The Middle East

Books about the Middle East concerned less with current headlines, prognosticating, or analyzing policies seem in short supply, but Bernard Lewis's The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years is a welcome departure. Because it predates 9/11, it is more of a scholarly introduction than a cultural or political document. Two aspects of Lewis's The Middle East I appreciated were his historical and geographical framing, and his emphasis on Ottoman history.Although most of the book involves the Ottoman period, because of the volume of original sources, Lewis starts not with Mohammad classical period, but in the pre-classical empires of the Roman Empire and Persia. The perspective illustrates Islam's genius for adapting both indigenous and exogenous alternatives to local problems. Geographically, Lewis stays fixed on Ottoman and Persian territory, with only occasional references to Central Asian, European, African, and Southeast Asian history. This keeps the reader immersed in the region without following Islam's extended borders in other regions.Another aspect I liked was an emphasis on Ottoman history, and not classical Islam. There is entire section on culture, law, religion, and social classes, which acts as an interlude between the early Ottoman Period and modern times. Here he addresses very succinctly and diplomatically many issues relevant to contemporary discussions. Many readers no doubt will be disappointed by his apparent reticence, but he avoids placing the debate in the classical period.Lewis makes a controversial argument that is certainly counter-intuitive and offensive to Muslim fundamentalists. The West has not intervened in the Middle East, except for limited economic and political contacts over short periods. As a matter of fact, if Western countries had supported their limited forays with substantial aid and attention, the region might have benefited. Instead, Lewis blames the marginalization of the Middle East both on the demise of the region as a crossroads between east and west, and on the Muslim governments for not realizing the consequences of this change. Lewis points the finger mostly at Muslims, not the West.The only bad aspect of this book is its length: too short. Although Lewis blames this on the dearth of research on Ottoman official documents, there is certainly more spaces to be filled with information. But Lewis's outline is very fruitful and compelling. It might not satisfy advocates, but it challenges both Muslim and Western proponents to examine their approaches.

I've been listening a lot to the radio since September 11, and there have been many journalists, diplomats, clerics, and academics on the air trying to explain Islam and the Middle East to us. One of the more interesting personalities doing this is a Professor of Near East studies at Princeton named Bernard Lewis, who's apparently of British extraction but has taught in New Jersey for more than 30 years. He's written a number of books on the region, and this one is sort of an overview of his work, near as I can tell. He also did a two-volume history covering only part of the period in this book; for those brave enough, perhaps that will provide the necessary detail.Lewis is a renaissance man as a historian: once on NPR, he spent the whole half hour reciting poetry from the Middle East, to illustrate how artistic and sensitive Muslims can be. He obviously has an affinity for the region and the people. He also has considerable skill as a writer, making even things like literature and art interesting to someone like me, a military historian who's not real interested in anything outside of the diplomatic/military side of things. I was highly impressed with the book's readability.The book is divided into several parts, but really there are four segments. The first is the pre-Islam period, the second early Islam, the third is an overview of Islamic society and culture that's not chronological, and lastly there's a chapter on modern times. The last two are the longest. Much of the book is narrative history, but the author doesn't get bogged down with the succession of caliphs or shahs, he instead informs you of trends and developments, doing a marvelous job of describing how things came out the way they did. One of the most significant things was the explanation of why Muslims have such a problem relating to Western governments: they not only don't have a tradition of separation of Church and State like ours, they don't even have a Church, in our sense of the word, at all. Instead, traditionally, the leader of the government is overtly religious, and rules as a Muslim. All who follow other approved religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism in the east) are allowed to practice their faith, provided they accept second-class citizen status, and pay a special tax. Everyone else (atheists and various pagans, Buddhists, etc.) gets three choices: slavery, conversion, or death. The whole country is overtly religious, everyone is expected to attend prayers, study the Koran, etc., and anyone who is able may lead prayers in the church. Since there's no formal clergy, someone like Osama bin Laden can be regarded as a holy man, when he went to engineering school. It's all very different.Lewis dispenses all of this painlessly, and discusses at great lengths the interactions of the various religions in the region, and also the various peoples. This is a worthwhile book, and I would highly recommend it.

I have willfully avoided reading any of Lewis' works because of his popularity. The mistake and loss were mine, but are mine no more.After an engaging preview in the introduction, the first 132 pages of "The Middle East" is a recap of history, from Nile to Oxus and from AD 1 to 1700 where he highlights precedents for current characteristics. The Caliphate's expansion was aided by peoples people "long subject to the Persian and Byzantine Empires [who] exchanged one imperial domination for another and found their new masters less demanding, more tolerant, and above all more welcoming than the old." The middle third of the book is a collection of cross-sectional essays on the state; the economy; elites; the commonality; religion and law; and culture. Agriculture & stock raising were economically in different hands, hence the persistence of nomads. Poets were PR people for rulers, even composing 'jingles.' Compared to the West, there was a lack of doctrinal differences or strife, an absence of persecution of heretics or unbelievers. "Muslims... [created] a religious civilization beyond the limits of a single race or religion or culture. The Islamic world in the High Middle Ages was international, multi-racial, polyethnic. one might even say intercontinental." In the 15th and 16th centuries, refugees voted with their feet from West to East. "[E]ven at the beginning of the 19th century a poor man of humble origin had a better chance of attaining to wealth, power and dignity in the Ottoman Empire than in any of the states of Christian Europe, including post-Revolutionary France." The section on religion and law is especially illuminating in its comparison of political law as a supplement to the Shari'a and in its explanation of how custom, regulations, and interpretations were used to disguise new laws.The final part of the book summarizes Middle Eastern history from 1683 to 1994. The author's analysis of the Ottoman state is the best I've ever seen, from the organizational roots of success, through the seeds of relaxed complacence at the height of its success to its collapse, which he compares and contrasts to the Soviet collapse. The alienation of landholdings, then governorships, is well covered, as is deindustrialization. I'll have to get his book on the Ottomans. Lewis' discussion of patriotism and nationalism is thought-provoking, as is one on the impact of liberty, equality and fraternity. The last chapter reveals the only significant weakness of the book: Lewis fails to distinguish Modernity from The West. He uses the terms modern and West interchangeably, not appreciating a point that Huntington, for one, makes theoretically in "Clash of Civilizations," and that Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan make in practice. The author also understates the client-patron nature of the Egyptian, Israeli, Lebanese, Jordanian, Iraqi (formerly), and Saudi regimes, among others.Though there are a couple of spell-check typos (attached instea

Lewis is the Daniel Boorstin of Middle East historians. He brings the same sort of encyclopaedic knowledge to his subject. The vast scope of his erudition is evident on every page in this volume. In fact, if there is anything to quibble about, it may be that few readers will be able to keep pace with him as he traverses Middle-Eastern history and landscape. Part of the difficulty in keeping up comes from the way in which Lewis presents his information. This is not your typical linear narrative, starting at a particular era and then ploughing forward through time. Though there is an overall progression (we start out in the Roman era and end up in current times), the author also often backtracks when discussing different aspects of the civilizations he covers. So while the book starts out in a relatively chronological manner in the first few chapters(Romans>Byzantines-Crusades>Mongol Invasions>Turkic Ascendency-Ottomans), we suddenly detour to Part IV of the book, entitled "Cross-Sections." Lewis then proceeds to break down different societal components such as "The State," "The Economy," "The Elites," etc. in which he backtracks to provide additional details about groups he has earlier portrayed. This is where I for one, who am looking for enlightenment on these subjects and have no real background scholastically speaking, had a hard time keeping track. I consider myself at least a moderately attentive reader, and a lover of history from Herodotus to Gibbon to Parkman to Tuchman, but felt swamped at times here from the sheer wealth and breadth of information. One also had better be up on their geography from about six different eras in that part of the world. Though there are a series of maps in the appendix, obscure towns, countries and dynasties are paraded forth at a rate that is taxing for the general reader. While we may be familiar with place-names such as Mecca, Medina or even Basra, how many western readers are going to have a mental image of the area that Yathrib sits in? or Nishapur? or Bukhara? The maps don't really help either, as the regions that have the most obscure towns are in areas that are the most darkly shaded, and the print is so fine, it's impossible to make the names out. <p> All that said, if you want to learn about a region that up until recently not many westerners were really all that interested in, Lewis is an excellent teacher. Just be warned that he is rather a dry lecturer. He's not a "school of color" historian. He's an academic and a pure scholar. There are vitually no anecdotal details. No human interest. No exciting passages or descriptions of great battles. He is a purveyor of information and you will come away from reading <The Middle East> with a lot more information than you came in with. If, like me, you think being at least reasonably well-informed at times such as these is important, you will want to investigate this book.

In a remarkable survey of Middle Eastern history, Lewis improves greatly on prior accounts. First, he starts not with the seventh century, when Islam originated, but goes the whole way back to the time of Jesus. This has the distinct virtue of placing Islamic history in context, rather than seeing it as an almost complete innovation. Second, Lewis aspires to do more than recite names and dates; he hopes to convey something of the texture of Middle Eastern life. His is a thoroughly modern history, full of striking details and illustrative personalities. While some of his information will no doubt be familiar to a reader with basic knowledge of the Middle East, Lewis draws extensively on his own original research, insuring that much of his book will be novel even to the most practiced Middle East hand. Third, the author resists the small-minded orthodoxies of political correctness. Lastly, the book is exceedingly well written. Recently dubbed "one of the great prose writers of the last fifty years," Lewis has a knack for the vignette, the turn of phrase, and the telling quotation. Lewis wrote his first published article in 1936 and celebrated his eightieth birthday earlier this year. The Middle East is a fitting capstone to his long career, surveying with broad strokes so many of the topics he has previously written about in more detail. The reader can now benefit from this lifetime of study within the covers of a single book. Middle East Quarterly, Sept 1996