Reviewed by Jill Kamil Jason Thompson's Edward William Lane, "is no mere biography", he explains. "It is a collective biography, in the sense that it is about the clusters of people around Lane. He was a central figure, a planner. They tended to share sources and observations, giving in order to get. But Lane was not like that at all. He was a taker not a giver. Moreover, he was extremely authoritative". Research can be endlessly seducing. It is certainly so for historian Jason Thompson. Even before his biography on Sir Alan Gardner Wilkinson and His Circle (published by AUC Press in 1992) had reached page-proof stage, the focus of his interest had already honed in on Edward William Lane, a member of the same circle whose fascinating and multi- faceted Description of Egypt had never been published. This massive work, which combines history, geography, city life, village communities, and antiquities between Alexandria and the Second Cataract, was rescued by Thompson from certain oblivion when he located files of unpublished material in the Griffiths Institute. Realising its value and aware that the material was known to only a handful of scholars, he decided to undertake to edit the material and provide an appropriate introduction. Also published by AUC Press, it met the market in 2000. While working on this Lane's manuscript, Thompson found himself comparing his work with that of Wilkinson and he began seriously to consider writing a biographical study on the great but relatively little known Victorian scholar, pioneering Egyptologist and Orientalist, author of Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, and translator of the Arabian Nights. "His Manners and Customs is a remarkable book on contemporary Egyptian society, and, aware as I am personally how complex that society is, I began to ask myself how Lane knew what he knew, and how he formulated what he did, because it was all new." The project was challenging, and Thompson was anxious to get on with it, but it was nevertheless put on hold when the director of AUC Press approached him to write A History of Egypt from earliest times to the present, and that he would like to have it published as soon as possible. What an offer? What a task? It meant virtually covering everything from the birth of the Egyptian civilisation in the predynastic period, through the rise and fall of the different kingdoms under Pharaonic, Ptolemaic, Roman and Byzantine rule, as well as Coptic Egypt, the advent of Islam through Ummayad, Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mameluk control, to the Ottoman Turks, the birth of modern Egypt, not to mention British occupation, the Parliamentary era, Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak. An impossible task, I said! And told him that he could not possibly give due justification to so many distinct specialisations over such a vast stretch of time. I said that any attempt to provide a synthesis of such an intimidating range and quantity of material was foolhardy. But that didn't put him off. And I was proved wrong. Jason Thompson, then associate professor of history at the American University in Cairo (claiming scholarship in various fields and a layman's interest in others), considered the challenge worth taking, and his A History of Egypt: From earliest times to the present was published (in 2008), a remarkable single-volume work of an extraordinarily long narrative of human history in the land of the Nile. How did he produce it in record time? Simply, it seems -- through profound interest in the task in hand, travelling around the country (sometimes in the footsteps of the 19th century travellers and scholars, sometimes to places they never visited), drawing on current scholarship and in-depth archaeological research, and of course making his own observations. Thompson was in fact ideally placed to take on such a task. Historian, researcher, and passionate traveller with a special attachment to Egypt, he is both insightful and prolific. What is your daily output, I once asked him and his response was: "Two thousand words and more on a good day", before adding, "sometimes no more than fifty." As for the time taken to delve through unpublished primary source material, well... speed-reading might be a simple answer, but as anyone involved in research knows, it takes much more than a quick eye and retentive brain to sort through mountains of material, peer through the darkened corridors of time, and comprehend changing circumstances behind the political conflicts, domestic unrest, periods of growth and development, others of decline, and come up with a history that is as comprehensible to the lay reader as to the scholar. Yet, this is what Thompson did with his History. He tackled the most written-about land in the world, and successfully managed to trace the many threads of continuity that run from ancient times through to modern. Once his History was put to rest (needless to say, it is rapidly becoming a best-seller), Thompson turned back to his pet project: Edward William Lane. Best known for his Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, and as the translator of the Arabian Nights, this great Victorian scholar who took to dressing in Arab garb, early captured Thompson's interest. "His copious literary output, widely-read and useful publications, deserved that he be better known," he said recalling that, when researching in the UK, he had, in looking for references on Wilkinson, delved through masses of unpublished manuscripts, notebooks and miscellaneous material that no- one seemed to have taken an interest in, and had chanced upon a load of stuff in Cambridge University written by Lane. "He was a remarkable man," Thompson said. "He explored monuments of the ancient past, contemporary Egyptian lifestyles, and travelled great distances to fulfill a passion for knowledge and understanding". Lane was aware that Egyptian attitudes forwards foreigners who did not conform with their manners and customs, or profess the same way of thinking, are polite in their address, but "cold and reserved, or parasitical" in conversation. So he wrapped himself in Eastern mannerisms and language as closely as he did eastern clothing. He even adopted an Eastern name, Mansur, becoming known as Mansur Effendi, and he revelled in his identity. Although most of his acquaintances are obscure, one in particular stands out: Sheikh Ahmed Al-Kutabi who, as the name suggests, was a bookseller, a senior partner who kept a shop on the main street of Cairo just across from the Khan Al-Khalili, from whom Lane most likely bought books and manuscripts, forming the basis for what must have been one of the outstanding private collections of Arabic manuscripts in Britain. At least this is what Thompson suggests. On Lane's character, he had this to say: "While the most vital part of Lane's work was accomplished through participation and direct observation," it was interaction with his European colleagues, many of whom remained friends for life, that provided a much more substantial contribution than he ever acknowledged. In the course of his early days in Egypt, Lane had met Henry Salt, the cheerful good-natured John Gardner Wilkinson, and Osman Effendi, a colourful individual who functioned as an intermediary between the two cultures and was undoubtedly responsible for Lane's outer transformation, which enabled him to look in on local society. Osman Effendi was in fact William Thomson, a native of Scotland who joined the army and was sent to Egypt as part of the British attempt to curb the growing power of Mohamed Ali in 1801. He was captured, given the choice of death or to embrace Islam, and chose the latter. That was when he adopted his new name, went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, and ended up as a real estate agent in Cairo, renting houses to foreign travelers. When Lane abandoned European clothing, it was undoubtedly with the help and advice of Osman Effendi who "was much more than a mere commissioned guide; he was a true cultural intermediary". Jason Thompson goes to great length to describe how Lane was transformed from a European gentleman into a member of the Turkish elite, complete with dagger ("without which no set of Turkish clothing would be complete"), and a sword slung over his shoulder ("where it hung from silken cords"). He stresses that Lane never presented himself as a convert to Islam but as a practising Muslim, one of the community of believers, someone who already had a right to be there, and he was accepted as such. "He insisted on acceptance, even from those who knew him to be an Englishman". Then Thompson raises the question: Was this honest? Many thought not. Among his critics was Edward Said, who provocatively argued that writers who were defined collectively as orientalists created an imaginary Orient that was unchanging, exotic, feminised, sexually depraved, and above all subordinate to the West. One of Said's definitions quoted by Thompson, was "a kind of Western projection onto and will to govern over the Orient," and he accused Lane as being one of the worst offenders. Said wrote, "His [i.e. Lane's] identity as counterfeit believer and privileged European is the very essence of bad faith". But Jason Thompson hastens to point out that Lane never made the shahada, the professional of faith, "therefore he was not a Muslim, nor was he pretending to be one. His participation in activities such as congregational prayer, while certainly not a Christian formality, involved nothing that contradicted or disavowed Christian doctrine". Lane's circle of male acquaintance steadily widened, but the female half of the Egyptian population remained most screened away from him. He makes observations on prostitutes, noted that women in the street were veiled and heavily clothed and, while details of the harem remained unseen, he wrote about the ghawazi, the adult female professional dancers in the streets, and about his wife Anastasia Nefeeseh, on whom there are no fewer than 47 references -- one on her illness in Hastings, another on her miscarriage. A biographer's task, says Thompson, "is like reconstructing a mosaic where most of the tesserae have been shattered or lost, trying to put the remaining pieces in their right relationship so some of the overall pattern will appear". Interestingly enough, on reading his biography on Lane -- an enormously lengthy piece of work of some 750 pages -- one is conscious of those parts of the mosaic which (like a jig-saw puzzle) suddenly "fit in" and "come to life". Thompson dwells, for example, on Lane's involvement with ancient Egypt ("never a more happy time"), yet gives equal space to his studies on contemporary society -- describing coffee shops and souqs, slave markets, and even property rates. This was a great and exotic world, and Lane's Manners and Customs remains a classic work in its field, a pertinent record of life in an Islamic community in the 19th century, much of it relevant until today. The first paragraph of the first chapter of Thompson's biography of Lane reads: "Visitors to the National Portrait Gallery in London often pause to admire a life-size statue. Its subject is attired in Eastern clothing, with the folds of his cloak and turban exquisitely rendered. His left hand holds an Arab scribe's dawaya, or writing kit; his right rests on a book. Leaning forward slightly, so that the cloak pulls tautly across his back and hangs loosely open in front, his slender face looks down on the viewer with kindly intentness. Curious to know the identity of such an interesting subject, visitors' eyes go to the plague on the pedestal. Scholars of the Middle East and Egyptologists instantly recognize the name; others read on and learn". It is Edward William Lane 1801-1876". This is his story. Edward William Lane 1801-1876 by Jason Thompson The American University in Cairo Press, Cairo and New York. 2010
