The Nature of Tyranny: and the Devastating Results of Oppression

Abdul Rahman Al-Kawakibi

may 2022 · Oxford University Press

Información sobre este eBook

The Nature of Tyranny was written and published at the dawn of the twentieth century by Abdul Rahman Al-Kawakibi, one of the pioneering thinkers of the Arab world. More than a century later, another Arab awakening exploded, led by a new generation of youth who chanted Al-Kawakibi's words in revolutionary cries from Aleppo, his hometown, to Cairo's Tahrir Square. Today this seminal text appears in English for the first time, with a foreword from Leon T. Goldsmith offering an overview of Al-Kawakibi's intellectual contributions. The first chapter of the text provides a definition of tyranny, presenting it as akin to a sickness or malaise that seeps into all classes of society, leaving behind decay. The following seven chapters apply this conception of tyranny to what Al-Kawakibi sees as society's crucial elements: religion, knowledge, honor, economy, ethics and progress. Having laid a theoretical framework for understanding the centrality of tyranny, its characteristics and its devastating effects, Al-Kawakibi concludes by setting forth a brief program for remedying the 'disease' of tyranny. The final chapter outlines another book in which he had planned to elaborate upon his ideas-but, ultimately, his fate arrived too soon.

Acerca del autor

Abdul Rahman Al-Kawakibi was born in 1854 in Syria and had a traditional education, studying law and learning several languages. His writing on tyranny and injustice in the Ottoman Empire remains influential among reformists across the Arab and Muslim world today. He died in 1902 under mysterious circumstances.