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The Muslim Discovery of Europe

by Bernard Lewis Ph.D. (Author)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 66 ratings
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"Full of rare and exact information…A distinguished work." ―New York Review of Books

The eleventh-century Muslim world was a great civilization while Europe lay slumbering in the Dark Ages. Slowly, inevitably, Europe and Islam came together, through trade and war, crusade and diplomacy. The ebb and flow between these two worlds for seven hundred years, illuminated here by a brilliant historian, is one of the great sagas of world history.

30 black and white illustrations
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  1. ISBN-10
    0393321657
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0393321654
  3. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  4. Publication date
    October 17, 2001
  5. Language
    English
  6. Dimensions
    5.6 x 1 x 8.3 inches
  7. Print length
    358 pages
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Full of rare and exact information.... A distinguished work. -- New York Review of Books

About the Author

Bernard Lewis (1916―2018), the author or editor of more than two dozen books, was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Emeritus, at Princeton University.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company (October 17, 2001)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 358 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393321657
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393321654
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.5 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.6 x 1 x 8.3 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 66 ratings

About the author

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Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis

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Bernard Lewis, FBA (born 31 May 1916) is a British-American historian specializing in oriental studies. He is also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Lewis' expertise is in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West. He is also noted in academic circles for his works on the history of the Ottoman Empire.

Lewis served as a soldier in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps during the Second World War before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History.

Lewis is a widely read expert on the Middle East and is regarded as one of the West's leading scholars of that region. His advice has been frequently sought by policymakers, including the Bush administration. In the Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Martin Kramer, whose PhD thesis was directed by Lewis, considered that over a 60-year career Lewis has emerged as "the most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East."

Lewis' views on the Armenian Genocide have attracted attention. He acknowledges that massacres against the Armenians occurred but does not believe it meets the definition of genocide. He is also notable for his public debates with the late Edward Said concerning the latter's book Orientalism (1978), which criticized Lewis and other European Orientalists.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Photo credit: Office of Communications, Princeton University. (1 English Wikipedia) [Attribution, GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
66 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Melinda Maidens
5.0 out of 5 stars See the West through Muslim Eyes
Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2017
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Lewis is one of the world's leading scholars of Islamic history. In this book, he presents a thoughtful and scholarly overview of Muslim travelers, students, envoys and others who wrote about their experiences and opinions of western Europe. This book explains a lot about the Muslim approach to the "dar al harb," (literally, the "world of war"), i.e., the world of the "unbelievers." Anyone concerned about the contemporary "clash of cultures" between Muslims and the West will get a lot of useful information from this history.
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L. Sabin
4.0 out of 5 stars Dense But Well Written
Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2003
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This is not an easy read, but Professor Bernard Lewis is a skilled writer. The book is divided into various disciplines; culture, science, language, government, etc., and spans approximately 1000 years of contact between the Muslim east (Persia, Ottoman Turkey, Arabia, Mughal India) and the European west.
It is not written chronologically, as other reviewers have commented, but this didn't bother me, personally. Prof. Lewis gives real insight into a variety of Islamic views of the west. I could not ignore that for the majority of the 1000 years covered, there was just as much intolerance and arrogance exhibited by Muslims as there was by Westerners. I was hoping to find a few more positive sketches of the historical contact between east and west.
Prof. Lewis writes with skill and an authoriatative voice, and I saw no reason to believe that his conclusions were false or misleading. Many of the numerous sources he uses are amazing as well. A great book that offers a fresh view of Western history and Westerners, as well as Muslim history. It is also difficult to not apply what is read here to the current world situation. A great book.
14 people found this helpful
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Bruce Loveitt
3.0 out of 5 stars All Over The Place...
Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2003
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I had trouble maintaining my concentration and interest with this book. Despite the fact that the author has broken the book up into "theme" chapters, such as "Muslim Scholarship About The West," "Government And Justice," "Science And Technology," etc., the book suffers from a lack of focus. Mr. Lewis keeps jumping back and forth, within the space of a few sentences, in both time (from about 700-1900 A.D.) and space (from Morocco across to Iran). He seems to have just gathered together a lot of material and pretty much jumbled it together. It doesn't really come together, and I found the structure disconcerting and even annoying. Another problem is that the author includes too many excerpts from first person accounts, which results in whatever narrative flow the book does have being disrupted even further. There is too much repetition- the author makes the same points over and over and includes four quotations when one or two would suffice. The book merits three stars because if you have the patience to sift through all of the material, you will be rewarded with some nuggets. For example, in the section dealing with economics, Mr. Lewis mentions that coffee and sugar both originated, commercially speaking, in Muslim countries, but these same countries wound up importing both items (because of lower prices) from the Central American and Caribbean colonies of Western European countries; in the section on religion, the author explains that Muslims had a difficult time understanding the concept of a Pope, especially that a man could forgive sins, as in Islam there is no such hierarchy as exists in the Catholic Church, and only God can forgive sins; in the chapter entitled "Social And Personal" the author quotes a disgusted Muslim regarding European personal hygiene: "You shall see none more filthy than they...They do not cleanse or bathe themselves more than once or twice a year, and then in cold water, and they do not wash their garments from the time they put them on until they fall to pieces. They shave their beards, and after shaving they sprout only a revolting stubble." Some of the excerpts are enlightening, some funny, and some sad (because they demonstrate the prejudice, intolerance, and lack of understanding that runs in both directions- and certainly gives us reason to ponder what the future holds in store). Again, though, there is just too much data here which is put together in a slapdash fashion. Mr. Lewis had a basic idea which could have resulted in an excellent book. Too bad the end result didn't fulfill the original promise.
13 people found this helpful
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ACM
5.0 out of 5 stars Professor Lewis` s books are a joy to read and this is no exception
Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2014
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Professor Lewis` s books are a joy to read and this is no exception. The book shows the muslim reaction to different aspects of Christian civilization.
2 people found this helpful
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Brentley
4.0 out of 5 stars Book can be a bit dryt but the topic is ...
Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2017
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Book can be a bit dryt but the topic is fascinating, Gives the reader some insight into why some things in the middle east are the way that they are.
One person found this helpful
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Amy B Morgan
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2017
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Very informative, enjoyable read.
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doc peterson
3.0 out of 5 stars Good in its day; eclipsed by more recent scholarship
Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2009
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Bernard Lewis is one of America's foremost scholars on the history of the Middle East. _The Muslim Discovery of Europe_ certainly demonstrates this, as he shows the political, social and economic mis-cues between Europe and the Near East over the last 1000 years. For much of that time, the rulers of the Middle East were not terribly interested in Europe (this may be suprising to Europeans), as socially and economically it was a backwater: the caliphs tended to look east. This, of course, was eventnually their undoing.

Lewis discusses at length this lack of interest in Europe by the wealthy and powerful in the MIddle East - in spite of the minor nusiance of the Crusades, the Abbysids, Il Khanids (Mongols) and later the Ottomans were primarily concerned with the internal doctrnal disputes and the control of trade routes to India and China. That Europe knew little of the Islamic world beyond their contributions in medicine, mathematics and astronomy (via Muslim Spain) is less suprising. The real "discovery" begins only after Sulieyman the Lawgiver ("the Magnificent" in the West) reached the gates of Vienna - when Britain, Portugal and the Italian city-states began to flex their muscles, exerting control over sea-routes in the Mediterranean and the Arabian Gulf.

Yet still the prejustices and misunderstandings persisted between East and West - I was struck by how little things have changed in our understanding of one another's cultures and values. Lewis' resitation is good, and he certainly was prescient in his discussion of the broader issues these parts of the world face. However, for my money, this same topic is covered much more clearly and in a more accessable manner in  Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes . If you must choose between one or the other, I recommend Ansary.
10 people found this helpful
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Karhausen Lucien
5.0 out of 5 stars Un aspect peu connu de la présence de la culture musulmane dans l'histoire de l'Europe
Reviewed in France on August 18, 2018
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Ce livre m'intéresse car je cherche à en savoir plus sur le rôle culturel des deux religions monothéistes, le judaïsme et l'islam, dans l'histoire de l'Europe et de la civilisation occidentale.
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A. J. Cox
5.0 out of 5 stars First class account of a complex and troubling history.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 17, 2011
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This is an outstanding book that intelligently contextualises how the Muslim world fell behind the West, whilst understanding and appreciating its great triumphs and its universal contribution to knowledge. Bernard Lewis has run into controversy over his supposedly 'right-wing' views and his notion of a 'clash of civilisations', which became transformed by Samuel Huntington into a vulgar and tendentious thesis of international relations. Lewis needs to be separated from the likes of Huntington.

First and foremost, Lewis is an exemplary scholar of Middle-Eastern history, a polyglot, and a far greater intellectual than Huntington. He also attracted the wrath of the late Edward Said, who, in response to Lewis's post 9-11 book "What Went Wrong?", accused him of 'rehashing and recycling tired Orientalist half (or less than half) truths'. Said's use of the term 'Orientalism' in the late 1970s, has been challenged by many critics of both left and right, as being an oversimplistic theory of intellectual history and a barrier to asking deeper questions and exploring more nuanced perspectives. This book is a brilliant account charting the inevitable separation of outlook that occurred between God fearing Christians and Muslims of the Middle Ages, and the later cultural dissonations that occured from the Reformation and on past the Enlightenment.

Said's labelling of Lewis as an 'Orientalist' (a nebulous form of academic mudslinging) lacks nuance and in my view is wholly wrong. To quote from Lewis's introduction: 'Much has been written in recent years about the discovery of Islam by Europe. In most of these discussions, however, the Muslim has appeared as the silent and passive victim. But the relationship between Islam and Europe, whether in war or in peace, has always been a dialogue, not a monologue: the process of discovery was mutual. Muslim perceptions of the West are no less deserving of study than Western perceptions of Islam, and have received less attention'.

To all disciples of Edward Said, I say 'Eat your hat'! This book may not please everyone, but the best books usually don't.
5 people found this helpful
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