The World Spoke Arabic: Classical Arab-Islamic Civilization through the Works of Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Battuta

This work deconstructs misconceptions and prejudices that associate Arabs with fanaticism, backwardness, and barbarism. The analysis here reveals another universe—cultured, dynamic, open to distant seas, which values writing, the harmonious coexistence between rural and urban areas, and knowledge. The result of the author's extensive academic research, the thematic focus was based on the category of space. Based on the assumption that the notion of space is constituted by and constitutes social relations and Arab culture itself, the historian shows how the Islamic religious field provides the basic elements for spatial ordering and representation. The notion of belonging is structured, in this universe, by the close relationship between the civilized world and the urban world and is hierarchized based on a sacred reference point: Mecca.