ABSTRACT
The problems of the modern Arab world can be understood only in the light of its past history and in relation to the complications of our modern world. Though this is, of course, a truism universally applicable, the statement needs to be emphasized when we are considering the case of the Arabs, whose fate has come to symbolize two of the most pressing problems of our times, namely the emergence of once dependant peoples from colonialism to national sovereignty and the conflict between the ideologies of Communism and the West. In the Arab countries no solution of either of these problems can be sought without reference to the Arabs’ own past.
