[lit-ideas] Who shall be an historian?

  • From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 23:23:44 -0700

Judy wrote: ?Esposito is not an historian,? even though Esposito wrote a
very influential work of modern history, The Islamic Threat, Myth or
Reality.  Of course Judy doesn?t write much, just sage pronouncements like
the above; so I have to guess which makes people like Judy and Simon mad
because they invariably think I should have guessed something entirely
different. But I?m guessing that what Judy thinks disqualifies Esposito as
an historian is his religious background.  This is from Wikipedia: ?Esposito
was raised a  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic> Catholic in an
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_people> Italian neighborhood in
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn> Brooklyn,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City> New York City, and spent a
decade in a Catholic monastery. After taking his first degree he worked as a
management consultant and high-school teacher. He then studied for a masters
in theology at St Johns University. He earned a PhD at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_University> Temple University,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania> Pennsylvania in 1974, studying
Islam for the first time. Esposito then taught religious studies (including
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism> Hinduism,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism> Buddhism and Islam) at the College
of the Holy Cross.?

 

Wikipedia also has: John Louis Esposito (born
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_19> 19 May
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940> 1940,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn> Brooklyn,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City> New York City) is a professor
of International Affairs and  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam> Islamic
Studies at  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgetown_University> Georgetown
University. He is editor-in-chief of
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Oxford_Encyclopedia_of_the_Mo
dern_Islamic_World&action=edit> The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern
Islamic World,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Oxford_History_of_Islam&actio
n=edit> The Oxford History of Islam,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oxford_Dictionary_of_Islam> The Oxford
Dictionary of Islam, and Oxford?s
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Islamic_World:_Past_and_Prese
nt&action=edit> The Islamic World: Past and Present. He is the founding
director of Georgetown?s
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Prince_Waleed_bin_Talal_Center_fo
r_Muslim-Christian_Understanding&action=edit> Prince Waleed bin Talal Center
for Muslim-Christian Understanding, and has served as president of the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_Studies_Association_of_North_Ameri
ca> Middle East Studies Association of North America and of the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=American_Council_for_the_Study_of
_Islamic_Societies&action=edit> American Council for the Study of Islamic
Societies.  

 

Now anyone who has written or edited the above (aside from his work The
Islamic Threat) would seem to qualify as an historian but apparently not by
Judy?s standards.  What must those standards be?  I can only guess that she
wants the word ?history? in his academic degree.  Gosh, in that case
consider the following fellow with a similar problem:

From Wikipedia: ?Gibbon was born in  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putney>
Putney, then a town by the river  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames>
Thames, near  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London> London,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England> England. His grandfather had made and
lost the family fortune in the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Bubble> South Sea Bubble. Gibbon was
the only child, and he described himself as "a weakly child" in his memoirs.
His mother died when he was 10 years old, after which he attended
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Grammar_School> Kingston Grammar
School, staying at the boarding house of his favorite "Aunt Kitty", followed
by  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_School> Westminster School at
the age of 11. At the age of 14, he was sent by his father to
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalen_College%2C_Oxford> Magdalen College
at the  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Oxford> University of
Oxford, where he enrolled as a gentleman-commoner.

?Gibbon was ill-suited to the college atmosphere and later wrote of his 14
months there as "the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life." The most
memorable event of his time at Oxford was his conversion to
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholicism> Roman Catholicism on
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_8> June 8,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1753> 1753. Religious controversies raged on
the Oxford campus, and while their intellectual standards were sometimes
described as bleak, obsolete, and barren fact the 16 year-old Gibbon was not
immune to religious controversies.

?Within weeks of his conversion, the elder Gibbon removed the younger from
Oxford, and sent him to M. Pavilliard, a
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism> Calvinist pastor and private tutor
in  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lausanne> Lausanne,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland> Switzerland, where he remained
for five years, a time which would have a profound impact upon Gibbon's
later character and life. He quickly reconverted back to
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant> Protestantism, but more
importantly, his time in Lausanne enriched Gibbon's immense aptitude for
scholarship and erudition. In addition, he met the one romance in his life:
the pastor's daughter, a young woman named Suzanne Curchod, who would later
be the wife of  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Necker> Jacques
Necker, the French finance minister, and mother of
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Louise_Germaine_de_Sta%C3%ABl> Mme de
Staël. Once again, his father intruded in his son's life by vetoing the
marriage proposal and demanding the young Gibbon's immediate return to
England. Gibbon would write: ?I sighed like a lover, I obeyed like a son.??

What paltry qualifications are these?  If Judy denies the attribute
?historian? to Esposito and Said (and presumably James Bowman) and refuses
to consider the histories they have written as relevant, and if she assumes
that an historian must have a degree in history else, no matter how many
histories he writes, he shall never be an historian, then is Edward Gibbon
any more entitled to be so called?  Certainly not, I would presume Judy to
respond.

 

 

Lawrence

Other related posts: