The Art of War

The Art of War by Sun Tzu, presented in Tareq al-Suwaidan's Practical Administration course as the oldest surviving book on management ¹.

Al-Suwaidan explains that the book is military at its core, addressed to the commander and teaching him the rules of running his army and dealing with opponents, with rules that sometimes mix deception and good administration ². He says the estimates place its writing about three thousand years before the Common Era, and that it is translated and in bookshops (needs_source: the date is the speaker's figure) ¹. He also mentions modern management books built upon it, among them The Art of War in Business, published around the year 2000 and not translated into Arabic ³.