A Middle East Mosaic Fragments of Life, Letters and History

by LEWIS, BERNARD

• ISBN13: 9780375758379
• ISBN10: 0375758372
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-11-13
• Publisher: Modern Library

Summary

In times of war and in peace, from the earliest days of the Roman Empire to our own, Westerners have traveled to the lands of the Middle East, bringing back accounts of their adventures and impressions. But it was never a one-way journey. In this spirited collection of Western views of the Middle East and Middle Eastern views of the West, Bernard Lewis gives us a rich overview of two thousand years of commerce, diplomacy, war and exploration. We hear from Napoleon, St. Augustine, T. E. Lawrence, Karl Marx and Ibn Khaldun. We peer into Queen Elizabeth's business correspondence, strike oil with Freya Stark and follow the footsteps of Mark Twain and Ibn Battuta, the Marco Polo of the East. This book is a delight, a treasury of stories drawn not only from letters, diaries and histories, but also from unpublished archives and previously untranslated accounts.

Author Biography

Bernard Lewis is the author of <b>The Middle East</b>, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; <b>The Emergence of Modern Turkey</b>; and <b>The Arabs in History</b>, among other landmark books. Inter-nationally recognized as one of the twentieth century's greatest historians of the Middle East, he is Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
PART I A Bundle of Prejudices	1	(20)
Ancient Prejudices	5	(2)
A Byzantine Misapprehension
Sayings Attributed to the Prophet
On National Character: Some Medieval Judgements	7	(3)
A Persian View of the World
An Iraqi View
A View from Jerusalem
Another Arab View
Another Persian View
Ibn Khaldun on Subjugation
A Consumer's Guide to Servants
Some Western Prejudices	10	(11)
Literary Stereotypes (Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton, Congreve, Chateaubriand, Byron, Moore, Austen, Hugo, Dickens, Carlyle, Twain, Thackeray, Shaw)
Some Religious Prejudices (Martin Luther, The Book of Common Prayer, John Wesley)
And Some Political Judgments (Rycaut, Hume, Washington, Hamilton, Tocqueville, Engels)
Five British Views of the Arabs (Nightingale, Bell, Douglas, Lawrence, Jarvis)
And Some American Prejudices (Diplomatic, Military)
Dr. Johnson on Orientalism
PART II As Others See Us	21	(38)
In Darkest Europe	27	(8)
An Embassy from the Arab Ruler of Cordova to the Vikings
Rome c. 886
The Northern Barbarians
Whaling in the Irish Sea
Northerners, Seen from Andalusia
England and Ireland
Franks in Syria
The British++Isles
The Franks According to al-Qazvini
Rashid al-Din on European languages
Ibn Khaldun on European Science
The State of Nature in Ireland and England
The Mysterious Occident	35	(3)
Emperor Leopold I in Vienna (1665)
Frederick the Great (1763)
A Moroccan Ambassador's View of Spain (1690-91)
Turkish Ambassador's View of Paris (1720)
Parisian Commerce (1777)
Two Revolutions	38	(5)
Revolution in America (Report from a Morocca+ Ambassador in Spain)
The French Revolution: Contemporary Turkish Reactions
The French Revolution Observed; The French Revolution Refuted; An Ottoman Historian; From the Letters of a Turkish Ambassador in Paris
The Western Menace	43	(16)
A Visitor's Guide to Western Europe (++ 1799-1803)
An Egyptian in Paris Discovers Newspapers, the Mails and Advertising (1826-31)
An Egyptian Lady on Shopping in Paris (1879-1924)
On Causes of the Progress of Europe and the Backwardness of the Orient, Though the Human Race ++ One
Western Dancing (1903)
Germans in Turkey (1914-18)
English Women and Men (1918)
A Turkish View of Freedom and Eccentricity (1933)
An Egyptia + View of Western Civilization (1933)
Plagued by the West (1961)
Working Women: A View from Afghanistan (1998)
PART III Migratory Words	59	(14)
Alcove
Amber
Aryan
Assassin
Baksheesh
Carafe
Caravan
Cassock
Caviar
Check
Chicane
Crimson
Divan
Gala
Harem
Hashish
Hazard
Lute
Magazine
Odalisque
Orange
Ottoman
Pajama
Paradise
Sera+glio
Sugar and Candy
Zero
PART IV Travelers	73	(52)
On Travel and Travelers	79	(5)
Hints to Travelers in the East
Salute to the Orient
Looking the Other Way	84	(7)
India and China
An African Adventure
Ibn Battuta, the Traveler of Islam, in Turkey, Iran and India
Quarantine	91	(3)
Contagion
Symptoms
Prayer
Departure from Europe: Crossing the Sava River
Western Travelers	94	(31)
Bernard the Wise, Pilgrim (867)
The Misadventures of an Italian Pilgrim (1384)
A Rabbi on the Road (1481)
Time and Space in Sixteenth-Century Turkey
A Spiritual Exercise: The Pilgrimage of Ignatius Loyola (1523)
Letter from a Jesuit Missionary (1700)
Testimony of Two English Slaves (Seventeenth Century)
On the Habits and Character of the Inhabitants of Syria (1782-85)
A Philosopher at Sea (1785)
Napoleon in Egypt (1798)
A Swiss Pilgrim in Medina (1814)
Kinglake's Travels
Damascus (1835 and 1845)
Persian Jews (1846-55)
Flaubert's Travel Notebook (1850)
Richard Burton's Arrival in Mecca (1853)
Melville on Missionaries (1856)
An Innocent Abroad: The Travels of Mark Twain (1867)
Jerusalem (1877)
Fraternizing with Orientals (1894-96)
Gertrude Bell in Praise of Gardens (1894)
On Punctuality (1947)
Saul Bellow Facing History in Jerusalem (1975)
A Journey to the Islamic Revolution (1981)
Interview with Qaddafi (1986)
PART V Diplomats	125	(52)
Rules Concerning Ambassadors	132	(4)
How to Test an Ambassador, from an Arabic Manual of Statecraft (Ninth Century)
From a Persian Manual of Statecraft (Eleventh Century)
How to Write a Letter to Europe, from an Egyptian Guide for Officials (Fifteenth Century)
Reception and Negotiation	136	(24)
An Offer of Marriage and Friendship, Apparently Unrequited, from a Frankish Queen (905-6)
A Letter from the Ottoman Grand Vizier Siyavush Pasha to Queen Elizabeth of England (1583)
An Organ for the Sultan (1599)
The Appointment of an Ottoman Ambassador to India (1653)
The Manner of Reception of Foreign Ambassadors Among the Turks, and the Esteem, They Have of Them (1667)
Sir Paul Rycaut on the Dangers of Interpreting (1667)
An Orientalist's View (Eighteenth Century)
James Porter's Advice on Negotiations; Interpreting Treaties; Thoughts on Book Learning and Intelligence, Credulity and Pedantry (1768)
A Turkish Ambassador in Spain (1787)
Petition from a Dragoman
The Dragoman System in the Levant: A Foreign Office Memorandum (1838)
The Etiquette of Embassies (1824-27)
A Lesson in Pride (1833)
Reception and Reform (1867)
An English View of an American Consul-General (1898)
Advice to a Vice Consul (1837)
And a Warning from an American Visitor (1856)
Modern Diplomacy	160	(17)
A Persian Mission to England (1838-9)
Nasir al+ Din Shah in Europe (1873)
Letters from Persia: Harold Nicolson to Vita Sackville-West
Politics in Syria Under the French Mandate: Two Foreign Office Memoranda (1934)
Diplomacy and War: The Siege of Baghdad (1941)
An American Diplomat in Baghdad (1944)
The Mad Hatter's Tea Party (Jordan, 1948)
Dean Acheson's Mosadeq (Tehran, 1951)
President Nasser and King Hussein: The Impressions of Henry Kissinger (1969)
PART VI Women	177	(38)
Interpreting Scriptures	183	(4)
Men and Women: A Qur'anic Verse in Translation
Middle Eastern Views	187	(8)
Aphorisms (Eleventh Century)
A Consumer's Guide (Eleventh Century)
Two Tales (Fourteenth Century)
On Beauty (Fifteenth Century)
An Egyptian View of Marriageability (Seventeenth Century)
A Traveler's Tale from Vienna (1665)
French Influences (1800-1801)
Frenchwomen, and a Note on Ballroom Dancing (1826-31)
The Need to Educate Women (1867)
The Koltuk Ceremony (Early Twentieth Century)
Lessons and Learning
Ataturk in Praise of Women (1923)
European Views	195	(16)
A Wedding (1384)
A Peek at the Harem (1599)
In Praise of Polygamy and Concubinage (1656)
Women's Quarters (c. 1667)
The Tales of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1717-18)
On the Domestic Life of the Inhabitants of Syria and Why There is so Little to Envy (1782-85)
A Physician Visits the Harem, with Notes on Certain Feminine Concerns (1824)
The Price of a Slave (1824)
The Second Wife
Florence Nightingale's Thoughts on Polygamy (1849-50)
The Superior Sex (1858)
Women in Muslim Law (c. 1900)
Behind the Veil (1923)
Four Classical Love Poems	211	(4)
Waddah al-Yaman
Rudagi
Yehuda Halevi
Fuzuli
Last Word from a Turkish Lady
PART VII Government	215	(52)
The Theory and Practice of Government:	219	(10)
Wisdom of the Rabbis (First Century B.C.E.)
From the Qur'an
Sayings Attributed to the Prophet
The Severity of Ziyad (Seventh Century)
Cutting Bureaucracy (Eighth Century)
A Letter to Secretaries (Eighth Century)
Maxims on Statecraft (Seventh-Ninth Centuries)
Advice on Government from the Vizier Ibn al-Furat
Al-Farabi and the Democratic City (Tenth Century)
Three Views of Kingship
A Turkish Rule of Statecraft (1269)
A Bureaucratic Parody (Eleventh Century)
On Taxation and Its Effects
Decline and Fall: Ibn Khaldun on the Lifespan of Empires
A Connoisseur's View of Kingship (1532)
Another View, Some Time Later (1786)
An Ottoman Official Offers Advice and a Warning to the Sultan (1630)
Crime and Punishment	229	(8)
Requisites of a Judge (Twelfth Century)
Justice in Damascus (1384)
Ottoman Advice on Trust and Fear (Mid-Seventeenth Century)
An English Merchant Reviews Methods of Execution (1600)
Turkish Justice (1650)
Summary Justice in Syria (1782-85)
Comments of a Military Adviser (1785)
Flaubert on the Bastinado (1850)
Thackeray on the Rules of Roguery in Cairo (1898)
Aspects of Reform	237	(7)
Despotism, Democracy and Human Rights: Reflections of an English Conservative (1832)
Florence Nightingale on Politics Here and There (1849-50)
Reform and Emancipation: A Turkish View (1856); An English View (1867)
Two Comments from a Turkish Liberal (1868-72)
An Ottoman View of Ottoman Officials (1872)
Persons and Institutions: A British View (1878)
Education: A Memorandum to the Sultan (1880)
Encounter with Freedom (1878)
A Young Turk's View of Old Turk Government (1897)
Imperial Sidelights	244	(3)
Britain in Egypt (1883)
The Leisure of a [British] Egyptian Official (1921)
Trouble in Palestine (1920-22)
Glubb Pasha on Arab Prospects for Self-Government and Democratic Institutions (1941)
Intellectuals and the State	247	(1)
Dependence (1978)
Words Versus Deeds (1986)
Reflections of an Egyptian Statesman (1997)
Revolution	248	(19)
Tehran, August 1906
Istanbul, 1908
Three Poems of Revolution
Ataturk on the State of the Union (1921-27)
Khomeini's New Year's Message (1980)
Turkey and Iran Look at Each Other
PART VIII War	267	(56)
War and Peace	271	(5)
Scriptures
Sayings Attributed to the Prophet
On Suicide
Abu Bakr on the Rules of War
St. Augustine on the Desire for Peace
Two Views on the Origins of the Crusades: Machiavelli and Ibn al-Athir
Terrorists in the Holy Land	276	(3)
Crusader Encounters with the Assassins (Twelfth-Thirteenth Centuries)
Murder and Paradise (1192)
A Social Call on the Assassins (1198)
Plus Ca Change (1250)
The Proper Use of Spies	279	(5)
The Spies of Moses
The Qur'an on Privacy
Catching Spies and How to Deal with Them: Two Legal Views (Eighth Century)
A Pilgrim's Progress (721-27)
Advice to Kings on How to Use Spies: Iraq (Ninth Century)
Iran (Eleventh Century)
Egypt (Fourteenth-Fifteenth Centuries)
USA (1997)
Ottoman Advances and Retreat	284	(16)
The Battle of Lepanto (1571)
Turkish Imperial Orders after Lepanto (1571)
The Struggle for the Heart of Europe: Skirmishes in Bosnia and Croatia, an Ottoman Account (1592-93)
Spoils of War: Defeat at the Gates of Vienna (1683)
Modernizing the Ottoman Army (1757)
General Bonaparte in Egypt: Campaign Plans and Proclamations (1798-1801)
The French in Cairo: A Contemporary Egyptian View (1799-1801)
The Outbreak of the Crimean War: A Contemporary Marxist View (1854)
Balance of Power in Central Asia: A View from London (1873-4)
The First World War and the Arab Rising	300	(9)
The War in Syria: Impressions of a German General (1918)
Calculations of the Ottoman Commander (1916-18)
T. E. Lawrence Before and After: Handling Hejaz Arabs (1917); Reflections After the War (1921-22)
Lawrence and Clemenceau at the Versailles Peace Conference (1919)
The Lawrence Legend: An Arab View (1969)
Mustafa Kemal and the Turkish War of Independence: A Churchillian View (1929)
The Second World War and After	309	(11)
De Gaulle in Cairo (1941)
Count Ciano's Diary (1939-43)
The Battle of El-Alamein: An Egyptian View (1942)
An Anglo-French Interlude (1945)
Declaration of a Jihad (1998)
The Poetry of War, and of War Weariness	320	(3)
PART IX Commerce and Crafficking	323	(26)
Early Islamic Views	327	(1)
Sayings Attributed to the Prophet
A Clear Look at Trade (Ninth Century)
Trafficking With the Enemy	328	(2)
Saladin Defends Constructive Engagement (1174)
An Egyptian Ruler Condemns It (1288)
Contraband of War: A Papal Bull of 1527
The Turkish Trade (1606-7)
Business as Usual	330	(8)
Trade in Damascus (1522)
A Business Letter (1586)
An Errant Vice Consul; Some Businessmen Complain (1596)
Diplomatic Reports on English Trade in the Levant (Some Illegal) to the King of Spain (1568-1606)
Advantages of Free Trade with the Ottoman Empire (Mid-Seventeenth Century)
Business Correspondence from Voltaire (1771)
Trade in Baghdad (Nineteenth Century)
The Slave Trade	338	(4)
Letter from the Sultan to the Ottoman Governor of Baghdad (1847)
Slavery and Diplomacy: From a Debate in the House of Lords (1960)
The Business of Oil	342	(7)
Possibilities of Petroleum: An American Report (1887)
Striking Oil in Persia (1908)
Oil Comes to Kuwait (1937)
The Oilmen Come to Arabia (1984)
PART X Arts and Sciences	349	(24)
Choice of a Profession	355	(1)
Science and Medicine	355	(8)
A Guide for Physicians (Ninth-Tenth Centuries)
A Syrian View of Crusader Medical Practice (Twelfth Century)
A Hospital and Asylum in Baghdad (1165-73)
Physicians in Constantinople
Customs and Costumes (c. 1551)
The Perils of Printing: Advantages of a Turkish Education (1656)
A Visit to the Observatory (1748)
A View of Western Science (1947)
Music	363	(3)
An Appreciation (Early Tenth Century)
Western Music (Tenth Century)
Turkish Chamber Music (1717)
Paris Opera (1720)
Musical Diplomacy in Spain: A Turkish Ambassador Reports (1787-89)
``If It Had Not Been for Lehar'' (1916)
Arts and Letters	366	(3)
A Well-Turned Thought (Ninth Century)
The Power of Poetry (Twelfth Century)
Lady Mary on Turkish Scholars (1717)
Ancient Arabian Poetry: Four Western Views
Precursors	369	(2)
Conversations in Heaven and hell with Pious Houris and a Pagan Poet (Eleventh Century)
Growing up on a Desert Island (Twelfth Century)
Persian Quatrains	371	(2)
(Daqiqi, Sana'i, Mujir, Khaqani, Ubayd-i Zakani)
PART XI Food and Drink	373	(24)
Rules	378	(4)
A Medieval Muslim Guide
A Modern Guide
Middle Eastern Views	382	(4)
The Discovery of Rice (Seventh Century)
Tales of a Wine Bibber (Eighth Century)
Warnings (Ninth Century)
In Praise of Wine (Thirteenth Century)
Watching People Eat: A Turk in Paris (1720)
An Egyptian Shaykh Discovers the Restaurant (1826-31)
Western Views	386	(1)
Table Manners in Cairo (1384)
Discovering the Banana in Alexandria (1384)
Street Vendors in Damascus (1384)
Dining in Turkey	387	(6)
Orders from the Sultan (1573-85)
A Turkish Palace Feast, and Its Disappointing Menu (1582)
Lady Mary on Spices and Soop (1717)
Dinner-Dance in Istanbul (1785)
Dinner with the Kapudan Pasha (1829-31)
Coffee and Tobacco	393	(4)
A Turkish Cure for Melancholy (1621)
Coffee and Tobacco in Istanbul (c. 1635)
The Sin of Smoking (c. 1869)
PART XII Wit and Wisdom	397	(16)
Sayings of the Rabbis	401	(12)
A Saying Attributed to the Prophet
Friends and Enemies
Classical Arab Wit and Wisdom
Dicts and Sayings
The Wisdom of Al-Watwat
Thoughts from a Persian Satirist
Servant Problems
Fuad Pasha
PART XIII Propheen and Retrospect	413	(16)
Prophecy and Empire	417	(3)
The Ottoman Lands (1837)
The Dangers of Balkan Nationalism (1862)
New Zeal (1876)
A Prophecy at the Turn of the Century (1900)
Intimations of War (1912-14)
``The Death-Knell of Ottoman Dominion''
A Turk in Hyde Park (1933)
Prophecy and the Holy Land	420	(4)
Return to Judea (1843)
Jewish National Home: An Ottoman Prophecy (1917)
Visons of Arab-Jewish Cooperation and Confrontation at Versailles (1919)
Another Opinion (1920)
``We Will Sweep Them into the Sea'' (1948)
War and Peace	424	(5)
The Future of King Hussein (1958)
The Coming War (1967)
Cairo: A Visitor Predicts Sadat (1969)
Lebanon's Future (1975)
The Rising Tide of Discontent (1986)
Saddam Hussein (1991)
There Must Be Something
What is Your Name, and How Do You Spell It?	429	(3)
Cast of Characters	432	(10)
Bibliography	442	(10)
Index	452

Excerpts

PREFACE

Toward the middle of the tenth century, an Arab geographer and cosmographer from the great city of Baghdad wrote an account of the known world in which he included a few words about some of the strange, wild people beyond the northwest frontier of civilization-that is to say, the Islamic empire of the caliphs. Of the northernmost of these peoples, he observed, "Their bodies are large, their natures gross, their manners harsh, their understanding dull and their tongues heavy. Their color is so excessively white that it passes from white to blue.... Those of them who are farthest to the north are the most subject to stupidity, grossness and brutishness."

In 1798 an Ottoman secretary of state wrote a memorandum to inform the Imperial Council about the recent troubles in Paris. He began his description of the events which, in the West, came to be known as the French Revolution: "The conflagration of sedition and wickedness that broke out a few years ago in France, scattering sparks and shooting flames of mischief and tumult in all directions, had been conceived many years previously in the minds of certain accursed heretics.... The known and famous atheists Voltaire and Rousseau, and other materialists like them, had printed and published various works, consisting ... of the removal and abolition of all religion, and of allusions to the sweetness of equality and republicanism, all expressed in easily intelligible words and phrases, in the form of mockery, in the language of the common people."

During the nine and a half centuries that intervened between these two reports, the level of information about Europe among Middle Eastern visitors and observers had improved considerably. The basic attitudes of contempt and certitude, however, remained substantially unchanged. Much the same may be said about Western attitudes toward the Middle East. Though in general rather better informed, medieval and early modem Western observers of the Middle East, including travelers, show a similar self-satisfied ignorance in their discussions of the places they visited and the peoples they met.

From the end of the nineteenth century a much closer contact between the two cultures brought a radical change, on both sides, in their perceptions of each other and ultimately of themselves.

The rise and spread of Islam brought the Middle East into contact-and sometimes into collision-with other regions and cultures: in the east with India and China, in the south with Africa, in the west and north with Christendom. The last of these, seen by Islam as its only serious rival both as world faith and world power, gave rise to the most sustained and most traumatic of these encounters. It began with the advent of Islam in the seventh century and the irruption of the Muslim Arabs into Palestine, Syria, Egypt and North Africa, all until then part of the Christian world. Three major areas of European Christendom were for a while lost to Islam: the two peninsulas at the southwestern and southeastern comers of Europe, Iberia and Anatolia, and the vast plains of Russia. The first was conquered and ruled by Arabs and Moors, the second by Turks, the third by Islarnized Tatars. The loss of Anatolia proved permanent. The attempt by the Crusaders to reconquer the Holy Land failed. But in both Russia and the Iberian Peninsula, the Christian inhabitants were in time able to defeat and expel their Muslim rulers, and, in the flush of victory, even pursued them whence they had come-from Russia to Asia, from Spain and Portugal to Africa and beyond. The reconquest grew into conquest and began the great expansion of Europe, from both east and west, which in time brought most of Asia and Africa into the European orbit. The relationship between the Middle East and the West has not been limited to war and its consequences-fear and mistrust, resentment and hatred, and a readiness to invent and believe the most absurd of calumnies. As well as fighters and preachers, there were others who looked at the people beyond their religious frontier with sometimes puzzled, sometimes eager curiosity. By turns amused and bewildered, they reflected in their books and letters home a range of envy, respect, hostility and-very rarely-admiration.

With the expansion of commerce during and after the crusades, European diplomats began to establish permanent missions in the coastal cities of the Ottoman Empire. Trained to observe and ready to comment on their hosts, their colleagues, and (with deep mistrust) their interpreters, diplomats traveling in both directions provide some of the best accounts we have of the habits and customs of those with whom they were sent to negotiate. Merchants in the Middle East, as elsewhere, discussed commodities, prices and their competitors. European Christian merchants defied papal and national bans to sell arms to Saladin fighting the Crusaders and, centuries later, to the Turks advancing toward the heart of Europe. Constructive engagement has a long history.

European travelers in the East discovered such delights as coffee and polygamy. An Italian pilgrim in fourteenth-century Alexandria describes his joyous discovery of the banana; an Egyptian sheikh in nineteenth-century Paris describes the French postal system and observes how it is used, among other purposes, for assignations. Inevitably, there are more negative comments--on the position of women, the punishment of crime, the conduct of war.

Much has been written of late about Western misperceptions, through negligence and prejudice, arrogance and insensitivity, and sheer lack of interest. Some have gone so far as to argue that Western views of the Middle East are largely the result of such attitudes and that misperception has frequently been aggravated by willful misrepresentation, serving a Western desire to dominate and exploit. Certainly, there is no lack of ignorance and prejudice in what Westerners, through the centuries, have written about the Middle East. But the same is true about much of what Middle Easterners have written about the West, in the phases of both their advance and retreat.

Among Europeans and, later, Americans there has been a sustained effort extending over centuries to develop techniques and methods to study, understand and eventually explain the dynamics of other civilizations. In part, this was done by deciphering scripts, learning languages and reading texts; in part by travel and direct observation. A considerable body of scholarly literature has resulted.

At the time when Muslims ruled parts of Europe, they found little to interest them in the languages, history and culture of their European subjects. More recently, efforts have been made by scholars and travelers from the Middle East to study not only the weaponry and gadgetry but also the arts and sciences of those who were once seen as barbarous infidels and later, when the tide of battle turned, as imperialist aggressors and oppressors. To the Western tradition of Orientalism there is now developing an Eastern equivalent, which we might call Occidentalism.

The words "Europe" and "West," in common use in Europe and the West, were not in the past used in the Islamic Middle East, where "West" meant their own west, North Africa and for a while Sicily and Spain. The term "Europe" occurs very infrequently, in a few translations of Greek geographical works. These regions and their inhabitants were usually designated either by religious terms-infidels, pagans, Christians--or by ethnic terms-Greeks and Romans in the adjoining Mediterranean lands, Slavs and Franks in eastern and western Europe.

For a long time, the peoples of Europe used similar designations, referring to their southern and eastern neighbors by religious terms, as infidels or Mohammedans, or by ethnic terms, as Moors, Saracens, Turks and Tatars.

The terms "Near East" and "Middle East" came into general use at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Clearly, they reflect a view of the world from a Western vantage point-more specifically, from Western Europe, then rapidly extending its rule, and to an even greater extent its influence, in the rest of the Old World.

In Greco-Roman antiquity and medieval Christendom, the region which we now call the Near and Middle East was simply the East, with no need for more precise identification. It was known by a series of names-the Greek anatolo (whence Anatolia), the Latin otlens, the Italian levante, and their derivatives-all meaning "sunrise." In Greek and later in Latin writings, these names often carried with them a suggestion of something exotic and barbaric, sometimes also effete and luxurious. At most times the East was seen in Europe as hostile and dangerous, the dark hinterland from which came the invading armies of the great kings of Persia and their many successors. The last of these, the Ottoman Turks, confronted Europe with what came to be known as "the Eastern question" in its two phases: first the menace of the Ottoman advance, second the problems posed by the Ottoman retreat.

When a new and more distant Orient was perceived, the old and familiar East-Anatolia, the Levant-seemed much nearer. It was the new awareness of a remote and unknown Far East that led Europeans to rename the countries around the eastern Mediterranean the Near East, and those immediately beyond them the Middle East.

It is easy to understand how these terms came into European usage. It is more difficult to understand why they still remain in common use at the present time, when European domination of the East has decisively ended and Europe itself-apart from the Greenwich meridian-is no longer the principal point from which the world is viewed.

Some territorial definition may be useful. The term Middle East has never been precisely demarcated and extends, for some purposes, as far west as Morocco. Broadly speaking, it applies to the countries of southwest Asia and northeast Africa, with vague and ill-defined extensions at both ends-from Iran into Central Asia and beyond, to the borders of China; from Egypt into Africa, westward to the Atlantic and southward up the Nile as far as the Islamic faith and the Arabic language predominate.

The Middle East, along with China and India, is one of the three most ancient regions of civilizations in the world. Yet it differs significantly from the other two in its pattern of diversity and discontinuity. This diversity goes back to remote antiquity and surely owes much to the geographical configuration and situation of the region. Its division into valleys separated by high mountains and cultivated plains separated by vast and impassable deserts encouraged cultural polycentrism. It was the meeting place of the very different peoples and cultures of Asia, Africa and, in the later stages, of Europe, all of which helped to produce a region of striking contrasts.

From the earliest times we see not one but several centers of civilization: in the river valleys of Egypt and Mesopotamia, on the high plateaus of Iran and Anatolia, in the mountain ranges that go from north to south, from Taurus to Sinai, and on their slopes, facing westward to the coastal plain and the Mediterranean, eastward to the desert and to Asia. These were inhabited by different peoples who spoke different and often unrelated languages, wrote in different scripts, worshiped different gods and created different, sometimes contrasting, societies and polities. Relations between them developed in antiquity from minimal to hostile.

The discontinuity of Middle Eastern history was the result of consecutive phases of conquest and conversion-the one bringing a restructuring of power and authority, the other a reorientation of religion and culture. There were four major phases, beginning with the Hellenization of much of the region after the conquests of Alexander the Great, and continuing with the extension of Roman imperial authority to all of the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. Hellenization and Romanization prepared the ground for two great waves of religious conversion, first to Christianity and then to Islam.

All four processes have left their mark on the present-day Middle East. Of the four, the last is undoubtedly the most comprehensive, the most profound and the most enduring, and gave the peoples of the Middle East the only shared perceived identity they have ever known. To this day, the term "Islam" is used as the equivalent of both "Christianity" and "Christendom" to designate both a religion and a civilization. The cumulative effect of these four cataclysmic changes was to obliterate the religions, the cultures, the languages and, to a large extent, even the nations of the ancient Middle East and to replace them with a new faith, a new political system and a new set of languages and loyalties.

Among Europeans and, later, Americans there has been a sustained effort extending over centuries to develop techniques and methods to study, understand and eventually explain the dynamics of other civilizations. In part, this was done by deciphering scripts, learning languages and reading texts; in part by travel and direct observation. A considerable body of scholarly literature has resulted.

At the time when Muslims ruled parts of Europe, they found little to interest them in the languages, history and culture of their European subjects. More recently, efforts have been made by scholars and travelers from the Middle East to study not only the weaponry and gadgetry but also the arts and sciences of those who were once seen as barbarous infidels and later, when the tide of battle turned, as imperialist aggressors and oppressors. To the Western tradition of Orientalism there is now developing an Eastern equivalent, which we might call Occidentalism.

The words "Europe" and "West," in common use in Europe and the West, were not in the past used in the Islamic Middle East, where "West" meant their own west, North Africa and for a while Sicily and Spain. The term "Europe" occurs very infrequently, in a few translations of Greek geographical works. These regions and their inhabitants were usually designated either by religious terms-infidels, pagans, Christians--or by ethnic terms-Greeks and Romans in the adjoining Mediterranean lands, Slavs and Franks in eastern and western Europe.

For a long time, the peoples of Europe used similar designations, referring to their southern and eastern neighbors by religious terms, as infidels or Mohammedans, or by ethnic terms, as Moors, Saracens, Turks and Tatars.

The terms "Near East" and "Middle East" came into general use at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Clearly, they reflect a view of the world from a Western vantage point-more specifically, from Western Europe, then rapidly extending its rule, and to an even greater extent its influence, in the rest of the Old World.

In Greco-Roman antiquity and medieval Christendom, the region which we now call the Near and Middle East was simply the East, with no need for more precise identification. It was known by a series of names-the Greek anatolo (whence Anatolia), the Latin otlens, the Italian levante, and their derivatives-all meaning "sunrise." In Greek and later in Latin writings, these names often carried with them a suggestion of something exotic and barbaric, sometimes also effete and luxurious. At most times the East was seen in Europe as hostile and dangerous, the dark hinterland from which came the invading armies of the great kings of Persia and their many successors. The last of these, the Ottoman Turks, confronted Europe with what came to be known as "the Eastern question" in its two phases: first the menace of the Ottoman advance, second the problems posed by the Ottoman retreat.

When a new and more distant Orient was perceived, the old and familiar East-Anatolia, the Levant-seemed much nearer. It was the new awareness of a remote and unknown Far East that led Europeans to rename the countries around the eastern Mediterranean the Near East, and those immediately beyond them the Middle East.

It is easy to understand how these terms came into European usage. It is more difficult to understand why they still remain in common use at the present time, when European domination of the East has decisively ended and Europe itself-apart from the Greenwich meridian-is no longer the principal point from which the world is viewed.

Some territorial definition may be useful. The term Middle East has never been precisely demarcated and extends, for some purposes, as far west as Morocco. Broadly speaking, it applies to the countries of southwest Asia and northeast Africa, with vague and ill-defined extensions at both ends-from Iran into Central Asia and beyond, to the borders of China; from Egypt into Africa, westward to the Atlantic and southward up the Nile as far as the Islamic faith and the Arabic language predominate.

The Middle East, along with China and India, is one of the three most ancient regions of civilizations in the world. Yet it differs significantly from the other two in its pattern of diversity and discontinuity. This diversity goes back to remote antiquity and surely owes much to the geographical configuration and situation of the region. Its division into valleys separated by high mountains and cultivated plains separated by vast and impassable deserts encouraged cultural polycentrism. It was the meeting place of the very different peoples and cultures of Asia, Africa and, in the later stages, of Europe, all of which helped to produce a region of striking contrasts.

From the earliest times we see not one but several centers of civilization: in the river valleys of Egypt and Mesopotamia, on the high plateaus of Iran and Anatolia, in the mountain ranges that go from north to south, from Taurus to Sinai, and on their slopes, facing westward to the coastal plain and the Mediterranean, eastward to the desert and to Asia. These were inhabited by different peoples who spoke different and often unrelated languages, wrote in different scripts, worshiped different gods and created different, sometimes contrasting, societies and polities. Relations between them developed in antiquity from minimal to hostile.

The discontinuity of Middle Eastern history was the result of consecutive phases of conquest and conversion-the one bringing a restructuring of power and authority, the other a reorientation of religion and culture. There were four major phases, beginning with the Hellenization of much of the region after the conquests of Alexander the Great, and continuing with the extension of Roman imperial authority to all of the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. Hellenization and Romanization prepared the ground for two great waves of religious conversion, first to Christianity and then to Islam.

All four processes have left their mark on the present-day Middle East. Of the four, the last is undoubtedly the most comprehensive, the most profound and the most enduring, and gave the peoples of the Middle East the only shared perceived identity they have ever known. To this day, the term "Islam" is used as the equivalent of both "Christianity" and "Christendom" to designate both a religion and a civilization. The cumulative effect of these four cataclysmic changes was to obliterate the religions, the cultures, the languages and, to a large extent, even the nations of the ancient Middle East and to replace them with a new faith, a new political system and a new set of languages and loyalties.

Interaction between Islam and the West is a major theme, but I have also tried to illustrate, more briefly, relations between the Islamic world and its other neighbors and, more important, relations between the different regions, peoples and social groups within the region. Much of the material is translated from Middle Eastern languages. Where suitable translations exist and were available, I have used them and cited the name of the translator. For the rest, I have made my own translations and cited the originals. Dating the excerpts has at times proved something of a problem, especially with premodern texts. In general, the excerpts are headed with the known or estimated date at which they were written. An exception was made for accounts of major military events, which carry the dates of their occurrence.

At the end of the book I have added three appendixes which I hope may help the reader. The first is an explanation of the structure of Middle Eastern personal names and the transcription of Middle Eastern systems of writing, both markedly different from those customary in the modern West. The second and third consist of a listing of the authors cited, with brief biographical notes, and a bibliography of the works from which the citations are taken. I have not thought it necessary to list well-known Western literary figures such as Shakespeare, Dickens, Milton, etc. I have, however, included a few, such as Mark Twain, Herman Melville and W. M. Thackeray, who traveled in the Middle East and left some written account of their adventures and impressions.

There remains the pleasant task of thanking those who have helped in various ways in the preparation and production of this book: my editor, Joy de Menil, whose combination of a sharp mind and gentle manner, of vision and vigilance, have made this a better book than it would otherwise have been; my daughter, Melanie Carr, who found, chose and arranged the illustrations; my former research assistants, Michael Doran and Michael Reynolds, for help of various kinds in the collection and preparation of the material; Nancy Pressman Levy, of Firestone Library, for invaluable help in tracking down some of my sources; and finally, my assistants Annamarie Cerminaro and Robin Pettinato, for the skill and care with which they handled the many versions of this book, from first draft to final copy.


From the Hardcover edition.

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Excerpted from A Middle East Mosaic: Fragments of Life, Letters and History by Bernard Lewis
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.