The Middle East

Rating:
Summary: Ride the Middle East Roller Coaster
Review: In "The Middle East", Bernard Lewis takes the reader on guided tour of the past 2000 years, charting the meteoric rise and fall of the Islamic civilization.

Lewis spares no effort in emphasizing the millennium of Islam's cultural and political dominance beginning with its 7th century inception. Europe had much to learn from their neighbors to the East, and indeed they did. The Ottoman advance into Europe reversed course, as European power expanded technically and geographically (colonialism).

Lewis provides a number of explanations for the role reversal, but one seems to stand out above others: hubris. The Ottomans were so convinced of their cultural superiority that they were initially unwilling to do what Europe had done in the past; they felt they had nothing to learn from their advesary. For example, the use of the printing press was rejected for several centuries after its invention.

The period of European colonialism in the Middle East, from the 19th to mid-20th century, becomes a logical conclusion. Regardless of right or wrong, nature abhors a vacuum. Lewis shows how the weakened state of the Ottoman Empire made it easy pickings for the powers of Europe.

Historians like Lewis have been pilloried by those who feel the role of colonialism has not been given sufficient attention when analyzing the current state of the Islamic civilization within the Middle East. As Lewis clearly shows, the decline of Islamic civilization was rooted in the tragic flaw of hubris; it began long before Napoleon's adventures in Egypt.

Rating:
Summary: The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years.
Review: 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

Rating:
Summary: A great introduction to a fascinating part of the world
Review: Lewis has a succint, clear writing style that everyone will appreciate.

Be warned, there are flaws. For one, if you are new to Middle Eastern history, prepare to be a bit confused since Lewis (necessarily) does not flesh out the details.

Also, his focus is on social history and frankly I would have liked to see more on military and intellectual history.

Overall, a must-read for any student of history.

Rating:
Summary: As Good An Overview As Can Be Provided
Review: 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.

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 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.

Rating:
Summary: Readable, concise, enjoyable, and relevant
Review: Lewis provides a solid overview of the Middle East. He's gives us a feeling for the incredible flux this area has seen over the past 2000 years. Lewis has a good eye for evocative detail, using an quotidian coffeehouse example at the outset to delineate elements of culture which he then uses as a springboard for Middle Eastern history.

Unlike many one-volume histories, Lewis then gives an excellent background, starting in pre-Christian antiquity and the Persian empire and continuing during the Christian period. He has an appreciation for the prominent achievements of Islam and the Ottoman Empire and writes with praiseworthy restaint when considering the causes of the decline of the Empire. Those seeking more recent history may be disappointed and might consider other histories in addition to this one.

Lewis has a good style with history, plucking out a narrative but not neglecting fact. It's a popular, not scholarly work, a thoroughly enjoyable read. Strongly recommended.

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Summary: useful history of a people
Review: Middle East histroy looks at the history of Middle East through its different time periods such asn pre-christian, pre-Islam, post-Islam. It also looks at the different groups inside the middle easte that have affected the region like Persians, Turcks and Arabs as well as groups outside the area like Europeans and Mongols. Through time these varying groups have had different affects on the region. Also the book looks at things like economy, relgion, law and cultre. One of the important topics that the books covers is a lot of history of the 20th like the fall of the Ottaman empire, post colonailism and the creation of Israel.

Overall, this books provides a good background into the middle east that can any many people's questions about the region.

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Summary: What's the agenda??
Review: Prof. Lewis is obviously a smart man, but for someone who is recognized as an "expert" in the Middle East I find his books very biased. To me he comes across as being a bit condescending to the people who live in the Middle East and an apologist for many of the policies from the west that are somewhat responsible for creating this ongoing discord. Not enough emphasis is given to the 20th century history. If you want an excellent book on this area I recommend, "A History of the Modern Middle East", by William Cleveland. I have lived in the Middle East for many years and Cleveland's book is by far the the best written and most objective I have ever read. It's good to read different viewpoints so there is a lot to be learned from Prof. Lewis's books, but you won't get the whole picture if he is your primary source of information.

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Summary: Boring!
Review: The first two thirds of the book are unreadable. After every few pages, I would ask myself: "what have I been reading? Did, I get anything out of this? The book lacks any focus, connection, and sequence for my mind to hang on to. Granted, the last third of the book reads much better. But, it is not worth the pain of the first two thirds.

If you are eager to understand Islam in a world context, and understand current events worldwide, I strongly recommend Samuel Hungtington's "Clashed Civilizations." ...

Rating:
Summary: Well written and interesting....
Review: THE MIDDLE EAST by Bernard Lewis is extremely well written, but footnotes and references are few, so if you want history that serves as a basis for further investigation you may be disappointed. The book is very readable, however, so I decided to treat it as a New Yorker type article (the long ones in the back of the magazine) and enjoyed it very much.

The book includes much interesting material and many wonderful anectdotes. For example, I found the story of Saladin fascinating--he was a probably a Muslim Kurd--not an Arab. Also, according to Lewis, the Crusades were a miserable attempt by the Europeans to "copy" the Muslim Jihad which the Arabs had been waging successfully for sometime before the first Crusade.

THE MIDDLE EAST includes a plethora of detail, yet not all topics are well covered. Although the introduction suggests Lewis will provide adequate coverage of the period from the 1st to the 7th Centuries, he provides only a bare synopsis of this Christian period (Latin or Orthodox) and barely covers the Jews at all. However, this is a vast improvement since most other "experts" begin with the Crusades which is comparable to a history of the U.S. Civil War that begins with Gettysburg.

Readers who want to understand the history of Palestine will find plenty of material. Apparently, following the partition of the old Ottoman Empire after WWI, the British acquired the governance of the area known as Palestine and TransJordan. The Romans had renamed Judaea--the land of the Jews---Palestine--the land of the Phillistines--at the time of their last attempt to eradicate the Jews (when the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed). The Arabs called the area other names, but when the British took over they used the old Latin name.

Jews have always lived in the Holy Land (they returned after every exile) and during the Arab conquest they actually lived in relative peace. As "people of the book" they were not treated as harshly as pagans and other non-Jews and non-Christians. Jews returned to the Holy Land in large numbers in the 16th Century during the Spainish exile, and continued to come from all over Europe through the 20th Century when they migrated following persecution in Russia, Germany, France, etc. Although many were killed during WWII, thousands managed to make it to the Holy Land. During the Israeli-Arab wars, hundreds of thousands of Jews exiled from other parts of the Middle East migrated to Israel. Lewis suggests that the largest refugee population in the world lives in Israel--where most people are refugees, or the children or grandchildren of refugees. While Israel accepted the Jews expelled from all over the world, Arab countries, excepting Jordan, did not reciprocate and accept Palestinian refugees from Israel--why many remain stateless.

Muslims are the dominant force in the Middle East, but their early history is not well known. Lewis pieces together his version which seems to be based on Muslim religious writing --comparable to the Old Testament history of the Jews or the New Testament history of Christians. I wondered why Lewis did not use more material from the Roman or Byzantine administrative and historical records (or cite Sir JJ Norwich or Dr. John Fine).

Lewis discusses all aspects of life in the Middle East over the past two thousand years--religion, politics, economy, etc. The great puzzle is how did the Muslims with such a rich inheritance from several advanced ancient civilizations (Greece, Mesopotamia, Egypt) end up losing their competitive edge to "infidel" Europeans by the 17th Century? Lewis suggests the answer lies in the unwillingness of the Muslims to embrace change which apparently they view as evil. Certainly the Europeans seem to have turned the tables on a once brilliant society which faltered after the reign of Sulyman the Magnificent.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This book by Bernard Lewis is the most complete book on this subject around. Todays problems in the Middle-East cannot be understood without (basic) knowledge of this regions political, cultural and social history. This book is what i call a 'must read'. Highly recommended.