Search results for ""Author Bernard Lewis""

The astonishing story of Henry Coombe-Tennant (1913-89), who served in the British Army in World War II, escaping from a POW camp, joining Special Forces and aiding the French Resistance, before working for the British Secret Service in Baghdad and ending his days as a Benedictine monk! Over 30 photographs and maps.

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Swansea''s port and industries were key targets for the Nazis during WWII. This book is a testament to life in the town over the course of the conflict, including many personal experiences. A comprehensive overview of the experience of ordinary people, set out in a single volume for the first time.

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'The book covers every side of Muslim life . . . a remarkable collection of new information, which will be of deep interest to students of European history' R.W. Southern, NEW YORK REVIEWTurning the traditional focus of western scholarship on its head, Professor Bernard Lewis, author of THE MIDDLE EAST (Phoenix Press) and one of the world's foremost experts on Islamic history, examines the sources and nature of Muslim knowledge of the West. His lively book explores the subtle ways in which Europe and Islam have influenced each other over seven centuries, retelling familiar historical events such as the battle of Lepanto and the siege of Vienna from an Arab perspective. Quoting from Islamic writers and scholars, he recounts their reactions to the West, their impressions of Western gardens, paintings, parliaments, hygiene, manners, and even the necklaces of western women.

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The great scholar of Islam directly confronts the events of September 11th and the reasons behind Islamic terrorism in the modern world - a Sunday Times bestseller.President Bush has made it clear that we are engaged in a war against terrorism. But for Osama bin Laden and his followers this is religious war, a war for Islam against infidels, especially the United States, the greatest power in the world of the infidels. In this book Bernard Lewis shows us where the anger and frustration have come from, and the extent to which almost the entire Muslim world is affected by poverty and tyranny.He looks at the influence of extreme Wahhabist doctrines in the Saudi kingdom, where custodianship of Islam's holy places and the revenues of oil have given worldwide impact to what would otherwise have been an extremist fringe in a marginal country. He looks at American double standards, which have long caused Muslim anger, and tells us the real meaning of `Islamic fundamentalism', `jihad' and `fatwa', and why the peoples of the Middle East are conscious of history in a way most Americans find difficult to understand.

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This book brings together eleven essays on Islamic political thought by Bernard Lewis, the acknowledged doyen of middle eastern studies. Few historians have garnered such a broad audience as Lewis, whose works are widely read by scholars, politicians, journalists, and the general public. This latest collection of essays is replete with the incisive historical insight for which Lewis, the world's foremost scholar of the Middle East, is known. With erudition, eloquence and wit, Lewis provides a focused treatment of fundamental Islamic political terms that is at once thoughtful and provocative. The essays provide the background that is essential to understanding Islamic civilization, and consequently, the troubled history of its relations with the West.

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What does jihad really mean? What is the Muslim conception of law? What is Islam's stance toward unbelievers? Probing literary and historical sources, Bernard Lewis traces the development of Islamic political language from the time of the Prophet to the present. His analysis of documents written in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish illuminates differences between Muslim political thinking and Western political theory, and clarifies the perception, discussion, and practices of politics in the Islamic world."Lewis's own style, combining erudition with a simple elegance and subtle humor, continues to inspire. In an era of specialization and narrowing academic vision, he stands alone as one who deserves, without qualification, the title of historian of Islam."—Martin Kramer, Middle East Review"A superb effort at synthesis that presents all the relevant facts of Middle Eastern history in an eminently lucid form. . . . It is a book that should prove both rewarding and congenial to the Muslim reader."—S. Parvez Manzor, Muslim World Book Review"By bringing his thoughts together in this clear, concise and readable account, [Lewis] has placed in his debt scholars and all who seek to understand the Muslim world."—Ann K. S. Lambton, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies"[Lewis] constructs a fascinating account of the ways in which Muslims have conceived of the relations between ruler and ruled, rights and duties, legitimacy and illegitimacy, obedience and rebellion, justice and oppression. And he shows how changes in political attitudes and concepts can be traced through changes in the political vocabulary."—Shaul Bakhash, New York Review of Books

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A brilliant survey of the history and civilisations of the Middle East by one of the world's greatest authorities on the subjectIn this immensely readable and wide-ranging book, Bernard Lewis charts the successive transformations of the Middle East, beginning with the two great empires, the Roman and the Persian, and covering the growth of Christianity, the rise and spread of Islam, the waves of invaders from the east, the Mongol hordes of Jengiz Khan, the rise of the Ottoman Turks, and the changing balance of power between the Muslim and Christian worlds. 'This book is a masterpiece' Sir Anthony Parsons, Daily Telegraph

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A collection of the most important essays on past and current history by the Western world's foremost Islamic scholarBernard Lewis has charted the great centuries of Islamic power and civilisation but also, in his recent books WHAT WENT WRONG? and THE CRISIS OF ISLAM, Islam's calamitous and bitter decline. This book collects together his most interesting and significant essays, papers, reviews and lectures. They range from historical subjects such as religion and politics in Islam and Judaism, the culture and people of Iran, the great mosques of Istanbul, Middle Eastern food and feasts, the Mughals and the Ottomans, the rise and fall of British power in the Middle East and North Africa, Islam and racism - to current history such as the significance of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Includes discussion of the problems of Western historians dealing with the Islamic world.

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Music of a Distant Drum marks a literary milestone. It collects 129 poems from the four leading literary traditions of the Middle East, all masterfully translated into English by Bernard Lewis, many for the first time. These poems come from diverse languages and traditions--Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew--and span more than a thousand years. Together they provide a fascinating and unusual window into Middle Eastern history. Lewis, one of the world's greatest authorities on the region's culture and history, reveals verses of startling beauty, ranging from panegyric and satire to religious poetry and lyrics about wine, women, and love. Bernard Lewis, one of the world's greatest authorities on the region's culture and history, offers a work of startling beauty that leaves no doubt as to why such poets were courted by kings in their day. Like those in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the poems here--as ensured by Lewis's mastery of all the source languages and his impeccable style and taste--come fully alive in English. They are surprising and sensuous, disarmingly witty and frank. They provide a fascinating and unusual glimpse into Middle Eastern history. Above all, they are a pleasure to read.They range from panegyric and satire to religious poetry and lyrics about wine, women, and love. Lewis begins with an introduction on the place of poets and poetry in Middle Eastern history and concludes with biographical notes on all the poets. This treasure trove of verse is aptly summed up by a quote from the ninth-century Arab author Ibn Qutayba: "Poetry is the mine of knowledge of the Arabs, the book of their wisdom, the muster roll of their history, the repository of their great days, the rampart protecting their heritage, the trench defending their glories, the truthful witness on the day of dispute, the final proof at the time of argument." In one hand the Qur'vn, in the other a wineglass, Sometimes keeping the rules, sometimes breaking them. Here we are in this world, unripe and raw, Not outright heathens, not quite Muslims. --Mujir (12th century)

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A bestselling account of why the Islamic world has been losing the conflict with the West for 300 years - and the frustration and humiliation this has produced.For many centuries, Islam was the world's greatest, most open, most enlightened, most creative, most powerful civilisation. And then everything changed, as the previously despised West won victory after victory, first on the battlefield and in the marketplace, then in almost every aspect of public and even private life. Bernard Lewis examines the anguished reaction of the Islamic world as it tried to understand why things had changed, and he provides a fascinating portrait of a culture in turmoil. Some Middle Easterners asked not 'who did this to us?' but 'where did we go wrong?'; while others fastened blame on a series of scapegoats, both internal and external - and the results are very much with us today.

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Surveying the population and revenue of six Palestinian cities--Jerusalem, Hebron, Gaza, Ramie, Nabulus, and Safed--in the sixteenth-century, Amnon Cohen and Bernard Lewis consider the numbers, composition, and distribution of the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish population, and discuss the different headings of revenue, the manner of assessment and collection, the yield, and the destination of the money collected. This monograph traces these developments, in detail, over an extended period and for a significant area of the Ottoman Empire. Based on the Tapu registers in Istanbul and Ankara, this book provides to the academic world a collection and analysis of documents previously unavailable and unreadable except to a very small number of people. Translations and annotations of these texts illuminate and explain the terms and institutions found in Ottoman surveys of population and taxation. Professors Cohen and Lewis establish the fact that in the cities of Palestine, population and revenue showed a rather spectacular parallel development towards the middle of the sixteenth-century when the disruptive conditions of the conquest had disappeared and Ottoman administration had been well established. Then, in the latter half of the century, they find a recession again. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

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This landmark book probes Muslims' attitudes toward Jews and Judaism as a special case of their view of other religious minorities in predominantly Muslim societies. With authority, sympathy and wit, Bernard Lewis demolishes two competing stereotypes: the Islamophobic picture of the fanatical Muslim warrior, sword in one hand and Qur'?n in the other, and the overly romanticized depiction of Muslim societies as interfaith utopias. Featuring a new introduction by Mark R. Cohen, this Princeton Classics edition sets the Judaeo-Islamic tradition against a vivid background of Jewish and Islamic history. For those wishing a concise overview of the long period of Jewish-Muslim relations, The Jews of Islam remains an essential starting point.

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Solomon ibn Gabirol (1021–1058) of Spain was a Jewish philosopher and moralist who is perhaps best known for the beautiful forty-stanza poem Keter Malkhut (The Kingly Crown). Hailed by scholars as one of the most important classics of Hebrew literature, The Kingly Crown employs the metaphor of a king in his palace to describe the relationship between humanity and God. This medieval poem is full of vivid imagery and scriptural references. Within its many layers of meaning, readers will find not only an extended prayer and meditation, but also signs of the neoplatonic philosophy that formed the foundation of Gabirol’s cosmology and theology. The University of Notre Dame Press is pleased to bring back in print Bernard Lewis’s lyrical translation of The Kingly Crown. This new edition includes Lewis’s extensive notes and introduction as well as a new introduction, notes, and detailed philosophical commentary by Andrew L. Gluck. Gluck’s meticulous correction of errors in the Hebrew text make this the most accurate version ever published with an English translation. Facing page Hebrew verse and English translation, as well as a new bibliographical section about the poet and poem, add to the utility and value of this wonderful book. General readers will delight in The Kingly Crown’s lucid text and scholars will discover a wealth of previously unavailable notes and historical information.

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