Lewis Bernard - Notes on a Century: Reflections of a Middle East Historian

Reflections of a
Middle East Historian

Bernard Lewis

with Buntzie Ellis Churchill

VIKING

VIKING

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First published in 2012 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4

Copyright Bernard Lewis and Buntzie Ellis Churchill, 2012

All rights reserved

Photographs courtesy of Bernard Lewis unless otherwise indicated.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Lewis, Bernard.

Notes on a century : reflections of a Middle East historian / Bernard Lewis;
with Buntzie Ellis Churchill.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN: 978-1-101-57523-9

1. Lewis, Bernard. 2. Middle East specialistsGreat BritainBiography. 3. Middle EastHistoriography. 4. Middle EastHistory20th century. 5. Middle East
History21st century. I. Churchill, Buntzie Ellis. II. Title.

DS61.7.L48A3 2012

956.007202dc23

[B] 2011049267

Printed in the United States of America

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ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

For Buntzie,

without whose inspiration and guidance
this book would not have been written or even started
and without whose presence and participation
this last and best part of my life
could not have been lived.

One grey hair appeared on my head

I plucked it out with my hand.

It answered me: You have prevailed against me alone

What will you do when my army comes after me?

Yehuda Halevi

Lord, of your grace all that I hope is this

Keep the realm of my pleasure prosperous

Avert from me the calamity of chastity

And keep far from me the doom of repentance.

Ubayd-i Zakani
Excerpts from Music of a Distant Drum

I thank my friends and colleagues whose encouragement, over many years and in many places, contributed so much to the life described in these pages.

David Pryce-Jones was kind enough to let me quote extensively from his article Enough Said, and Adam Garfinkel graciously permitted me to reprint my article from The American Interest (spring 2006), with minor changes.

A word of thanks to Mari Steed and Denise Bala for invaluable technical assistance.

Finally, special thanks are due to my editor, Joy de Menil, whose rigorous scrutiny removed defects and added merits to the manuscript.

The Typewriter

Sometimes the machine stares back at me

Somber, silent

A hint of menace?

Sometimes it works with me,

Anxious, eager

For reassurance.

Sometimes it sits in judgment

Hearing, condemning

Pondering sentence.

D uring my long life I have been principally concerned with the study of the Middle East. This interest began when I was still a schoolboy. It has grown ever since, becoming first a hobby, then an obsession, finally a profession. I have tried from the start to understand the society from withinby learning its languages, reading its writings, visiting its countries, talkingand listeningto its people.

In accomplishing these purposes, I derived considerable advantage from the time, place and circumstances of my birth and therefore of my early education. In England in those days, history was an important part of education, and we were expected to have at least an outline knowledge not just of recent and current events, but of the whole sweep of recorded and remembered history of Western civilization, from classical antiquity to the present day. Not only that, but we were expected to study at least part of it in the original languages, notably French and Latin, to which some of us later added German and Greek. King Alfred, William the Conqueror, Richard the Lionheart and the Crusades were a familiar part of everyday discourse. This did not prepare me for the study of Islamic history; indeed in a sense, by inculcating a Christian, European perception, it biased me against it. But it did give me a better understanding of the nature of the historical process, the purpose and manner of historical research and writing.

In my early studies I was mainly interested in medieval history, in the period when the Islamic Middle East was most different from the West, least affected by the West, and in most respects far in advance of the West. I never lost my interest in medieval Islamic history, but it is no longer my primary concern. The opportunity to enter the hitherto sealed Ottoman archives in 1950 was too good to miss; it provided me with a chance to pursue a topic in which I was already deeply interestedthe history of the Ottoman Empire. Most of my published work since then has been on the Ottoman and modern periods, or some combination of the two.

But no specialist on the Middle East, not even an Assyriologist or an Egyptologist, can wholly ignore the contemporary scene. My war service gave me an intimate knowledge of some aspects of modern Middle Eastern life and politics. My travels in Middle Eastern countries, my discussions with Middle Eastern leaders, my meetings with Middle Eastern colleagues, and, perhaps most of all, my encounters with Middle Eastern students, and later with former students, kept me in touch with what was going on. From time to time, I ceded to the temptation to make some public pronouncement on Middle Eastern events, usually in the form of an interview or article in some review or magazine or, occasionally, newspaper. And I have occasionally written at greater length on recent and contemporary topics.

For the study of Middle Eastern history, and at the present time one might even add of world history, some knowledge of Islams origins and of its scriptures is necessary. Already in my student years I was reading the Koran, the biography of the Prophet, and the extensive literature concerned with them. But at no time did I specialize in these topics. I am not an expert in theology or scripture, and I looked at these, if at all, only with a historians eye. I am, by vocation and profession, a historian, principally interested in the history of civilization.