Vice President Dick Cheney honored Middle Eastern historian Bernard Lewis on Monday in a speech to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia.

Lewis, an emeritus professor at Princeton University, was celebrating his 90th birthday on the same day of a conference organized by the council on Islam and the West.

During a brief luncheon speech, Cheney said he first met Lewis more than 15 years ago, when he was defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush, after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Cheney praised Lewis for being "always objective, clearly candid and completely independent."

"You simply cannot find a greater authority on Middle Eastern history, classical Islamic civilization, the Ottoman Empire ... than this man," Cheney said.