Download PDF | Bernard Lewis - The Arabs in History-Oxford University Press, USA (2002).
256 Pages
Preface to the First Edition
THIS is not so much a history of the Arabs as an essay in interpretation. Rather than compress so vast a subject into a bare outline of dates and events, I have sought to isolate and examine certain basic issues—the place of the Arabs in human history, their identity, their achievement, and the salient characteristics of the several ages of their development. In a work of this nature it is not possible nor indeed desirable to acknowledge the sources of every point of fact and interpretation.
Orientalists will recognize at once my debt to the masters, past and present, of Islamic historical studies. For the rest, I can only express my general indebtedness to my predecessors, teachers, colleagues, and students who have all helped, in different ways, to form the view of Arab history set forth in these pages. My special thanks are due to Professor Sir Hamilton Gibb, the late Professors U. Heyd and D. S. Rice for reading and criticizing my manuscript, to Miss J. Bridges for preparing the index, and to Professor A. T. Hatto for many useful suggestions. B.L. London, 1947
Preface to the New Edition
THIS book was written in 1947 and first published in 1950. Thereafter, it went through five editions and many reprints, both in Britain and in the United States. Translations were published in eleven languages, four of them—Arabic, Turkish, Malay, and Indonesian—in Muslim countries. The Arabic version was made by two distinguished Arab historians and was praised by such eminent Arab scholars as Shafiq Ghorbal in Egypt. This did not save it from being banned in Pakistan, because of a disrespectful reference to the Prophet which I had quoted from Dante as an example of medieval European prejudice and bigotry.
More recently, it has been attacked, principally by the exponents of the new school of epistemology. Despite such strictures, the book was widely used and frequently reprinted in many countries, presumably because of the shortage of alternative works treating Arab history with the same brevity and at the same level of analysis and generalization. It has, however, in several respects become out of date, and when I was asked to prepare yet another new edition, it seemed to me that a more thorough overhaul was necessary. My original intention was to confine this overhaul in the main to the final chapter dealing with more recent events, where extensive revision and additions were obviously required. But in rereading the text which I wrote almost forty-five years earlier, I soon realized that many more changes would be needed before I could publish this as a revised and updated edition. These changes are of several kinds. Some are primarily verbal, to take account of changes of usage that have occurred during the past half century.
For example, the word 'racial' in Britain in the 1940s was commonly used in contexts where 'ethnic' would be appropriate nowadays. In the induction form of the British Army, when I joined in 1940, a recruit was asked to state his race, the expected answer being English, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish, and the choice entirely his own. To use the word 'racial' in this sense at the present day would be offensive and, more important, misleading. There are other words that have changed or lost their meanings; others again that have become unacceptable. Even in a number of places where I had no desire to change the meaning of the words which I used in 1948, I have nevertheless found it necessary to change the words themselves in order to convey that same meaning accurately to the present-day reader. Of greater importance are the revisions which affect not merely the wording, but the substance. These changes are of two kinds. The first might be described as corrections— changes the purpose of which is to bring the text into line with the current state of knowledge and climate of opinion among scholars. Since this book was originally published, many scholars in many countries have worked on the subjects discussed in it, and, through the discovery of new evidence and the achievement of new insights, have in significant respects transformed our perception of the Arab past.
The second group of revisions derive not so much from the advancement of scholarship in general as from the evolution of my own views. There are many things in Arab history, as in other topics, which I no longer see as I did when I wrote this book. It would be self-defeating and ultimately pointless to try and rewrite the book as I would write it at the present time. The aim of my revisions has been more modest—to remove statements which I now find unacceptable, to use more cautious language where I am no longer as sure as I was then, and to add new material where this seemed to be necessary to present a balanced picture. In both respects therefore, I have proceeded by addition, omission, and emendation, while still preserving the original structure of exposition and analysis. Finally, there are the changes necessitated by events in the Arab world and beyond during the years that have passed since this book was written.
These events are of course important in themselves; they may also affect the perception and the presentation of the past. I have not, however, included an outline of recent and current history. In a region and period of rapid and sometimes violent change, some distance is needed for serious evaluation, and any attempt to keep pace with new developments would swiftly be outdated. In the chronological table, I have added more recent events which attracted public attention or seemed to me important. For similar reasons, I have inserted a few earlier events missing from previous editions. Paradoxically, the progress of scholarship has not obliged me to lengthen the bibliography but has rather permitted me to shorten it, thanks to the appearance of several excellent bibliographical guides and other works of reference.
In the original edition, following the pattern of the series, there were no footnotes. I have retained this pattern, and have made no attempt to provide detailed annotation and documentation for the statements made in the book. I have, however, provided an appendix, giving references for direct quotations. B.L. Princeton, N.J. July 1992
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