Studies in Arab History: The Antonius Lectures, 1978–87

197 Pages·1990·22.76 MB·English

by  Derek Hopwood (eds.)

STUDIES IN ARAB HISTORY
Studies in Arab
History
The Antonius Lectures, 1978-87
Edited by
DEREK HOPWOOD
Director of the Middle East Centre
St Antony's College, University of Oxford
Palgrave Macmillan
© St. Antony's College 1990
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1990 978-0-333-52348-3
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Referenee Division,
St. Martin's Press, Ine., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1990
ISBN 978-1-349-20659-9 ISBN 978-1-349-20657-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20657-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publieation Data
Studies in Arab history: the Antonius leetures, 1978-87/edited by
Derek Hopwood
p. em.
ISBN 978-0-312-04623-1
1. Arab eountries-History. I. Hopwood, Derek.
DS37.9.S85 1990
909' .0975927--de20 90-30337
CIP
Contents
Editor's Preface vii
An Introduction by E.C. Hodgkin ix
Antonius Lectures
1976 George Makdisi
On the Origin and Development of the College
in Islam and the West 1
1977 Albert Hourani
The Arab Awakening Forty Years Mter 21
1978 Andre Raymond
The Ottoman Conquest and the Development of
the Great Arab Towns 41
1979 MafMarsot
Muhammad Ali and Palmerston 61
1981 Thomas Hodgkin
George Antonius, Palestine and the 1930s 77
1982 Magdi Wahba
Cairo Memories 103
1983 Harold Beeley
Emest Bevin and Palestine 117
1984 Mahmud Manzalaoui
Mouths of the Sevenfold Nile: English Fiction
and Modem Egypt 131
1985 Oleg Grabar
The Meaning of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalern 151
1986 Tarif Khalidi
Space, Holiness and Time: Palestine in the
Classical Arab Centuries 165
1987 Norman Daniels
Orientalism Again 175
To the memory of Katy and George Antonius
Editor's Preface
The editing of this volume has been made very easy by the willing eooperation of the
eontributors, to whom warm thanks. Qnly one lecturer failed to respond and
unfortunately his paper has had to be omitted. I would like to thank also Jennifer
Baines for typesetting the manuscript and Diane Ring for her help with the proofreading.
I am happy to aeknowledge the agreement of Encounter, Macmillan Press and the
InternLltionLll JournLll ofTurkish Studies to print the lectures ofMagdi Wahba, Albert
Hourani and Andre Raymond.
Finally I am most grateful to Alistair Dunean and the World of Islam Festival Trust
for its generous support
Derek Hopwood
Antonius Lectures
An Introduction by E.C. Hodgkin
FüR many people the Antonius Lecture has become one of the most
enjoyable events of the year, more eagerly awaited than Epsom, Wim
bledon, Eights Week, or any other of the summer season's fixed points. It is
an occasion at which the attender can be certain of enlarging his or her
knowledge in a most agreeable fashion, of meeting old friends and making
new ones. And now comes this sort of posthumous Festschrift in which eleven
of the first twelve lectures find a permanent horne in print.
Contributions to some of the Festschrifts I have seen appeared often to
have little relevance to the person they were supposed to be honouring. That
is far from being the case here. Each lecture is directly relevant to some part
of George Antonius's interests - historical, political, literary, topographical,
all to do with some aspect of the Middle East, and more particularly with
the relations between that area and the West. George, who admired
scholarship and enjoyed chat, would have greatly appreciated the chattiness
as weIl as the scholarship here displayed. There can be no higher praise than
that.
In his 1983 lecture Harold Beeley said that he was 'one of the few people
in the room who met George Antonius and talked, or more accurately
listened, to hirn,' having met hirn during the 1939 St James's conference. I
can upstage Harold, having first met George in London in 1934 and got to
know hirn weIl in Jerusalem and Cairo in the winter and spring of 1935/36.
This was when, having left Oxford, I was travelling in the Middle East,
often staying with my brother Thomas, whose chequered career as a colonial
servant he described in his 198 lecture and which is reflected also in his
I
Letters from Palestine 1932-:-36, which I edited and which apppeared in Ig86.
In a letter to his mother, written in May 1933, Thomas described George
as a man with rather the manner of a young fellow of All Souls and a
mysterious profession - travelling expensively round, interviewing Amirs,
Sultans, Grand Rabbis and Secretaries of State, and opening all their eyes.'
In a letter to me a year later he recalled a meeting we had had with George
at the Maison Basque (a very good restaurant in Dover Street, alas no
more), during which George had 'talked passionate politics.' Thomas went
on: 'He is even more charming he re [Jerusalern] than in England, because in
England there are more people rather like hirn, whereas here there are very
few - no one that I have ever met that so admirably combines the passion of
Introduction
the Syrian patriot with the lucidity of the Cambridge don in stating his
patriotic beliefs.' There is a subtle Oxford/Cambridge nuance in these two
passages which I leave to higher criticism. What I can confirm is that
George was splendid company - seldom in my memory passionate, but
always lucid.
To be a guest at Karm al-Mufti in those days was a rare privilege, as it
was later after George had died, an oasis of civilization in the last unhappy
years of the mandate. On all occasions it was Katy who showed the guest to
what heights hospitality could rise. To speak of that remarkable person in a
single pendant sentence seems a crime, but there are, fortunately, so many
who have attended these lectures, as she herself also did as long as she was
able, who will have their private memories of her that any tribute to her or
to Soraya in this context would be otiose.
The institution of these lectures was made possible by the generosity of an
admirer of George Antonius who has from the outset desired to be
anonymous and still wishes to remain so. He will, however, I think be not
unaware of the enormous pleasure he has provided for so many over the past
thirteen years - a pleasure which can be keenly looked forward to in the
years to come.
E.C. Hodgkin
On the Origin and Development of
the College in Islam and the West
FEW chapters in the history ofWestern culture are as fascinating as that of
the rise and development of universities. These institutions of learning are
justly the pride and joy of those who cherish the traditions of Western
culture. Such names as Salerno and Bologna, Paris and Montpellier, Oxford
and Cambridge, carry a resonance richly deserved, which has not ceased to
vibrate in the annals ofWestern civilization, since their early foundations in
the Middle Ages. Small wonder, then, that claims on their origins as
possibly owing to influence from the Muslim East should be opposed, at
tim es politely, more often by simply ignoring the claim.
There is no doubt in my mind as to the legitimacy ofsuch opposition. The
claims which have been made for the madrasa as the prototype of the
university should be regarded as devoid of a sound basis in fact. The idea of
the university as it first arose in the West is one which is totally alien to
classical Islam.
The university in its early his tory is strict1y a product ofWestern Europe
in the Middle Ages. Islam borrowed it in modern times, in the second half of
the nineteenth century. In his excellent book on The Rise of Universities,
Charles Homer Haskins made it clear that the institution was a medieval
one, the likes of which had not been seen by Athens or Rome in ancient
times.l He did not insist on its European character; he merely took the
matter for granted; and this is spite of claims by Islamists placing its origin in
Baghdad or Cairo. Haskins was right, irrespective of his awareness of such
claims. This fact of the medieval European origin of the university should be
kept in mind when speaking of'the rise ofuniversities'.
On the other hand, when we speak of the rise of colleges, we are speaking
of an institution that is peculiarly Islamic in origin. And there is ample
reason to believe that the medieval West borrowed it from Islam. This is
what I hope to show in what follows.
In a study that seeks to understand institutions of learning from their
genesis, it behooves the student first to seek a clarification of the key terms
involved. In a comparative study of such institutions in Islam and the West,
clarification is nowhere more necessary than in the signification of the basic
insitutional terms, 'college' and 'university'.
If we were to consider the college and the university as we first find them
in Paris in the latter part of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, we
would find that there was no ambiguity whatsoever as to the functions of