Knowra Bernard Lewis Bernard Lewis Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) was a British-American historian of the Middle East and Islam, known for research on Ottoman history and modern Middle Eastern politics.
Albert Hourani : A British-Lebanese historian whose influential work examined modern Arab intellectual and social history. Hourani offered a contrasting account of the Arab world and its modern history.
Ottoman Empire : A multiethnic empire centered in Anatolia that ruled parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa from the late thirteenth century to 1922. The empire’s institutions and decline anchor much of Lewis’s historical scholarship.
What Went Wrong? : Bernard Lewis’s 2002 book examining explanations for the perceived decline of Muslim societies relative to the West. This work distilled Lewis’s account of historical change for a broad readership.
Orientalism (book) : Edward Said’s 1978 book arguing that Western scholarship and culture constructed the East as an object of knowledge and power. Said’s book supplies the central critique directed at Lewis’s scholarly approach.
Edward Said : A Palestinian-American literary scholar whose book Orientalism criticized Western scholarship on the Middle East. Said’s critique made Lewis a central example in debates over Orientalism.
Islamic studies : The academic study of Islam, Muslim societies, and their histories, texts, and institutions. Lewis’s work belongs to this field and helped shape its modern Western institutions.
The Crisis of Islam : Bernard Lewis’s 2003 book discussing political conflicts and modern transformations in Muslim societies. The book shows how Lewis presented contemporary conflict through historical interpretation.
Postcolonialism : A field of study examining the cultural, political, and social legacies of colonialism. Postcolonial analysis provides a broader framework for disputes about Lewis and Western expertise.
Kamal Salibi : A Lebanese historian known for scholarship on Lebanon, Arab history, and the Bible. Salibi represents another major historian interpreting Middle Eastern history from outside its national institutions.
Orientalism : The study and representation of Asian and Middle Eastern societies in Western scholarship and culture. Debates over the term became inseparable from assessments of Lewis’s scholarship.
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