Lane's Arabic Influences

May 25, 2006

Last night we went to a lecture at ARCE, located over near the American embassy. The speaker was a man named Jason Thompson who is finishing up his ARCE fellowship for the year. He appears to be the expert on the life and career of Edward William Lane, the 19th century orientalist who was responsible for a popular book on the customs of modern Egyptians as well as his great Arabic dictionary to which every student of classical Arabic is indebted.

The lecture was interesting to me primarily as a sketch of the contours of Lane's life. Jason Thompson, a historian of English history from the University of Chicago, seemed particularly at home when it came to Lane's Victorian companions.. his "circle" of friends. What was lacking, however, is a sense of Lane's intellectual indebtedness to Arabic intellectuals. As Thompson described Lane's writings and drawings, I was struck by the similarity in their aim to the Khitat of al-Maqrizi.. and as I asked about this connection afterwards, it turned out that Lane owned one of the best manuscripts of that work. But is it too much to say that this monumental work must have influenced his portrayal of Cairo? One interesting approach to Lane would be to see him as a translator of this descriptive tradition into English. His dictionary project is liable to a similar approach.. I would bet that the great Arabic-Arabic dictionary known as the Lisan al-Arab (The Arab Tongue) exercised a profound influence on his work. But neither of these connections were brought out by Thompson, who despite a professed interest in the Middle East does not actually engage with the Arabic world and its influence on Lane.