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Albert Hourani
Albert Habib Hourani, CBE (Arabic: ألبرت حبيب حوراني Albart Ḥabīb Ḥūrānī; 31 March 1915 – 17 January 1993) was a Lebanese British historian, specialising in the history of the Middle East and Middle Eastern studies.
Hourani was born in Manchester, England, the son of Soumaya Rassi and Fadlo Hourani, immigrants from Marjeyoun in what is now South Lebanon (see Lebanese diaspora). Fadlo had studied at what later became the American University of Beirut and settled in Manchester as a cotton merchant. Albert's brothers were George Hourani, philosopher, historian, and classicist, and Cecil Hourani, economic adviser to President of Tunisia Habib Bourguiba. His family had converted from Eastern Orthodoxy to Scottish Presbyterianism and his father became an elder of the local church in Manchester. Hourani himself, in turn, converted to Catholicism[broken anchor] in adulthood. Fadlo had extensive business contacts with the Levantine community both in Manchester and in the Ottoman Empire, and Cecil Hourani commented on the household's mixed Anglo-Levantine culture:
... to my earliest memories in Manchester there were two faces: the one Near Eastern, Lebanese, full of poetry, politics, and business; the other partly Scottish Presbyterian, full of Sunday church-going and Sunday school, partly English through an English nanny and a succession of English and Irish cooks and maids.
Fadlo Hourani tried to enroll Albert into a preparatory school in Manchester but it did not accept him as it did not take 'foreigners'; Fadlo instead opened an alternative school in which Albert studied until the age of fourteen. He later studied at Mill Hill School, London before attending Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy, Politics, Economics and History (with an emphasis on international relations in the politics section of the degree), graduating first in his class in 1936.
The academic H. A. R. Gibb was among his mentors.
He taught in 1938–39 at the American University of Beirut, the first time he had lived in an Arabic speaking country In World War II he worked at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (aka Chatham House) and in the office of the British Minister of State in Cairo. When in Cairo, Hourani rented a room in Paul Kraus's house; in 1944 Kraus was found hanged in his bathroom for an alleged suicide.
After the war's end, he worked at the Arab Office in Jerusalem and London, where he helped prepare the Arab case for the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. Although he developed a liberal Arab nationalist sensibility as his education about the Middle East deepened, Hourani described himself as originally an unquestioning English liberal.
He began his academic career, which would occupy the rest of his life, in 1948, teaching at Magdalen College, St. Antony's College (where he created and directed the college's Middle East Centre), the American University of Beirut, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard. He ended his academic career as Fellow of St. Antony's and Reader in the History of the Modern Middle East at Oxford. Hourani trained more academic historians of the modern Middle East than any other university historian of his generation. Today his students can be found on the faculties of LSE, Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, MIT and the University of Haifa, among others. He was appointed CBE in the 1980 Birthday Honours.
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Albert Hourani
Albert Habib Hourani, CBE (Arabic: ألبرت حبيب حوراني Albart Ḥabīb Ḥūrānī; 31 March 1915 – 17 January 1993) was a Lebanese British historian, specialising in the history of the Middle East and Middle Eastern studies.
Hourani was born in Manchester, England, the son of Soumaya Rassi and Fadlo Hourani, immigrants from Marjeyoun in what is now South Lebanon (see Lebanese diaspora). Fadlo had studied at what later became the American University of Beirut and settled in Manchester as a cotton merchant. Albert's brothers were George Hourani, philosopher, historian, and classicist, and Cecil Hourani, economic adviser to President of Tunisia Habib Bourguiba. His family had converted from Eastern Orthodoxy to Scottish Presbyterianism and his father became an elder of the local church in Manchester. Hourani himself, in turn, converted to Catholicism[broken anchor] in adulthood. Fadlo had extensive business contacts with the Levantine community both in Manchester and in the Ottoman Empire, and Cecil Hourani commented on the household's mixed Anglo-Levantine culture:
... to my earliest memories in Manchester there were two faces: the one Near Eastern, Lebanese, full of poetry, politics, and business; the other partly Scottish Presbyterian, full of Sunday church-going and Sunday school, partly English through an English nanny and a succession of English and Irish cooks and maids.
Fadlo Hourani tried to enroll Albert into a preparatory school in Manchester but it did not accept him as it did not take 'foreigners'; Fadlo instead opened an alternative school in which Albert studied until the age of fourteen. He later studied at Mill Hill School, London before attending Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy, Politics, Economics and History (with an emphasis on international relations in the politics section of the degree), graduating first in his class in 1936.
The academic H. A. R. Gibb was among his mentors.
He taught in 1938–39 at the American University of Beirut, the first time he had lived in an Arabic speaking country In World War II he worked at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (aka Chatham House) and in the office of the British Minister of State in Cairo. When in Cairo, Hourani rented a room in Paul Kraus's house; in 1944 Kraus was found hanged in his bathroom for an alleged suicide.
After the war's end, he worked at the Arab Office in Jerusalem and London, where he helped prepare the Arab case for the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. Although he developed a liberal Arab nationalist sensibility as his education about the Middle East deepened, Hourani described himself as originally an unquestioning English liberal.
He began his academic career, which would occupy the rest of his life, in 1948, teaching at Magdalen College, St. Antony's College (where he created and directed the college's Middle East Centre), the American University of Beirut, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard. He ended his academic career as Fellow of St. Antony's and Reader in the History of the Modern Middle East at Oxford. Hourani trained more academic historians of the modern Middle East than any other university historian of his generation. Today his students can be found on the faculties of LSE, Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, MIT and the University of Haifa, among others. He was appointed CBE in the 1980 Birthday Honours.