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First of all, may I say how warmly I welcome this opportunity to express something of what I owe to French masters, colleagues, and friends. Half a century ago, when I first became concerned with the history of the Middle East as a young instructor at the American University of Beirut, I might have found it more difficult to say this. France itself was unknown to me at that time. I looked at it mainly as the rather unsuccessful ruler of the country where I was living and working, and to which I was bound by ancestral ties. My attitude may have expressed something of the Arab nationalist sentiment of most of my colleagues and students at the American University, and also something of the tradition of Anglo-French rivalry in the Levant.

The oeuvre of Andre Raymond will stand unassailable for as long as most scholarly work done in our time: solid, beautifully shaped, with details clearly and delicately depicted, the product of the imagination and mind of a single author. He is himself, perhaps, too lacking in self-regard to wish to give us his own account of the making of that mind; one who has observed his work almost from the beginning with admiration, and who has learned much from it, may perhaps be permitted to try to extract from his published writings some indication of the curve of his scholarly life. His books and articles contain evidence of the way he has developed, and of the personal influences which have helped to form his work, for he has always been generous in acknowledging the kind of debts which scholars owe to their teachers. The first influence which can be clearly discerned is that of CharlesAndre Julien. Early experience of teaching in Tunisia, at the time when the movement for national independence was strong, may have turned his mind to the subject which Julien had made his own, the history of French expansion and colonization. It was Julien who sent him to Oxford, to a new graduate college, St. Antony's, which had been founded by a Frenchman who had made his fortune in the British colony of Aden; the college wanted to attract French students, and turned to Julien for help. Raymond's Oxford thesis, British Policy towards Tunis (1830-1881), completed in 1953, has never been published, but a number of articles based upon it reveal the depth of his research in British official documents in the Public Record Office, and in the private papers of Gladstone and Granville, and also the clarity of his analysis of the aims and methods of British politicians and officials.1 He explains the difference between British and French aims in Tunisia: while French interests in Algeria, and in the Mediterranean basin as a whole, led in the direction of expansion eastwards, it was the British interest to preserve the position of Tunisia as a semiautonomous part of the Ottoman Empire, or at least to maintain the status quo, but not to do so in such a way as to quarrel with France; after the Congress of Berlin in 1878 this became impossible, and all that could be done was to accept the inevitable and make the best of it. The article on 'Salisbury and the Tunisian question'2 shows an understanding of the way in which

Hourani Albert. L'œuvre d'André Raymond. In: Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée, n°55-56, 1990. Villes au Levant. pp. 18-27.

This is a collection of historical studies on the Middle East by some of Albert Hourani's students and colleagues. It provides a survey of many salient problems of the Middle East.

Part 1 Introduction and background: introduction, Albert Hourani the historical background of Lebanese emigration - 1800-1914, Charles Issawi Lebanese migration in the context of world population movements, Roger Owen emigration from a Lebanese village - a case study of Bishmizzine, Patricia Nabti Lebanese population movement 1920-1939 - towards a study, Kohei Hashimoto Ottoman attitudes towards Lebanese emigration - 1885-1910, Engin Deniz Akarli. Part 2 The Americas: Lebanese immigration into the United States - 1880 to the Present, Alixa Naff the Lebanese Muslim community in Dearborn, Michigan, Barbara C. Aswad the Arab community in the United States - a comparison of Lebanese and non-Lebanese, Michael W, Suleiman the literature of the Mahjar, Robin Ostle the Lebanese in Montreal, Baha Abu-Laban Criollos and Arabic speakers in Argentina - an uneasy pas de deux, 1988-1914, Ignacio Klich. the social and spatial mobility of the Syrian and Lebanese community in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Clark S. Knowlton intergration and identity in Argentina - the Lebanese of Tucuman, Estela Valverde Lebanese of the Antilles - Haiti, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Trinidad, David Nicholls Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians in Colombia, Louise l'Estrange Fawcett the Lebanese community in Mexico - its meaning, importance and the history of its communities, Luz Maria Marinez Montiel from pedlars to proprietors - Lebanese, Syrian and Jewish immigrants in Brazil, Jeff H. Lesser. Part 3 Australia: the Lebanese in Australia - 1880-1989, Trevor Batrouney sectarianism and the politics of identity - the Lebanese in Sydney, Michael Humphrey the Lebanese in Melbourne - ethnicity, inter-ethnic activities and attitudes to Australia, Abe Ata. Part 4 Africa: Lebanese and Syrians in Egypt, Albert Hourani the Lebanese community in the Ivory Coast - a non-native network at the heart of power?, Didier Bigo migration, mobility and settlement of the Lebanese in West Africa, H. Laurens van der Laan change and continuity in the relationship between the Lebanese in Senegal and their hosts, Said Boumedouha public reaction to the Lebanese presence in Nigeria during the colonial period, Devendra M. Misra Lebanese emigration - its effect on the political economy of Sierra Leone, Neil O. Leighton. Part 5 Emigration during the civil war: Lebanese emigration during the war (1975-1989), Boutros Labaki Cyprus - haven and stepping-stone for Lebanese migrants and emigrants, Michael F. Davie Lebanese emigration to the Gulf and Saudi Arabia, Marwan Maaouia Lebanese asylum applicants in Denmark 1985-1988 - political refugees or war emigrants?, Brian McGuire the Lebanese Migrant in France - Muhajir or Muhajjar?, Perg Kemp Lebanese business in France, Amir Abdul-Karim problems in comparative studies of international emigration.

Analysing the region from its ancient civilizations to the present day, this encyclopedia covers the Middle East from the Maghrib in the West to Turkey and Afghanistan, looking at the distinctive features of the region, both cultural, political, social and religious.

Shī'ī scholars from Jabal 'Āmil, the hill-country which lies inland from Ṣaydā and Ṣūr in southern Lebanon, claim that theirs is the oldest of all Shī'ī communities. They attribute its foundation to Abū Dharr, a Companion of the Prophet and one of the first supporters of the claims of 'Alī to be his successor. He is said to have gone from Madīna to Damascus, and to have been exiled from there to the country districts of Bilād al-Shām, or Syria in the broader geographical sense. There is a mosque associated with his name in the village of Mays al-Jabal.

The appearance of Islam in the world was no ordinary event. It has not happened very often in history that a religious movement, springing up in a backward region, has within a generation engulfed some of the main centres of power and culture in the known world, and has then proved to be more than a short-lived barbarian incursion, a wave which receded as swiftly as it advanced, but on the contrary has left its mark on thirteen hundred years of history in a quarter of the world, and over the whole range of culture and society. What began as the preaching of a religion led soon to the founding of a state, and when the state dissolved it left behind a literary culture, a system of law, an organization of social life and a moral ideal which have helped to mould the nature of regions far beyond those

The Modem History of Lebanon by Kamal S. Salibi. xxvii + 228 pages, index, illustrations, maps. Weidenfeld and Nicolson 36/-.

B y 1860 there had come into existence little groups of officials, officers and teachers, alive to the importance of reforming the structure of the empire, and convinced this could not be done unless some at least of the forms of European society were borrowed. The reforming group in Constantinople included few if any Arabs at this time, but the great proclamations of reform and the laws which resulted from them had an influence all over the empire, and Ottoman officials of the new way of thought held positions in the Arab as in other provinces. In Egypt men with some amount of French education were already filling important posts, and in 1863 one of them, Isma‘il Pasha, came to the throne; in Tunis too the leader of the young reformers, Khayr al-Din, was beginning to be important in the affairs of the State. The Christian students of the mission schools in Lebanon and Syria were unable to play so direct a part in the government of what after all was still an Islamic State, but they already had some indirect influence as interpreters in the local governments and foreign consulates, and in the 1860's were to acquire a new power as the first journalists of the Arab world.