Bernard Lewis was born in London of Jewish immigrant parents from Eastern Europe and early on engaged with the study of Hebrew, together with other languages – Latin and French – before turning to Arabic (at SOAS) alongside reading History at University College, London, for his undergraduate degree, which he was awarded in 1936. He had preferred to stay close to the Jewish community of north London rather than applying for Oxford, which his father thought was ‘just a place where students spent all their time drinking and partying’. On graduating, Lewis decided to work on a PhD at SOAS under H. A. R. (Sir Hamilton) Gibb, who advised him first to study for a year in Paris with Louis Massignon, where he learned Persian and Turkish, and then recommended him for a travelling scholarship from the Royal Asiatic Society. This enabled Lewis to travel widely in the Middle East – Egypt, Palestine, Syria and, briefly, Turkey. Apart from exposure to the Arabic language, these lands also formed the geographical context for the history of the Isma‘ilis, who were the subject of his doctoral thesis and of his first publication; he was able to visit Isma‘ili villages and see the remarkable Crusader fortress of Krak des Chevaliers.

On his return to London in 1938, Lewis was appointed Assistant Lecturer in Islamic History at SOAS and promoted to Lecturer in 1940. He had completed his thesis, and the resulting publication appeared this same year, along with others that signalled the direction of his future interests. The British Contributions to Arabic Studies was published in 1941 for the British Council, as part of cultural propaganda directed towards the Middle East, to which A. J. Arberry also contributed with a volume on Persian studies and wrote the Preface. Lewis joined the army in 1940, was first placed in the Royal Armoured Corps and the Intelligence Corps, and then moved to MI6 in 1941. In 1945 the Foreign Office sent him to the Middle East, where he visited Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut, this second encounter with the region fuelling the development of his later abiding interest in the contemporary Middle East and its post-war evolution. He married his second wife, Ruth Oppenhejm, in 1947.