Notes on a Century: Reflections of A Middle East Historian

by Bernard Lewis

  Looking back, I felt that the amount of space I allocated to the Isma‘ili movement was disproportionate. I was, shall we say, somewhat obsessed with the Isma‘ilis; I had done my doctoral dissertation on the Isma‘ilis; my earliest attempt at fieldwork had been in the Isma‘ili villages in Syria; most of my other early work had been in connection with the Isma’ilis and for me at that time they were the most important thing in Arab history. So I gave them a whole chapter and they tended to infiltrate from that chapter even into other places. It was too late to do anything much about that. Restructuring to the point of omitting a chapter would have been much too difficult, but I did try to restore some better proportion between the Isma‘ilis and other elements in the history of the time.

  If I paid too much importance to the Isma‘ilis, there were other subjects to which, looking back, I felt I gave too little importance, and I tried to remedy that in the new edition. One might argue (and I think I would have to concede some truth in this) that I was merely replacing my old obsessions by my current obsessions. Slavery, for example, hardly occurred in the old edition, whereas it figured quite prominently in the new one. But that again, I think, is not only inevitable but quite reasonable.

  There are many other things in Arab history, as in other topics in general, which I no longer saw, or for that matter see now, as I did in 1947. It would have been self-defeating and utterly pointless to try to rewrite the book as I would have written it forty-five years later. I was indeed inspired, a few years later, to attempt a longer view of a broader topic, in my book The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last Two Thousand Years, first published in 1995. The aim of the revisions of the earlier book was more modest: to remove statements which I now found unacceptable, to use cautious language where I was no longer as sure as I was half a century ago (and that applies to practically everything in this world and the next), to add new material where this seemed necessary in order to present a balanced picture. In both respects I proceeded by addition, by omission, by emendation while still preserving the original structure of exposition and analysis.

  I began by saying that the original idea of the publishers and of myself was to update the book by rewriting the sections dealing with more recent history and current events, and obviously there were major changes in the Arab world and beyond during the years that had passed since this book was written and first published. These events are important in themselves and some of them at least had to be discussed. They are important in another respect, and that is in the way in which they affect the perception and presentation of the past. It is commonplace that we use the past to illuminate the present and perhaps the future; it is also true though less realized that we sometimes use the present to illuminate our understanding of the past.

  Let me illustrate this with some examples. In 1947, when I first wrote this book, the Cold War had not yet begun; in 1992, when I prepared the new edition, it was over. Looking back at my chapter on pre-Islamic Arabia, I could not but be struck by the parallels between the situation of the modern Middle East between the two rival superpowers and the position of the Arabian peninsula between Byzantium and Persia, for the most part beyond the direct rule of either but affected in many ways by the competing strategic, commercial and diplomatic efforts of both superpowers of the time, in war, in peace, then in war again. The impact of their rivalry on Arabia provoked new reflections on the ending of the Cold War and its probable consequences for the Middle East.

  Another topic where recent and current events could help achieve a better understanding of the past is the relative importance of socio-economic and ethnic-national factors. In the nineteenth century, in the age of liberalism and nationalism, it was assumed generally by scholars that the great struggles of the early caliphate were basically national: especially Persian nationalism in revolt against Arab domination. By the time that I was writing this book, these ideas had been generally abandoned and we were all quite sure that nationality did not matter very much, that ethnicity was of secondary importance, that what really mattered were the economic and social factors. So, along with most others at the time, I presented these early struggles in primarily socioeconomic terms. Looking at the world in 1992, who would say that ethnicity doesn’t matter? Who could say with certainty that socioeconomic factors are more important and more decisive than ethnic, and one might add religious, loyalties and allegiances? There again, I felt that some revision was required.

  Arab history offers a wide range of experiences where one may engage in the usual exercise of looking into the past to help understand the present and even prepare for the future. We have a wonderful selection of seemingly relevant events in the Arab past: invasions from the north, south, east and west; triumphs and defeats; the waxing and waning of imperial power, their own and that of others; the blooming and withering of cultures; tensions and releases in economic and social change. Not least important of the lessons of the past are the things that didn’t happen—the changes resisted or attempted without success, the revolutions that failed or, to borrow a phrase, the roads not taken.

  The events of the last few decades have demonstrated with blinding clarity the impact of technological change, both in peace and in war; and the penalties paid by those who fail to keep pace. This may help us now to achieve a better understanding than before of the impact of firearms in late medieval and early modern times in the Middle Eastern Islamic world and the cultural causes and political consequences of the late and reluctant adoption of modern weaponry. The communications revolution of our time and its consequences have illuminated another contrast in the Arab and Islamic past: the swift and early acceptance of paper—an import from China which made possible the rapid and relatively inexpensive production of more durable books and affected not only literature and science but also government and commerce; and after paper, the long-delayed and reluctant acceptance of printing. Social choices of this type are no less important, and at the present time a good deal more relevant, than cataclysmic events like the Crusades and the Mongol conquests.

  Of all the pages in the original edition, the ones that had become most badly out-of-date were of course the ones that at the time of writing were the most up-to-date—the final pages dealing with recent and current affairs. These date very rapidly, even in the brief interval between proofreading and publication. I was more careful this time. I did, of course, rewrite these final pages to take some account of the massive changes that had taken place in the Arab world since the first edition appeared, but after some reflection I decided not to include even the barest outline of recent and current history. In a region and in a period of rapid and often violent change, some distance is needed for serious evaluation and any attempt to keep pace with new developments is swiftly outdated. The past is more stable.

  Iceland

  Sometime in the early fifties, when I was spending the summer months in Denmark as I usually did at that time, I received a request to contribute to a Festschrift, to be published in Turkish, in honor of a distinguished Turkish colleague. The deadline was dangerously near.

  For social, personal and professional reasons I could not refuse but the question was how on earth was I to write anything being so far away from all my books and notes and files? In desperation, I went to the Royal Danish Library to see if I could find anything there and looked up the terms “Turks” and “Turkey” in the various subject catalogs. To my surprise and delight I found several items relating to a raid by Barbary Corsairs on Iceland in the year 1627. The raid seems to have received very little attention from historians (except of course in Iceland). The published material was very limited and almost all of it was in either Danish or Icelandic. I eagerly accessed the available publications and decided that this would provide me with the basis for an article suitable for the Festschrift in honor of my colleague. The Turks were of course not Turks in the sense in which that term is used today—that is, people from Turkey. At that time the term “Turk,” like “Moor” and “Saracen” in
earlier times, was used simply to designate Muslims. The raiders in question came from North Africa; many of them came originally from Christian Europe. In the Christian perspective they were renegades, in the Muslim perspective, converts to the true faith.

  I was able to read the Danish material without much difficulty. The Icelandic stuff was more of a problem but I managed to get the general sense. With this material I was able to write a short article, “Corsairs in Iceland,” and sent it to Ankara for publication. It was duly included, in Turkish translation, in a special Festschrift issue of a Turkish journal in 1953. Unsurprisingly, it received very little attention in Turkey and none at all anywhere else. Some twenty years later I was asked to contribute to a French journal devoted to the “Muslim Occident” for a special issue in honor of the birthday of a distinguished French historian, an expert on the Islamic Far West. It occurred to me that the unpublished English original of my “Corsairs in Iceland” piece might be suitable. The original Turkish publishers had no objection to my reusing it; the French publishers had no objection to my using a piece previously published in Turkish and therefore unknown in the Western world. The article was duly published in the English language, in a French journal, on an Icelandic subject. Unsurprisingly, it remained obscure and unknown and I assumed that it would remain so.

  I was mistaken. In 2000 Buntzie and I went on a ten-day holiday in Iceland. It is a relatively short journey with very little jet lag. Iceland is a beautiful country with excellent food, especially fish, and neither of us had been there before. It seemed a good idea for an interesting, relaxing and not too expensive holiday. We booked a four-day tour to see waterfalls and glaciers and found ourselves part of a group of about a dozen tourists. On the first day we were sitting and having coffee with a guide, who suddenly asked me if I was the Bernard Lewis who had written about the Turkish raid on Iceland. I was astonished at this reference to an obscure piece, written on an obscure subject and published in an obscure place more than a quarter of a century earlier. I admitted that I was indeed the author of that piece and the guide became very excited. He explained that he was a historian by profession and was doing tours as a sideline to make a little extra money. He had just finished reviewing for accuracy the script for a program about the raid that was being produced for an Icelandic TV station. Would I agree, he asked, to be interviewed by the director of the program, and for the interview to be included in the broadcast? I did and I was, and the incident certainly lent a distinctive flavor to the rest of the trip.

  Another incident during that trip is one which I remember only because Buntzie won’t let me forget it. When traveling abroad I usually go into bookstores and look particularly at the history sections, to see what historians are writing and people are reading. In a bookshop in Reykjavik I found something I had never seen before—an Icelandic grammar in English. Icelandic, originally a dialect of Old Norse, is what one might call the classical Scandinavian language and since I had a fairly good knowledge of Danish, I found that the “buy one, get one free” principle applied here. If one knows Danish, Norwegian is easy and Swedish accessible. Icelandic is somewhat more difficult, but not excessively so. After spending about ten minutes leafing through the Icelandic grammar in the bookshop, I remarked: “I think I could learn to read Icelandic in about a week.” Buntzie found this startling and amusing and teases me about it.

  13.

  Politics and the Iraq War

  When Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait in 1990, the United States, with the support of the international community, decided that something had to be done. Almost every Middle East expert in the country was invited to Washington and was asked for his comments on the situation. That was my first meeting with high-level official Washington, and more important, my first meeting with Dick Cheney, at that time Secretary of Defense. We met on subsequent occasions over the years.

  I gather that my assessment and recommendations were radically different from those of almost all the other “experts” they had consulted. The general feeling was that this was going to be a major and difficult struggle. It could be “another Vietnam,” a phrase that came up frequently during the discussions. In general, preparations were being made as if the United States were about to confront the Third Reich in its prime. One senior officer even said, in terms of great alarm, that he feared that this might be a repetition of the Russo-Japanese War when a major European power was defeated by an upstart Asian power, and the beginning of a new era in East-West relations.

  I took a different view, reinforced by a recent conversation with the Turkish President Turgut Özal. I told them that I thought that the war, when it came, would be “quick, cheap and easy.” In this I was echoing what President Özal had told me shortly before when I was in Turkey on university business. Özal and I spent an evening together. I knew him well, long before he rose to high office and our conversation was more relaxed than would be normal between a head of state and a visiting foreigner. We talked of many things and then inevitably we talked about the crisis in Iraq. Saddam Hussein had invaded and occupied Kuwait and President Bush was still wondering what to do. Turgut Özal said, “You remember when I visited Washington a few months ago?” I remembered because we had had lunch together. He said, “I spoke with your President. He is an indecisive sort of character, but I think he has made up his mind this time. There will be war, and,” Özal added, “when it comes, it will be quick, cheap and easy.” This was startling. I said, “What makes you think that?” and so he gave me an enigmatic Turkish smile, and said, “We like to know what is happening among our neighbors.” In other words, they had good intelligence. “Let me give you an example,” he continued. “Not a week passes without many Iraqi soldiers, including officers, deserting from the Iraqi Army, crossing our frontier and asking for sanctuary. An army from which officers are deserting before the battle begins is not in good shape.” I had to agree. Then I said, “If it comes to war, will you be with us?” “Of course,” he said. I asked, “May I ask why?” Again he gave me his enigmatic Turkish smile and said, “For the same reason we declared war on the Axis in February 1945. When the fighting stops and the talking starts, we want to be at the victors’ table, and we want to be there on the guest list, not on the menu.”

  The really tough problem was political, how to deal with the country after military victory was achieved. The results of the invasion amply confirmed President Özal’s judgment and therefore my reputation with Cheney. Incidentally we were not entirely alone in our view. An Israeli general who happened to be passing through Washington at the time was asked if he thought the preparations were adequate and he replied that they were adequate in all respects but one. “You haven’t made enough arrangements to accommodate prisoners of war and deserters.”

  The prompt and effective American response not only saved Kuwait but also Saudi Arabia, which was threatened and whose rulers relied entirely on American action to save them. Indeed, a quip at the time was that the marching song of the Saudi Arabian armed forces was “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

  During the Eight-Year War (1980–88) between Iraq and revolutionary Iran, Saddam Hussein was able to count on a considerable measure of American tolerance and even, on occasion, help. One of the factors that helped end the war was that U.S. forces shot down and destroyed an Iranian passenger aircraft. The American statement, and I have no doubt that it was the truth, was that it was an accident. But neither the Iranians nor the Iraqis believed it. The Iranians, whose army had weakened considerably, decided that the Americans were becoming serious, and that they had better make peace on the best terms that they could get. Although the UN brokered a cease-fire (Security Council Resolution 598) Saddam Hussein felt that he could count on American support, or at least acquiescence, in whatever he decided to do next.

  His next step was to invade and annex Kuwait—an independent state since the eighteenth century, long before the creation of modern Iraq in the twentieth. According to Saddam Hussein, it was
an integral part of Iraq and should be returned to its motherland. The Arab world in general was outraged at this annexation which was rightly seen as an immediate threat to the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia and a more general threat to the rest of the Middle East. Action was demanded and the U.S. administration of Bush Sr. first gave a deadline for withdrawal from Kuwait and then sent forces into Iraq to compel Saddam Hussein to withdraw. But having accomplished this immediate and limited purpose, the U.S. government, to everyone’s astonishment, promptly made peace. Saddam Hussein was left in control of the state, his army and most particularly of his revolutionary guards, and he was free to use them as he chose, except in two separate no-fly zones set up to protect the Kurds in the north and the Shi‘a in the south. These zones were enforced by the United States, the United Kingdom and France, which sent out aircraft patrols.

  I was not consulted on what followed in Iraq and do not feel it was handled wisely. Saddam Hussein was soundly defeated but the victorious Americans treated him with extraordinary gentleness. Instead of a picture of defeat and surrender, the reality of the situation, he was allowed, even encouraged, to cherish and spread the illusion of a compromise truce. Worse was to follow. The United States had called upon the oppressed people of Iraq to rise against the tyrant, and some of them, notably the Kurds and the Shi‘a, had done so. The victorious Americans now sat back and watched while Saddam, using the Republican Guard which he had been allowed to retain, proceeded to wreak ferocious vengeance on both groups. Not surprisingly, this had a discouraging effect the next time around.

  An argument was put forward at that time that it was on Saudi advice, indeed insistence, that the Americans had stopped their advance and left Saddam Hussein in power. I had an opportunity to discuss this with the Saudi ambassador in Washington at that time, Prince Bandar, and asked him if this were true. He replied with considerable emphasis that it was totally untrue. “On the contrary,” he said, “we urged them to go ahead and finish the job.”