WHETHER he was drinking tea with Arab royalty or discussing his books on Islam with an American audience, Bernard Lewis was a bridge between the Muslim world and the West. He saw himself as a latter-day dragoman, referring to the Ottoman-era interpreters who mediated talks between Turkish, Arabic and Persian rulers and European governments.
Mr Lewis, who died on May 19th, grew up in a north London suburb, the son of Jewish middle-class parents who would have preferred him to be a lawyer. But his passion for history and knack for languages (he spoke 15, including Hebrew, Arabic, Persian and Turkish) made him better equipped to tutor political officers managing the British empire’s Middle East mandates. He taught Islamic studies, first at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies and then, from the 1970s, at Princeton University in America.
With over two dozen books to his name, Mr Lewis was hailed as the West’s pre-eminent historian of Islam. “The Arabs in...Continue reading
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