Product Description

Most of the modern states of the Middle East are of recent origin, yet the region is the birthplace of three religions and many civilizations. Bernard Lewis, one of the world's most respected historians of the Middle East, discusses the countries and frontiers; their religions and communities; language and loyalties to place, and Middle Eastern perceptions of outsiders. He also considers the effect of alien ideas and influences including liberalism, nationalism, fascism, socialism and democracy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #250210 in Books
• Published on: 1999-12-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

About the Author
Bernard Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Formerly Professor of Middle Eastern History at the School of Oriental & African Studies, London, 1949-74.

Customer Reviews

Counteracting monolithic views of the Middle East
Reading newspapers and watching TV is likely to give us a highly distorted view of the Middle East. Bernard Lewis, who is one of the the great scholars of the Middle East, its history, cultures and religions, provides a well-researched and readable antidote to what we get from the media. He shows that the Middle East is not, and never has been, a monolithic entity with a single cultural and religious identity. Far from it. The geographical area we now call the Middle East has only recently come to be known by this collective term - and, of course, it is only the "East" if we happen to live in the "West".

Lewis helpfull begins by reviewing definitions of the terms we use in relation to the geography, culture, languages and nationalities of the Middle East. He shows that very few of the terms we use now, nor indeed the terms used in the past, are or were what they seem(ed) at first sight. Just to give one example, consider what he writes about the Greeks:

"The word used by the Turks, and more generally by Muslims in the Middle East to designate the Greeks is Rûm. But Rûm doesn't mean Greeks; Rûm means Romans, and the use of the name, first by the Greeks and then by their new Muslim masters, echoes their last memory of political sovereignty a greatness - the Byzantine Empire."

Of course, The Byzantines did not call themself Byzantines!

And so on. Lewis unpacks so much of what we take for granted before embarking on a masterly, if brief, historical review of the cultures (plural), languages (plural) and the religions (plural) that have had their birth, life and, quite often, their death in this extraordinary cultural entrepot of the world.

If you want a sober, scholarly (but readable) background that will help you understand the complexities of the present-day Middle East, I can highly recommend this book.