Albert Hourani

[7] He taught in 1938–39 at the American University of Beirut, the first time he had lived in an Arabic speaking country[8] In World War II he worked at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (aka Chatham House) and in the office of the British Minister of State in Cairo.

He ended his academic career as Fellow of St. Antony's and Reader in the History of the Modern Middle East at Oxford.

According to historian Rashid Khalidi (quoted from within a series of essays gathered originally for a conference in Hourani's honor), "Hourani's students, and their students, have over the last few decades effectively populated and then produced the core of the field of modern Middle East history in North America and Europe, and parts of the Middle East and other regions as well (2016)".

He also wrote extensive works on the orientalist perspective on Middle Eastern cultures through the 18th and 19th centuries, and he developed the influential concept of the "urban notables" – political and social elites in provincial Middle Eastern cities and towns that served as intermediaries between imperial capitals (such as Istanbul under the Ottoman Turks) and provincial society.

Among his students are Abbas Amanat, Nazih Ayubi, Aziz al-Azmeh, Michael Gilsenan, Rashid Khalidi, Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, Roger Owen, Ilan Pappé, and André Raymond (and others).

They had a daughter, Susanna Hourani, who became professor of pharmacology and Head of Department in the School of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences of the University of Surrey.