100 books like Indonesians and Their Arab World

By Mirjam Lücking,

Here are 100 books that Indonesians and Their Arab World fans have personally recommended if you like Indonesians and Their Arab World. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Book cover of The Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia: Networks of Malay-Indonesian and Middle Eastern 'Ulama' in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Sumanto Al Qurtuby Author Of Saudi Arabia and Indonesian Networks: Migration, Education, and Islam

From my list on Islam, travel, and travelers in Arabia.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an American-trained Indonesian anthropologist, teacher, writer, researcher, and academic nomad who has lived and taught at a Saudi university. I have travelled since childhood. When I was a kid or teenager, I journeyed to various places and cities for schooling away from my home village (and parents) in the isolated highlands of Central Java. I also travelled for shepherding my goats which I did after school. So, I love to travel, learn many things from my travel, and as a teacher of Anthropology of Travel, I have always been fascinated by literature on travel whatever its forms ranging from pilgrimage and nomadism to migration and tourism.   

Sumanto's book list on Islam, travel, and travelers in Arabia

Sumanto Al Qurtuby Why did Sumanto love this book?

This is an extremely fine book that traces and discusses the origins or intellectual roots of Islamic renewal and reformism in Indonesia (and the Malay world in general). What makes this book special is that, among others, the author used rare academic sources (e.g., Arabic biographic dictionaries that have never before been analyzed or utilized as research materials) to reconstruct the history of Indonesia’s Islamic reformism. The book shows that an orthodox form of Islam in Southeast Asia was the product of intellectual and religious networks between Muslim societies in the archipelago and the Malay-Indonesian Islamic scholars in the Haramain (Mecca and Medina) who transmitted Islamic scholarships, knowledge, and discourses to them since the seventeenth century. 

By Azyumardi Azra,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Islamic renewal and reformism is an ongoing process which is commonly thought to have started only in the twentieth century. Professor Azra's meticulous study, using sources from the Middle East itself, shows how scholars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were reconstructing the intellectual and socio-moral foundation of Muslim societies. Drawing on Arabic biographic dictionaries which have never before been analysed or used as research materials, Professor Azra illuminates a previously inaccessible period of history to show the development of the Middle Eastern heritage in the Indonesian archipelago.

The reader can trace the formation and expression of Indonesian Islam and…


Book cover of A History of Jeddah: The Gate to Mecca in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Sumanto Al Qurtuby Author Of Saudi Arabia and Indonesian Networks: Migration, Education, and Islam

From my list on Islam, travel, and travelers in Arabia.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an American-trained Indonesian anthropologist, teacher, writer, researcher, and academic nomad who has lived and taught at a Saudi university. I have travelled since childhood. When I was a kid or teenager, I journeyed to various places and cities for schooling away from my home village (and parents) in the isolated highlands of Central Java. I also travelled for shepherding my goats which I did after school. So, I love to travel, learn many things from my travel, and as a teacher of Anthropology of Travel, I have always been fascinated by literature on travel whatever its forms ranging from pilgrimage and nomadism to migration and tourism.   

Sumanto's book list on Islam, travel, and travelers in Arabia

Sumanto Al Qurtuby Why did Sumanto love this book?

Jeddah in the western Arabia has long been an entrance for Muslim pilgrims around the world as well as a terminus for global-international trade routes for centuries or even millennia due to its strategic location in the coastal Red Sea. Yet, surprisingly, the region has not been the subject of a serious academic inquiry. Scholars of Saudi Arabia generally focus on Mecca and Medina, two most important pilgrimage sites for Muslims. To my knowledge, this book is the first biography of Jeddah that traces the city's urban history, development, and cosmopolitanism from the late Ottoman period to its contemporary era. The author in particular examines how Jeddah’s different groups of travelers (migrants, pilgrims, etc.) interrelated in a changing urban space and how their economic behaviors and activities contributed to the shape of the city’s socio-political framework. 

By Ulrike Freitag,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A History of Jeddah as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Known as the 'Gate to Mecca' or 'Bride of the Red Sea', Jeddah has been a gateway for pilgrims travelling to Mecca and Medina and a station for international trade routes between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean for centuries. Seen from the perspective of its diverse population, this first biography of Jeddah traces the city's urban history and cosmopolitanism from the late Ottoman period to its present-day claim to multiculturalism, within the conservative environment of the Arabian Peninsula. Contextualising Jeddah with developments in the wider Muslim world, Ulrike Freitag investigates how different groups of migrants interacted in a changing…


Book cover of The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean

Sumanto Al Qurtuby Author Of Saudi Arabia and Indonesian Networks: Migration, Education, and Islam

From my list on Islam, travel, and travelers in Arabia.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an American-trained Indonesian anthropologist, teacher, writer, researcher, and academic nomad who has lived and taught at a Saudi university. I have travelled since childhood. When I was a kid or teenager, I journeyed to various places and cities for schooling away from my home village (and parents) in the isolated highlands of Central Java. I also travelled for shepherding my goats which I did after school. So, I love to travel, learn many things from my travel, and as a teacher of Anthropology of Travel, I have always been fascinated by literature on travel whatever its forms ranging from pilgrimage and nomadism to migration and tourism.   

Sumanto's book list on Islam, travel, and travelers in Arabia

Sumanto Al Qurtuby Why did Sumanto love this book?

This book studies the historical dynamics of the Hadrami Yemeni diaspora in Arabia, India, and Southeast Asia. The Hadramis, especially progenies of Prophet Muhammad, have settled in these three regions for centuries but academic work that discusses the origins of their presence and transnational movement across the Indian Ocean is extremely rare. Professor Ho is a brilliant anthropologist and historian. I, in particular, like the ways he vividly utilizes and interprets various sources–biographies, family histories, chronicles, pilgrimage manuals, and religious law – to reconstruct the history of the diasporic Hadrami community from Arabia to Southeast Asia. 

By Engseng Ho,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Graves of Tarim as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"The Graves of Tarim" narrates the movement of an old diaspora across the Indian Ocean over the past five hundred years. Ranging from Arabia to India and Southeast Asia, Engseng Ho explores the transcultural exchanges - in kinship and writing - that enabled Hadrami Yemeni descendants of the Muslim prophet Muhammad to become locals in each of the three regions, yet remain cosmopolitans with vital connections across the ocean. At home throughout the Indian Ocean, diasporic Hadramis engaged European empires in surprising ways across its breadth, beyond the usual territorial confines of colonizer and colonized. A work of both anthropology…


Book cover of Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj Under the Ottomans

Sumanto Al Qurtuby Author Of Saudi Arabia and Indonesian Networks: Migration, Education, and Islam

From my list on Islam, travel, and travelers in Arabia.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an American-trained Indonesian anthropologist, teacher, writer, researcher, and academic nomad who has lived and taught at a Saudi university. I have travelled since childhood. When I was a kid or teenager, I journeyed to various places and cities for schooling away from my home village (and parents) in the isolated highlands of Central Java. I also travelled for shepherding my goats which I did after school. So, I love to travel, learn many things from my travel, and as a teacher of Anthropology of Travel, I have always been fascinated by literature on travel whatever its forms ranging from pilgrimage and nomadism to migration and tourism.   

Sumanto's book list on Islam, travel, and travelers in Arabia

Sumanto Al Qurtuby Why did Sumanto love this book?

Concerning the study of the hajj (i.e. Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca), I consider this book is pioneering primarily because it utilizes original sources and documentation left by Ottoman administrators to depict and recreate uneasy experiences of the pilgrims’ everyday life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of Arabia. During these centuries, Mecca was under the control and authority of the Ottoman sultans, and the hajj pilgrimage was an extremely tough journey: long, arduous, and fraught with danger. This work has contributed to our understandings of the pilgrims’ conditions and mundane activities and the sultans’ policies of the pilgrimage.  

By Suraiya Faroqhi,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Pilgrims and Sultans as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The pilgrimage to Mecca - the hajj - is a major aspect of the Islamic religion, yet little has been written about its history or of the conditions under which thousands of pilgrims from far flung regions of the Islamic world travelled to the heart of the Arabian peninsula. This pioneering book concentrates on the pilgrimage in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when Mecca was ruled by the Ottoman sultans. At a time when, for the majority of the faithful, the journey was long, arduous and fraught with danger, the provision of food, water, shelter and protection for pilgrims presented…


Book cover of Arabian Nights and Days

Gretchen McCullough Author Of Shahrazad's Gift

From my list on books influenced by Thousand and One Nights.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a fiction writer and currently live in Cairo, where I have lived for over twenty years. I noticed that the way I started telling stories was influenced by learning Arabic and by listening to the stories of the people in the city. My interest in Arabic also led me to read Arabic literature, like A Thousand and One Nights.   

Gretchen's book list on books influenced by Thousand and One Nights

Gretchen McCullough Why did Gretchen love this book?

I enjoyed Mafouz’s marvelous retelling of the Thousand and One Nights. Although Mafouz sets the time in mediaeval era, the novel is a political fable with contemporary overtones for any authoritarian government.    

Arabian Nights and Days, tells the story of the Sultan, Shahriyar, and his entourage of rotating police chiefs, spies, and informers. Many of the same characters from A Thousand and One Nights appear in his version: Sindbad the Sailor, Aladdin, Shahrazad and her sister, Dunyazad. And characters do tell stories to one another, but Shahrazad is not as prominent.

The “jinn” or evil spirits do take over each of the most noble characters, who are tempted by money, sex, and power. Many “fall into the abyss” either in this world or the next. There are disappearances, robberies, murders, purgesand those who are in favor might have their fortunes drastically changed in the course of…

By Naguib Mahfouz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Arabian Nights and Days as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz refashions the classic tales of Scheherazade into a novel written in his own imaginative, spellbinding style. Here are genies and flying carpets, Aladdin and Sinbad, Ali Baba, and many other familiar stories from the tradition of The One Thousand and One Nights, made new by the magical pen of the acknowledged dean of Arabic letters, who plumbs their depths for timeless truths.


Book cover of After the Arab Uprisings: Progress and Stagnation in the Middle East and North Africa

Sean Yom Author Of From Resilience to Revolution: How Foreign Interventions Destabilize the Middle East

From my list on democracy and dictatorship in the Middle East.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been interested in the politics of democracy and dictatorship. Governing is a funny business: the masses must entrust a very few to lead them, and often with vast power. Where does that trust come from? And why do some rulers act so viciously while others serve with grace? Understanding these very human concerns is a worthy pursuit of knowledge.

Sean's book list on democracy and dictatorship in the Middle East

Sean Yom Why did Sean love this book?

The 2011-12 Arab Spring was a momentous opportunity for a young generation of activists to upend their dictators and secure radical freedoms. The scoresheet more than a decade later is mixed, as this book shows. Some countries remain mired in conflict, like Libya and Yemen; others have tentatively embraced political reform, like Morocco and Jordan; and in still others, like Algeria and Sudan, popular movements and stubborn autocrats are locked in tense confrontation. Few other volumes provide as vivid of a snapshot of regional politics as this one.

By Shamiran Mako, Valentine M. Moghadam,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked After the Arab Uprisings as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Why were some, but not all the Arab mass social protests of 2011 accompanied by relatively quick and nonviolent outcomes in the direction of regime change, democracy, and social transformation? Why was a democratic transition limited to Tunisia, and why did region-wide democratization not occur? After the Arab Uprisings offers an explanatory framework to answer these central questions, based on four key themes: state and regime type, civil society, gender relations and women's mobilizations, and external influence. Applying these to seven cases: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, Valentine M. Moghadam and Shamiran Mako highlight the salience of…


Book cover of Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate

Debangana Chatterjee Author Of Lives of Circumcised and Veiled Women: A Global-Indian Interplay of Discourses and Narratives

From my list on gender and culture with a unique lens.

Why am I passionate about this?

Since my childhood, I understood quite well that "gender" is a troubled water. Women were not allowed access to education, were domesticated, and were not allowed to vote for the longest time in history. Yet I did not quite know how to articulate how it should be! While broadly "gender" still remains a concern, growing as an academic (currently as an Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at National Law School of India University), I started asking how best we can reconcile gender and culture, and even if we do, what does it mean for my country, India and the discipline of International Relations?


Debangana's book list on gender and culture with a unique lens

Debangana Chatterjee Why did Debangana love this book?

We all know that the oppressive structures of patriarchy are all-pervasive. But can we see "oppression" in black and white? Certainly not! 

Unless we put things in context and see through their nuances, the vicious Islamophobic tendency (subtly or not) comes into play, caricaturing Islam as the sole source of gender-based oppression. No doubt, the condemnation of Islam flows from prejudice and half-baked Orientalist assumptions surrounding the religion.

Leila Ahmed, a pioneering figure of Islamic feminism, hits hard at the stereotypes surrounding Islam and challenges them. I learned from her that Islam is anything but monolithic, especially from the perspective of gender. She devotes chapters on Egypt to link the percepts of Islam with colonial modernisation.

For academics like me, this book adds a dynamic perspective and opens the big picture. However, for even those bearing the burden of prejudice, I am sure this book will be educative.

By Leila Ahmed,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Women and Gender in Islam as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A classic, pioneering account of the lives of women in Islamic history, republished for a new generation

This pioneering study of the social and political lives of Muslim women has shaped a whole generation of scholarship. In it, Leila Ahmed explores the historical roots of contemporary debates, ambitiously surveying Islamic discourse on women from Arabia during the period in which Islam was founded to Iraq during the classical age to Egypt during the modern era. The book is now reissued as a Veritas paperback, with a new foreword by Kecia Ali situating the text in its scholarly context and explaining…


Book cover of Quest for Democracy: Liberalism in the Modern Arab World

Sean Yom Author Of From Resilience to Revolution: How Foreign Interventions Destabilize the Middle East

From my list on democracy and dictatorship in the Middle East.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been interested in the politics of democracy and dictatorship. Governing is a funny business: the masses must entrust a very few to lead them, and often with vast power. Where does that trust come from? And why do some rulers act so viciously while others serve with grace? Understanding these very human concerns is a worthy pursuit of knowledge.

Sean's book list on democracy and dictatorship in the Middle East

Sean Yom Why did Sean love this book?

Westerners often believe that in the Middle East, ideas of democratic freedom and human rights are gifts of Western civilization. Not so, this book shows. Across the Arab world, there are generations – and in some cases, centuries – of local activism, organization, and intellectual life focused on democracy and liberalism. This is an extraordinary heritage, and one that inverts the script of Western condescension: Arab thinkers were debating democratic possibilities well before women could vote in America.

By Line Khatib,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Quest for Democracy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Since the uprisings of 2010 and 2011, it has often been assumed that the politics of the Arab-speaking world is dominated, and will continue to be dominated, by orthodox Islamic thought and authoritarian politics. Challenging these assumptions, Line Khatib explores the current liberal movement in the region, examining its activists and intellectuals, their work, and the strengths and weaknesses of the movement as a whole. By investigating the underground and overlooked actors and activists of liberal activism, Khatib problematizes the ways in which Arab liberalism has been dismissed as an insignificant sociopolitical force, or a mere reaction to Western formulations…


Book cover of Tents and Pyramids: Games and Ideology in Arab Culture from Backgammon to Autocratic Rule

Andrea B. Rugh Author Of Egyptian Advice Columnists: Envisioning the Good Life in an Era of Extremism

From my list on how culture influences Middle Eastern history.

Why am I passionate about this?

From over three decades of work on development projects in countries of the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Africa, I am convinced that when efforts fail, it is invariably because we lack the cultural understanding of what people want or how we provide it. These books all reinforce my point by either underlining the way culture shapes the way people see the world or by showing how when we neglect culture, we do so at our own peril. Culture can be discovered through multiple entry points with these books offering a good start. Even something as mundane as advice columns in newspapers offer political insights when plumbed for the meanings below the surface.

Andrea's book list on how culture influences Middle Eastern history

Andrea B. Rugh Why did Andrea love this book?

In Tents and Pyramids, Khuri describes how Arabs’ ways of seeing and dealing with reality have implications for power in the Middle East. He juxtaposes tents—the low horizontal Bedouin ones—against vertical hierarchical pyramids. Khuri argues that authority is not built into the tent approach—rather the strategy is to act as equal groups with leaders who are only “first among equals” and isolated individuals are the vulnerable ones. The second group, imagined as hierarchical pyramids, has no standardized rules for succession and ends up being the ones who conquer the rest. To stay in power these autocrats need strong militaries to keep the public from holding them accountable. Although Khuri’s framework doesn’t always hold up, it offers a useful way of imaging the region’s power structures.    

By Fuad I. Khuri,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Tents and Pyramids as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This study deals with an unusual and absorbing topic: how the Arabs see and deal with reality and the implications this has for the nature of power in the Arab world. "Tents" and "pyramids" are, metaphorically, opposed mental images; the first signifies the absence of hierarchy and graded authority, the second the presence of both, Khuri argues that the Arabs perceive both social and physical reality as a series of discrete, non-pyramidal structures that are inherently equal in value - much like a Bedouin encampment composed of tents scattered haphazardly on a flat desert surface with no visible hierarchy. Authority…


Book cover of How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs: The Syrian Congress of 1920 and the Destruction of its Liberal-Islamic Alliance

Sean Yom Author Of From Resilience to Revolution: How Foreign Interventions Destabilize the Middle East

From my list on democracy and dictatorship in the Middle East.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been interested in the politics of democracy and dictatorship. Governing is a funny business: the masses must entrust a very few to lead them, and often with vast power. Where does that trust come from? And why do some rulers act so viciously while others serve with grace? Understanding these very human concerns is a worthy pursuit of knowledge.

Sean's book list on democracy and dictatorship in the Middle East

Sean Yom Why did Sean love this book?

In this historical narrative, Thompson gives a stunning take on the early rise of democratic aspirations in the Arab world. Post-war Syria in 1920 was a hotbed of liberal activism, where Arab leaders sought to establish the first Arab democracy. In response, the French and British invaded Syria and destroyed its embryonic political life. That Western powers disregarded local democratization so early set into motion a catastrophic chain of imperialism and wars, which left behind the dictatorships standing today.

By Elizabeth F. Thompson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When Europe's Great War engulfed the Ottoman Empire, Arab nationalists rose in revolt against their Turkish rulers and allied with the British on the promise of an independent Arab state. In October 1918, the Arabs' military leader, Prince Faisal, victoriously entered Damascus and proclaimed a constitutional government in an independent Greater Syria.

Faisal won American support for self-determination at the Paris Peace Conference, but other Entente powers plotted to protect their colonial interests. Under threat of European occupation, the Syrian-Arab Congress declared independence on March 8, 1920 and crowned Faisal king of a 'civil representative monarchy.' Sheikh Rashid Rida, the…


Book cover of The Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia: Networks of Malay-Indonesian and Middle Eastern 'Ulama' in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Book cover of A History of Jeddah: The Gate to Mecca in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Book cover of The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,164

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in the Arab world, Indonesia, and Islam?

The Arab World 17 books
Indonesia 39 books
Islam 128 books