This study attempts to answer the central question: how far has Arab academia been able to keep up with new approaches outside traditional writing? It takes history as the field on which this question is played out. In doing so it draws on three approaches: a source-based historical approach concerned with the Annales school and the horizons it opened up for interdisciplinarity, a developmental approach interested in the emergence of an Arab awareness of the need to update our methods of historical research, and a practical-experimental approach looking at the possibilities of new Arab historiography. The first approach reveals that the relationship of different academic fields with one another in modern history has been controlled by an episteme imposed by the waves of new knowledge flowing into all fields. The second illustrates that interdisciplinarity is a conception and an attitude aiming to look for ways to rewrite history and not just a tool – and we show that this Arab emergence was not purely local but was affected by the "Annales Revolution". The third approach demonstrates that despite the many challenges, Arab historians are dealing ably with the struggle against traditional historiography. The broad attempts to connect disciplines are evidence of an awareness of the importance of breaking down barriers between fields, which is an indispensable methodological approach– not only to rewrite history but also to develop academic research skills and the performance of Arab academia.