Обсуждение:Джон Уонсбро

Preface: Professor J. E. Wansbrough

It was at the beginning of October 1957 that a casually dressed man, carrying a haversack and looking rather like a soldier on leave, knocked on the door of Bernard Lewis's room and announced that he was a new postgradu- ate student by the name of John Wansbrough. Interrogated on his academic credentials acquired at Harvard, the reasons for his interest in Middle Eastern history and on his military record in the armed forces of the United States, he responded with dignity and restraint and was duly admitted to the department of history at the School. It so happened that I witnessed this notable event because I was sitting in Bernard's room having joined the staff of the depart- ment as an assistant lecturer that same morning. Subsequently, that dearly loved teacher, Vernon Parry, wandered in, following the casual pattern of the opening of the session in those pleasant and unexacting days, and introductions were made. Unsurprisingly, Vernon mixed up the new postgraduate and the new teacher-even then the self-possessed, mature John looked much more like a university teacher than I did-and when the confusion was eventually sorted out regarded us with dark suspicion as though we had been engaged in some conspiracy to subvert the proper order of affairs in the School. He was not the last to harbour such notions. It was not long, however, before, in 1960, we were to welcome John as an academic colleague in the history department. As he took up his academic duties so, with his wife and growing family, he settled into a seventeenth-century house in Essex. As he described it the house seemed to be as inconvenient a dwelling as could be imagined but when I asked why he did not live in a more modern one he looked surprised. 'It would be a waste to live in England and not to live in a house that had some history,' he replied.

John stayed in his historical house until he moved to Islington more than twenty years later but his sojourn in the history department was much shorter. Although, as may be observed from his willingness to subject himself to physical hardship in the cause of the discipline, he was far from disliking history, John had already conceived some doubts about historians, whom he regarded as people prone to skim on the surface of scholarship rather than to trouble to equip themselves adequately to investigate the depths of their subject. There was current at the time an expression, more common indeed by repute than in usage, to the effect that language was a tool of study and John had already concluded that language was much more fundamental to the study of the past than this dictum suggested. As part of his postgraduate training he had attended the lectures given by Paul Wittek on Ottoman history and was strongly drawn towards that scintillating combination of language and history which the great Austrian scholar displayed to all of his students, or at least to those who were willing to sit up to all hours of the night because Wittek's day only began at 3.0 p.m. As determined in execution as he was thorough in his convictions John quietly went off to read for the B.A. Arabic and was duly rewarded by a first class degree.

At that time the School constituted a loose framework intended to facilitate the personal academic initiatives of its academic staff rather than a scheme of neat and purposive pigeonholes in which individual scholars laboured to achieve a greater good. Nevertheless, it was felt that in studying Arabic when he should have been researching and writing history John had somewhat overstepped even the vague and liberal bounds of those days, the more so since he had not troubled to inform the head of his own department of his doings. To the School's great credit and subsequent advantage John's transgres- sion was treated as a mere misdemeanour occasioned by scholarly zeal. All that happened was that in 1967 John left the history department and joined the department of the Near and Middle East as a teacher of Arabic.

For the next fifteen years John sought the satisfactions of teaching and research, broadening his knowledge of Semitic languages and exploring what became his especial field of interest, the early years of Islam. He had long been interested in the writings of Ignaz Goldziher and Joseph Schacht and in following the lines of inquiry into the sources for the birth of Islam which had been pioneered by those writers John began to expound a highly controversial view in his teachings and writings. This is not the place, nor am I qualified, to discuss the merits of his academic work, but no one who worked at the School in those days could be unaware of his powerful influence on the development of a generation of young scholars whose own future contributions to the subject were to be testimony to the effectiveness of his teaching. Most distinctive in his approach was his insistence on a close and critical study of the evidence and on precision in the language used by scholars to express their judgements. He, himself, studiously avoided any speculation, an attitude which could occa- sionally cause bafflement among his listeners. I heard him once give an elegant lecture which presented a paradox which by implication could only be resolved by a second, more breathtaking paradox. In vain did Albert Hourani try to extract that implication from John; in words of measured and precise mystery John repeated his former statements; others might speculate but the evidence would permit him no further liberties. In private conversation and in dischar- ging his administrative duties John was a clear, direct and even, occasionally, an uncomfortably blunt speaker and writer but when he put on the metaphor- ical robes of scholarship something of the grand Central European Germanic tradition was known to embellish his speech and pen. Long before the arrival of his Readership (1975) and his Professorship (of Semitic Studies) (1984) he looked and sounded the parts.

Many of his colleagues thought John, like his model Wittek, who never attended any committee and would have been perfectly useless if he had done so, would remain wedded to his books and his pen for the remainder of his career. Only his fellow members of the Editorial Board of the Bulletin knew of some of his talents for administration; to others he seemed a pillar of academic integrity but a man lacking the suppleness as well as the desire to be a man of business. However, in 1982, when the headship of his department fell vacant, word came out that John was willing to do the job. So obscure had he made himself, however, that several heads of department confessed that they would not be able to recognize him; and the then Director, after it had been decided to offer John the appointment, remarked that he thought that John did not know him (the Director) as he had the day before passed him in the street without a sign of recognition; and he looked forward to giving John the opportunity to renew their acquaintance. Some comforted themselves with the assurance that it did not much matter who was chosen since the job was impossible anyway.

Leadership of any department is a difficult task. One looks for knowledge of an extensive subject area, the ability to recognize and reward talent, to identify academic priorities and possibilities, to create frameworks which will advance teaching and research, to offer guidance and counsel. Members of a department commonly want a tribune of the people: the central authorities of the School need a prefect. To combine the roles demands an individual of no ordinary talents who commands academic respect and managerial competence. But leadership of the department of the Near and Middle East was something else again. It was then perceived by outsiders to be one of the two most awkward departments of the School, overburdened with powerful and uncom- promising personalities and infested with warring sections whose disdain for each other was only exceeded by their suspicious contempt for the rest of the School and especially for its administration.

John proved to be an excellent head of department. As Dean of Studies I had much to do with departmental heads. What I wanted was someone who could say clearly what his department would accept and what would not go. This John did and he never failed to deliver. He was also a determined, unabashed spokesman for the claims of his department and its members. But he was much more than just a good head of department: he rapidly showed himself to be someone with a valuable view of much wider subjects, a man with a clear sense of the strengths and weaknesses of individuals, of the powers and the limitations of institutions, a leader of good judgement who kept his eye clearly on the essential goal and did not allow himself to be distracted by trifles. Seated always at the far end of the board room table, speaking clearly, deliberately and persuasively at the right time, he quickly made himself a power in the councils of the School and it was unsurprising when in 1985 he was offered the post of Pro-Director. Retaining that office at the time of the change of directors in 1989, he provided a most valuable element of continuity and willingly assumed still greater burdens, notably in the development of the research machinery of the School and in the selection of staff during the renewed expansion which followed the Parker report. In those days when he seemed to be involved in everything it became more and more difficult for him to carry on his academic work and I asked him once if he did not regret the change. I was granted many years of freedom from administration to pursue my research, he replied, and it is only fair that I should now take on this work so that others can have the same opportunity. As

I reread that last attempt to dredge his words up from a failing memory they sound a little pompous, but there was nothing of the kind about John Wansbrough. Many people think that academic administration is just about power and patronage and believe that those who engage in it seek pleasure from the exercise of such attributes. This is occasionally, but, I think, not often the case; with most scholar-administrators it is an interesting, although fre- quently tedious duty made palatable by the laughs. Human and institutional follies, the absurdities of one's own intellectual contortions and those of others: these elements constantly confront the academic administrator, and if he cannot laugh about them he will not last long. John could laugh and, despite an occasional brusqueness when he felt that some were persisting in idle objections to an obvious course of action, he was quite the most relaxed and easy man with whom to deal. Not that he was any soft touch; when he was convinced that a particular course of action was necessary he could drive it through with the toughest of them. But if the verdict finally went against him he shrugged his shoulders, smiled and turned to implementing the decision that had been reached.

In the last ten years of his career John gave very much to the School, which is greatly in his debt. In the end he left with some regret that he had not been able to accomplish more, but as usual he had set his standards impossibly high. John played a central role in the creation of the new institutions and the formation of the new staff which will take the School into the next century. These are no small gifts to the community he graced for thirty-five years. It is pleasant and appropriate that his services have been recognized by the rare honour of having a special edition of the Bulletin dedicated to him, for BSOAS is an institution of the School which he particularly cherished, and which he served with distinction for many years.