Guided US policy following 9/11 attacks
Bernard Lewis Historian BORN MAY 31, 1916 - DIED MAY 19, 2018 AGED 101
ON September 11, 2001, two planes were flown into the World Trade Center by Islamic terrorists.
Like the rest of the world, president George Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney sought to understand why.
They turned to historian Bernard Lewis for an explanation.
Having devoted his life to studying the Middle East, Lewis was one of the world’s most influential historians on Islam and in the aftermath of 9/11 his works helped to inform policymakers.
Born in London, Lewis was the only child of Harry, a textiles worker, and his wife Jenny.
As a child his father’s attempts to get his son interested in football proved fruitless and he shunned sports in favour of history.
In 1936, he graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London with a BA in history and earned a doctorate specialising in Islamic history.
He studied law, going part way to becoming a solicitor but was not captivated by the subject, returning to study Middle Eastern history at the University of Paris for a year. He returned to SOAS as an assistant lecturer in 1938.
During the Second World War, Lewis served in the Royal Armoured Corps but in 1941 left to be a corporal in the Intelligence Corps, stating his “aptitude for languages and ineptitude for tanks” as the reason, having mastered seven languages.
He married his first wife Ruth in 1947, but the pair divorced in 1974 after Lewis had a brief affair with an Ottoman princess.
He went on to accept a position at Princeton University where he taught for the remainder of his career, being granted US citizenship in 1982.
His work was regularly sought after to explain the growing divergence between Islamic and Western cultures. His book What Went Wrong? published in 2002 was on the New York Times bestseller list for several weeks.
Warning of an imminent “clash of civilisations” between Islam and the West, Lewis foresaw friction between the two cultures because of their differing ways of life.
He is survived by his partner Buntzie Churchill, his daughter Melanie and son Michael.