ASSIGNMENTS
Each assignment is due in the instructor’s mailbox during the week indicated below. Count
Week 1 as the first week that classes begin and Week 15 as the final week of the term.
Trimester dates are listed at the upper left hand corner of your registration form.
All papers must be typed, with footnotes and bibliographies where appropriate, and mailed in
before the assignment deadline. Send two copies of the paper and an adequately stamped,
return-addressed, envelope for the return of one copy with the instructor’s comments. The
second copy will be filed by the department. Also, keep the paper returned by the instructor
which contains your grade, comments, and date. If you do not fully understand the assignment or
need help, telephone the instructor during office hours, or mail in your questions.
University regulations forbid assigning a grade of “I” (Incomplete) unless at least one course
assignment has been received by the instructor. Instead, we must assign a “U” grade
(Unauthorized Incomplete), which is equivalent to an “F.”
Assignment 1
Read:
P Hitti, History of the Arabs, Parts 1-2.
Due Date:
Length:
Paper Topic:
Week 5
1400-1600 words (give exact word count)
The Individual in History:
In The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History,
Michael Hart selects Muhammad as the single most influential person in
all human history. He states “Muhammad was responsible for both the
theology of Islam and its main ethical and moral principles. In addition,
he played the key role in proselytizing the new faith, and in establishing
the religious practices of Islam.... Furthermore, Muhammad (unlike
Jesus) was a secular as well as religious leader. In fact, as the driving
force behind the Arab conquests he may [also] rank as the most
influential political leader of all times. Hart may be taken as a proponent
of one extreme regarding the influence individuals have on history.[1]
<#_ftn1> Commonly called the “Great Man Theory,” it argues that
individuals sometimes appear who have seem to shape events through
the force of their own intellect, personality, or skill. Human progress is
Course Guide Design, Layout by Anissa Barton-Thompson - March 2, 2016
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regarded as being primarily due to the work of these individuals who are
so powerful that they shape events for good or evil. Examples often put
forth in this tradition include but hardly are limited to Alexander the
Great, Hitler, Napoleon, and Elizabeth I.
The opposite extreme, broadly called “determinism,” holds that the
impact of individuals is more apparent than real. Some hold that history
has and will move toward a predetermined end regardless of individuals.
Less extreme proponents hold that apparently influential individuals
succeeded only because they were at the right place at the right time. The
airplane, calculus, electric light, telephone and theory of evolution may
commonly be attributed to the Wright brothers, Newton, Edison, Bell,
and Darwin, but others were working along the same lines at the same
time, and all had precursors who had similar ideas but lived before all
the components required for success existed.
Modern historians work from the premise that there is no single cause
for anything, and that most events would have occurred even without the
particular leader who guided them. Thus, in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.
E. Lawrence argues that “almost [the Semites] were monopolists of
revealed religions, [three of which had] endured and two had borne
export to non-Semitic peoples. These were their successes. Their
failures they kept to themselves. The fringes of their deserts were strewn
with broken faiths. It was significant that this wrack of fallen religions
lay about the meeting of the desert and the sown. It pointed to the
generation of all these creeds. They were assertions; so they required a
prophet to set them forth. The Arabs said there had been forty thousand
prophets: we had record of at least some hundreds. None of them had
been of the wilderness; but their lives were after a pattern. Their birth
set them in crowded places. An unintelligible passionate yearning drove
them out into the desert. There they lived a greater or lesser time in
meditation and physical abandonment; and thence they returned with
their imagined message articulate, to preach it to their old, and now
doubting, associates. The founders of the three great creeds fulfilled this
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cycle: their possible coincidence was proved a law by the parallel life
histories of the myriad others...”
Answer This Question In Your Paper: Is Hart or Lawrence closer to the
truth? That is, is the individual or the time in which he lived more important
to understanding the historical impact of Muhammad?
Assignment 2
Read:
P. Hitti, History of the Arabs, Parts 3-5.
Due Date:
Week 9
Length: 1400-1600 words (give exact word count)
Paper topic:
The Arabs built on the achievements of subjugated peoples—on
classical literature, Hellenistic thought, Byzantine institutions, Roman
law, Syriac scholarship and Persian art. Their achievements were
original and distinctive particularly in architecture, astronomy,
geography, literature, law, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, science,
and theology. The period of greatness coincides roughly with the
Umayyad and Abbasid Dynasties, although in some areas extends for
another century or two beyond the destruction of the latter in what Hitti
calls “petty” or “sundry” dynasties and states, particularly in Spain and
Egypt.
Answer One of These Questions In Your Paper (Adjusting the scope of
your paper to the word limit, most probably by selecting a limited number of
areas of achievement from the list above): (1) Were the great achievements
of Arab civilization derivative or original? Or, (2) How important was the
Arab contribution to the European Renaissance?
Assignment 3
Read:
P. Hitti, History of the Arab Peoples, Part VI
B. Lewis, What Went Wrong
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Due Date:
Week 14
Length: 1400-1600 words (give exact word count)
Paper topic: Causes, effects, and patterns in history:
Escalating terrorism directed at the West since 1968 (longer than most
remember) by factions within the Arab world demand analysis. There is
a vast amount of material beyond Bernard Lewis’s book to help you
answer this question, including pieces in journals (as a CSUDH student,
you can access many at a distance through http://library.csudh.edu)
although you sometimes will have to obtain a password), on the internet
(using search engines such as http://google.com), and additional books.
David Benjamin Age of Sacred Terror or the United Nation’s Arab
Human Development Report, 2002 (written by Arab scholars) are among
many useful recent works, and more are coming out all the time.
Answer These Questions In Your Paper: Why are some Arab Muslims
so militant and angry? What is the larger historical context in which this is
occurring? How should the West react to these events?
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