Summary
Author of “The Summer of Arab Discontent”, Foreign Affairs 69, No.5 (Winter 1990-91), p.1, the article Edward Said quotes and answers in Chapter Four, I of Culture and Imperialism for its description of Iraq as a “brittle land” with little claim to culture and books (Culture and Imperialism, PDF p.386 / printed p.359, note 25; the article is quoted at PDF p.324 / printed p.297).
Details
- The article opens, as Said quotes it, claiming that after Khomeini another contender rose in Baghdad, Saddam Hussein, made of material different from the turbaned saviour from Qom (wording checked against the original; the copy garbles “Qom”), from “a brittle land, a frontier country between Persia and Arabia, with little claim to culture and books and grand ideas” (PDF p.324 / printed p.297).
- Said answers that Iraq was the seat of Abbasid civilization, that Baghdad produced at least five of the greatest twentieth-century Arab poets, and that Iraq has been by far the most fertile Middle East country; he reads the article as the intellectual will to please power (PDF p.324-325 / printed p.297-298).
- The article’s author is not named in Said’s text; the attribution to Ajami is given in the book’s Notes (PDF p.386 / printed p.359, note 25).