Cultural anthropology took a late interest in the Arab world because the populations that inhabited this region were considered too complex to be a legitimate object of the discipline. Despite the existence of literature written by European administrators and missionaries aimed at mapping the social customs and cultural traditions of the colonised, in most Arab countries anthropological studies were born in the postcolonial period. Condemned as colonial knowledge, with few exceptions, cultural anthropology was absent from university curricula and an object of suspicion over several decades. This chapter intends to trace the broad outlines of the history of cultural anthropology in the academic institutions of Arab countries, exploring its complex relations with the colonial period and the political dynamics that influenced its development after independence.