Notes on a Century: Reflections of A Middle East Historian

by Bernard Lewis

  The idea of serving meals in courses—appetizer, entrée, salad, dessert, brandy—is basically a Western concept though it is becoming more and more prevalent around the world. The Middle Eastern custom is to serve everything on the table at the same time, and to have more than one main dish. You can help yourself to the dishes in any order that you please. In a home it would be considered inhospitable to have just one main course, but among the Bedouin there is only one kind of meat. In general they slaughter a whole sheep, or as many sheep as may be needed.

  I have been told that the eyeball is a particular delicacy and people are said to pop eyeballs into their mouths. All I can say is it never happened to me and I’ve never seen it. I have had a host pick out a particularly juicy piece of meat for me and pop that into my mouth, but never an eyeball.

  An interesting thing about the Muslims and particularly, but not exclusively, the Bedouin, is the high respect for bread. If a piece of bread is dropped on the floor I’ve seen people pick it up and kiss it. Bread is God’s greatest gift by way of food, and it has to be treated accordingly. It is considered very bad to put anything other than food on bread. Disrespect to bread is disrespect to God, who gave us this precious gift.

  King Hussein was married four times and had four sons. His last wife, Lisa Halaby, the American daughter of Najeeb Halaby, who was then president of Pan American Airways, was working in the Pan Am office in Amman when they met. After she converted to Islam her name became Noor. Although she was his fourth wife he decided to confer upon her the title of Queen. In the past, Muslim monarchies did not usually have queens, neither as reigning monarch nor as the wife of a reigning King. Noor was the first Queen of Jordan. The principle of primogeniture, the right of succession of the eldest son of the monarch, is European and has only very recently been introduced into the Middle East; it is unfortunately more prevalent in republics than in monarchies.

  In the late 1990s I attended a lecture given by Prince Hassan at the University of Amman in which he spoke about the possibility of outreach toward Israel, a strange idea at that time, and expressed the hope that this might occur. “But,” he said, “the Israelis would also have to do something to acclimatize themselves, to really become part of the region and not be an alien body.” I was there with an Iraqi friend, who like me was a guest of Prince Hassan. At this remark he turned to me and said, “What do you say to that?” To which I replied, referring to the recent assassination of Prime Minister Rabin, “The Israelis have already made a start. They’ve murdered a Prime Minister.” My Iraqi friend was greatly amused at this wisecrack. When the meeting was over we joined our host Prince Hassan in his car, to travel with him back to the palace. To my acute embarrassment my Iraqi friend said to the Prince, “Bernard made an interesting comment about your suggestion that the Israelis should acclimatize themselves to the region. I think you ought to hear it.” There was no escape. The Prince looked at me and asked for my comment, and I had to give it to him. He responded with one word, “Touché.”

  The story of Prince Hassan’s supersession as heir to the throne is a sad one.

  I attended the King’s funeral in February 1999 and at that time Prince Hassan shared with me his experience of the King’s final scenes. King Hussein had called Hassan and asked him to nominate Queen Noor’s eighteen-year-old son, Hamza, as his heir. Hassan was not happy with this request and raised two issues which he saw as problems. The first was that it would be rather odd, to say the least, for him to nominate and appoint an heir while he himself was only heir. One is heir to the throne, not heir to the heir. His second point was more serious, that Noor’s son Hamza was the fourth son of the King and he had three elder brothers. To set aside the others and nominate the fourth son might start a crisis. If the King was determined to do this, as apparently he was, Hassan suggested that a family council be called to discuss it. This would have been a more or less normal procedure in an Arab tribal situation, and the Jordanian monarchy was, to no small extent, a tribal institution.

  The King was furious at his response. A written statement from the King then removed Prince Hassan from the succession and appointed the King’s eldest son, Abdullah, in his place.

  The King died not long after. Abdullah succeed to the throne and among his first acts were to confer the title of Queen on King Hussein’s widow, who had lost the title when her husband ceased to be King by death, and to install formally her eighteen-year-old son, Hamza, as heir to the throne. This clearly was what his father had asked him to do and he was willing to accept. Everything seemed to be going Noor’s way, but not for long.

  Later, when he was firmly installed, King Abdullah took some further steps. One was to confer the title of Queen on his wife, Rania, unusual by Middle Eastern standards but normal by Western, and by now international, standards. His second step was to appoint his own five-year-old son, Prince Hussein, as heir to the throne, nullifying the previous nomination of Prince Hamza. This is what Prince Hassan could have done. But that was not his way.

  Hamza was now out of the line of succession and dowager Queen Noor returned to the United States.

  King Abdullah followed exactly in the footsteps of his father by removing his brother from the succession and appointing his own eldest son as heir.

  I went to Jordan to attend King Hussein’s funeral and on one or two subsequent occasions to attend meetings. I have not been there since.

  A Concert in Jerusalem

  Over the years when I went to Jerusalem I often stayed as a guest in one of the small apartments of the Jerusalem Foundation. Their lovely facility is called Mishkenot Sha’ananim. Mishkenot means “dwellings.” Sha’anan (plural sha’ananim) in biblical Hebrew means “tranquil.” In modern Hebrew it has acquired the connotation of “complacent.” I’m sure that in using this name the Foundation had only the biblical meaning in mind.

  One afternoon I was in my apartment in Mishkenot when suddenly there was a knock at the door. I answered it. A man with a vaguely familiar face said, “I hope my practicing the violin doesn’t disturb you. I am afraid you can hear it in your flat.” I said: “No, not at all, not at all.” He said, “You see I am giving a concert tonight, so I feel I have to get myself into shape.” I said, “I am delighted to listen.” I had realized in the meantime that this was none other than the world-renowned violinist Isaac Stern. Oh, you’re interested!” he exclaimed, “Why not come to the concert tonight? I’ll get you in as my guest.” I said I would be honored and delighted to do so, but that unfortunately I had an engagement. I was taking two ladies, an old friend and her daughter, out to dinner. “Bring them along,” he said. “I’ll make arrangements for all three of you.” So I did. It was a wonderful concert and, more importantly, the beginning of a long and cherished friendship.

  My eightieth birthday was celebrated by my colleagues at Princeton in the traditional scholarly way by producing a Festschrift, a volume of studies contributed by colleagues, friends and others in honor of the occasion. My family celebrated with a party at my home for about fifty guests. I was very touched by some of the comments made by former students and friends. My daughter, going through my address book, invited Isaac Stern. Unfortunately he was unable to come as he was scheduled to give some concerts in Europe that week. He did, however, find a substitute; he sent a tape recording with his personal greetings and his rendition, on the fiddle, of “Happy Birthday to You.”

  There were many different kinds of visitors at Mishkenot: academics like myself who were there to give a lecture or two, musicians there to give a performance, archaeologists who had come to help and advise on a dig and so on. One morning, I was having breakfast with a visiting violinist in the Foundation breakfast room. Normally we transacted our business with the waitress in English but this time the waitress on duty knew no English, so I did the honors in Hebrew and ordered breakfast for myself and for the violinist. He looked at me in surprise and said, “You speak Hebrew?” I said, “Yes,” and he said, “In that case, why are you givi
ng your lectures in English? Why don’t you give them in Hebrew?”

  “Can you play the piano?” I responded. And he said, “Of course, every professional musician can handle a keyboard.” “Well,” I said, “why don’t you give concerts on the piano?” “Ahhhh,” he muttered, and he instantly understood. The English language is my instrument. I can speak other languages, but I can’t perform in them.

  The one exception, when I had to perform in another language, was when I received an honorary doctorate in 1996 from the University of Ankara. Normally, honorary doctorates are given in batches and one of the recipients, by previous arrangement, is called upon to reply on behalf of the honorees. Since the correspondence regarding my award made no reference to this, I assumed that someone else would be making the appropriate speech, and there was no need for me to do anything.

  I was wrong. When I arrived in Turkey, my host arranged to meet me and accommodate me overnight in Istanbul so that I could rest and recover before continuing on my way to Ankara the following day. And by the way, he said in passing, there will be just two recipients, you and Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel. We were each expected to make a short speech in response, and, of course, that speech would be in Turkish.

  I now faced a really difficult problem. I was exhausted after the long transatlantic, trans-European journey and the last thing I wanted to do was to prepare a speech, more particularly a speech in a language other than my own. But there was no way of avoiding it. So I set to work and prepared a more or less autobiographical speech, starting with my first encounter with the Turkish language as a student and the first time I set foot in Turkey. I delivered the speech the following day at the university and breathed a sigh of relief. My hosts either liked it or were polite, I’m still not sure which. The two are, of course, not mutually exclusive.

  Teddy Kollek

  One of my oldest and most interesting friendships in Israel was with Teddy Kollek. I remember when he was first elected mayor of Jerusalem in 1965, which at that time meant West Jerusalem because East Jerusalem was still ruled by the Jordanians. (This was before the Six Day War, during which the Israelis captured East Jerusalem.) Between 1948 and 1967, when the Old City was under Jordanian control, Jews were not allowed to enter the Old City, let alone to live in it. The inhabitants of the ancient Jewish Quarter were evicted, and even dead Jews were removed from their graves in the ancient cemeteries. The tombstones were used for a variety of practical, mostly unclean purposes.

  At the time the Jordanians would not admit anyone of whom they disapproved to the holy places in East Jerusalem or indeed to East Jerusalem in general. Jews of all nationalities and Israelis of all religions were barred. Israeli Muslims and Israeli Christians as well as Israeli Jews were not allowed to go into the holy places of the Old City with one exception. That was on Christmas Day—the Western Christmas Day not the Orthodox Christmas, so it was clearly intended for Western impact. On Christmas Day the Jordanians allowed Christian Israelis to cross into the Old City for the day, spend a few hours there, visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and then return.

  I was in Jerusalem on a very cold, blustery Christmas and Teddy had had a refreshment counter set up just near the crossing point. Coffee, tea and snacks were dispensed free to the Christians who were going and then coming back. I was enormously impressed because there was absolutely no political mileage in this. Many of these people were not from Jerusalem but from other parts of the country so they couldn’t vote for him and there was certainly no political gain from his constituents in Jerusalem. It was simply an act of human compassion at a time of bitter conflict. That told me something of the character of the man and everything that happened afterward confirmed it.

  Teddy Kollek was a great man who did great things for the city. I said to him once that there must be many people all over the world who could tell you the name of the mayor of Jerusalem but couldn’t tell you the name of their own mayor. He said he didn’t think so. I said, “Well, me for one.” I didn’t know the name of the mayor of Princeton. He laughed and he said, “If you’d had the same mayor for twenty-five years, you would know his name.” That is probably true. Normally in democracies politicians work mainly with a view to pleasing the people who elect them. But Teddy thought in global terms and in human terms, not just about how to get reelected but how to do a good job for the people of Jerusalem and for all those countless millions of other people for whom Jerusalem matters. That is a quality of greatness.

  Teddy and I met many times and developed a close friendship, which continued until his sadly lamented death in 2007. One of my most treasured possessions is a mezuzah, a sacred text in a case attached by Jews to their doorpost, given to me by Teddy when I rented an apartment in Tel Aviv. It’s inscribed, “To show that I forgive you for choosing Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem.”

  To be perfectly honest, Tel Aviv had actually chosen me. In 1980 I received a most attractive invitation from Tel Aviv University, proposing that I should become a Visiting Fellow on a continuing annual basis. My only obligation would be to deliver two public lectures at the university and to meet with students who wanted to talk to me. As my schedule at Princeton was quite light, I was happy to accept. Of the many lectures I delivered there over the years, some were revised and published as articles in journals; some became chapters in my books. The greater majority remain unpublished but are accessible on the Tel Aviv University Web site. For many years these lectures attracted large audiences filling the main university auditorium and often an overflow in adjoining rooms outfitted with loudspeakers. Laterally, as both the members of the audience and I have aged, the numbers have diminished to about two hundred.

  This relationship provided me with the convenience of an office and a base from which I could visit other countries in the region quickly, easily, and without jet lag. This last point was an important one, as with increasing age I find long-distance travel more and more difficult.

  A Brit Looks at Golan

  In the late 1940s I became acquainted with Geoffrey Arthur, a leading Foreign Office Arab expert, with whom I remained in close touch for many years. He had a good knowledge of Arabic, served in a number of posts in a number of Arab countries and eventually became head of the Foreign Office department dealing with the Middle East, North Africa and the United Nations. (A rather interesting combination I thought.) We used to meet once or twice a month for lunch or dinner at his club or mine and exchange news and views. Normally, he provided the news and I provided the views, though sometimes it was the other way around. Our conversation after his first visit to Israel in the early 1970s was memorable.

  He had gone there in his official capacity and met a number of senior Israeli politicians and diplomatic officials. He said that it had been a rare pleasure in that part of the world to be able to converse with politicians as rational adults and not have to watch his words as if he were talking with neurotic children. I asked him if he had told them that. He said, “Yes, I did and they were rather flattered, but then one of them said, ‘If that’s how you feel about us why aren’t you nicer to us?’ ” I asked how he had answered that. He said he told them his job was to look after British interests and there were many more Arabs than there were Israelis in this part of the world so Britain had to shape her policies accordingly.

  The Israelis took him for a tour of Israel which included a flight over the Golan Heights, which the Israelis captured in the 1967 war. He told me that while they were flying over the Golan Heights, whose possession by Syria had been a major threat to the northern part of the country, he looked down and the words slipped out before he could stop himself. He blurted out, “You can’t give this back!”

  During my travels in Arab countries I heard again and again the line of argument: “We have time, we have patience, history is on our side. We got rid of the Crusaders; we got rid of the Turks; we got rid of the British. We’ll get rid of the Jews in due course.” Finally, I heard it once too often and sitting with a group of friends,
I think it was in Jordan, I said: “Excuse me, but you’ve got it wrong.” They said, “What do you mean? That’s what happened.” I said, “Not quite. The Turks got rid of the Crusaders. The British got rid of the Turks. The Jews got rid of the British. I wonder who’s coming here next?”

  9.

  The Clash of Civilizations

  There have been many civilizations in human history, shaped and guided by many different systems of religious belief. Most religions have a “relativist” approach, to use a term invoked by the Catholic church to indicate disapproval, though I use it approvingly. Others, again to use the term applied by its detractors, are “triumphalist.” The relativist view would be something like this: Just as men have invented different languages to talk to each other, so they have invented different religions to talk to God, and God understands all of them. Perhaps not all equally well, but he understands all of them. Followers of triumphalist religions, in contrast, believe they are the fortunate recipients of God’s final message to humanity, which it is their duty not to keep selfishly to themselves, like the Jews or Buddhists, but to bring to the rest of humanity, removing whatever obstacles there may be in the way. There are two such religions, Christianity and Islam. Their shared attitude has been summed up in the formula: “I’m right. You’re wrong. Go to hell.” Both have played a global role, and remain in competition to the present day.