History Quotes

“Those who are in power control to a very large extent the presentation of the past, and seek to make sure that it is presented in such a way as to buttress and legitimize their own authority, and to affirm the rights and merits of the group which they lead.’ This continuing thread can be traced from ancient inscriptions on rock faces through medieval annals, modern schoolbooks and textbooks, and the official mythology which passes as history in the Soviet Union.”
― Bernard Lewis, History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented

“At the beginning of the 19th century, all that the world knew of the history of the ancient Middle East was what preserved in Greek and Hebrew, that is to say by the only two peoples active in the ancient Middle East who had preserved continuity of identity into modern times, and who had retained and could still read their ancient writings. This history was part of their collective memory and was passed by them, with their scriptures and classics, to Christendom—but not to Islam, for Muslims read neither the Bible nor the classics. The name of Cyrus was well known in medieval Europe and appears even in the sagas of faraway Iceland. It does not appear in Islam, not even in Persia, where the pre-Islamic past was rejected and literally buried. The recovery was for long the work of European, later also of Russian and American, scholars, and was only gradually accepted by the Muslims of the Middle East.”
― Bernard Lewis, History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented