Excellent professor and very interesting topic for whoever is curious to learn about these Muslim Countries! I warmly recommend it and the only reason I gave it 4 out of 5 stars is that it is too long! There are many sections that can be cut out and some lectures repeat themselves but over all it is intriguing and fulfilling and I think its also very important to understand the background of these states and why they are how they are today.

Fue muy interesante este curso, poco conocía del mundo musulmán, a sido como un viaje enriquecedor, mucho por conocer y poco tiempo para estudiarlo. Quiero decirle al profesor Ebrahim que fue un placer conocerlo, es admirable su formación académica. Y me agradó su sentido del humor. Hay tantas preguntas que no pude realizar, pero me quedo con su mensaje final, seguir estudiando, continuar avanzando. Saludos desde México.

Excellent course.

Just a shame, trying to figure out to get always the video notes only in english language and not in my natural language (currently french, detected by Coursera), which is better to understand questions & insure to get the answer. For some videos, only the notes in my natural language are available, which constraint me to translate and probably leads to misunderstandings.

This is an excellent course that provided an overview of the broad scope of history of the Middle East, with an emphasis on insights into the Islamic faith over time and among Middle East cultures. This is must-have information for those who live in the Western Judeo-Christian culture.

The course so far is quite interesting but it can be made more intense with detailed readings and supply of book and journal material. It can also incorporate a series of reform which were took after arab Spring since, it was the phenomenon in Arab and muslim world.

Intelligent and informative at a macro level. Effective for those with no historical background to the Middle East (ME). It's a good crash course to understanding why the ME is a liquid place (not stable).

The videos are a waste of time if you are listening to them. The speech is too slow and full of little mistakes and stumbles. Way quicker to just read the decodings below the videos.

Exceptionally informative as an introduction to Islamic studies. Could do with tightening up its question and answer format.

Perfect course to get historical knowledge of Muslim countries. Well researched and explained. Highly recommended.

Dedicated resource person. Good reading materials. Challenging quizzes and assignments.

The course is very interesting, but videos are too long to be honest.

generally good but kind of not clearly formulated

Thank you for a very in

Really good course!

I once had a boyfriend who said my mind was like an encyclopedia that had come free from its binding. To some extent that's true, and it makes me, I think, fun to drink with. I think the Prof of this course would be super fun to drink with, too. I can only imagine the directions the conversation would careen, how many diversions and reversions and tangents we would go on. In terms of instruction, though, I find it rather exhausting. First we're talking about Ottoman reforms, then a diversion into Goethe (or some other dour Teutonic thinker) then a tangent into- but we'll cover that in another video so in 1924, but if you read L'etranger.... I've taken to listening to the lectures while doing something else, and then parsing the transcripts, trying to tease out some sort of linear narrative for my notes and it's just so effortful and time-consuming.

Long, especially the week on Iran. Really proud of myself for getting through it.

Demasiado largo y, por lo tanto, aburrido. Videos tediosos.

I appreciate the effort but there are a lot of points on which I disagree with the tutor's claims.

I have attended 24 courses on Coursera and this one is the worst by far. It is such a pity. I was very much looking forward to attending it. The course is poorly designed (for example, the lecturer doesn't begin by explaining what Islam is, what distinguish shiites and sunnis...). The lecturer makes almost no use of the media (apart from him reading his notes we only see a picture and a title from time to time), he is unbearably slow, stumbles on words (why didn't they re-shoot some of these sequences???). His course is an almost uninterrupted flow of words, with very little effort to hierarchize the claims he makes (slides would have helped doing just that), and, what is worst, he repeats himself time and again. His ideas are half-backed, as if he lacked the time to think things through. I have attended two weeks of the course and am amazed by how little I have learned. Don't loose your time watching this. Check out the books in the collection "Very Short Introductions to" instead. I have found them very helpful. It's such a pity...

Pésima atención al alumno, llevo muchos días esperando a que alguien me califique las actividades requeridas y sigo esperando y mucho me temo que va para largo, deberían de hacer algo al respecto, por favor, tomen nota señores responsables del contenido.