Becoming Arab: The Formation of Arab Identity in the Medieval Middle East

by Yossef Rapoport

How late medieval Middle Eastern peasants adopted Arab cultural identities, and formed village clans

During the later Middle Ages, peasants in Egypt and Greater Syria came to view themselves as members of Arab clans that had originated in the Arabian Peninsula. They expressed their Arab identity by wearing Arab headgear, adopting an Arab dialect, and circulating a new genre of popular epic that told heroic tales of pre-Islamic Arabia...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691210632
• ISBN13: 9780691210636
• Release Date: November 2025
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 352 Pages