A HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL ISLAM
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loginDR. JOHNSON, commenting in one of the Ramblers on the oblivionwhich overtook Richard Knolles’ Generall Historie of the Turkes(1603), despite its literary merits, explained this neglect on the groundthat the author ‘employed his genius upon a foreign and uninterestingsubject’ and recounted ‘enterprises and revolutions of which nonedesire to be informed.’ Indifference to Oriental history among theeducated public of the West still exists, but is diminishing, and more‘desire to be informed’ of the relations between Europe and Islamthroughout the ages. Such recent works as Dr. Norman Daniel’s Islamand the West (1960) and Professor R.W. Southern’s Western Viewsof Islam in the Middle Ages (1962) provide striking evidence of thewider perspectives now being opened up, and as our historians ceaseto be Europe-centred and devote more attention to the nature andevolution of non-European societies, we may expect the history ofthe Muslim East to be studied with increasingly critical care.
