.91) By practicing hospitality lavishly, one "whitens" one's "face," that is, one's reputation; contrarywise, a show of inhospitality can "blacken" one's face.
(p.98) The most preferred marriage is that between children of two brothers.
(p.94) A number of games are voluntarily engaged in by adolescent boys in which their courageous tested. Lashings are administered to them or their arms are burned with pieces of duracaine or cigarettes or cut with a knife..... The most painful form of the circumcision is performed among some Arab tribes in the Hijaz and Asir, where the skin of the entire male organ is removed, as well as the skin of its environs on the belly and inner thigh.
(p.89) Bedouin values: hospitality, generosity, courage, honor, self-respect.
(p.155) There is belief in innumerable demons and spirits jinnis, ghouls, ifrit, the evil eye, as well as belief in and ritual worship of numerous saints who, especially at their tomb sanctuaries, wield great supernatural power.
(p.195) The second type of bilingualism is found in all parts of the Arab world.... of literary Arabic and local colloquial dialects.
(p.193) By 1971, more than 2 million Algerian students were learning French, a figure never even remotely approached during the period when Algeria was an integral part of France. (8.8 million as of 2024.)
(p.191) In fact.... There is an almost direct correlation between the degree of cultural and linguistic assimilation to the west and the intensity of anti-western feelings.
(p.182) Arab music is not tempered, and is based on quarter tones, 24 of which constitute an octave..... What western music considers as harmony is regarded in Arab musical tradition as dissonance ... Arab music is in its entirety modal and possesses dozens of modes. (Wow! So THAT'S why their music sounds like that!)
(p.181) Just as the decorative frieze has no beginning and no end, but simply starts and ends according to the space to which it is applied, so the Arab musical frieze fills the available stretch of time and is characterized throughout by the same level of emotion sustained unchanged from beginning to end.
(p.179) Having foresworn the use of animal in human figure even as a decorative motif, Arab art was left with only three elements...... The plant motif, the geometric motif, and the Arabic script.
(p.216) This idea of the national unity of all Arabs is a very new concept.
(p.144) Only in the outlying areas..... has homosexuality come out into the open with the sheikhs and the well to do men lending their sons to each other.
(p.229) According to tradition, one of the two original ancestors was Qathan, progenitor of all the South Arabian tribes, and the other was Adnan, ancestor of all the North Arabian tribes..... The Southern tribes are considered the true Aboriginal Arab stock, while the Northern tribes are considered merely Arabized peoples.
(p.251) Such willingness to go through the procedures of mediation again and again can only be understood as a conditioned reflex based on the reliance on mediation for countless generations.... The persistent Arab refusal to meet in direct talks with Israel can be considered as a case in point. It appears that in this instance, too, Arab behavior reflects the old tradition of considering the mediator conditio sine qua non for resolving the conflict without loss of face, while the direct peace negotiations, insisted upon by Israel, remain for them a psychological impossibility to accept.
(p.291) In historical perspective, the Arabs see the West as a young disciple who has overtaken and left behind his first world master, medieval Arab civilization. Now it is the turn of the Arabs to sit at the feet of their former pupil, a role which is beset by emotional difficulties.
(p.321) It is a psychological law that people nurture a greater hatred toward those who have been their inferiors in the past and then succeed in outdistancing them, than toward those who proved their superiority from the very first moment of their encounter.
(p.328) Turning our attention to the traditional components of the air personality, we find that they fall into two main categories: a pre-Islamic Bedouin substratum.... and the Islamic component, superimposed on the first one and often merging with it imperceptibly.
Verdict: Strongly recommended. I feel bad that I waited 7 years to read it.
*******
Vocabulary:
thawb
abā
abu banaāt
kūfiyya
iqāl
khamsa
muruwwa
razzia
bedizen
fellahin (Egyptian peasant)
mubazzira (female female circumcision/infibulation expert)
moiety
summum bonnum
Quotes
(Ibn Khaldūn, p.20): "Arabs can gain control only over flat territory.... On account of their Savage nature the Arabs are people who plunder and cause damage. Eventually the civilization they conquer is wiped out."
"The Arab Mind"
5/5 stars
"The detailing of a VERY different conceptual space"
*******
Of the book
-322 pps/20 chapters= 20pps/chapter
-587 point citations for 322 pages of text.1.8/per (=well sourced)
-10 hours of reading time
This book is just a little bit too busy.
Preface to the 1976 edition, one to the 1983 edition, and then another full preface on a personal note; At the end, we have a 1983 postscript that consists of 8 parts and 46 pages. And then TWO appendices after that, one about the judgment of historians Spengler and Toynbee and the other--a comparison of the Arab world and Spanish America.
It must be clear that this author was actually someone who:
1. Lived in Arab countries for many years--not merely an armchair academic. (He puts me in mind if somebody like Eric Harper or Ernest vanDenhaag.)
2. Spoke and taught Arabic in what later became the State of Israel. (The author is deceased, and he was born in such a way that he was teaching Arabic in the 1930s; also, a lot of his observations are from before the '70s, and so they are out of date with respect to demographic numbers. But, a lot of what he says still makes sense in the present day).
3. Completed two PhDs
4. Portrayed the Arabs actually very sympathetically, but a lot of what he observes people will find unflattering--Which does not make it any less true.
*******
This book was originally published in 1973, revised in 1983, and republished in 2002. (Author died in 1996.)
In spite of its age, I think it is still worth reading because:
1. It was written just before it became fashionable to assume that all human beings are the same and all cultures are equal in every way and it is "racism" to say anything otherwise; lot of failed initiatives and blood and treasure have been wasted going to places and assuming that the Arabs are tabula rasa.
2. It is a snapshot of what a perceptive observer saw at that time. (And perceptive observers are a rare thing.)
3. Some of what is written here is testable; some of it may be explanation that has stood the test of time.
*******
Second order thoughts, first:
1 It seems like when you study great civilizations, they have a lot of resonances to each other.
a. It seems like, by this book, the Arab civilization has a Bedouin/tribal substrate. And in Arab eyes, they are the things to be emulated. (India is a society with an Aboriginal substrate and a superstructure created by invasions from 20 centuries ago. )
b. China is a society with a glorious past that they keep replaying over and over because in their mind, the perfect days were in the past at some indeterminate point. And that seems to be the exact same thing that is repeating itself in the Arab world. It feels like they have a very schizophrenic relationship with modernity.
c. Closed civilizations have a VERY HARD time with the fact that they are not the center of the world once they wake up. (Japan only found out the emperor was not Divine in 1945; China/The Middle Kingdom only became aware that it was not in the center of the world around 1979.)
2. Surprisingly, Arabs in the United States have some of the highest rates of interracial marriage--but WHITE/ASIAN ONLY. (Andrzej Kulcycyzski: over 80% of them have non-Arab spouses, and by the third generation only 1% of them are married to each other.) Their interfaith marriage is 39%.
3. The section on "unity and conflict" was very eye-opening. I couldn't even pull all of the good quotes out of it because they were so many, and I think the upshot is: factionalism and protracted and bloody antagonisms are idiosyncratically Arab and pre-Islamic.
They do not depend on any colonial power or, indeed, anything except the Arabs themselves. If it was not *these* two factions fighting against each other, it would just be *those* two.
4. Intra-Arab fighting used to be mostly/symbolic ceremonial, and with a minimum of bloodshed; but the addition of Western weapons has made them much more deadly than they would otherwise have been.
5. The book was written at a time when the number of children per Arab woman was 9; today, it is just barely over 3. Dramatic improvements in primary and tertiary education have been observed.
*******
For brevity, I will present direct quotes from two sources:
1. Arabic proverbs/Quotes from other authors;
2. The most striking observations of the author, as direct quotes.
*******
>>>Proverbs:
(p.28) Character impressed by the mother's milk cannot be altered by anything but death.
(p.44) I against my brothers; I and my brothers against my cousins; I and my cousins against the world.
(p.85) Blood demands blood.
(p.155) Labor for This World of yours is if you were to live forever; and labor for the Other World of yours as if you were to die tomorrow.
(p.117) The shared kettle does not boil.
(p.117) Better a mat of my own than a house shared.
(p.134) Whenever a man and a woman meet, the devil is the third.
(p.263) [Edward Atiyah] Until 1798, when Napoleon set foot on Egyptian soil, the Arabs were still living in the Middle Ages.
(p.265) They live in a splendid past as an escape from the miserable present.
(p.297) Piety and virtue lie in obedience and conformity, while nothing is more repugnant than change and innovation.
(p.302) [Hans Tütsch] Proud peoples with a weak ego structure tend to interpret difficulties on their life path as personal humiliations and get in tangled and endless lawsuits or through themselves into the arms of extremist political movement.
>>>Author:
(p.29) A man who has only girl children is derided as an abu banat ("father of daughters").
(p.31) A boy is breastfed for 2 to 3 years; a girl, for one to two.
(p.34) This comforting and soothing of the baby boy often takes the form of handling his genitals.
(p.14) The world, in the traditional Arab view is divided into two parts: "House of Islam," and an outer one, "House of War."
(p.36) In the meantime clashes occur, and with them comes the bitter taste of the father's heavy hand, the rod, the strap, and at least among the most tradition-bound Bedouin tribes, the saber and the dagger whose cut or stab is supposed, beyond punishing the disobedient son, to harden him for his future life.
(p.67) The intention of doing something, or the plan of doing something, or the initiation of the first step toward doing something - - any one of these can serve as a substitute for achievement and accomplishment.
(p.75) This means, of course, that to the mind of Muhammad, The Exodus of the Children of Israel from Egypt (13th century BCE) and the foundation of Xtianity were practically simultaneous events. [Talks about the use of aspect in Arabic, as opposed to tense.]
(p.79) Among the Arabs, with their typical ahistoricity, the heroic age is actually timeless.
(p.91) By practicing hospitality lavishly, one "whitens" one's "face," that is, one's reputation; contrarywise, a show of inhospitality can "blacken" one's face.
(p.98) The most preferred marriage is that between children of two brothers.
(p.94) A number of games are voluntarily engaged in by adolescent boys in which their courageous tested. Lashings are administered to them or their arms are burned with pieces of duracaine or cigarettes or cut with a knife..... The most painful form of the circumcision is performed among some Arab tribes in the Hijaz and Asir, where the skin of the entire male organ is removed, as well as the skin of its environs on the belly and inner thigh.
(p.89) Bedouin values: hospitality, generosity, courage, honor, self-respect.
(p.155) There is belief in innumerable demons and spirits jinnis, ghouls, ifrit, the evil eye, as well as belief in and ritual worship of numerous saints who, especially at their tomb sanctuaries, wield great supernatural power.
(p.195) The second type of bilingualism is found in all parts of the Arab world.... of literary Arabic and local colloquial dialects.
(p.193) By 1971, more than 2 million Algerian students were learning French, a figure never even remotely approached during the period when Algeria was an integral part of France. (8.8 million as of 2024.)
(p.191) In fact.... There is an almost direct correlation between the degree of cultural and linguistic assimilation to the west and the intensity of anti-western feelings.
(p.182) Arab music is not tempered, and is based on quarter tones, 24 of which constitute an octave..... What western music considers as harmony is regarded in Arab musical tradition as dissonance ... Arab music is in its entirety modal and possesses dozens of modes. (Wow! So THAT'S why their music sounds like that!)
(p.181) Just as the decorative frieze has no beginning and no end, but simply starts and ends according to the space to which it is applied, so the Arab musical frieze fills the available stretch of time and is characterized throughout by the same level of emotion sustained unchanged from beginning to end.
(p.179) Having foresworn the use of animal in human figure even as a decorative motif, Arab art was left with only three elements...... The plant motif, the geometric motif, and the Arabic script.
(p.216) This idea of the national unity of all Arabs is a very new concept.
(p.144) Only in the outlying areas..... has homosexuality come out into the open with the sheikhs and the well to do men lending their sons to each other.
(p.229) According to tradition, one of the two original ancestors was Qathan, progenitor of all the South Arabian tribes, and the other was Adnan, ancestor of all the North Arabian tribes..... The Southern tribes are considered the true Aboriginal Arab stock, while the Northern tribes are considered merely Arabized peoples.
(p.251) Such willingness to go through the procedures of mediation again and again can only be understood as a conditioned reflex based on the reliance on mediation for countless generations.... The persistent Arab refusal to meet in direct talks with Israel can be considered as a case in point. It appears that in this instance, too, Arab behavior reflects the old tradition of considering the mediator conditio sine qua non for resolving the conflict without loss of face, while the direct peace negotiations, insisted upon by Israel, remain for them a psychological impossibility to accept.
(p.291) In historical perspective, the Arabs see the West as a young disciple who has overtaken and left behind his first world master, medieval Arab civilization. Now it is the turn of the Arabs to sit at the feet of their former pupil, a role which is beset by emotional difficulties.
(p.321) It is a psychological law that people nurture a greater hatred toward those who have been their inferiors in the past and then succeed in outdistancing them, than toward those who proved their superiority from the very first moment of their encounter.
(p.328) Turning our attention to the traditional components of the air personality, we find that they fall into two main categories: a pre-Islamic Bedouin substratum.... and the Islamic component, superimposed on the first one and often merging with it imperceptibly.
Verdict: Strongly recommended. I feel bad that I waited 7 years to read it.
*******
Vocabulary:
thawb
abā
abu banaāt
kūfiyya
iqāl
khamsa
muruwwa
razzia
bedizen
fellahin (Egyptian peasant)
mubazzira (female female circumcision/infibulation expert)
moiety
summum bonnum
Quotes
(Ibn Khaldūn, p.20): "Arabs can gain control only over flat territory.... On account of their Savage nature the Arabs are people who plunder and cause damage. Eventually the civilization they conquer is wiped out."