Thank you.
Placing the comment from your website written by anonymous here:
All this nonsense has it’s roots in a book written by Philip K Hitti, first published in 1937, in which is claimed every single human endeavour and innovation as arabic. When Obama speaks of arabic accomplishments, he’s simply repeating the contents of ‘History of the Arabs’
From the back cover of the 10th Edition:
Philip K Hitti was born in Lebanon in 1886 and lived in the USA for the most part since 1913, teaching first at Columbia and later at Princeton, from which he retired in 1954 as Professor of Semitic Literature and Chairman of the Department of Oriental Languages. The author of many works on Oriental subjects, Professor Hitti has been active in numerous roles related to the study of Near East languages and politics, and to the promotion of international cultural organisations.
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To read Hitti, one would need to believe that that arabs invented EVERYTHING. It’s probably the most puke-worthy 757 pages I have ever forced myself to read.
A Talk With Philip Hitti
Written by John R. Starkey
excerpt:
Arabic literature is among the richest in the world. Even today, very few people realize that. There was a professor at Yale who concluded after years of study that Arabic literature up until the year 1900 was far richer than even English literature.
You see, there was a time when the Arabs were masters of an empire which extended from the Pyrenees in Spain to the frontiers of China. North Africa, southwestern Europe, western and central Asia, Turkey, Persia, everywhere Arabic was the chief language of learning. Imagine the output in history, philosophy, science, literature! Of course, in each locality there were variations, influences from the native language and culture. But officially Arabic was the written language.
That is why you have a very rich Arabic literature, and it scares people. Not just because of the amount, but also because the backbone of this literature is poetry or elegant prose such as you find in the Koran. And that floors the American students. In addition, the quality of most translations puts people off.
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/197104/a.talk.with.philip.hitti.htm