For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies [Paperback]

Robert Irwin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0140289232 | ISBN-13: 978-0140289237 | Publication Date: February 2007

Robert Irwin's history of Orientalism leads from Ancient Greece to the present. He shows that, whether making philological comparisons between Arabic and Hebrew, cataloguing the coins of Fatimid Egypt or establishing the basic chronology of Harun al-Rashid's military campaigns against Byzantium, scholars have been unified not by politics or ideology but by their shared obsession. "For Lust of Knowing" is an extraordinary, passionate book, both a sustained argument and a brilliant work of original scholarship.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert Irwin is a publisher and writer of fiction and non-fiction. His works of non-fiction include The Arabian Nights, Islamic Art, Night & Horses & the Desert and The Alhambra.

Product Details

• Paperback: 409 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books (February 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140289232
• ISBN-13: 978-0140289237
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,238,949 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The entertaining confusion, June 1, 2006

By 

Martyn A. Oliver - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: For Lust of Knowing (Hardcover)

Irwin's book, like Said's Orientalism, and like the other reviews of Irwin's book all suffer from the same problem--a confused sense of purpose. Are we to bash Arabs? Zionists? Orientalists? Imperialists? Muslims? The French? (yes, the french!)

Irwin's book--a fun read blessed with an English sense of wit, style, and flippancy--awkwardly combines (the awkwardness being Irwin's fault, as these topics do belong together) three topics: a history of the the study of the Orient, a critique of Said's critique of the study of the (so-called) Orient, and a plea for the reinvigoration of the study of the Orient. He succeeds admirably on the first, dully on the second, and, well, he does seem to plead . . .

Finer and more convincing critiques of Said's work have been done elsewhere--Irwin's consisting mainly of "gotcha" type errors (and Said is notoriously sloppy when it comes to facts). Begging for British institutions to beef up their Middle East studies programs is odd on two counts. First, the public's interest in the Mideast could hardly be higher. Second, British universities have, as Irwin himself shows, a rather lackadisical history when it comes to the study of the middle east--they do not have the same institutional dynamism that US universities do (although the Brits continue to produce very fine scholars).

What makes the book worthwhile is Irwin's account of the eccentric history of some of academia's most eccentric characters--many of whom did indeed study simply for the love of knowledge--while others were spies, some zionists, some anti-semites, some imperialists, some pacifists. Irwin's account does little to prove or disprove Said's (contentious) thesis, and would have been better off without trying to do both.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For the History Part, March 12, 2008

By 

KC Tang (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews

This review is from: For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies (Paperback)

The book contains two things: a history of Islamic scholarship in the West, and a critique of Edward Said's book "Orientalism". I'm not really interested in the latter, hence the mere four stars. I only hoped the pages for second part (one long chapter) were devoted to the first! As Irwin says in the book, the rank of Oriental scholars in the West has more than their fair share of eccentrics; and it's sheer joy to read their biographies, though short. Sir Richard Burton is only briefly mentioned (for whom you've to refer to Rice's biography), but you'll meet the good Guillaume Postel and Edward Henry Palmer. This first part of the book is especially valuable as most of the source materials are difficult to get hold of for an ordinary reader.

14 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely brilliant ..., April 2, 2006

By 

Serge Lyubomudrov "Barbatus" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: For Lust of Knowing (Hardcover)

... and hilarious! Mr. Irwin has authored several novels, and, no doubts, his non-fiction writing has only been improved by that.

So far, I found just a couple of rather strange ... aberrations? (I guess it is appropriate to use that word for a book populated by so many eccentrics). Mr. Irwin writes (pp. 19-20), "For reasons that remain misterious, the new conquerors [i.e., Arabs] were referred to in the earliest Latin sources either as 'Hagarenes' or as 'Saracens'." I've always thought there's nothing misterious about that: it's an old tradition of calling an ethnos by a name or place known to classical authors, or by a legendary ancestor. Hagar was mother of Ishmael, the ancestor of the Arabs, hence Hagarians. Saraceni were nomads mentioned by the late Greek authors, so here you go ...

Another example (p. 181): "It always rankled with [Edward] Palmer that he did not succeed to [William] Wright's professorship when the latter died." Something isn't right here. Palmer was murdered in 1882, Wright was succeeded by their mutual friend William Robertson Smith after Wright's death in 1889. With all Orientalists' eccentricity, it seems rather unusual for Palmer to be irritated by a fact that his friend and colleague outlived him.

Despite these minor editorial omissions, I wish could give more than five stars to this book.

As for the sad case of Said's "Orientalism," Mr. Irwin yet again "tore that book to pieces," which, naturally, will have no effect on Said's admirers. As any critique never had and never will on supporters of the "Black Athena," or on believers in the less known here in the West so called "New Chronology."