Book Review - Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence

 Seven Pillars of Wisdom: a Triumph by T.E. Lawrence

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books in association with Jonathan Cape, 1975 printing

(First published privately in 1926, first published by Jonathan Cape in 1935, and by Penguin in 1962)

ISBN 0140016961

I first read Seven Pillars of Wisdom at university, which is when I suspect many young men read it, at least in the 70s and 80s, when the book had almost a cult status with those who would like to think they were in some way intellectual. Like many others of impressionable age at an impressionable time in their lives, I was very impressed by it. I still have the copy I purchased second-hand in the Monash University co-op, and I note that I paid the then (for me) princely sum of five dollars, which was the equivalent of several beers or a decent meal at that stage in my life.

I had always intended re-reading the book, but have been put off the task over the years by the notion that it was a book for young men, and that those wearied by the natural cynicism of age had found it just so much twaddle when they went back to it. That was my father's advice to me as well, and I didn't want to destroy my good opinion of the book. But then lockdown hit, and I've had a bit of a project to read some classic works, so I decided to bite the bullet and risk destroying an icon after watching an interesting television documentary about Lawrence that got me thinking about him, and Seven Pillars.

Is it as good as I remember? No. Is it just so much twaddle? No. Is it a great classic? Of that I'm not sure. It is definitely more than an exciting narrative of someone's wartime adventures, but it is also definitely less than a great work of literature. What it most definitely is, is an insight into the complex and difficult character that was T.E. Lawrence.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom, ostensibly about the Arab Revolt and the consequent battle of the Arabs against the Turks from Medina to Damascus, is actually about the wish-fulfilment of Lawrence's dreams to become famous, by whatever means became open to him. He admits as much several times in the book, while going on to admit that in fulfilling his wishes, he destroyed his soul through lying, killing, and the degradations that came to him during the campaign.

His opportunity, which came about when he was appointed liaison and intelligence officer to Feisal, became a legend, and he burnishes the legend (while seeming to deprecate it) in this book. He claims to run not only the Arabs, but also the British intervention in their theatre of war, explaining how his intelligence and forward thinking ran rings not only around the Arabs, who he describes as petty and unthinking, but also the British staff officers, who in his eyes are hide-bound and old-fashioned.

The book is a series of descriptions of his travels throughout the theatre, and some of the actions in which he took part, and of some of the characters he met along the way. Anyone who agreed with him, or fell in with his ideas, is painted glowingly, and those that didn't are not. The best parts of the book are his descriptions of his travels through the Hejaz and Jordan, with his writing placing the reader on the back of the camel with him, feeling his tiredness and hunger, and elation at arriving at a well-watered camp.

It is when he switches to mystic mode that the book suffers. Like many young idealistic men, his ideas about the beauty of man's struggle, of the meaning of war and society, and of the differences between men are incohate and hard to decipher in any meaningful way. He wishes to bring the Arabs into their hegemony, and so tries in his writing to make them more than they were: to create castles and kings from tents and wandering nomads. 

There is no doubt that Lawrence was a troubled soul. His upbringing was harsh, and sexually he was not classifiable, and there are passages in Seven Pillars of Wisdom where he revels in the degradation forced on him through his wanderings with the Arab tribes. He seems to have a theory that beauty and truth are unobtainable in the physical world, and so one should eschew the physical and in fact try and destroy it. There is no doubt in my mind that by the end of the campaign Lawrence was suffering mentally from his trials, and he just made it over the line in Damascus, so that the prize that he had been hoping for came to him as a bitter fruit indeed.

His mental state was definitely affected by his capture torture and rape in Deraa, which I think led not only to him hating the Turks, but also to hating the Arabs. In a strange way the reader gets the feeling that Lawrence almost felt that he'd deserved such punishment, and after the incident on several occasions the reader finds Lawrence uncaring about whether he lives or dies.

It struck me while reading the book that Lawrence is very much a precursor to the modern age, and the modern person. It is all about him, everything is done according to his plan, and other people are just so many chessmen to be placed on the board. It strikes me that Lawrence would have been a natural on social media, an influencer and icon.

There is no doubt that Lawrence hoped that Seven Pillars of Wisdom would become a great classic - a classic of endurance, of struggle and overcoming, and of the mystical beauty of a people and their history. That he failed in achieving that I think he knew, and we know as well. However, it is still a fine book, a worthy book, and no doubt a book that will continue to inspire those young men who find it at the right time in their lives.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Did Muhammad exist? by Robert Spencer

Did Muhammad exist? : an inquiry into Islam's obscure origins by Robert Spencer

Wilmington Delaware: ISI Books, 2012               ISBN 9781610170611


Robert Spencer is a somewhat controversial author and commentator, perhaps best known for his jihadwatch website, and his polemical books about Islam. This book, while no doubt having controversial things to say, is not a polemic, but a look at the current state of study into the origins not so much about Muhammad himself, but the Koran.

Of the three main monotheistic religions, it is Islam that claims the most historicity for it's origins. Muhammad lived in the late 6th and early 7th century, was a prophet and warrior, and received the Koran in a series of revelations from the Angel Gabriel around Mecca and Medina. The problem with this seemingly historical statement is that the more it is investigated, the harder it is to pin down.

There is no mention in other historical sources of Muhammad, or the Koran itself, for over a hundred years from the supposed date of Muhammad's death. In fact between the date of Muhammad's death and the first mention of the Koran, coins were produced and buildings erected that seem to suggest the local rulers in Arabia were, if anything, Christians of a sort. It is only in the 9th century that something that we would recognise as Islam appeared in the historical record.

How to account for this gap in the story? It is clear that  both the Abbasid and Umayyad Caliphates were keen to enlist God as a partisan on their side, and had seen how religion could unify otherwise separate peoples into a large empire. It is also clear that large parts of the text of what came to be the Koran had existed for some time as separate fragments before being collected into one book. It also seems to be true that there did exist at some time in the 7th century in Arabia a "prophet armed with a sword". Spencer's theory is that the Caliphs were responsible for putting these disparate facts together to create a religion that could justify their rule.

The Koran itself is the major item under scrutiny in this book. Notoriously hard to interpret, recent study is bringing to light several sources of the suras of the Koran and leading to some extraordinary conclusions by some scholars. There can be an argument made that some of the text originated from Christian communities that denied the Trinity. These texts, which would have been in the Syraic language, were adapted as needed, with additions where required, to create the Koran as we have it now. These theories can explain some of the mysteries of the text itself, and also possibly the meaning behind some of the seemingly contradictory statements made in the Koran about Jews and Christians: they are due to the accretions made over time to original Christian sect texts.

Even the name Muhammad itself then comes into question - meaning "praiseworthy", the name itself is only mentioned four times in the Koran, and each time it could possibly be referring to Jesus, or other figures, rather than to a person named Muhammad himself.

The historiography of religious texts is a notoriously fraught business, and possibly no text is more difficult to look at than the Koran, as not only is it seen by Muslims as the literal word of God, but also is seen as a definite historical artifact emanating from a known point in history from a known person. Both the Jewish and the Christian Bibles have been studied historically for a long time, and Koranic studies have a long way to go in this area.

Did Muhammad exist? is an interesting work that gathers together some of the threads of current research into early Islam. There is a decent bibliography for further reading, and both the notes and the index are helpful.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Philby of Arabia by Elizabeth Monroe

Philby of Arabia by Elizabeth Monroe

London: Quartet Books, 1980                         ISBN 0714333465

It's a sad state of affairs that when one mentions the name Philby usually the first person to be discussed is Kim, the Soviet Spy and British traitor. His Father, Harry (known as St. John) Philby, or as he came to be known "Philby of Arabia", is a more fascinating man for all sorts of reasons.

In this book Elizabeth Monroe has done a serviceable job of relaying a life of a driven, difficult, yet talented man who carved out his own niche in the history of the political development of the Middle East, and in exploring both the geography and history of much of the Arabian Peninsula. 

The subject of a broken home, Philby exhibited his precocious talent early, winning an exhibition to the famous Westminster School, and on to Trinity College at Cambridge. His mother's lack of means meant that rather than continue on at University he went to India to work in the civil service, where his quick facility for languages served him well, but where his quick temper and forthright views served him less so. He was seen early on as a bit of a "queer fish" owing to his mingling with the locals, and his developing views on Indian independence, although in many other ways Philby was English to his core, never losing his love of London club life, or watching cricket at Lords.

Like many men of his era, World War One was a turning point in his life. He chafed to be of use to his country, and eventually found his way to Mesopotamia, where he worked with the governing forces. He never saw action, but became a vital member of the civil government for a time. However, his forceful nature and inability to compromise saw him lose favour with the powers that be, which was a constant theme in his life. He did have his supporters though and they suggested he be sent to gauge the political outlook of Ibn Saud, the major Sheikh in Arabia during the War. Philby, in the course of this task, became the first European to traverse Arabia from East to West, and was one of the first to enter Riyadh and stay there for any length of time. He became friends with Saud, and in his impulsive way, saw Saud as the true liberator and ruler of all the Arabs. Because Philby was a man who only saw things in black-and-white, this meant that he was totally opposed to Hashemite rule in Arabia, which again brought him into conflict with the British Government. He played a small part in the negotiations around the political shape of the Arabian peninsula after the War, but was never able to grasp the bigger picture, failing even to see that Ibn Saud was following an agenda different to the one Philby thought he should.

Philby though had seen one thing - that his future lay in Arabia. He revealingly wrote to his long-suffering wife, Dora - who was left in England for long periods without much money to bring up their children - that he was desperate for fame, and he felt that Arabia was the place for him to find it. He had written a book about his wartime journey, and was seen as something of an Arabian expert, so was hired by a company to represent them in Arabia. It took several "lean years" before he could turn his friendship with Saud into a profitable one, years in which he further antagonised the British government with his outspoken writings suggesting Arabia should be independent. During these years he also converted to Islam, which seems to have been driven by practical motives as it enabled him to be with the King in the Holy City of Mecca - Philby never seems to have been a very religious man.

His business career began to meet with some success in the 1930s, and he was given permission by the King for the first of his Arabian journeys, into the Empty Quarter. Although Philby in many ways was not a nice person, he was a good explorer and mapmaker, producing quality geographical information on his trips, as well as collecting interesting specimens of wildlife. Philby being Philby, he also caused a diplomatic incident when he entered Yemen without permission, which made Ibn Saud wary of giving him permission to explore in similar areas near the border.

World War Two saw Philby spend some time under arrest in Britain for his views on Britain and its Middle Eastern Policy: Philby thoughout his life could never understand why his outspokenness may not be welcome, and always saw himself as a loyal but critical Englishman. His short foray into politics was similarly damaged by his outspoken nature, gathering only 526 votes the only time he stood for office.

After the war he was back in Arabia, living well until the demise of Ibn Saud, which included starting another family with a girl given to him by the King. In the 1950s he made several expeditions into the ancient lands of Midian, before being for a time banished from the Kingdom after Saud's death, for criticism of the Kingdom's growing problem with corruption and greed.

Philby eventually was welcomed back, but by this time he was an old man, and eventually died at his son Kim's home in Beirut in 1960. By this time Kim was already under pressure, with speculation about him being "the third man" rife: he fled to the Soviet Union shortly after his father's death.

Philby's legacy is his exploration and mapping work, with the results of his Midian expedition with Rykmans still being written about to this day. His was one of the last of those lives lived when an Englishman could impose himself anywhere in the world and live a life worth writing about. A fascinating man, this book is a good introduction to him and his achievements.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell