Customer Reviews

The Middle East

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

Contrary to previous reviewers, this book is NOT banal or dull. Bernard Lewis is the preeminent English-writing historian on the world's powderkeg region of today and has a wealth of knowledge on the area and its culture. For the average non-fiction reader, the text is not tough to read and has quite a bit of life to it, but if all you read is Oprah's Book of the Month, it may be a bit tedious.

However, I can only give it three stars because, although it's subtitled "A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years," it was a bit too brief for my literary palate. I anxiously devoured the work eager to learn about Suleyman the Magnificent and Ataturk; instead I learned that the eggplant comes from the Middle East and a peach, at one time, was known as a Persian apple.

And that's my biggest gripe with the book. Lewis titles it as an overview of the region giving prospective readers the idea it will cover famous Middle East leaders, its countries and their origins, and the timeless religious conflicts. Instead, the book takes a Howard Zinn approach to the region and covers in great detail the inhabitants and their religion, culture, economy, social castes, judicial systems, agriculture, etc. Over one-third of the book entitled "Cross-Sections" is on this subject matter, And although informative, it is impertinent to the political history of the Muslim world, which the title of the book implies it is about.
The only historical figure garnering a significant amount of ink in the book is, for obvious reasons, Muhammad. Lewis' basic explanation of the Muslim religion in his section "The Dawn and Noon of Islam," is an engrossing look into one of the major religions of the world and would be quite helpful to someone who is new to the subject matter. Lewis has a number of other books solely devoted to the subject matter but gives a good overview in this work.
With the large sections on culture and religion, there is little room left in the book on the political history itself. Lewis gives brief synopsis' on Iran's early history and the reign of the Ottoman Empire but little else. The 20th century info is contained in just 40 pages at the end of the last chapter.
Lewis does deserve extra credit for two helpful tools in the back with the reader-friendly chronology and informative maps.

In conclusion, ask yourself what most interests you as the reader about the Middle East? If one is interested in the culture and everyday life, this book is a great start. If one wants the political history about the rulers and military leaders, I'd look elsewhere.

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 instead of attacked, founts instead of fonts), there are many delights in Lewis' command of language, and not just English. The depth of his knowledge shines through everywhere. It may aggravate some, but I especially delighted in his use of 'fora' as plural of the noun 'forum.' His word choices are true, and his phrasings in places approach the elegance and wry wit of Will and Ariel Durant. For instance, "even the pettiest of modern dictators has greater control than even the mightiest of Arab caliphs Persian shahs, and Turkish sultans. The traditional restraints on tyranny have gone. The search for some new or renewed form of limitation continues." The neologismic nature of country names are explored. He even has a couple of satirical excerpts that had me tearing up with laughter. And I had to go to the dictionary to look up 'calque' (a copy). All in all, I found this an informative easily read book that left me wanting more. It's time to add to my wish list.

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.

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.

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 <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.

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." ...

highly recommend, very accurate and informative. i got this book on recommendation from fareed Zakaria on his GPS show. thumbs up!

A very nice introduction to middle eastern history. Engagingly written, although events fly by at a furious pace. Told with equal emphasis on political and military history, hinting at culture and social history. To be honest, could have done more explaining cultural and social aspects of early Islamic empires. But, that would probably have been a much longer book.
A must have for anyone looking for an intro to middlea eastern history.

This truly is a brief history of the last 2,000 years in the middle east. I kept wishing for more information but then would have been facing a gigantic book.

So this is what is promised, something that gives you the basics of what happend over the last 2,000 years. And that is a very good book to read first so that as you read of various periods in more detail, you can hang that onto this understanding of the entire time.

As to the writing itself, it is good to very good.