San Antonio College Library

Encompassing a history for more than two thousand years, the music of the Arabs is unique among the world's various musical cultures. Based on a modal tone system - one of the few autonomous tone systems of our time - Arab music is characterized by the maqam phenomenon, an original type of improvisation that is common to both secular and sacred Arabian art music. Arab countries throughout North Africa and the Middle East share musical forms, rhythms,...

Jerusalem is more than a holy city built of stone: it is a battle cry, a magic spell, an act of defiance, a claim of sovereignty. The scramble for the soul of Jerusalem began three millennia ago. Only in the past century did the battle between distant empires and warring sects of believers evolve into today's deadly struggle between the peoples for whom Jerusalem is now home: Jews and Arabs. To justify their rival claims, each faction has written...

Stories by Jewish writers on relations with Arabs. They range from Amos Oz's Nomad and Viper, on a Jewish woman's love-hate relationship with a Bedouin, to Sami Michael's Refuge, in which an Arab poet is branded a traitor for having a Jewish girlfriend.

In this comprehensive study of nearly one thousand films, Shaheen documents the tendency to portray Muslim Arabs as Public Enemy #1-brutal, heartless, uncivilized Others bent on terrorizing civilized Westerners. Shaheen examines how and why such a stereotype has grown and spread in the film industry and what may be done to change Hollywood's defamation of Arabs--Publisher's description.

Examines the history of the great Islamic expansion, reveals how the Arab armies were able to overcome almost everything in their path, and brings to light the unique characteristics of Islamic settlement in new lands and the conversion to Islam of vast populations.

"A thrilling and revelatory narrative of one of the most epic and consequential episodes in twentieth-century history--the Arab Revolt and the secret "great game" to control the Middle East. The Arab Revolt against the Turks in World War I was, in the words of T.E. Lawrence, 'a sideshow of a sideshow.' Amidst the slaughter in European trenches, the Western combatants paid scant attention to the Middle Eastern theater. As a result, the conflict was...