Page 7 - Arabian Studies (I)

INTRODUCTION

To the many new journals concerned with what has become known
as the M iddle East why add yet another? For introducing Arabian
Studies we offer what appear to us cogent reasons.
Development of studies since the Second World War in the Middle
Eastern field has tended to be aligned along the subject disciplines —
that is to say, for instance, an historian is regarded as able to deal
with history, be it of contemporary Morocco, mediaeval Egypt, or
even ancient Arabia. Sociologists, linguists and other experts coura­
geously venture into widely divergent cultures or languages. While
there is something to be said in favour of this approach, it has
nevertheless serious drawbacks, since, whereas it may emphasize that
certain elements are common to these cultures, only study of an
individual culture in depth can present a true picture of it. In
post-war developments of Middle East studies at universities, the
opportunity has largely been neglected of setting up area depart­
ments where groups comprising several different disciplines could
profit from close association of one with the other - in favour
of subject departments following, at least theoretically, one
discipline.
In practice it proves impossible for an individual research worker
to confine himself within the restricted range of a single discipline -
this becomes ever more patently obvious in dealing with the Arabian
Peninsula. History and language are so intimately linked that the
historian of Arabia must be competent in Arabic, and an Arabist may
well also be an historian, etc. The historian is inevitably drawn into
sociology, law, economics; to examine Islamic or customary law the
lawyer must have as high a proficiency in Arabic as the professional
Arabist. Properly to appreciate how a country like Arabia works,
economists, agriculturists and others must know something of its law
and language. All this seems to us natural and desirable, and - may
we add - in accordance with the trend of our Cambridge tradition!
The Arabian Peninsula with its immediate confines constitutes a
coherent whole appropriate to area study, within which there is a
unity, yet much diversity. The extent to which interest in it has
expanded is manifest in the great growth of writing on it during the