Who's Who in the Arab World, 1990-1991

Publitec's Who's Who is gold mine of information, too little used by researchers of the Middle East. The biannual volume contains much of interest. With something like 5,000 biographies, it offers a unique view of Arabic-speaking elites from Morocco to Iraq. Women, for example, are just as rare as one might expect. And Defense Minister Mustafa Tallas of Syria maintains his reputation as the greatest blowhard in the Middle East-he has much the longest biography of the volume (about six times the length of his boss', Hafiz al-Asad).

Peculiarities also abound. While Saudis number only 5 million, they are represented by five times more individuals that the Iraqis (who number 17 million). The 3.3 million Lebanese are absent here because they fill a whole volume of their own; of 8.2 million Somalis, only 16 turn up here. Unaccountably, a sprinkling of non-Arabs are listed, including Americans, Japanese, and Europeans of many nationalities. In some cases, the most recent information appears to end around 1980. Naturally, some outstanding names are missed, such as the Syrian politicians Akram Hawrani and Khalid Baqdash. Transcriptions from Arabic cause heartburn (Cherif and Sharif are both the same name). These problems, however, are nothing more than what one might expect from a reference volume covering a distant civilization, twenty very disparate countries, and something like 200 million individuals.

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