The Muslim Reception of European Orientalism: Reversing the Gaze 2018040940, 2018046284, 9781138232037, 9781315313771

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The Muslim Reception of European Orientalism

Edward Said’s Orientalism, now more than fifty years old, has to be one of the most frequently cited books among academics in a wide range of disciplines, and the most frequently assigned book to undergraduates at colleges. Among the common questions raised in response to Said’s book: Did scholars in Western Europe provide crucial support to the imperialist, colonialist activities of European regimes? Are their writings on Islam laden with denigrating, eroticized, distorting biases that have left an indelible impact on Western society? What is the “Orientalism” invented by Europe and what is its impact today? However, one question has been less raised (or less has been done about the question): How were the Orientalist writings of European scholars of Islam received among their Muslim contemporaries? An international team of contributors rectify this oversight in this volume. Susannah Heschel is the Eli Black Professor and Chair of the Jewish Studies Program at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, and Jüdischer Islam: Islam und jüdisch-deutsche Selbstbestimmung. She has held research grants from the Carnegie Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Humanities Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Umar Ryad is a Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Leuven and a Member of the Young Academy of Belgium. Previously, he has worked as an Assistant Professor at the University of Leiden (2008–2014) and as an Associate Professor at Utrecht University (2014–2017). He is currently leading a European Research Council (ERC) project which focuses on the “History of Muslims in Interwar Europe.” His current research also includes the dynamics of the networks of pan-Islamist movements, Muslim polemics on Christianity, and transnational Islam in the modern world.

Routledge Studies in Modern History

39 The Limits of Westernization American and East Asian Intellectuals Create Modernity, 1860–1960 Jon Thares Davidann 40 Liberalism in Pre-revolutionary Russia State, Nation, Empire Susanna Rabow-Edling 41 Informal Alliance The Bilderberg Group and Transatlantic Relations during the Cold War, 1952–1968 Thomas W. Gijswijt 42 The Muslim Reception of European Orientalism Reversing the Gaze Edited by Susannah Heschel and Umar Ryad 43 Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Europe and Latin America Edited by António Costa Pinto and Federico Finchelstein 4 4 The Origins of Anti-Authoritarianism Nina Witoszek 45 Agrarian Reform and Resistance in an Age of Globalisation The Euro-American World and Beyond, 1780–1914 Edited by Joe Regan and Cathal Smith 46 The Catholic Church and Liberal Democracy Bernt T. Oftestad For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/history/series/MODHIST

The Muslim Reception of European Orientalism Reversing the Gaze

Edited by Susannah Heschel and Umar Ryad

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Susannah Heschel and Umar Ryad; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Susannah Heschel and Umar Ryad to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Heschel, Susannah, editor. | Ryad, Umar, editor. Title: The Muslim reception of European orientalism: reversing the gaze / edited by Susannah Heschel and Umar Ryad. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2019. | Series: Routledge studies in modern history; 42 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018040940 (print) | LCCN 2018046284 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Orientalism. | Middle East—Study and teaching—Europe. | Islam—Study and teaching—Europe. | East and West. Classification: LCC DS61.85 (ebook) | LCC DS61.85 .M873 2019 (print) | DDC 303.48/2405—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018040940 ISBN: 978-1-138-23203-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-31377-1 (ebk) Typeset in Galliard by codeMantra

Contents

List of figures Acknowledgments List of contributors Introduction

vii ix xi 1

S usannah H eschel and U mar R yad

1 On cooks and crooks: Ah mad Faˉ ris al-Shidyaˉq and the ˙ orientalists in England and France (1840s–1850s)

14

T are k E l - A riss

2 An eastern scholar’s engagement with the European study of the east: Amin al-Madani and the Sixth Oriental Congress, Leiden, 1883

39

Kathryn A . S chwart z

3 The reception of the Brill Encyclopedia of Islam: An Egyptian debate on the credibility of orientalism (1930–1950)

61

S aid F. H assan and A bdullah O mran

4 Arabic literature for the colonizer and the colonized: Ignaz Goldziher and Hungary’s eastern politics (1878–1918)

80

Katalin F rancis k a R ac

5 Islamic modernism between colonialism and orientalism: Al-Manar’s intellectual circles and Aligarh’s Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, 1898–1914 R oy B ar S adeh

103

vi Contents

6 The frustrating authority of Mr. Wells: Islam and the politics of orientalism in Republican China

129

A aron N athan G lasserman

7 Orientalist triangulations: Jewish scholarship on Islam as a response to Christian Europe

147

S usannah H eschel

8 “Dieses wirklich westöstlichen Mannes”: The GermanJewish Orientalist Josef Horovitz in Germany, India, and Palestine

168

Ruchama Johnston -Bloom

9 Scholarship on Islamic archaeology between Zionism and Arab nationalist movements

184

M ostafa H ussein

10 A Muslim convert to Christianity as an Orientalist in Europe – the case of the Moroccan Franciscan JeanMohammed Abdeljalil (1904–1979)

209

M ehdi S ajid

Bibliography Index

233 251

List of figures

2.1 7.1 7.2 10.1

Amin al-Madani, 1883 41 Abraham Geiger (1810–1874), unknown artist 150 Gustav Weil (1808–1889), photograph by Fritz Langbein, 1878 152 Abdeljalil as a teenager wearing the traditional Moroccan Jellaba (date unknown) 211 10.2 Abdeljalil and Louis Massignon during the baptism ceremony of the former in 1928 215 10.3 Abdeljalil in his Franciscan robe (1964) 226

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the contributors to this volume for their original research and excellent articles. This collection developed out of a small conference held at Dartmouth College in November 2016 under the auspices of the Jewish Studies Program. It was one of a series of conferences that began in 2007 with a grant from the Ford Foundation to Susannah Heschel to explore common problems facing scholars in the fields of Islamic Studies and Jewish Studies. Susannah would like to express her gratitude for that funding to Constance Buchanan and the late Alison Bernstein, whose enthusiasm and support stimulated new avenues of research for the many participants in the eight conferences that followed. In addition, Susannah would like to express her gratitude to the Carnegie Foundation for the Scholar’s Grant in Islamic Studies that made possible two years of sabbatical to begin researching the history of Jewish scholarship on Islam, and to Jonathan Wilson, director of the Center for the Humanities at Tufts University, who generously provided an office and a warm welcome during that sabbatical. Susannah also thanks the Rektor, Luca Giuliani, and members of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin for the yearlong fellowship in 2011–2012 that made possible many wonderful engagements with the remarkable community of European scholars, many of whom were part of the extraordinary community around Georges Khalil, director of the EUME (Europe in the Middle East) program affiliated with the Wissenschaftskolleg. Finally, Susannah thanks the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for the fellowship she received in 2013 to research the history of Jewish scholarship on Islam. The generous deans and wonderful colleagues and students at Dartmouth College have been sources of great intellectual stimulation. In particular, Susannah thanks Veronika Fuechtner, Irene Kacandes, Tarek el-Ariss, Zahra Ayubi, Klaus Milich, Jonathan Smolin, Ezzedine Fishere, Barbara Kreiger, Randall Balmer, and Robert Baum. Umar Ryad would like to express his gratitude to the European Research Council (ERC) for funding the Starting Grant project “Neither visitors, nor colonial victims: Muslims in Interwar Europe and European Trans-cultural History” (NEITHER NOR, Utrecht University (2014–2017) and KU Leuven

x Acknowledgments (2017–2019); ID: 336608; Funded under: FP7-IDEAS-ERC). Umar would also like to express his thanks to the team members of the ERC project, Soumia Hida-Middelburg, Sophie Spaan, Hussam Raafat, Mehdi Sajid, Tolga Teker, and Andrei Tirtan for their great work to achieve the targets of the project in both Utrecht and Leuven. In addition, Umar would like to thank his former supervisors, P.S. van Koningsveld and G.A. Wiegers; his former colleagues in Utrecht, Christian Lange, Nico Landman, Martha Frederiks, and Birgit Meyer; and his colleagues in Leuven, Jo Tollebeek and the late Gino Schallenbergh (1965–2017).

List of contributors

Roy Bar Sadeh is a PhD candidate in the International and Global History track and the Institute for Comparative Literature & Society at Columbia University. His research focuses on the idea of a Muslim minority and its intellectual and sociopolitical histories that link Islamic modernists throughout South Asia, the Indian Ocean, and Eurasia. Tarek El-Ariss is an Associate Professor of Arabic and Chair of the Middle Eastern Studies Program at Dartmouth College. He is the author of Trials of Arab Modernity: Literary Affects and the New Political (2013) and Leaks, Hacks, and Scandals: Arab Culture in the Digital Age (2018), and the editor of The Arab Renaissance: A Bilingual Anthology of the Nahda (2018). Aaron Nathan Glasserman is a PhD candidate in the Department of ­H istory at Columbia University. His research focuses on Islamic law, ritual, and ­religion–state relations in modern China. Said F. Hassan currently teaches in the Faculty of Languages and Translation, Islamic Studies Department, Al-Azhar University. He received his PhD in the field of Islamic Law from UCLA in 2011. He has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, 2012; a Visiting Fellow at Institute for Islamic Studies (IAIN) Sultan Maulana Hasanuddin, Indonesia, 2014; and a Visiting Fellow at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies, Freie Universität, Berlin, summer 2014. His publications include Fiqh al-Aqalliyyat: History, development and Progress (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2013) and “Law-Abiding Citizen: Recent Fatwas on Muslim Minorities’ Loyalty to Western Nations,” in Journal of the Muslim World, October 2015. He contributed a number of chapters to edited volumes such as Education and the Arab Spring: Shifting toward Democracy, 2016, Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History, 2016, and The Encyclopedia of Muslim American History, 2010. Susannah Heschel is the Eli Black Professor and Chair of the Jewish Studies Program at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, and Jüdischer Islam: Islam und jüdisch-deutsche Selbstbestimmung.

xii  List of contributors She has held research grants from the Carnegie Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Humanities Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Mostafa Hussein is a Postdoctoral Scholar and a Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities affiliated with the School of Religion at the University of Southern California. He received his PhD from the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. His research focuses on the encounter between Jews and Islam in modern times in the Middle East as exploring main themes in the mutual perceptions of Jews and Muslims as they were represented in the writings of intellectuals from both sides. Ruchama Johnston-Bloom  is the Associate Director of Academic Affairs at CAPA, The Global Education Network’s London center. She holds a PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School. Her research focuses on modern Jewish interest in and engagement with Islam. Recent publications include “Gustav Weil’s Koranforschung and the Transnational Circulation of Ideas: The Shaping of Muhammad as Reformer,” in Beyond the Myth of “Golden Spain”: Patterns of Islamization in Modern Jewish Scholarship on Islam, ed. Ottfried Fraisse and Christian Wiese (De Gruyter: Berlin, 2017), and ­“Analogizing Jewish and Islamic Modernities: Nineteenth- and ­Twentieth-Century German-Jewish Scholarship on Islam,” Journal of Values and Beliefs 38, no. 3 (2017). She has held fellowships at the Franz R ­ osenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the American University in Cairo. She has taught at NYU London, the University of Cambridge, the University of ­Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Abdullah Omran is an MA student at Indiana University. He graduated from the Faculty of Languages and Translation, Al-Azhar University. He contributed entries to the Encyclopedia of Christian-Muslim Relations. He translated many works in the Islamic Studies field, including Umar Ryad’s The Hajj and Europe in the Age of Empire to be published by King Abdul-Aziz Foundation for Research and Archives. He received a Fulbright Fellowship for his studies in the United States. Katalin Franciska Rac  received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Florida; she is library coordinator for Jewish heritage at the Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica at the University of Florida. Her scholarly interests include nationalism, majority-minority relations, and the transformation of Jewish learning and knowledge production in nineteenth- and twentieth-­ century Central Europe. She is currently working on her first monograph, a revision of her dissertation “Orientalism for the Nation: Jews and Oriental scholarship in modern Hungary,” which explores Jewish participation in modern Hungarian Oriental research, the thoroughly politicized national academic institutions, and national identity discourse. Taking another route to the study of nationalism and minority integration, she also conducts research and publishes on the history of food ways in modern Hungary and beyond.

List of contributors  xiii Umar Ryad  is a Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Leuven and a Member of the Young Academy of Belgium. Previously, he has worked as an Assistant Professor at the University of Leiden (2008–2014) and as an Associate Professor at Utrecht University (2014–2017). He is currently leading a European Research Council (ERC) project which focuses on the “History of Muslims in Interwar Europe.” His current research also includes the dynamics of the networks of pan-Islamist movements, Muslim polemics on Christianity, and transnational Islam in the modern world Mehdi Sajid  is Assistant Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Utrecht University, The ­Netherlands. His research so far has dealt with the history of Islam and ­Muslims in modern Europe, the rise of Islamic organizations in Egypt in the 1920s and 1930s, and the transformation of the Muslim reformist discourse in the twentieth century. His current research is dedicated to the study of renewal attempts among Sufi brotherhoods in North Africa in the pre-colonial period. Kathryn A. Schwartz is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her work focuses on the social and cultural histories of the modern Middle East, and she is currently revising her dissertation into a book manuscript entitled, “Print and the People of Cairo, Nineteenth Century.”

Introduction Susannah Heschel and Umar Ryad

Since Edward Said, the study of Orientalism has been treated too often as a tool of European imperial interests, a scholarly handmaiden to colonial powers whose goal was Europe’s conquest, domination, and exploitation of the East and the South. While this was a necessary political and epistemological intervention exposing hegemonic discursive formations, the result has obscured interactive terrains and interplays that are set to complicate our understanding of Orientalism and its contribution to and emergence from both European and Eastern scholarly traditions. Our essays contend that Orientalism – and specifically, the academic study of Islam – was not simply the product of European scholars, but a joint enterprise that engaged Muslim, Christian, and Jewish scholars, from Western and Eastern Europe and the broader East: from North Africa through the Levant, Iran, India, Russia, and China. Moreover, this widespread engagement with Islam was often motivated by similar concerns. As Suzanne Marchand has demonstrated, interest in the nature of religion spurred many German Protestant scholars to enter the field of Oriental Studies.1 Comparable interests motivated Muslim and Jewish scholars to explore philological methods of analyzing Scripture and the earliest stages of their respective religions, often in the context of spurring theological reconfigurations for the purpose of changing religious practices. Said’s argument was that the relationship between Europe and Islam was oppositional, both intellectually and politically: as imperial powers conquered Muslim territories, imperialist scholars conquered Muslim texts. Contributors to our volume present a very different picture, of broad networks of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, in Europe and in India, China, and the Mashriq, engaged in parallel and often intertwining discussions. Their exchanges of ideas present a more complex picture of Orientalism, in which all sides are engaged in reconfiguring religious beliefs, scholarly methods, and political commitments. The articles in this book contribute to the awareness of networks of intellectual exchange that have been examined in recent years by Ian Coller, Nile Green and Saree Makdisi among others. As Nile Green has pointed out in his study of Iranian students who came to England in the early nineteenth century, there was a sense of “overlapping” rather than “clashing” civilizations.2. Saree Makdisi, in his book, Making England Western: Orientalism, Race, and Imperial Culture,

2  Susannah Heschel and Umar Ryad similarly points to the politics of England’s domestic use of Orientalism as a category applied to the English underclass. Orientalism, he argues, thus became a tool for creating race and class within England, and for creating the “Western” identity of the English: Occidentalism.3 Missing from these studies is the political and religious triangulation: not only were Christians and Muslims engaged in a transnational encounter, Jews, both in Europe and abroad, also participated, both as important scholars of Islam and as objects of intense English debates. Critic of Said’s theory argued that the book neglects German Biblical scholarship and the role of Jewish scholars, which influenced Western scholars of the Qu’ran and the early Islamic history.4 Our argument in this book is that Islam functioned as a template for a wide variety of religious and political interests throughout the world that were both colonial and anti-colonial, pious and heretical, enlightened and reactionary, scholarly and popular. What emerged in their discussions was an “Islam” that was both elevated as a paragon of progressive, liberal religion and denigrated as a retrograde religious system impermeable to modernity. That conflicting discourse has shaped our politics, scholarship, and cultures ever since. The articles we are presenting address the encounter with European Orientalism by intellectuals both within and without. Theirs is a critique and also an appropriation, because Orientalism, as these articles demonstrate, was both an essential component of colonialist power yet also a tool for negotiating various streams of modernity and for carrying out anti-colonial revolt. Rather than review the important developments in European attitudes toward Islam that have been outlined for different eras by Suzanne Akbari (medieval),5 John Tolan (early modern),6 and Suzanne Marchand (modern),7 we look from the “margins”: at European Jewish scholars of Islam, including Josef Horovitz and Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921), both of whom had extensive connections with Muslim scholars, in India and Egypt, respectively; at Muslim and Christian scholars who came to Europe to engage with Orientalists, including Amıˉn ibn Hasan al-­Halawaˉ ni al-Madanıˉ (d. 1898), whose sale of books and manuscripts was essential to the work of European scholars; the Syrian intellectual Ahmad Faˉris ˙ al-Shidyaˉq (1805–1887), the extraordinary Christian (and later Muslim) critic of European philology; and at the use of European scholarship by those promoting Islamic reforms in India and China. A complex web emerges that demonstrates the many facets of the discussions that drafted Islam into a key role for intellectual and political debates around the world. This volume expands the history and the critique of Orientalism as not only the manufacture of knowledge which “occidental” scholars used in representing the Orient for several ends, which was an isolated western exercise in which Orientals had no place. In the case of “oriental” encounter with Orientalism in the pre-modern and modern times, in particular, we come across Arab, Muslim, or Christian scholars who had contacts and cooperated with western scholars in producing “Orientalist” knowledge.8 In his 1997 doctoral dissertation on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century contacts between Arab intellectuals and Orientalists, Ronen Raz evaluated “the intellectual and psychological processes

Introduction  3 which were involved in these relations.” 9 In order to understand the mechanisms and meanings of the relations between Arab intellectuals and Orientalism, his study analyzes “an intellectual discourse”10 in the broader sense, beyond individual case studies. The study of individual case studies is nevertheless necessary in order to understand the multilayers of their encounter in the global history of knowledge production in the field of humanities.11 In the volume, we shall see that oriental scholars tried to develop a “counter-genre” of literature in which they tried to explain Orientalism and the West to oriental readers. In that vein, “like European intellectuals, non-Europeans developed their own semantics to grasp and debate the modern condition related to different historical trajectories, popular narratives and religious traditions.”12 Tarek El-Ariss introduces us to the brilliant Arab author and scholar, Ahmad Faˉris al-Shidyaˉq (1805–1887), who came to France and England as ˙ “the first [Arab intellectual] to offer a systematic analysis of Orientalist knowledge production in 19th-century Europe, acknowledging its achievements and exposing its internal mechanisms.” He translated his experiences into masterful belles lettres and remarkable translations. Born a Maronite Catholic in Mount Lebanon, Shidyaq traveled extensively in the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa. He wrote his major books, including Leg over Leg, while being a Christian; only after leaving Europe did he convert to Islam in the 1860s in Tunis. Indeed, he was buried as both a Muslim and a Christian, and his religious identity has remained a political issue until today. His multiple religious identities and his wide-ranging travels contributed to his intellectual sophistication and his critical edge. Shidyaˉq arrived in the realm of the Orientalists as a native informant, and produced a scathing critique of their deficiencies, errors, and self-referential praise, in his extraordinary masterpiece, Leg Over Leg, a brilliant and unique fantasy novel of philological playfulness combined with biting satire.13 An extraordinary scholar of Arabic himself, Shidyaˉq came to know the major Orientalist publications, as well as many of their authors, during his travels in Europe in the 1840s and 1850s. Central to his critique is the denigration of Muslims caused by errors of translation by European philologists whose knowledge of Arabic was limited to reading ancient texts. Unable to speak Arabic, unaware of the subtle nuances of the language, and unwilling to consult native speakers, European scholars produced distorted translations that reinforced biased stereotypes about Muslims. Yet, Shidyaˉq was not only critical of Europeans. He also attacked the Ottoman rulers for appointing governors who could not speak the Arabic of the regions they were supposed to administer, and he wrote with contempt of Istanbul residents who expressed their Orientalism through consumerism. His work illustrates how Western traditions are both rejected and also deployed in the nahda. El-Ariss demonstrates that al-Shidyaˉq’s philological playfulness had a deeper purpose: “bringing the premodern into the modern, activating it in new and exciting ways, thereby obliterating the temporal boundaries that separate the nahda from the era that precedes it, and the classical from the modern.”14

4  Susannah Heschel and Umar Ryad Susannah Heschel’s article argues that the study of Islam in which many European Jewish scholars participated became its own “epistemic space,” functioning to counter Christian hegemony within the academy during an era of political debates over the emancipation of Jews. The Jewish version of Islam took shape while Germans were engaged in an ongoing discourse labeling Jews “oriental” and denigrating Judaism as unsuitable for German Kultur.15 This was also the era of the rise of colonial fantasies in Germany and its emergence as an imperial power, which affected theories and methods of philology that had been honed in the fields of Classics and biblical studies, but had omitted the Hebrew texts of rabbinic literature that Jewish scholars claimed were crucial influences on early Islamic texts. While most of their conclusions may be viewed today as dated and untenable, of broader interest is the way their scholarship negotiates the political and theological debates of their era, making Islam as a vehicle for modern Jewish thought. Indeed, in this multivocal epistemic space of nineteenth-century German scholarship, both Judaism and Islam should be seen not simply as passive receptacles of scholarly dissection, but as active voices in the ongoing discussions over religion, secularism, scholarly method, and the nature and history of the West. From regarding the Qur’an as an uncanny repository of rabbinic teachings, Jewish scholars ultimately came to valorize Islamic rational, philosophical, and scientific openness as crucial for the flourishing of medieval Jews and as a model for a tolerant, multicultural Europe. The Arab renaissance (or nahda) created a wide space of intellectual activity and collaboration with European scholars. The colonial project, too, was not homogenous, but created a variety of new collective efforts regarding occidental knowledge of the colonized regions, people, and their texts and histories. In response to the popularization of western ideas about Muslim societies as backward and superstitious, which were originally “Orientalist” conclusions and imaginations, Muslim reformers promoted their own reinterpretations of Islam, particularly in the area of education. Thus, the Indian Muslim modernist Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan believed that “reformed” religion should be put into practice and translated by society. Another figure in the field of Arab modernism was the renowned Egyptian philologist and statesman Ahmad Zakıˉ Paˉshaˉ (d. 1934), ˙ who took part in reforming Arabic library collections and philology in the late Ottoman Empire and engaged with a broad swath of European scholars and collectors, as demonstrated by Umar Ryad in a recent study.16 Zakıˉ Pasha was a complex character who combined his position as a government bureaucrat with many literary and intellectual activities in colonized Egypt. He possessed political power, scholarly networks, and intellectual resources and talents. Ronen Raz’s metaphor of the Arab–Orientalist encounter as a “transparent mirror” is true when we look at Arab scholars like Zakıˉ Pasha’s western and eastern scholarly networks. He proudly perceived himself as a unique “oriental” scholar who successfully joined “Orientalist” circles. Spurred in part by the challenges of colonialism, Zakıˉ Pasha’s encounters with Europeans strengthened his efforts “to reclaim Arabic and Islamic heritage,” as Ryad writes. It is noteworthy to say that International Orientalist Congresses became significant avenues where non-European Orientals directly met with their Orientalist

Introduction  5 interlocutors. The first International Congress of Orientalists was convened in Paris in 1873. Although some Ottoman, Persian, and Indian intellectuals participated in early Orientalist congresses, it was not until the sixth session of the congress (Leiden, 1883) when Arab intellectuals took active part in it.17 Despite their limitations and errors, European scholars also offered opportunities on an international scale for engagement with Arabic and Islamic texts. Kathryn Schwartz describes the role of Amıˉn al-Madanıˉ, an Arabian purveyor of Arabic manuscripts, in fostering Western scholarship on Islam. As she writes, for alMadanıˉ, western scholarship was not a phenomenon seeking domination or promoting contempt for the east, but rather a scholarly discipline that he hoped to encourage, both through the sale of materials and by reporting on the Congress to a broad audience of Muslims. To him, Schwartz writes, “western scholarship was an extension of classical eastern scholarship, and his ultimate hope was for a collaborative effort of west and east.” As much as al-Madanıˉ served as a critical source for the books and manuscripts purchased by European scholars, he was also an important voice for promoting European scholarship within the Arabic world. His description of the 1883 Congress of Orientalists that he attended in Leiden gave voice to his respect for the high quality of the scholarship, the support from European governments for academic research, and his praise for the fair-mindedness he encountered among the scholars. For example, his report on the Congress notes that two German scholars rose to condemn charges that Jews practice ritual murder, and their actions impressed al-Madanıˉ as a display of enlightened thinking. Unlike al-Shidyaˉq’s critique of European scholarship, al-Madanıˉ hoped for future collaboration. Besides the scholarly encounters between occidental and oriental scholars on European soils, Orientalist works were translated and digested in the East. Said F. Hassan and Abdallah Omran examine The Encyclopedia of Islam (EI) as a large-scale project about Islam, its civilization, culture, and people. Their study demonstrates that the Encyclopedia did not escape the attention (and sometimes suspicion) of the Muslim world. What concerned many Muslim scholars were the intention and the accuracy of data in that work. Their debates, which were always negative, included various stances taken by the Egyptian religious scholars, intellectuals, and writers concerning the accuracy, impact, and value of the encyclopedia. Said and Omran see the connection between Orientalists and Muslim scholars as part of the East–West interaction, which was not “a mono-dialogue of supremacy and weakness. Rather, it was a complex multi-layer discourse where the religious, the political, the cultural and the social encounter each other.” By studying various examples of Muslim voices in Egypt for and against the EI, the chapter directs our gaze to various ways the Near East, represented here by a group of Egyptian intellectuals, received scholarship of their traditions, religion, and civilization by the western “other.” In fact, the reception of the EI among Muslim writers was not as gloomy as it may look on the surface. Both opponents and proponents of the EI voiced their “serious concern” about the accuracy of the information about Islam and Muslim doctrines, history, and cultures. Among the major proponents of the EI was the team of translators who decided that it was worth their laborious endeavor. Other groups of this category appreciated the EI

6  Susannah Heschel and Umar Ryad as “a great opportunity to understand Orientalists and their research techniques, and derive benefit from such a voluminous, in depth work on Islam.” The opposition to the EI in Egypt was part of the debate and controversy on the real intention of Orientalists and the nature of the EI was stirred by the translation of the lemma “Abraham” into Arabic by the Dutch Orientalist and editor of the EI, Arent Jan Wensinck (1882–1939) who had at the time just been appointed as a member of the then recently established Royal Academy of Arab Language. In recognition of his many contributions to Arabic and Islamic studies, he was appointed a member of the Royal Academy of Arabic Language. But his membership was soon withdrawn, due to severe criticism from some Arab intellectuals who argued that his writings were hostile to Islamic tradition. His dismissal from the Academy is one of the most critical episodes in the history of Dutch Orientalism. Despite this fierce debate, Wensinck’s name in the Muslim world remains much related to his works on hadıˉth, not to his dismissal from the Academy. After his ˙ death, an anonymous contributor published an obituary in the Egyptian magazine ar-Risa ˉla in which he praised Wensinck’s efforts in indexing the Prophetic traditions by saying “Fıˉ dhimmati Allah (in God’s hand) are those who devoted their lives to real science […] and bringing the sources of Islam closer to its adherents.”18 Said and Omran conclude that despite Muslim opposition in many circles, the first Encyclopedia bore the hallmarks of an earnest desire to discover the Islamic world yet it was framed in a pre-defined vision of how Islam was presented in the Western world, a vision less favorable, of course, to how Muslims would have hoped. The relationship between knowledge and power that Edward Said depicted in his classic work of 1978, Orientalism, was far more multifaceted than he recognized In a recent study, Dietrich Jung argued that by applying the methodologies of Protestant biblical criticism to the study of Islamic traditions, the Hungarian scholar of Islam and secretary of the liberal Jewish community in Budapest Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921) became a crossroads of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Goldziher’s scholarly career shows that the rise of the discipline of Islamic studies should be not isolated from the context of nineteenth century movements of religious reform.19 In a similar direction, Katalin Rac points to the complex relationship with colonialism of Ignaz Goldziher, who is considered by many to have been Europe’s most brilliant scholar of Islam. As a Jew in Budapest, the capital of Hungary, Goldziher endured episodes of antisemitism throughout his career, as well as troubles from the right-wing Jewish community in Budapest. Goldziher, who attended traditional religious classes at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, appreciated Muslim scholars for their quest for reform and modernity during his encounter with them in the East.20 What Rac investigates is Goldziher’s involvement in colonialism: commissioned in 1907 by the Hungarian Ministry of Education, Goldziher wrote a textbook on Arabic literary history for use in secondary schools in Bosnia, which had been newly acquired by the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Introduction  7 In commenting on Goldziher’s large body of scholarship, Said presents him as a typical Orientalist who depicted Islam negatively. By contrast, two recent scholars, Hamid Dabashi and John Efron, deny Goldziher’s involvement in European imperialist projects.21 For Rac, the answer is more complex. She demonstrates that Goldziher cooperated with the Hungarian colonial regime in its recent acquisition of Bosnia by writing a textbook on Islam for use in Bosnian schools, but she argues that his goal was not supporting Hungary’s imperial domination of Bosnian Muslims, but rather promoting his own authority within Hungary as a scholar of Islam. Comparing his textbook to other scholarly writings that he produced, Rac demonstrates that Goldziher, in his textbook, presented Arabic to Bosnian Muslims as a language of a rich multicultural literary tradition shared by Muslims and non-Muslims within a widespread empire, perhaps reflecting, Rac suggests, the multiculturalism of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Beginning with pre-Islamic poetry and extending through the Qur’an, Goldziher depicted a broad panorama of historical and cultural development. With just one sentence about the Qur’an, and little on Muhammad and the religious revolution he brought, and only passing discussion of Muslim philosophers and theologians, Goldziher’s textbook textualizes and aestheticizes Islam. In so doing, his book illustrates Shahab Ahmed’s recent claim that Orientalism created a narrow definition of an “authentic” early set of Islamic texts, so that subsequent, broader cultural and theological developments within Islam came to be described by scholars as deviant or marginal.22 Yet for Goldziher, it is the literary production in Arabic that marks the greatness of Islam. At the same time, by emphasizing Islam’s textual traditions, Goldziher called attention away from dogmatic religious claims. Textualizing Islam turned it into a topic suitable for philological examination by academic scholars at a secular institution and opened the door for religious reforms and liberalizations. Goldziher’s textbook for Bosnian students understandably omitted the complexities and debates of Western scholarship, but those debates were actually highly significant for Muslim intellectuals in shaping Islamic modernist movements in a variety of geographic locations. Roy Bar Sadeh explores attitudes toward Western scholarship in al-Manar, an Arabic-language journal published in Cairo and distributed internationally to promote Islamic reform, and Aaron Glasserman analyzes Chinese Muslim intellectuals’ appropriations of Orientalism as a tool to define their role within China as well as Chinese understandings of Islam. Bar Sadeh’s article examines the role played by Western Orientalism as it was invoked in al-Manar, which promoted a vision of religious reform, engaging the conflicts that accompanied Islamic modernist efforts. Gratitude for Western scholars who preserved manuscripts and generated important studies of the history and legacy of Arabic was mixed with concern over those scholars who did not appreciate al-Manar’s efforts to generate reform. While Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865–1935), the founder of al-Manar, promoted Arabic as the language that would unite Muslims, including those in India, it was competing with a movement insisting on Urdu as the language of Indian Muslims. Modernist

8  Susannah Heschel and Umar Ryad reforms invariably took aim at educational institutions, and the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College (M.A.O. College), established in 1875, which promoted Arabic and linked itself to European scholars and methods of instruction, stood in conflict with anti-colonialist figures such as Rida’s predecessors Jamal al-Din al-­A fghani (1839–1897) and Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849–1905), who viewed M.A.O. College as collaborating with the British. World War I brought changes, as Bar Sadeh describes, with British colonial political involvement in Arab affairs reviving hostility toward the M.A.O. College among al-Manar’s writers and supporters. All this was carried out within a much larger, transnational framework involving Muslim intellectuals from India and Egypt. Rashid Rida had to explain to Egyptians the reason for his support of Sayyid Ahmad Kahn’s project of the M.A.O. College and its engagement with Europe. One of the quandaries facing al-Manar was the seeming conflict between reforming Muslim education, on the one hand, and standing in opposition to European (primarily British) colonialism. Modernizing reforms, if linked to Europe, undermined Muslim nationalist and anti-colonialist efforts. Negotiating an intermediate path was a rocky challenge for Rida, as Bar Sadeh illustrates. The conflict was complicated by British support for efforts by the M.A.O. College to promote Arabic instruction. Rida himself expressed gratitude for that British support; for him, Arabic was a language that would strengthen Islam. Bar Sadeh makes it clear that al-Manar’s positions changed over time and in response to rapidly altering political conditions. Following the Young Turk revolt of 1908, and his own rejection of Ottoman claims to the caliphate, Rida realized that he would not receive support from Istanbul for his educational projects, and advocated Egypt and India as political counterpoints. Even more radical was Rida’s growing conviction that the British offered greater support to Muslims than the Ottoman Empire. Nonetheless, within a few years, the College became a center of support for the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, however warmly, Rida may have expressed himself about British support, it was not reciprocated, as Bar Sadeh makes clear, and his connections to the British and European scholars resulted in a backlash of criticism from Muslim intellectuals, ultimately undermining al-Manar’s ties to the M.A.O. College in the years after World War I. As Bar Sadeh points out, attitudes toward Western scholarship did not exist in a pure, unmediated ether of ideas, but within the context of ­European colonialism and a binary of “West-East.” Ambivalence toward Western writings on Islam was also at the heart of Chinese Muslim intellectuals’ efforts to define Islam and solidify the position of Muslims in China. Chinese admiration for the writings of the English writer, H.G. Wells, whose views of Islam varied from contemptuous to admiring, provides Aaron Glasserman with a tool for deciphering the complex negotiations of Muslim identity in twentieth-century China. With the collapse of the Qing dynasty, China tried to consolidate itself around ethnic Han identity, and at the same time control border regions that included a broad mix of nationalities. Even as their membership in the national identity of China was not yet fully recognized, Muslims sought to define their own history and the nature of Islam

Introduction  9 as a religion. Some of Wells’ writings, translated into Chinese, could be invoked as a voice of authority, given his stature in China as a Western intellectual. Wells was not a scholar of Islam, nor did he know Arabic; yet, his popular histories turned him into an “authority who could not be ignored,” not only in China, but also in a wide range of Muslim journals around the world, including The Islamic Review, published in English, and al-Manar, which reached Guangzhou, Tianjin, and other cities along China’s eastern coast, although it was an Arabic journal published in Cairo. The defense of Islam by Chinese Muslims was largely directed against arguments that Islam was a violent religion; arguments they claimed were derived from Christian anti-Muslim bias. Indeed, already in the 1920s, Muslim intellectuals accused the educational system in China of having been Christianized, Glasserman writes, and bringing Christian misunderstandings of Islam into Chinese schools. That Christianization, in turn, was often attributed by Muslims to Wells’ Christian faith. Yet, Glasserman, comparing the Chinese translations with the original, English versions of Wells’ publications, concludes that these accusations were inaccurate and drew, instead, from the need of Muslim intellectuals in China during the 1930s to depict Wells as an Islamophobic enemy in order to “mobilize their communities and legitimize their own authority to represent Islam in China.” Yet a few years later, Muslim intellectuals translated some of Wells’ writings on Islam, at times revising his sentences, in order to present Wells as an Islamophile. Wells had remained a popular figure in China, so transforming him into an advocate of Islam was a shrewd effort. In that way, Orientalism served Muslim intellectuals with both internal and external purposes: defining Islam for Chinese Muslims, and advocating a position of respect for Islam within China. The defense of Islam by Chinese Muslims was largely directed against arguments that Islam was a violent religion; arguments they claimed were derived from Christian anti-Muslim bias. Indeed, already in the 1920s, Muslim intellectuals accused the educational system in China of having been Christianized, Glasserman writes, and bringing Christian misunderstandings of Islam into Chinese schools. That Christianization, in turn, was often attributed by Muslims to Wells’ Christian faith. Yet, Glasserman, comparing the Chinese translations with the original, English versions of Wells’ publications, concludes that these accusations were inaccurate and drew, instead, from the need of Muslim intellectuals in China during the 1930s to depict Wells as an Islamophobic enemy in order to “mobilize their communities and legitimize their own authority to represent Islam in China.” Yet a few years later, Muslim intellectuals translated some of Wells’ writings on Islam, at times revising his sentences, in order to present Wells as an Islamophile. Wells had remained a popular figure in China, so transforming him into an advocate of Islam was a shrewd effort. In that way, Orientalism served Muslim intellectuals with both internal and external purposes: defining Islam for Chinese Muslims, and advocating a position of respect for Islam within China. Thus, Glasserman concludes that Orientalism is not a matter of the West seeking domination of the East, but functions as a tool for complex political

10  Susannah Heschel and Umar Ryad systems serving a multitude of interests. Thus, Glasserman concludes that Orientalism is not a matter of the West seeking domination of the East, but functions as a tool for complex political systems serving a multitude of interests. The West moves East in Ruchama Johnston-Bloom’s study of the German Jewish scholar of Islam, Josef Horovitz (1874–1931), which brings us to another dimension of Orientalism. Horovitz, raised as a religious Jew, studied Islam at the University of Berlin under Eduard Sachau, and then spent seven years as a Professor of Arabic at the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh, India, from 1907 to 1914. While most of the Orientalists in Europe were ­Christians – not surprisingly, since professorships for Jews at European universities were difficult to obtain – numerous Jewish scholars published important studies of Islam, particularly on early texts – the Qur’an, Hadith, Sira. Their efforts frequently sought points of comparison with Jewish texts – r­ abbinic interpretations of biblical stories reflected in the Qur’an, passages from the Mishnah rendered into Arabic, Hebrew names and Jewish religious practices with correlations in Islam. Horovitz is a prime example of a Jewish scholar at home in both traditional rabbinic and Islamic texts. While in India, he forged relationships with Muslim scholars and with anti-colonial activists. Returning to Germany after the outbreak of World War I, he became a professor at the new University of Frankfurt. In contrast to Ignaz Goldziher, who was renowned for applying historical–­ critical methods to his analysis of the hadıˉth, Horovitz was more willing to grant ˙ authenticity to the historical reliability of the isna ˉds, or chains of hadıˉth, which ˙ he, like other Jewish scholars, compared to rabbinic texts that also attribute later teachings to earlier rabbis. Johnston-Bloom calls attention to the reception of Horovitz’s scholarship by Muslim scholars seeking a moderate Western scholarly voice. Indeed, she argues, Horovitz may be one of the more frequently cited Western scholars by Muslims; in that respect, he serves as a Jewish link from Western to Eastern academic institutions. A distinguished scholar of Qur’an and Hadith, Horovitz was invited by Judah Magnes, the founder of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, to develop a proposal for an Oriental Studies Institute. Horovitz’s vision was deeply influenced both by his scholarship and his experiences in India. He proposed an institute that would offer instructions in both Hebrew and Arabic, and include not only European scholarly methods but also invite imams to teach courses on contemporary Islamic religious concerns. Staunchly anti-imperialist, Horovitz hoped that a Jewish–Muslim relationship could be built in the Middle East, but was disappointed by Zionist politics that he viewed as imperialist. He was credited by some German-Jewish intellectuals living in Palestine with inspiring the bi-nationalist movement, Brit Shalom, that sought a Jewish-Arab state. The links between Orientalism, archaeology, and the rise of regional nationalisms in the Orient are important aspects of the entangled history of our case in question. The colonial age witnessed a marriage between western scholarship of the Orient and archaeology. Mostafa Hussein studies how nationalism and archaeology in the Middle East enhanced each other during the first half of the

Introduction  11 twentieth century by examining the reception of Western Orientalism by local nationalist elites in Egypt and Palestine from the perspective of Islamic archaeology. The study focuses on the reception of Leo Mayer’s archaeological work and how the field of Islamic archaeology became intertwined with the agenda of local nationalist elites. Hussein highlights Mayer as a Jewish nationalist and a scholar of archaeology trained in the Austrian school of Orientalism, and whose scholarship was useful in the quest of Middle Eastern nationalists to build a connection to the past through archaeological evidence from the Islamic era. This chapter looks at how Arab nationalist elite were exposed to Orientalistic archaeological scholarship. Hussein is of the view that “although western by origin, Leo Mayer’s scholarship differed from that of other western archaeologists by concentrating on the study of artistic and architectural artifacts dated to the Islamic era.” As opposed to the reception of his work by the Yishuv in Israel, Mayer’s studies were met with great interest by Egyptian intellectuals such as Zaki Muhammad Hasan, Mohammad Mostafa, and others who viewed his work as a means of filling the gap in Arabic scholarship. Mayer’s painstaking studies on the history of the Mamluks in Egypt and its neighbors helped advance the nationalist consciousness in Egypt during one of the most flourishing periods of its history. The nationalistic model retrieved from Mayer’s activities served both Jews and Arabs, while promoting the Land’s past as rich and inclusive. While Horovitz, who died in 1931, would have been disappointed that ­Jewish–Muslim cooperation in Palestine did not become the basis of the national project, other attempts at dialogue have been more successful during the second half of the nineteenth century. As Europe left its colonies around the world, Christianity had to reconsider its doctrines that there is no salvation outside the church. Theological supersessionism had ruled Christianity from its inception: its colonization of Judaism’s Scriptures and central religious beliefs, such as messiah, formed the core foundation of Christianity. No salvation outside the church was the watchword for two millennia. However, decolonization in the political sphere inspired a rejection of Christian supersessionism and an effort to define a Christian theology that would affirm the legitimacy of other religions’ claims. Steps toward that goal are traced by Mehdi Sajid through the remarkable and unique account of the Moroccan Franciscan Jean-Mohammed Abdeljalil (1904– 1979), a Muslim convert to Christianity who joined the Franciscan order and became a renowned Orientalist. A student of the great Louis Massignon, one of France’s most distinguished scholars of Islam, Abdeljalil nonetheless was limited by the configurations of his identity as a Muslim turned Christian, as Sajid illustrates. Within the context of European colonialism, Abdeljalil was a classic figure of convert as native informer. Although acknowledged for his scholarly expertise, he nonetheless was reduced, according to Sajid, to a limited sphere of influence within the European Catholic community and among Christian missionaries in Muslim environs. His voice of authority derived from his Muslim status, despite having supposedly abandoned that identity via Catholic baptism. Abdeljalil is the only known Moroccan Muslim scholar who converted to Christianity; yet,

12  Susannah Heschel and Umar Ryad his circumstances are reminiscent of the many Jewish converts to Christianity through the centuries who also served as native informants; baptism, though a sacrament, was never able to fully transform a Jew or a Muslim. Yet, baptism did provide what the many Muslims who lived in Europe as Muslims were unable to accomplish: open a door to scholarly participation. ­Sajid evaluates Abdeljalil’s impact in highly positive terms: “Abdeljalil contributed through his own example and scholarship to some degree to the major leap made by the Catholic Church in its understanding and attitudes towards Islam.” Within a few decades, Sajid claims, the Church transformed itself from viewing Islam as a “corrupt religion” to the possibility of non-Christians achieving salvation. Thanks to Abdeljalil, in part, a Christian–Muslim dialogue was opened and is now flourishing in Europe. The articles in this book are intended to expand the discussion of Orientalism, intellectually and geographically. European scholarship on Islam was not simply a method of domination or denigration, nor was it solely the product of European Christian and Jewish scholars. The contributors to this book make it clear that the study of Islam was a global discourse not limited to particular European nations and empires. Local scholars, whether in North Africa, the Levant, India, China, Iran, or elsewhere, whose communities, religions, and habits were the primary objects of study, were neither mute nor passive, but read, wrote, engaged, contested, and revised Orientalism both before and after that term became politicized and deployed in colonizing ventures. For the contributors to this volume, stimulating a more inclusive understanding of the history of scholarship on Islam, its classic texts, historical development, and modernizing intellectual and political movements is the primary goal; as its editors, we hope that it will inspire additional scholarship and a more expansive view of this important phenomenon related to the encounters between orientalists and their oriental interlocutors.

Notes 1 Suzanne Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Race, Religion, and Scholarship (Cambridge University Press, 2009). 2 Nile Green, The Love of Strangers: What Six Muslim Students Learned in Jane Austen’s London (Princeton University Press, 2016) 3 Saree Makdisi, Making England Western: Occidentalism, Race, and Imperial Culture, The University of Chicago Press, 2013. 4 See for example, Robert Erwin, “Writing about Islam and the Arabs,” Ideology and Consciousness, 9 (1981-82), 108-9; James pasto, “Islam’s “Strange Secret Sharer”: Orientalism, Judaism, and the Jewish Question”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 40/3 (July 1998), 437-474. 5 Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Idols in the East, European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450 (Cornell University Press, 2009). 6 John V. Tolan, Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages (University Press of Florida, 2008); idem., “Impostor or Lawgiver?: Muhammad through European Eyes in the 17th and 18th Centuries,” in: Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Perception of Other, ed. David R. Blanks and Michael Frassetto (St. Martin’s Press, 1999).

Introduction  13 7 Suzanne Marchand, German Orientalism. 8 See, for example, John Arberry, “A Fresh Light on Ahmad Faris al-Shidiaq,” Islamic ˙ Culture, 26/1 (Jan. 1952), 155–168; Jason Thompson, “Edward William Lane’s ‘Description of Egypt’,” IJMES, 8/iv (Nov. 1996), 565–583; Donald P. Little, ed., Essays on Islamic Civilization (Leiden: Brill, 1976). For a detailed list of nineteenth century Arab accounts on Europe, see, Daniel Newman, “Myths and realities in Muslim Alterist discourse: Arab travellers in Europe in the age of the Nahda (19th c.),” Chronos, 6 (2002), 7–76. 9 Ronen Raz, “The Transparent Mirror: Arab Intellectuals and Orientalism, 1798– 1950,” Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis (Princeton University, 1997), 24. 10 Raz, “The Transparent Mirror,” 31. 11 Raz, “The Transparent Mirror,” 41. 12 Dietrich Jung, Orientalists, Islamists and the Global Public Sphere: A Genealogy of the Modern Essentialist Image of Islam (Equinox Publishing, 2011), 115. 13 Faris al-Shidyaq, Leg over Leg, trans. Humphrey Davies (New York University Press), 2015. 14 Tarek el-Ariss, “Leg over Leg, or the Turtle in the Tree: Concerning the Fariyaq, What Manner of Creature Might He Be,” Arab Studies Journal, 24/1 (2016), 286–290. 15 Daniel J. Schroeter, “Orientalism and the Jews of the Mediterranean,” Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 4/2 (1994), 183–196; Axel Stähler, “Orientalist Strategies in a German ‘Jewish’ Novel: Das neue Jerusalem (1905) and Its Context,” Forum for Modern Language Studies, 45/1 (2009), 51–89. 16 Umar Ryad, “An Oriental Orientalist”: Ahmad Zakˉı Pasha (1868–1934), E ­ gyptian ˙ Statesman and Philologist in the Colonial Age,” Philological Encounters, 3 (2018), 1–41. 17 Raz, “The Transparent Mirror,” 57–58; see also Transactions of the Second Session of the International Congress of Orientalists, ed. by Robert K. Douglas (London: Trübner & Co., 1876); Travaux de la troisieme session du congres international des orientalistes. 2nd vol. (St. Petersburg, 1879–1880); Het Leidsche Orientalistencongres, (Leiden: Brill, 1883) 24–54. 18 Umar Ryad, “The Dismissal of A.J. Wensinck from the Royal Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo,” in The Study of Religion and the Training of Muslim Clergy in Europe, ed. Willem B. Drees, Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld (Leiden University Press, 2008), 120. 19 Dietrich Jung, “Islamic studies and religious reform. Ignaz goldziher - A crossroads of Judaism, Christianity and Islam”, Islam - Zeitschrift fur Geschichte und Kultur des Islamischen Orients (1/90, 2013), 106-126. 20 Raphael Patai (trans. and ed.), Ignaz Goldziher and His Oriental Diary: A Translation and Psychological Portrait (Wayne State University Press, 1987); Lawrence Conrad, “The Near East Study Tour Diary of Ignaz Goldziher,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland, 122/1 (1990), 105–126; Lawrence Conrad, “The Dervish’s Disciple: On the Personality and Intellectual Milieu of the Young Ignaz Goldziher,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland, 122/2 (1990), 225–266. 21 See Hamid Dabashi’s chapter on this issue in his book, Post-Orientalism: Knowledge and Power in a Time of Terror (Routledge, 2017). John M. Efron, German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic (Princeton University Press, 2015). Cf. Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Jonathan Penslar (eds.), Orientalism and the Jews (Indiana University Press), 2017. 22 Shahab Ahmed, What Is Islam? (Princeton University Press, 2015).

1 On cooks and crooks Ahmad Faˉ ris al-Shidyaˉq and the˙ orientalists in England and France (1840s–1850s) Tarek El-Ariss The Arab “discovery” of Orientalism in the nineteenth century generated both fascination with and contestation of European scholarship on Islam and ­A rabic language and literature. For instance, in Takhlıˉs al-ibrıˉz fıˉ talkhıˉs Ba ˉrıˉz ˙ ˙ (An Imam in Paris) (1834), Rif ˉaʿa al-Tahtˉawıˉ (d. 1873) relates his encounter ˙ ˙ with ­Silvestre de Sacy (d. 1838),1 heaping praise on this scholar at the École des Langues Orientales and founder of Journal Asiatique.2 Working under the supervision of Edmé-François Jomard (d. 1862), the editor of Description de l’Egypte, al-Tahtˉawıˉ expresses great admiration for de Sacy’s knowledge of Arabic language ˙ ˙ and literature, and quotes in Takhlıˉs parts of his translation and commentary on ˙ al-Harıˉrıˉ’s Maqa ˉma ˉt.3 By way of comparison, al-Tahtˉawıˉ states that this eminent ˙ ˙ ˙ scholar’s erudition and prestige are such that they lead the reader to imagine what al-Faraˉbıˉ (d. 950) was like in his day. al-Tahtˉawıˉ illustrates this through an ˙ ˙ anecdote about al-Faraˉbıˉ’s first visit to Sayf al-Dawla al-Hamadaˉnıˉ’s (r. 944–967) ˙ court in Aleppo, during which he bewildered attendees with his knowledge, language mastery, and musical genius. By conjuring up al-Faraˉbıˉ in his discussion of de Sacy, al-Tahtˉawıˉ reclaims a tradition of Arab-Islamic learning that produces ˙ ˙ wonder and fascination as well, and to which he, an al-Azhar scholar, is heir. While Jamaˉl al-Dıˉn al-Afghaˉnıˉ’s (d. 1897) response to Ernest Renan’s (d. 1892) claim about the incompatibility of Islam with Science in 1883 was a key site of the Arab-Islamic critique of Orientalism,4 this critical engagement could be traced to al-Tahtˉawıˉ, Hasan al-Attˉar (d. 1835), and other scholars from the ear˙ ˙ ˙ ˙˙ lier part of the century whose contributions were fundamental to the development of Arab thought during and beyond the nahda.5 The Arab-Islamic critique ˙ of Orientalism starting in the nineteenth century draws on the classical Arabic tradition of polemics and satire but also on European genres and philosophical frameworks from Voltaire to Foucault, culminating, one might argue, with ­Edward Said. This critical genealogy, which is benefiting from increased scholarly attention, has the potential to refigure the history of Arab-Islamic critique in the modern age, and the history and development of Orientalism in Europe. Susannah Heschel’s groundbreaking exploration of the European Jewish Orientalist tradition offers alternative critical genealogies that decenter the prevalent paradigm. ­Examining the works of German and Austro-­Hungarian Jewish scholars of ­A rabic and Islam such as Abraham Geiger (d. 1874), Gustav Weil (d. 1889),

On cooks and crooks  15 and Ignaz Goldziher (d. 1921), Heschel argues that this tradition sought to move beyond the purely philological and Christian- (and British- and French-) centric tradition with which Orientalism became associated. Writing against the Semitic philologist Ernest Renan, who viewed both Islam and Judaism as stagnant Semitic religions, incapable of development and lacking mythology, Goldziher argued that Islam, like Judaism, has a receptive nature, a capacity to assimilate foreign ideas and rituals and to adapt itself to changing circumstances.6 Goldziher’s response to Renan thus ought to be read alongside al-Afghaˉnıˉ’s, thereby complicating categories such as Europe, the East, Islam, and Arabic. In the same context, Karla Malette’s argument about Southern European Orientalist scholarship that claimed an “Arab origin for a modern European national identity”7 serves to expand the critical framework. Finally, Hosam Abol Elah’s work aptly situates Edward Said’s own critique of Orientalism in relation to Maghrebi thinkers such as Abdallah Laroui (b. 1933) whose engagement with Orientalism repositions the critical genealogy within which contemporary scholarship has been operating.8 In this essay, I shed light on Ahmad Faˉris al-Shidyaˉq’s encounters with Ara˙ bists in England and France in the 1840s and 1850s, and situate his contribution in the genealogy of the critique of Orientalism that comparatively draws on the polemical tradition fundamental to the development of Arab-Islamic philosophy and thought in the classical age, satire from al-Jaˉhiz to Voltaire, and the critique ˙ ˙ of economic production and consumerism in nineteenth-century Europe and the Ottoman Empire. al-Shidyaˉq identifies Orientalist knowledge production as being intimately tied to marketing strategies, eighteenth- and nineteenth-­ century classification models, and ideological and political prejudices. al-Shidyaˉq offers a systematic analysis of Orientalist knowledge production, acknowledging its achievements and exposing its internal mechanisms. Critiquing the self-­ referential economy of this epistemological production, he identifies what Said would later term “the restorative citation of antecedent authority,” through which the academic discipline of Orientalism is constituted, and the Orient itself is imagined and reproduced.9 al-Shidyaˉq not only exposes the errors of the Orientalists he encounters but also offers an alternative to this form of knowledge in order to establish his own authority as a native scholar. In doing so, he employs the models of circulation and promotion that he associates with the Orientalists’ scholarly production, thereby revealing a complex economy wherein the native scholar is not merely a passive observer but rather contests, critiques, praises, and appropriates. In both al-Sa ˉq ʿala ˉ al-sa ˉq fˉı ma ˉ huwa al-Fa ˉrya ˉq (henceforth: al-Sa ˉq) (Leg over ˉrubba Leg) (1855)10 and Kashf al-mukhabbaʾ ʿan funu ˉn U ˉ (henceforth: Kashf ) (Revealing the Hidden in European Arts) (1863),11 al-Shidyaˉq relates his encounters with French and British scholars whom he admires and respects yet also critiques and parodies. Revealing or unveiling (kashf )12 the economy of

16  Tarek El-Ariss Orientalist scholarship in Parisian academies and at Cambridge and Oxford, al-Shidyaˉq offers a satirical and scathing account of the Orientalists’ deficient knowledge and dismissal of the expertise of native scholars of Arabic. He exposes the Orientalists’ countless intentional and unintentional mistranslations of Arabic texts, including lists of their “scandalous mistakes” (aghla ˉtihim al-fa ˉdiha) ˙ ˙ ˙ in his various publications.13 He accuses them of patching (tarqıˉʿ) and concocting (talfıˉq) in order to consolidate their theses, recasting (sabk) Arabic language and ideas to make them conform to their own. He also considers both absurd and amusing the fact that they conceal their lack of knowledge by quoting one another and emblazoning the covers of their books with lists of their prior publications and the fields in which they have worked.14 He compares this practice to what he observes in the marketplaces of Europe with regard to food labels, mocking the superlatives used to describe items’ provenance and distinguished pedigree. “They do this,” al-Shidyaˉq writes in the case of England, “in order to show how civilized they are” (al-mara ˉd ʿindahum min al-tamaddun).15 al-Shidyaˉq opposes the Arabists’ “flawed” methodology by drawing on genealogies of knowledge and critique that could be traced to the Islamic c­ lassical period. In what follows, I investigate the registers of taqlıˉd (imitation, tradition), ʿa ˉda (custom), tarqˉı ʿ (patching), sabk (recasting), and taha ˉfut (precipitance, infatuation, competition, etc.) deployed in al-Shidyaˉq’s text against Orientalist practices. I read these elements together as the basis for an overall conceptual framework of critique, which I situate in a comparative genealogy of polemics and intellectual debates (jida ˉl). Specifically, I argue that the interplay between taha ˉfut and taqlıˉd in al-Shidyaˉq’s work allows him to analyze and expose (kashf ) the Orientalists’ model of knowledge production and circulation in nineteenth-­ century Europe. al-Shidyaˉq’s activation and transformation of ­A rab-Islamic critical tools of scholarly engagement allow us to gauge the continuity between the classical period and the nahda, thereby contesting the notion of an epistemic ˙ break enacted in the nineteenth century.16 This also creates the possibility of reading Edward Said’s work as part of a long trajectory of intellectual debates that coalesce in this comparative nahda moment with al-Shidyaˉq. ˙

A wandering polemicist Born in 1804 to a family of Maronite notables and scribes from Mount Lebanon, al-Shidyaˉq experienced displacement at an early age.17 Persecuted along with his brother Asʿad for working with Protestant missionaries and converting to Protestantism, al-Shidyaˉq moved to Cairo in 1825.18 There, he collaborated with scholars at al-Azhar and succeeded al-Tahtˉawıˉ as the editor of the jour˙ ˙ nal al-Waqa ˉʾiʿ al-mis riyya. When the Maronite patriarch imprisoned and put to ˙ death his brother Asʿad in 1830,19 Ahmad Faˉris’ exile from Mount Lebanon be˙ came permanent. After nine years in Cairo, he headed to Malta, spending fourteen years working for the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and the British administration on the island. In 1848, he left for England in order to collaborate with Cambridge Arabist Rev. Samuel Lee (d. 1852)

On cooks and crooks  17 on translating the Bible into Arabic.20 Upon completing the translation in 1850, al-Shidyaˉq moved to Paris only to return to London in 1853. Unable to secure employment in England, al-Shidyaˉq moved to Tunis in 1857, where he would convert to Islam and court Sultan Abdülmecid I (r. 1839–1861) who eventually invited him to the Ottoman capital. In Istanbul, al-Shidyaˉq founded the journal al-Jawa ˉʾib in 1861, which he edited until 1884.21 When al-Shidyaˉq passed away in 1887, his body was repatriated to Lebanon and buried in the Hazmiyeh cemetery alongside the high officials of the Ottoman administration.22 al-Shidyaˉq devoted a great part of his career to editing and publishing Arabic lexicons and classical texts, and this work proved influential in shaping his own philological engagements and literary production. al-Sa ˉq, for instance, draws on the genre of the maqa ˉma and the Arabic lexicographical tradition to portray the vagaries of a character named al-Faˉryaˉq and his wife, al-Faˉryaˉqiyya, as they move back and forth between Europe and the lands of the Ottoman Empire. Conjuring a lewd position and attitude in its very title, al-Sa ˉq is a satirical and highly experimental work that unsettles fixed categories of adab (manners, respectability, ethics, literature, etc.) and challenges religion, social propriety, and learning practices. al-Shidyaˉq deploys mockery to expose the incoherence of al-Faˉryaˉq’s interlocutors over the course of his travels. In one instance, al-Faˉryaˉq parodies the monks in a monastery in Lebanon, teasing one of them about mishearing the word qa ˉmu ˉs (dictionary) as ja ˉmu ˉs (buffalo), highlighting the monks’ ignorance. 23 However, al-Shidyaˉq reserves his most scathing attack for a clergyman by the name of Atanaˉsiyu ˉ s al-Tutunjıˉ, a babbling pseudo-scholar who spares no effort to betray and undermine al-Faˉryaˉq. The fictionalization of al-Tutunjıˉ, a real-life figure who critiqued al-Shidyaˉq’s work and tried to replace him as a translator for the SPCK in Malta, blurs the distinction between the travel narrative and the fictional text, intellectual disagreement and polemic. Polemics and satire characterize both al-Shidyaˉq’s writing style and his choice of topics. They also mark his professional career from his work as a teacher and translator in Malta to his long-running dispute with Ibraˉhıˉm al-Yaˉzijıˉ (d. 1906), which took the form of polemical articles published in alJawa ˉʾib and in Butrus and Salıˉm al-Bustaˉnıˉ’s al-Jina ˉn. This long and acrimo˙ nious fight with al-Yaˉzijıˉ over Arabic philology started with al-Shidyaˉq’s eulogy for and critique of Ibraˉhıˉm’s father, Naˉsˉıf al-Yaˉzijıˉ, upon his death in 1871. The ˙ debate soon descended into a “battle of words” that lasted for years, marking a collapse of civility and a dire competition between the two intellectuals over supporters and allies. However, al-Shidyaˉq’s biographer, ʿImaˉd al-S ulh, ˙ ˙ suggests that his polemic against al-Yaˉzijıˉ “brought new life into philological research” (baʿth al-hara ˉra fıˉ al-abhˉ ath al-lughawiyya).24 The controversy also ˙ ˙ helped to increase the readership of al-Jawa ˉʾib, magnifying its influence in matters cultural and political. 25 In this context, the exchange of polemics expanded the journal’s circulation and revived the field of Arabic philology in the nineteenth century, bringing about change and novelty along with acrimony and manipulation.

18  Tarek El-Ariss However, al-Shidyaˉq’s first controversy, which was fictionalized in al-Sa ˉq, pitted him against al-Tutunjıˉ, the Melkite Metropolitan of Tripoli (in modern-day Lebanon). While al-Shidyaˉq was working on a translation of selections from the Psalms and the Bible for the SPCK in Malta,26 al-Tutunjıˉ went to London and convinced the society that al-Shidyaˉq’s translations were too Qur’anic and that they would not appeal to Christian Arabs.27 The SPCK sided with al-­Tutunjıˉ and sent him to Malta to replace al-Shidyaˉq. Meanwhile, al-Shidyaˉq wrote two letters to the Society, contesting their decision and threatening to make public the mistakes of al-Tutunjıˉ’s alternative translation. When the Society declined to reverse its decision, al-Shidyaˉq exposed al-Tutunjıˉ’s errors in a Maltese newspaper, incurring the wrath of the SPCK and bringing about his dismissal. After al-Shidyaˉq apologized for his behavior but not for his assessment of al-­Tutunjıˉ’s work, the Society consulted Samuel Lee at Cambridge, who supported al-Shidyaˉq’s claims.28 Lee’s assessment led the Society to rehire al-Shidyaˉq, who would then move to England to collaborate with Lee on the translation of the Bible in its entirety. al-Tutunjıˉ’s episode in Malta set the stage for al-Shidyaˉq’s critique of the Orientalists in England and France. In his fictionalization of this episode in alSa ˉq, al-Shidyaˉq relates that the Society was fooled by al-Tutunjıˉ’s appearance, assuming his credibility and authenticity upon seeing his long beard and clerical attire. Moreover, some experts appointed by the SPCK thought it wiser to endorse a translation of Christian texts that seemed to them closer to Aramaic (al-Tutunjıˉ’s) rather than to Qur’anic Arabic (allegedly, al-Shidyaˉq’s).29 Thus, al-Tutunjıˉ’s performance of the “authentic” native informant fed the Orientalist fantasy, consolidating a structure of knowledge production founded on cultural and linguistic biases that reduced Arabic to the language of the Qur’an, thereby negating the language’s evolution and development outside of the strictly Islamic context. In this sense, al-Shidyaˉq’s critique of al-Tutunjıˉ’s translation and of its initial endorsement by the Society is an anti-Orientalist critique of exoticism, Islamophobia, and a structure of philological tyranny that treated Arabic as a minor tributary of ancient Semitic languages. While his kashf of al-Tutunjıˉ’s errors earned al-Shidyaˉq the respect and the job he sought, it would eventually define his style and earn him the reputation of a “combative intellectual.”30

On style and context In his fight with al-Tutunjıˉ, al-Shidyaˉq not only exposed his – and the Society’s – mistakes and prejudices against the Arabic language and Islam but also mounted a campaign against his rival that utilized hija ˉʾ and lampoons that al-Shidyaˉq arranged sent to al-Tutunjıˉ through third parties.31 Pursuing his revenge against al-Tutunjıˉ in al-Sa ˉq, al-Shidyaˉq introduced him in a section entitled “Drain” (Fıˉ ballu ˉʿa) as the author of al-H aka ˉka fıˉ al-raka ˉka (The Leavings Pile Concerning Lame ˙ Style), [who] traveled to the same country [Britain] on some pot-scrapping business and got to know the aforesaid Committee, whom he proceeded to inform that al-Faˉryaˉq’s language was utterly corrupt […].32

On cooks and crooks  19 In this section, al-Shidyaˉq satirizes al-Tutunjıˉ’s training and parodies his mistakes. al-S ulh argues that al-Shidyaˉq deploys what he terms “naqd mutahakkim” ˙ ˙ (deriding critique)33 in his writings and polemics. al-S ulh elaborates on the dif˙ ˙ ferent definitions of satire, comparing and contrasting al-Shidyaˉq with al-Jaˉ hiz, ˙ ˙ the master of satire in the Arabic tradition, and tracing his work to a genealogy of hija ˉʾ from Jarıˉr and al-Farazdaq to al-Buhturıˉ and Abu ˉ Tammaˉm.34 That ˙ said, al-H aka ˉka fıˉ al-raka ˉka, the work that al-Shidyaˉq mockingly attributes to ˙ al-Tutunjıˉ in al-Sa ˉq, cannot but bring to mind Diatribe du docteur Akakia, Voltaire’s 1752 pamphlet against Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (d. 1759), a French philosopher and mathematician and the director of the Academy of Science in Berlin.35 al-Shidyaˉq was an avid reader and admirer of Voltaire.36 In Kashf, al-Shidyaˉq quotes Voltaire’s La Pucelle d’Orleans (1735) when discussing Jeanne d’Arc’s place in French history.37 In al-Shidyaˉq’s discussion of British history and customs, the influence of Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques (1734), also known as Lettres sur les Anglais, is pervasive.38 al-Shidyaˉq also quotes from Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations (1756) when discussing Arab-Islamic contributions to European culture and civilization starting from the times of Haˉru ˉ n al-Rashıˉd (r. 786–809) and Charlemagne (r. 800–814).39 al-Shidyaˉq also draws on Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique (1762) when discussing Isaac Newton and British Orientalists such as George Sale (d. 1736).40 Moreover, a predilection for satirizing the moral condition in the vein of Jonathan Swift (d. 1745) via Voltaire runs through al-Shidyaˉq’s Kashf and al-Sa ˉq alike, expressing his ambivalent relation to power, both political and epistemological. Seeking the patronage of the wealthy and powerful yet rebelling against them, both al-Shidyaˉq and Voltaire perform the role of the “combative intellectual” who is constantly engaging in polemics and fights against foes and patrons. Though the comparison between al-Shidyaˉq and Voltaire is not within the purview of this essay, their ambivalent relation to power, satirical style, and combativeness need to be mentioned as a framing of al-Shidyaˉq’s polemical genealogy, which encompasses both fictional (in al-Sa ˉq) and nonfictional linguistic debates and anticlerical attacks that could be traced to the Arab-Islamic tradition and eighteenth-century European diatribes and lampoons.41 The genre of kashf in the nineteenth century is a model of critique deployed in polemical arguments on topics ranging from language to religion.42 Nadia Al-Bagdadi engages the history and background of al-Shidyaˉq’s anti-Christian polemic, Muma ˉhaka ˉt al-taʾwıˉl fıˉ muna ˉqadˉ at al-injıˉl (Altercations of Interpreta˙ ˙ tion: On Contradictions in the Gospels) (1851), which revived a traditional model of the religious polemic.43 Rana Issa argues that al-Shidyaˉq’s anti-religious polemic needs to be read in relation to the translation of the Bible into Arabic and its transformation into a commodity in the nineteenth century.44 In this context, the polemical vein running through both Kashf and al-Sa ˉq needs to be read within this environment that aligns the political, the philological, and the literary. These polemical episodes and trends ultimately lead to the consolidation of the scholar’s authority. The kashf and the polemic – or kashf as polemic – have

20  Tarek El-Ariss direct professional and epistemological importance as they allow al-Shidyaˉq to counter opponents’ arguments and to present himself as the ultimate expert in the subject matter. Kashf as a model of critique, and more specifically the particular critiques of Orientalism in Kashf and al-Sa ˉq are thus part of an economy of knowledge production that al-Shidyaˉq both takes issue with and deploys for his benefit.

Confronting the Arabists Written as a travelogue, Kashf includes descriptions of French and British hygiene, eating habits, snobbery, superstition, laws, fashion, and sexual mores.45 Focusing on England, in which he spent almost seven of his nine years in Europe, al-Shidyaˉq discusses the distribution of property, observing that a handful of families own most of the land. He also comments on the theater, tracing it to Greek tragedies and lamenting the fact that the Arabs only inherited philosophy from the Greeks. Throughout Kashf, al-Shidyaˉq is both critical and admiring of British society, constantly going back and forth between praise and parody. Far from representing the culture of the other by reversing the Orientalist model or practicing Occidentalism, Kashf offers instead a complex account of British practices and beliefs that puts in question the ideological production of cultural and racial differences. al-Shidyaˉq perceptively interrogates the very basis of the culture of learning and expertise, and its modes of production and circulation. Though impressed with British society and its industrial and political achievements, al-Shidyaˉq subjects its system of values to a diagnosis that reveals inconsistencies and contradictions, and he ties knowledge production within British intellectual circles to social and economic practices. In Kashf, al-Shidyaˉq provides descriptions of Paris’s and London’s academies and libraries that include statistics about the number of books they contain.46 He describes the universities at Oxford and Cambridge, and discusses their professors’ pay structure.47 However, al-Shidyaˉq warns his readers against considering the acquisition of European languages and education as the only means to achieve progress and civilization (tamaddun). Critiquing the notion prevalent in the Ottoman Empire that knowledge is always a condition for tamaddun, he argues that education could instead lead to indulgence. Thus, having libraries full of books does not necessarily make one cultivated or learned.48 He also mentions the many Arabic books in the libraries of Europe, which Arab travelers, according to al-Shidyaˉq, ignore altogether when visiting them.49 al-Shidyaˉq thus provides a powerful critique of the circulation of books as the key in the spread of enlightenment, rejecting the elitism of the nahda discourse ˙ on education that endorsed borrowing from Western sources and adopting Western methodologies and practices.50 In this context, he critiques the perception that the achievement of tamaddun necessitates a break with tradition, which, in turn, could only be accessed through Western learning including ­Orientalist scholarship. In his discussions of Paris, al-Shidyaˉq mentions French scholars and authors such as de Sacy, Lamartine (d. 1869), and George Sand (d. 1876) while

On cooks and crooks  21 expressing admiration for their various achievements.51 In al-Sa ˉq, he describes writing a poem about Paris, which he published in Journal Asiatique. al-Shidyaˉq also relates meeting Joseph Toussaint Reinaud, Armand-Pierre Caussin de Perceval, and Etienne-Marc Quatremère.52 At Cambridge, he meets the Orientalists H. G. Williams, Theodore Preston, and John Barton.53 Collaborating with Cambridge professor Samuel Lee on the translation of the Bible, al-Shidyaˉq presents a scathing account of the teaching, translation, and publication of Arabic in nineteenth-century England. Critiquing British learning practices and knowledge production in a section entitled “British’s Precipitance over Fame” (“Taha ˉfut al-inklıˉz ʿala ˉ al-shuhra”), al-Shidyaˉq claims that the British habitually seek out and rush toward notoriety in every aspect of life including in matters of learning and scholarship.54 In the course of their studies, for example, Orientalists profess mastery of other languages, namely Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. Whatever knowledge they glean about such topics, notes al-Shidyaˉq, is enough to make them claim expertise, pretend to be linguists, and publish books in which they include all – the little – they know. What is far worse, he writes, is that they falsify and distort as they please. He cites the example of John Richardson, who misinterpreted a series of grammatical rules in his Dictionary Persian, Arabic, and English (1777). al-Shidyaˉq also cites a number of mistakes in the translation of the Arabian Nights by Edward Lane (d. 1876), discussing the latter’s misinterpretation and misreading of parts of the Arabic text. ،‫وأورد حكاية من كتاب ألف ليلة وليلة عن ذلك األحمق الذي قدر في باله أن يتزوج بنت الوزير‬ ‫ “ال أعطي الحرية لنفسي‬:‫فلما وصل إلى قوله “وال أخلي روحي إال في موضعها” ترجمها بقوله‬ ”‫” وقوله أيضا “وال أزال كذلك حتى تتم جلوتها” صحف “جلوتها‬،‫أي لزوجتي إال في حجرتها‬ 55 ”.‫ “وال أكف حتى يتم ذلها‬:‫ب“جلدتها؛” فقال‬ He related a tale from A Thousand and One Nights about that fool who imagined he could marry the vizier’s daughter, translating his statement, “I don’t feel comfortable except with her” as “my wife’s only freedom is in the bedroom.” He also substituted “unveiling of the bride on the wedding night” for “skin,” mistranslating “I will not cease from this until I marry her” as “I will not stop humiliating her.” [My translation] In this passage, al-Shidyaˉq contests Lane’s misreading and mistranslation, “my wife’s only freedom is in the bedroom,” whose connotation is that the woman lacks freedom except in the bedroom – where presumably she takes full advantage of her liberty through sexual acts. al-Shidyaˉq offers the correct reading, “I don’t feel comfortable except with her,” which emphasizes the notion of psychological comfort as the basis for the man’s attachment to his would-be wife. In the second example, al-Shidyaˉq calls attention to the misreading of jalwa (the unveiling of the bride on the wedding night) as jilda/jalada (skin, whipping), which emphasizes the man’s cruelty. In these two instances, mistranslation produces a misunderstanding of sexual and gender roles in the Nights, consolidating the stereotype of the Arab or Eastern man as being sexually perverse and violent toward women, and the stereotype of the Arab woman in the Harem who is reduced to her sexuality.

22  Tarek El-Ariss What al-Shidyaˉq identifies as mistranslation based on a lack of knowledge or misreading of the Arabic text has radical implications that have been addressed in postcolonial and feminist critiques. These mistranslations are comparable to the ones Fatima Mernissi discusses in Scheherazade Goes West, for instance, wherein adaptations of the Nights in European culture invariably emphasize Arab or Oriental despotism, mistreatment of women, and sexual lasciviousness and perversion. In her engagement with Orientalist approaches to reading, translating, and editing the Nights, Mernissi emphasizes how mistranslations, omissions, and distortions of the Arabic texts have buttressed an Orientalist fantasy that systematically presents female characters as subservient, enslaved, and cunning. With their role as social and intellectual agents suppressed, women’s “readiness to obey is a distinctive feature of the Western Harem fantasy” in the European versions of the Nights.56 Engaging the translation errors and fantasmatic projections among British Arabists, al-Shidyaˉq goes further to interrogate their politics of language and culture, tying the process of Orientalist scholarship to the kinds of biases that shape/produce the Orient in nineteenth-century England. He suggests that Arabists not only mistranslate words but also approach the very act of translation through a European mindset, which they never question: ‫ وسبكه في‬،‫فقد ق رأت كثي راً مما ترجم من كالمنا إلى كالمهم وإذا ترجم أحدهم كتاب ا ً رقعه بما عن له‬ 57 .‫ فإذا هو مسبوك في قوالب أفكارهم مما لم يخطر ببال المؤلف قط‬.‫قلب لغته‬ Should one of them translate a book, he patches it as he pleases, recasting it in his language. I read much of what was translated from our language to theirs only to realize that their translators, unaware, recast these texts according to their mindset. [My translation] al-Shidyaˉq goes to the heart of Orientalist knowledge production, identifying the blind spot through which Arabic language and ideas are reproduced, translated, and explained in English. Orientalist tarqıˉʿ (patching) and sabk (recasting) emerge as two dimensions of a dialectic of knowledge production that evokes the crafts of leather- or cloth-making and metal work. A European process of recasting, according to al-Shidyaˉq, constitutes the prism for translations that take shape through new molds and patterns. This recasting of Arabic into English strips the former of its particularities and cultural context. This recasting operates at both conscious and unconscious levels through processes of fantasizing and self-referencing. In al-Sa ˉq, when al-Faˉryaˉq notes his wife’s need to learn English language and customs, al-Faˉryaˉqiyya protests and tells her husband: “Could it be that you’ve brought me to this country to recast (tasbuk) me and fashion (tas u ˉgh) me into another woman.”58 Recasting ˙ in this context involves an alteration of the essences of both language and the individual, molding each into another shape and context, as if melting metals for alchemy. Moreover, we could read sabk as a form of minting that transforms metals into coins for exchange in a new economy of knowledge and cultural difference.

On cooks and crooks  23 al-Shidyaˉq relates how British Orientalists once mistranslated a proclamation by the Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid I59 in which he urged Muslims to perform Jihad.60 al-Shidyaˉq states that the English translation referred to Muslims as “worshipers of the Prophet” (ʿubba ˉd al-nabiyy), and that no one felt embarrassed by this concocting (talfıˉq), calumny (iftira ˉʾ), and patching (tarqıˉʿ) except for Edward Lane, translator of the Nights; Theodore Preston, translator of alHarıˉrıˉ’s Maqa ˉma ˉt; and George Sale, translator of the Qur’an.61 Nevertheless, ˙ states al-Shidyaˉq, even these Arabists who “know better” could not have interacted with native speakers of Arabic despite the time some of them had spent in Egypt and elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire. al-Shidyaˉq quotes Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique, which asserts that Sale lived among the Arabs for twenty-five years, which is enough time to produce a reliable translation of the Qur’an. However, upon reading Sale’s introduction to his translation to the Qur’an, al-Shidyaˉq doubts whether Sale had indeed spent all that time in Arabia, mixing with (yukha ˉlit) its people. ˙ Reading Voltaire on Sale and then assessing Sale’s translation of and introduction to the Qur’an, al-Shidyaˉq engages and confronts the Orientalist economy. alShidyaˉq comes to the conclusion that mistranslation even among the finest scholars is linked to the absence of an intersubjective encounter that would, in turn, infuse language mastery and translation skills with a specific cultural understanding. In this respect, al-Shidyaˉq observes that a colloquial expression like yahriq dıˉnu (his ˙ religion burns), a common insult in Arabic, is translated as an expression about the power of religion, burning brightly like fire, which is in line with the representation of God in the Old Testament as “burning fire.”62 al-Shidyaˉq attributes this mistranslation to the Arabists’ association of Islam and the Arabic language with a Biblical context, leading them to read Arabic with Hebrew and Syriac in mind. al-Shidyaˉq observes that they translate from this Semitic philological perspective, disregarding and missing in the process Arabic’s cultural context, history, humor, vulgarity, and, ultimately, contemporaneity.63 In this context, he mentions that Hebrew professors earn ten times more than those who teach Arabic in the British academy, for Hebrew is more useful to these Arabists than Arabic itself is. al-Shidyaˉq thus exposes the Orientalist epistemological and economic framework that treats Arabic as a dead language, always viewed through the Semitic prism of the Bible. Thus, al-Shidyaˉq discovers in these engagements the discrepancy between Arabic speech and understanding on the one hand, and the Orientalist engagement with such classics as the Qur’an and the Nights on the other. al-Shidyaˉq’s engagement with the kinds and levels of Orientalist mastery of Arabic comes to the fore in a long conversation with Samuel Lee that al-Shidyaˉq reproduced in Kashf. When Lee mentions an Austrian scholar64 who had published a book of poetry in Arabic, al-Shidyaˉq replies that his poetry is full of mistakes, and that this is the case for all those who do not learn Arabic from native speakers. Lee responds that the British compose poetry in Greek and Latin without having studied with native speakers. al-Shidyaˉq answers that these languages are part of the British tradition, which they learn as children, unlike Arabic.65 Lee retorts that a man can learn a language at any age. In response, al-Shidyaˉq challenges Lee to compose Arabic poetry. Accepting the challenge, Lee presents

24  Tarek El-Ariss al-Shidyaˉq with a couple of verses the very next day. al-Shidyaˉq proceeds to identify the mistakes in Lee’s composition. Lee explains to al-Shidyaˉq the Syriac and Hebrew origins of Arabic grammatical features, citing the example of the Hebrew origin of ˉ a in Imruʾ al-Qays’s famous opening invocation qif-a ˉ (in Qifa ˉ nabkıˉ…). al-Shidyaˉq refuses this explanation, insisting that the ˉ a is for the muthanna ˉ or dual case, in reference to Imruʾ al-Qays’s two companions. When further challenged, Lee claims that Arabic has too many unnecessary rules and clutter.66 Finally, al-Shidyaˉq asserts that Lee teaches Arabic at Cambridge but is unable to speak it.67 In both al-Sa ˉq and Kashf, al-Shidyaˉq relates countless encounters with Arabic “pseudo-professors” (asa ˉtıˉdh, as opposed to asa ˉtidha, professors),68 taunting and deriding their expertise and linguistic mastery. Anticipating later debates about the need to teach Arabic as it is spoken in its contemporary context,69 i.e. communicatively, al-Shidyaˉq exposes the treatment of Arabic as a dead language, stripped of its historical and cultural associations. According to al-Shidyaˉq, reducing meanings to their Hebrew and Syriac origins might explain some philological genealogies but fail to acknowledge the language’s contemporaneity. This critique, leveled against Orientalists in the academy till this day, is embodied in al-Shidyaˉq’s text through a model of confrontation that reveals the shortcomings of the Arabists not only at the linguistic level but at an ideological one as well. This is not to claim that al-Shidyaˉq is a proponent of welcoming ʿa ˉmmiyya into literary discourse. On the contrary, he’s quite concerned with the rendering of the Arabic that is recorded in the classical lexicons. However, his critique of the Arabists’ mistakes and their inability to communicate in Arabic has repercussions for the ʿa ˉmmiyya/fus hˉ a debates that would come later. al-Shidyaˉq’s critique ˙˙ takes aim at the exclusion of the native as interlocutor, scholar, and author whose texts’ meaning and integrity are altered in the act of reading, interpreting, and translating. In this light, his critique stems from an experience of epistemological and cultural exclusions.70 Collapsing personal and cultural exclusions vis-à-vis the discipline of Orientalism as he encounters it in England and France, al-Shidyaˉq exposes the ways in which the Arabists’ approach to language reflects a larger bias that suppresses Arabic historical development altogether. Moving beyond the native speaker as the sole guarantor of language correctness and purity, al-Shidyaˉq’s critique addresses the Orientalist dehistoricization of Arabic that reduces its Semitic philology and classical Semitic texts (the Bible, etc.). Specifically, al-Shidyaˉq identifies in the disciplinary politics of Orientalism the suppression of the history and achievements of Arab-Islamic culture as such, which are omitted from Orientalist curricula and their civilizational narrative of the West. At one point in Kashf, al-Shidyaˉq mentions the Arabists’ translation of animal names and discusses the translation of “ram” (kabsh) as a “war instrument” or “battering ram.” He then turns to the Arabs’ contribution to astronomy and astrology, wondering where the Europeans were during the Arab Golden Age.71 Addressing the Arabs’ contribution to contemporary European culture, he mentions the glory of Andalusia from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, explaining how the Arabic al (the) made its way into Spanish and Italian as il, el, and la, and which was retained

On cooks and crooks  25 as al or el in the names of stars. He also quotes Voltaire’s Essai sur les mœurs on Islamic science, mentioning the clock Haˉru ˉ n al-Rashıˉd sent to Charlemagne, the legacy of Arab medicine in Europe, and Arab contributions to the development of mathematics.72 Offering a historical narrative that emphasizes Arab–­ European relations and Arabic linguistic and cultural contributions to modern European sciences especially, al-Shidyaˉq quotes Isaac Newton, highlighting his grand achievements and satirically exclaiming that had Newton written in Arabic, the Oxford Arabists would have mistranslated him as well, spending “an hour and a half interpreting his verse, then gleefully raising their heads with amazement, reveling at their own brilliance”: ‫هو وتالمذته وبعد انقضاء نحو ساعة ونصف على تأويل هذا البيت يقومون وهم سامدو الرؤوس‬ ‫ ويظنون أن شيوخ الجامع األزهر واألموي والزيتونة هم دون هذا التحرير الذي‬،ً‫عجب ا ً وفخ را‬ ‫ وقد استبد هؤالء األساتيذ بهذه‬.‫عرف مولد نيوطون ووفاته واستيالء المسلمين على األندلس‬ ً ‫ وإنما يسمحون له بأن يعلم أشخاص ا‬،‫الدعوى بحيث أنهم ال يوظفون الغريب في هذه المدارس‬ ‫ وهذا الداء‬.‫ وال يأذنون لغيرهم في أن يعلموا حق التعليم‬،‫ فال هم يتعلمون حق التعلم‬،‫على حدتهم‬ ً ‫ وال بد لشيخ العربية من أن يكون عالم ا‬.‫ش أيض ا ً في مدارس فرنسا مع استتباب المصالح فيها‬ ٍ ‫فا‬ 73 ً .‫بالالتينية حتى إذا جهل شيئ ا من تلك عمد إلى هذه فقور منها رقعة‬ After spending an hour and half interpreting this verse, they gleefully raise their heads with amazement, reveling at their own brilliance, thinking that professors at the al-Azhar, al-Umawıˉ, and Zaytuna mosques are incapable of such interpretation, which witnessed the birth and death of Newton and the Arab conquest of Andalusia. These pseudo-professors are so stubborn in their course that they never hire a native speaker. They allow him to tutor some students on the side. The result of this is that they never learn properly nor do they allow anyone else to do so. This ill is rampant in France as well where self-interest also trumps educational needs. The professor of Arabic has to know Latin as well so that he could core and patch up with Latin what he lacks in Arabic. [My translation] In this defense of Arabic language and poetry, al-Shidyaˉq contests and mocks the British scholarly approach, which systematically reduces Arabic to a point of origin in Biblical languages through patching (tarqıˉʿ) and recasting (sabk). In response, al-Shidyaˉq reclaims Arab-Islamic culture by identifying a debt and a dynamic interaction that have been suppressed by a Semitic or Greco-Roman philological framework. al-Shidyaˉq’s confrontation with British Orientalism activates an intellectual tradition and model of learning that is integral to yet excluded from the knowledge produced in England about Arabic culture, science, history, and language. This exclusion runs parallel to the exclusion of the native scholar and speaker of Arabic from the Orientalist economy of knowledge production and employment. In this way, economic, intellectual, and historical exclusions intersect in al-Shidyaˉq’s multilevel critique of French and British Orientalists. ʿImaˉd al-S ulh suggests that al-Shidyaˉq’s aim as a writer and editor was to ˙ ˙ promote and spread Arabic heritage, finding old manuscripts and lexicons and publishing them.74 In this sense, al-Shidyaˉq was the Arabist par excellence,

26  Tarek El-Ariss competing methodologically with the European Orientalist tradition that he critiqued yet admired. Nadia Al-Bagdadi elaborates on al-Shidyaˉq’s relation with Quatremère and de Sacy, arguing that al-Shidyaˉq saw in nineteenth-century Orientalist philology a way to preserve Arabic philology and to separate it from the exegetical tradition. In his critique of Orientalism, Edward Said engages the inauguration of modern philology with de Sacy. Reading Said on the philological tradition, Jeffrey Sacks writes: The division that came “to separate language from mentalism or from religion” (Said 1983, 274) is therefore a secular one: philology, “whose major successes included comparative grammar, the reclassification of languages into families, and the final rejection of the divine origins of language,” was “a secular event that displaced a religious conception of how God delivered language to man in Eden” (Said 1978, 135). Yet if what philology occasioned was the spilling over of controversy from “the realm of theology” into “secular discourse” (Olender 1989, 37/19), it also occasioned the persistence of the old.75 Though he admired de Sacy, al-Shidyaˉq included an appendix in al-Sa ˉq cataloguing the errors in his published translation of al-Harıˉrıˉ’s Maqa ˉma ˉt.76 While ˙ pointing out these mistakes implies a level of collegial engagement in the philological discipline to which al-Shidyaˉq contributes, his critique goes beyond professional disagreement, exposing cultural prejudice and models of epistemological production and circulation that need to be examined with Edward Said’s critique in mind. In this sense, al-Shidyaˉq presents an alternative model of Arabic language expertise and epistemological production in the nineteenth century that is cognizant of the political prejudice and pitfalls that have marked European study of Arabic and Islam (the Maqa ˉma ˉt, Nights, etc.). Thus, his listing of the Orientalists’ mistakes in an appendix in al-Sa ˉq (and in various other places in his works) is not so much a denigration of the other but rather a display of al-Shidyaˉq’s own skills and expertise. As in the case of al-Tutunjıˉ in Malta, his listing of the Orientalists’ errors should be read both as a critique of Orientalist bias and as a professional performance that might provide him recognition and, ultimately, employment in French and British universities. al-Shidyaˉq’s critique of the Orientalists’ exclusion of the native scholar operates both within an academic context and at the political and economic levels.

The economy of taqlıˉd and taha ˉ fut al-Shidyaˉq’s discussion of knowledge production in England is a continuation of his discussion of British customs and practices; he sees learning and knowledge circulation not simply as abstracted processes but rather as tied to a set of cultural and political traits and dispositions (tabʿ, tiba ˉʿ) that extend to social status and ˙ ˙ tastes in fashion and food. Exploiting the dual meanings of tabʿ as “the printing ˙ of books and newspapers” and tabʿ as “disposition,” al-Shidyaˉq presents the ˙77 British as imitators (muqallidu ˉn) and identifies a tradition (taqlıˉd) of imitation

On cooks and crooks  27 (also taqlıˉd) in manners, fashion, and scholarship. Imitating the French in their pursuit of civilization, the British also imitate each other, quoting one another and reproducing what others have written about Arabic language and culture especially. al-Shidyaˉq suggests that the British imitate the French in all things to show how civilized they are. Taqlıˉd here is linked to habit and custom (ʿa ˉda), but also to an appeal to authority. In The Muslim Creed, Arent Jan Wensinck argues that taqlıˉd is the submission to the opinion of others, following the original imams (Shaˉfiʿıˉ, Hanbalıˉ, etc.), ˙ which entails an appeal to authority.78 Orientalists and Islamic modernizers in the nineteenth century viewed taqlıˉd as “blind submission.”79 While Islamist revival wanted to reject taqlıˉd in an age of reform, al-Shidyaˉq uses it in the context of a critique of the production of knowledge about Arab-Islamic culture within Orientalist circles. According to the classical Arabic lexicon Lisa ˉn al-ʿarab, taqlıˉd is the wearing of the medallion (qila ˉda), associated with a process of investiture and initiation. The word muqallid refers both to the “bestower” who confers the medallion and thus inducts the other into a tradition (taqlıˉd) and also to the “imitator” who wears the medallion as a condition of his/her induction.80 Much like academic knowledge production and publication, taqlıˉd operates as a ritualized process of conferring legitimacy through modes of circulation and referencing. Taqlıˉd thus entails submission to the authority of a system of truth.81 According to al-Shidyaˉq, taqlıˉd or “conferring the medallion” takes shape on book covers as well as on the covers of “rare” food items he finds in the marketplace. Taqlıˉd is thus a visual symbol but also a tradition through which the book enters an economy of knowledge and pedigrees in the academy. Taqlıˉd is the act of wearing the mantel or medal, but also of girding the sword before battle, a rite sustained till this day in induction ceremonies including that of the Académie Française. This highlights a key nahda problematic: taqlıˉd or taqa ˉlıˉd as customs ˙ and traditions which imply continuity in relation to certain predecessors, and taqlıˉd as the imitation of and borrowing from the West. Taqlıˉd’s polysemy in alShidyaˉq’s text allows us to identify both a critique and a reclaiming of tradition through a complex engagement with European knowledge and systems of value. al-Shidyaˉq presents British views and attitudes toward knowledge production and circulation in a section on their competition over fame (“Taha ˉfut al-­inklıˉz ʿala ˉ al-shuhra”). Critiquing the British obsession with honors and titles, he writes that even when he wanted to publish his book, the editor asked him to include all of his honorific titles, and that he is the “author of such and such publication, editor of such and such work, translator of such and such book.”82 Critiquing their precipitance and competition over expensive items regardless of their real value, al-Shidyaˉq writes: ‫ وأن يتهافتوا على‬،ً‫ وإن يكن نفيس ا‬،‫ومن طبع اإلنكليز وال سيما كب راؤهم أن ينفروا من الرخيص‬ 83 ً .‫الغالي وإن يكن خسيس ا‬ It is the disposition of the British and especially the upper class to disdain what is inexpensive even if it is precious, and precipitate over what is expensive even though it might be worthless. [My translation]

28  Tarek El-Ariss al-Shidyaˉq not only mocks the pettiness of the British but also describes the system through which this production of value operates. In this critique, he links a commodity-based ideology to knowledge production and circulation,84 and to a kind of lying (kadhib) involving commerce and the display of goods. Using the example of food labels, al-Shidyaˉq narrates how the British claim that a food item is from this or that place, rare and good, or royal or lordly, thereby proving their tamaddun (civilization).85 Civilization, tied to this surplus value, is produced through marketing, advertisement, circulation of goods, shoddy scholarship, and obsession with titles and honors. In al-Sa ˉq, al-Shidyaˉq emphasizes taha ˉfut as a process of scholarly falsification, fiction, and fantasy that ignores the text and the intention of its author. ‫وألنهم إنما اعتمدوا على اتصافهم بنعت مدرسين فاجت زأوا باالسم عن الفعل وعن حقيقة ما ي راد‬ ،‫ فإن المتصدى لهذه الرتبة الجليلة ينبغي أن يكون صادق النقل متثبت ا ً في الرواية‬،‫من التدريس‬ 86 .‫متحرج ا ً من التهافت على ترجيح ما استحسنه وهو دون م راد المولف‬ Because they have invested all their dignity in having people call them by the title of “teacher,” they are content to have the name without the doing and undertaking what is properly meant by being a teacher. He who occupies this sublime position must be truthful in his transmission, cautious in his narration, careful not to give too much without credence to the likelihood of what he favors at the expense of what the author intended.87 In this passage, al-Shidyaˉq identifies Orientalist scholarship as a process of fictionalization, thereby rewriting the original text and overriding the intention of its author. In this context, taha ˉfut implies haste and fantasy, and, ultimately, the exclusion of the author and the dismissal of his intention and the integrity of his text. This ties in with the process of sabk that seeks to mold original texts and ideas through a rapid process characterized by a lack of caution and fidelity. The exclusion of the native scholar of Arabic dovetails in the Orientalist system of knowledge production with the author’s exclusion. In the context of “Taha ˉfut al-inklıˉz ʿala ˉ al-shuhra,” al-Shidyaˉq writes that if one were to “squeeze” the Arabists’ books like one would a wet rag, very little knowledge would come out of them. Moreover, al-Shidyaˉq relates that “titles resounding like bells” (jala ˉjil min al-alqa ˉb al-tanna ˉna) are hung on book covers, showing off the authors’ ˙ pedigree, honors, expertise, and affiliation with learned societies.88 Through their circulation, books resound like bells (jala ˉjil), generating a sensorium of sound and movement, reproducing the effects of a marketplace. The economy of Orientalist scholarship thus depends on marketing and (false) advertising those ties in food and product promotion with that of knowledge and culture, fiction and fantasy. al-Shidyaˉq mocks this vulgar marketing of knowledge that structurally excludes the Arab scholar and author. However, he warns that the danger of this exclusion is that it triggers a desire for inclusion on the part of the native, which could take shape as blind emulation. He relates in Kashf that when a foreigner meets the British – especially members of the upper class – this foreigner

On cooks and crooks  29 has to invent his own titles, achievements, and pedigree in order to fit in. This could be read as a sign of al-Shidyaˉq’s own ambivalence regarding the culture and institutions of knowledge in Europe; he critiques and parodies them yet desires their legitimacy and economic benefit. al-Shidyaˉq’s critique of Orientalism is tied to a model for critiquing power that unfolds both in Europe and in the Ottoman Empire, drawing on ʿa ˉda (custom) and extending beyond the encounter with Arabists in England. In al-Jawa ˉʾib, al-Shidyaˉq describes how it is customary to appoint Ottoman governors who do not speak the language (Arabic) of their provinces, and how what matters are these officials’ al-alqa ˉb al-fakhma wa-al-nuʿu ˉt al-dakhma (grandi˙ ose and magnificent titles).89 In the same vein, al-Shidyaˉq criticizes the taha ˉfut of Istanbul residents over certain goods, chastising their consumerist practice of “civilization” that entails owning “something made in France or Britain, a precious stone from India or Ceylon, Chinese pottery, Persian rugs, Moroccan leather and so on.” 90 Vying for rare items, education, and the European way of life is symptomatic of a taha ˉfut and an economy of taqlıˉd, both framed through the pursuit of fame and titles (shuhra wa alqa ˉb) both in Europe and in the Ottoman Empire, always in the name of civilization (tamaddun). The logic of exchange, the desire for modernity, and the mystification of civilization are joined together through a model of taqlıˉd, tarqıˉʿ, and taha ˉfut that simultaneously elucidates cultural production, commerce, and political ascendance. Thus, al-Shidyaˉq’s interplay of taqlıˉd and taha ˉfut becomes crucial to a critique of Orientalism in England but also at home, exposing the lure of a hollow tamaddun forged through the emulation of the West. Reading this model of critique comparatively alongside the Arab-Islamic tradition and philosophical polemics regarding the Islamic “discovery” of neo-Platonic philosophy in the classical age in what follows serves to frame al-Shidyaˉq’s contribution to nahda ˙ debates about the relation to tradition on the one hand, and borrowing from Europe on the other. Specifically, it allows us to gauge how specific intellectual traditions are deployed in the nahda to counter the discourse on blind borrow˙ ing from the West.

Taqlıˉd and Taha ˉ fut in the Arab-Islamic tradition The taqlıˉd of Arab-Islamic polemics involving philosophy and religion could be traced to al-Ghazaˉlıˉ’s Taha ˉfut al-fala ˉsifa (The Precipitance of the Philosophers, also translated as The Incoherence of the Philosophers)91 and Ibn Rushd’s Taha ˉfut al-taha ˉfut.92 al-Ghazaˉlıˉ’s polemic against Muslim philosophers such as al-Faraˉbıˉ and Ibn Sıˉnaˉ (al-mutafalsifa fıˉ al-isla ˉm, “the philosophizers in Islam”)93 emphasizes the incoherence of the philosophers’ theses, linking it to a tradition (taqlıˉd) that misappropriates the Greek epistemological model by seamlessly applying it to Islamic texts and beliefs. al-Ghazaˉlıˉ claims that Muslim philosophers, through their disagreements and misunderstandings, distorted the word of God by uncritically subjecting Islam to the Greek (more specifically, neo-Platonic) philosophical tradition. al-Ghazaˉlıˉ presents the philosophers’ theses regarding

30  Tarek El-Ariss the universe’s infinity, the eternity of souls, and the prime mover among others, and proceeds to disprove them one by one. He also argues that the relation between cause and effect is not necessary but contingent, as David Hume would later argue, identifying in this context ʿa ˉda (custom) as the philosophical framework for that which is contingent rather than necessary.94 Far from attempting to do away with Aristotelian causality as the basis of knowledge production, al-Ghazaˉlıˉ critiques instead its absolute nature in the philosophers’ work. While al-Ghazaˉlıˉ attacked the philosophers on a series of points using the logic that is at the basis of Aristotelian philosophy, Ibn Rushd used the same philosophical principle to reread Aristotle against his appropriation by the neo-Platonic taqlıˉd that includes Muslim philosophers as well. In this sense, Ibn Rushd’s Taha ˉfut is not so much a critique of al-Ghazaˉlıˉ – in fact, he agrees with his critique of Ibn Sıˉnaˉ’s understanding of the necessary cause – but of the distortion of philosophy, which he sets out to redress.95 In addition to his alKashf ʿan mana ˉhij al-adilla (Exposition of the Methods of Proof ), which examines the philosophical structure of argument, Ibn Rushd supplements this work with Taha ˉfut, in which he takes up al-Ghazaˉlıˉ’s polemic in order to produce a synthesis and a correct interpretation, amending the methodological model that led to misunderstanding and misreading. In Inspired Knowledge in Islamic Thought: Al-Ghaza ˉlıˉ’s Theory of Mystical Cognition and Its Avicennian Foundation, Alexander Treiger argues that “al-­ Ghazaˉlıˉ often focuses on showing that the philosophers’ teaching are unproven, rather than incorrect.” 96 Understood as a polemic, Taha ˉfut thus aims at “the validity of proofs mounted by the philosophers in support of their assertions.” 97 The polemic is thus methodological as it seeks to make room for revelation. Specifically, al-Ghazaˉlıˉ’s Taha ˉfut contests the elitism and arrogance of those who replaced religion with false beliefs (funu ˉn min al-zunu ˉn), which led them to be ˙ fooled by “ornamented illusions shining like a mirage.” 98 Specifically, al-Ghazaˉlıˉ claims that the philosophers’ arrogance, error, and misguidedness stem from their hearing the high-sounding names (sama ˉʿahum asa ˉmıˉ ha ˉʾila) of Socrates, Hippocrates, Plato, and Aristotle, lauded for the superiority of their intellects and systems of knowledge. Identifying a process of seduction and bewilderment, al-Ghazaˉlıˉ emphasizes the philosophers’ blind pursuit of that which appears as all-powerful, convincing, and true: ،‫) وإنما مصدر كفرهم سماعهم أسامي هائلة كسق راط وبق راط وأفالطن وأرسطاطاليس وأمثالهم‬٤ ‫وإطناب طوائف من متبعيهم وضاللهم في وصف عقولهم وحسن أصولهم ودقة علومهم الهندسية‬ ،‫ واستبدادهم لفرط الذكاء والفطنة باستخ راج تلك األمور الخفية‬،‫والمنطقية والطبيعية واأللهية‬ ‫وحكايتهم عنهم أنهم مع رزانة عقلهم وغ زارة فضلهم منكرون للش رائع والنحل وجاحدون لتفاصيل فة‬ .‫ ومعتقدون أنها نواميس مؤلفة وحيل مزخرفة‬،‫األديان والملل‬ ‫ تجملوا باعتقاد الكفر تحي زاً إلى غمار‬،‫) فلما قرع ذلك سمعهم ووافق ما حكى من عقائدهم طبعهم‬٥ ‫ واستنكاف ا ً من القناعة‬،‫ وترفع ا ً عن مساعدة الجماهير والدهماء‬،‫ وانخ راط ا ً في سلكهم‬،‫الفضالء بزعمهم‬ ً‫ وغفل ة‬،‫ ظن ا ً بأن إظهار التكايس في النزوع عن تقليد الحق بالشروع في تقليد الباطل جمال‬،‫بأديان اآلباء‬ .‫منهم عن أن االنتقال إلى تقليد عن تقليد خرق وخبال‬

On cooks and crooks  31 (4) The source of their unbelief is in their hearing high-sounding names such as “Socrates,” “Hippocrates,” “Plato,” “Aristotle,” and their likes and the exaggeration and misguidedness of groups of their followers in describing their minds; the excellence of their principles; the exactitude of their geometrical, logical, natural, and metaphysical sciences – and in [describing these as] being alone (by reason of excessive intelligence and acumen) [capable] of extracting these hidden things. [It is also in hearing] what [these followers] say about [their masters – namely,] that concurrent with the sobriety of their intellect and the abundance of their merit is their denial of revealed laws and religious confessions and their rejection of the details of religious and sectarian [teaching], believing them to be man-made laws and embellished tricks. (5) When this struck their hearing, that which was reported of [the philosophers’] beliefs finding agreement with their nature, they adorned themselves with the embracing of unbelief – siding with the throng of the virtuous, as they claim; affiliating with them; exalting themselves above aiding the masses and the commonality; and disdaining to be content with the religious beliefs of their forebears. [They have done this,] thinking that the show of cleverness in abandoning the [traditional] imitation of what is true by embarking on the imitation of the false is a beauteous thing, being unaware that moving from one [mode of] imitation to another is folly and confusedness.99 According to al-Ghazaˉlıˉ, the philosophers engage in blind borrowing from the Greeks in their approach to Islam, ignoring religious tradition (taqlıˉd) and beliefs. The philosophers have deviated from the imitation of truth (taqlıˉd al-haqq) ˙ to the hasty imitation and proliferation of falsehood (taqlıˉd al-ba ˉtil). al-Ghazaˉlıˉ ˙ thus exposes the Muslim philosophers’ taqlıˉd vis-à-vis one another and in relation to Greek philosophers. This emulation operates as a total enchantment, a spell cast on the philosophers from which they are unable to break free. According to al-Ghazaˉlıˉ, hearing the names of the Greek philosophers has mesmerized Muslim philosophers and put them in a trance. This spell causes them to act with tyranny (istibda ˉd) and ingratitude (juhu ˉd). Their relation to knowledge in ˙ this context is linked to a state of intoxication, which conditions arrogance and blindness. al-Ghazaˉlıˉ exposes their false beliefs (funu ˉn al-ʿaqa ˉʾid wa-l-a ˉra ˉʾ)100 by using the word fann as “meaning” but also funu ˉn as “absurd opinions.” This exposure is also tied to kashf, and specifically, kashf al-ʿawra ˉt (exposing lacks) of the philosophers’ opinions and doctrines (funu ˉn).101 As for his back and forth between taqlıˉd al-haqq and taqlıˉd al-dˉ alla, it is a framework that goes to ˙ ˙ the heart of the question of tradition (taqlıˉd but also taqa ˉlıˉd), imitation, and borrowing. Thus, al-Ghazaˉlıˉ not only calls attention to the incoherence of the philosophers’ theses but also exposes their methodological taha ˉfut as a form of knowledge production tied to arrogance, ingratitude, tyranny, blindness, haste, and false taqlıˉd.

32  Tarek El-Ariss The debate over philosophy and faith in the taha ˉfut polemics starting with al-Ghazaˉlıˉ continues to reverberate in the Arab-Islamic context. Viewed as “blind submission”102 by Orientalists and Islamic revivalists in the nineteenth century, taqlıˉd’s polysemy and critical potential as a framework for upholding and contesting intellectual authority fell by the wayside during the nahda. The ˙ reception of Western thought and culture has often been studied in terms of rejection and acceptance, resistance and borrowing in relation to European thought and culture. The only continuity imagined is that embedded in the Western tradition (taqlıˉd), which was linked to Greek heritage in the works of nahda thinkers. Muhsin al-Musawi writes: ˙ [T]he seeming nahdah espousal of an Abbasid Golden Age (750–978), ˙ with its widely proclaimed indebtedness to Greek philosophy and science, partially duplicates a comparable proclaimed European filiation with a ­Greco-Latin tradition [….]The presence of Greek philosophy and science in the basic structures of Abbasid knowledge was so well known and well established in the scholarship that advocates of modernity required no further proof to argue for a similar need in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For those modernity campaigners and moderate Islamic thinkers, the glories of the Abbasid past underscore a pressing need to make use of European knowledge. Stripped to its core, the rationale draws on the Abbasid era as a way of critiquing the recent past and thence invigorating the present.103 This is a key framework for nahda thought and critical practices, one which ˙ aligns Abbasid heritage with the Greek philosophical one. Reading taqlıˉd and kashf comparatively in al-Shidyaˉq’s work problematizes the continuity of an intellectual tradition that shapes nahda thought and critique at multiple levels. ˙ al-Shidyaˉq’s appropriation and recoding of kashf and taqlıˉd serve to critique ideology and epistemological production during the nahda. al-Shidyaˉq’s title, ˙ ˉrubba Kashf al-mukhabbaʾ ʿan funu ˉn U ˉ, and his deployment of such conceptual frameworks as funu ˉn, kashf, taqlıˉd, and taha ˉfut, thus could be examined in relation to an Arab-Islamic model of knowledge production and argumentation that are contested methodologically. It is likely that al-Shidyaˉq had read al-Ghazaˉlıˉ’s work or was privy to the intellectual debate in which he, Ibn Rushd, and others were engaged. The point is not to ascertain whether al-Shidyaˉq was applying concepts from al-Ghazaˉlıˉ or Ibn Rushd but rather to comparatively align alShidyaˉq’s work with the debates about taqlıˉd, taha ˉfut, and the reception of a contested intellectual system (neo-Platonic philosophy). Appropriating and recoding taqlıˉd to expose a model of Orientalist production in England and France, al-Shidyaˉq takes aim at Arabs and Ottomans as well, keen on imitating the West in the name of civilization. Taqlıˉd should thus be read in the relation between Arab thinkers and writers to the West as well as to their predecessors in the Arab-Islamic tradition. al-Shidyaˉq’s critique is thus of the nahda itself, at its very inception, as it sets out to embrace industrial ˙ modernity and European education, manners, attitudes, goods, and a taqlıˉd

On cooks and crooks  33 from which Arab scholars and authors and their intellectual tradition (taqlıˉd) are excluded. al-Shidyaˉq’s work points us to a critique of Orientalism and offers a trajectory for engaging the Arab-Islamic tradition in the nahda undertaken ˙ by the native scholar. The kind of Orientalism that is identified and critiqued by postcolonial theory, and by Edward Said’s work more specifically, is already a subject of polemical attack and methodological and ideological contestation in al-Shidyaˉq’s work. It is the encounter with Orientalism in the nineteenth century that produces the rethinking of one’s subject position in relation to tradition, both that of the West and in an Arab-Islamic context. Both al-Shidyaˉq and later Edward Said identify the production of the Orient epistemologically through an exclusionary taqlıˉd that governs European texts and scholarship and that is associated with the Orientalists’ taha ˉfut in their publications and pursuit of titles and honors. The critique of Orientalism and the upholding of the Arab scholar’s expertise and methodology amount to demystifying a system of knowledge, exposing its economy of circulation, epistemological violence, fantasmatic excess, political and cultural biases, and modes of exclusion. al-Shidyaˉq calls on his readers not ˉrubba to be too impressed with European modernity (funu ˉn U ˉ), for it could also emanate false lights. In his kashf of European customs, learning, and commerce, al-Shidyaˉq seeks to bring about a moment of awakening that counters the “awakening” generally associated with nahda through both discovery of Euro˙ pean knowledge and also of the Islamic tradition translated and recast (masbu ˉk) by Orientalists in French and British academies. Mocking the Orientalists and highlighting their biases, errors, and contradictions, al-Shidyaˉq’s kashf through parody, argumentation, and polemics grounds awakening in self-reflexivity and scrutiny.

Conclusion In this essay, I argued that al-Shidyaˉq’s engagement with the Orientalists in England and France needs to be viewed in relation to an Arab-Islamic critique that goes back to jida ˉl from al-Faraˉbıˉ and al-Ghazaˉlıˉ to Ibn Rushd. al-Shidyaˉq appropriates taqlıˉd and taha ˉfut for a cultural, intellectual, and political critique that takes the shape of a kashf, and, as I argue in a parallel project,104 fadh or ˙˙ affective critique, i.e. one that knocks over, makes a scene, destroys, and breaks down the causal fantasy of the production of knowledge. al-Shidyaˉq identifies the intertwinement of taha ˉfut and sabk as intellectual and commercial practices tied to flawed epistemological models of Orientalist knowledge. Linking it to taha ˉfut in the Arabic context, we are able to identify in al-Shidyaˉq a new economy of tell-all writing, a form of fadh that we see with Said as a framework that ˙˙ involves a reproduction and a critique of the errors and arguments of Orientalist authors and scholars. al-Shidyaˉq contests the methods and assumptions of the Orientalist paradigm by confronting the system and the economy through which its misrepresentations and mistranslations arise. Rather than accepting the authority of the European

34  Tarek El-Ariss system of knowledge through emulation and taqlıˉd, al-Shidyaˉq breaks it apart, exposing it to its own lacunas, arrogance, and exclusion of the other. In this vein, Edward Said as well confronts Arabists and Middle East experts throughout his writing and political activism. Said not only identifies the model by which the Orient and Orientalist knowledge are produced, but also performs kashf of the system of knowledge and of those who perpetuate it through publishing and posturing, and through academic disciplines and political projects including colonialism. In this context, al-Shidyaˉq needs to be viewed as the comparative and intertextual link between a recognizable model of polemical critique of systems of knowledge and the more contemporary work of Edward Said, who takes on the Orientalist tradition in no less polemical works (Orientalism, among others), and which could be traced to a long history in the Arab-Islamic tradition mediated through the nahda. To take on this tradition, with its established economy ˙ and journals and sites of power (academic and otherwise), requires an intervention and a fadˉh ı a (scandal) that both al-Shidyaˉq and Said perform. ˙ ˙

Notes 1 Shaykhu ˉ (1910), 65–66. 2 al-Tahtˉawıˉ (2002), 87–88. Takhlıˉs has been translated by Daniel Newman as An ˙ ˙in Paris: Al-Tahtˉ Imam awıˉ’s Visit to˙ France [1826–1831] (London: Saqi Books, 2004). ˙ ˙ Martin Bernal describes de Sacy, author of such works as Anthologie grammaticale arabe ou morceaux choisis de divers grammairiens et scholiastes arabes (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1829), as a “vehement anti-Egyptianist.” Bernal argues that while Champollion’s work represented the “culmination of Masonic Enlightenment,” the atmosphere in France when al-Tahtˉawıˉ arrived was one of anti-Egyptianism, with Champollion being marginalized˙ by˙ such Orientalists as de Sacy and others. See Bernal (1987), 253. Nevertheless, it is important to mention that al-Tahtˉawıˉ collaborated ˙ of recommenwith de Sacy during his stay. In fact, de Sacy wrote al-Tahtˉawıˉ a ˙letter ˙ ˙ dation attesting that his learning goals had been achieved. He also helped him correct and edit an early version of Takhlıˉs . 3 In Paris, al-Tahtˉawıˉ also met with ˙Orientalist scholars such as Armand-Pierre Caussin ˙ de Perceval ˙(1759–1835) and Joseph Reinaud (1795–1867). He includes his correspondence with them in Takhlıˉs . See al-Tahtˉawıˉ (2002), 202–208. ˙ ˙ ˙ (2012), 143–160. 4 For an excellent essay on this topic, see Fieni 5 See Ronen Ratz (1997) and Tarek El-Ariss (2013). 6 Susannah Heschel (2012), 100. 7 Karla Malette (2010), 13. 8 Hosam Aboul-Ela (2018). 9 Said (1979), 176. 10 al-Shidyaˉq (2013–2014). 11 This translation of the title doesn’t fully capture the nuances with which I engage later in this chapter. While all translations from Kashf are mine, translations from alSa ˉq are from Humphrey Davies’s bilingual edition. 12 Kashf means “exposing, unveiling, and examining” as well as “record, bill, and account.” Kashf thus implies “exposing ill intent” (kashf al-amr) but also “bill of health” (kashf tubbıˉ). See Ibn Manzu ˉ r (1955), 9:300–301. In the Sufi context, it means the ˙ ˉshafa, which leads to a higher kind of knowledge that lifting˙ of the veil as in muka collapses the relation between subject and object. See Gardet (2013). ı a as “appalling.” 13 al-Shidyaˉq (2014), vol. IV, 432–433. Davies translates fadˉh ˙ ˙

On cooks and crooks  35 14 al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 190. ˉsita (the Malta travelogue) was first published in 1836 and re 15 Ibid., 251–252. al-Wa ˙ published along with Kashf in 1863. These two books are often published together but are, in fact, two separate works. 16 On this subject, see al-Musawi (2015). 17 See al-ʿAzma and Traˉbulsıˉ (1995), 12–25. ˙ ulh puts˙ this date at 1826. See al-Sulh (1987), 31. 18 ʿImaˉd al-S ˙ ˙ ˙ (2008). ˙ 19 See Makdisi 20 al-Shidyaˉq completed the translation of the Old Testament in Cambridge in twenty months, after which he went to Paris because he wanted to learn French. The SPCK sent him the translation draft to edit while in Paris (al-Shidyaˉq [2004], 314). See Nadia Al-Bagdadi’s article on al-Shidyaˉq’s translation of the Bible: Al-Bagdadi (1999), 375–401. 21 For a discussion of al-Jawa ˉʾib’s history and publication, see al-Sulh (1987), 85–133. ˙ a˙ confessor, thereby 22 Lu ˉ wıˉs Shaykhu ˉ claims that before his death, al-Shidyaˉq requested implying that he died a Maronite (Shaykhu ˉ [1910], 79–81). An Austrian ship transported al-Shidyaˉq to Beirut where they prayed on his body at the Omari mosque, after which he was buried in Hazmiyeh (al-Sulh [1987], 127–128). ˙ 23 al-Shidyaˉq (2013), vol. I, 179. al-Shidyaˉq ˙ published Ja ˉsu ˉs ʿala ˉ al-Qa ˉmu ˉs (Spying on the Dictionary), a lexicon in which he draws on Fıˉru ˉ zabaˉdıˉ’s dictionary, Qa ˉmu ˉs al-muhˉt. ı Muhsin al-Musawi writes: ˙ The word qaˉmu ˉ s (dictionary) itself grows genealogically over time to connote enormous semantic, semiotic, and linguistic fields that encompass grammar, logic, and thought. It is no longer only a container of lexis, but rather a generator of identity and nationhood; hence the unabating circulation of the term through the unsevered link with the abundance of the ocean (as used in the title ‘Qaˉmu ˉ s’ and ‘Muhˉıt’) and the functional genealogical growth. Ahmad Faˉris al-Shidyaˉq’s ˙ ˉdıˉ’s dictionary) and enterprise˙ is not merely to ‘spy’ on the Qaˉmu ˉ s (i.e., Fıˉru ˉ zaba detect its omissions, but primarily to establish correct genealogies among the family or network of no less than thirty well-known lexicons. See al-Musawi (2014), 265–280 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

al-Sulh (1987), 115. ˙ 120. ˙ Ibid., al-Ikhtiya ˉra ˉt min kita ˉb al-sˉ alawa ˉt al-ʿa ˉma, al-Sulh (1987), 46. ˙ ˙ ˙ See Issa (2015). al-Sulh (1987), 53. ˙ 48. ˙ Ibid., See Winckler (2009). al-Sulh (1987), 189. ˙ ˙ ˉq (2014), vol. III, 301. al-Shidya al-Sulh (1987), 167. Yatahakkam also means “to mock,” “to taunt,” and “to gibe.” ˙ 119. ˙ Ibid., The diatribe was published with other texts on Maupertuis as Histoire du docteur Maupertuis et du natif de Saint-Malo in 1753. 36 Although al-Sulh mentions similarities between al-Shidyaˉq’s al-Sa ˉq on the one hand, ˙ ˙ Voltaire’s works, la Bruyère’s Caractères, and Rabelais’s Gargantua, and on the other he doesn’t engage in detail with these similarities (al-Sulh [1987], 162, 175). ˙ edited ˙ 37 al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 380. al-Shidyaˉq must be quoting the (excised) version from the 1760s because the original of 1735 was a salacious parody that didn’t appear as a whole till the end of the nineteenth century. 38 Describing England, al-Shidyaˉq quotes from Voltaire’s Lettres directly: “C’est ici le pays des sectes. Un Anglais, comme homme libre, va au Ciel par le chemin qui lui plaît” (“Cinquième lettre: sur la religion Anglicane,” 61) (al-Shidyaˉq [2004], 275).

36  Tarek El-Ariss 39 Ibid., 198. 40 Ibid. 41 Referencing Henri Pérès’s Premières manifestations, Nadia Al-Bagdadi argues that the intellectual struggles of al-Shidyaˉq … took form in the classical representation of a Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. The Querelle involved indissoluble questions of aesthetics, knowledge, and education alike, as well as politics, social life, and national mentalities. Al-Bagdadi (1999), 375–401, 380 4 2 Rana Issa refers to various works of kashf in the context of the Bible translation polemics in the nineteenth century: Mıˉkhaˉʾıˉl Mashaˉqqa’s Kashf al-awhaˉm ʿamman mazzaqathu al-sihaˉm [Exposing the Delusions on Those Who Were Torn by Arrows] and Yusuf Van Ham’s Kashf al-mughaˉlatˉat al-sufastiyya raddan ʿalaˉ maˉ ashharuh hadıˉt an ahad khadamat ˙ baʿd al-asfaˉr al-ilaˉhiyyah (Beirut: Jesuit ˙ ˉ Press, ˙ 1870); and ˙ al-ʾbrotstaˉnyah d idd ˙ Yusuf Van Ham’s˙ Kashf al-tala ˉʿub wa-al-tahrıˉf (fıˉ mass baʿd ˉayaˉt al-kitaˉb al-sharıˉf), ˙ ˙ ed. Yusuf Van Ham (Beirut: Jesuit Press, 1872). Issa (2015), 145 43 4 4 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60 61 62 63

6 4 65

See Al-Bagdadi (2015). See Issa (2015). See Rastegar (2007). al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 354–355. Ibid., 198–199. See Roper (1998), 233–248. al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 446. For a reference to the discrepancy between civilization and education in England, see the introduction in al-ʿAzma and Traˉbulsıˉ (1995), 39. Also see al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 218. ˙ al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 386. ˙ al-Shidyaˉq (2014), vol. IV, 282–284. al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 290. Ibid., 189. Ibid., 190. Mernissi (2001), 26. Mernissi’s identification of this fantasy has been discussed in key works on the Oriental harem in the European imaginary, namely Alain Grosrichard’s Structure du sérail: La fiction du despotisme asiatique dans l’Occident classique (Paris: Seuil, 1979). al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 190. al-Shidyaˉq (2014), vol. IV, 161. This is a chronological conjecture as there is no mention of the Sultan’s name in the text. The reign of Abdülmecid I coincides with the years al-Shidyaˉq was in England. al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 190–191. In Dictionnaire philosophique, Voltaire writes: “Sale qui vécut vingt-cinq ans parmi les Arabes” (“Alcoran,” Section 1, 46) and “M. Sale avait demeuré longtemps en Arabie pour nous donner une traduction fidèle de l’Alcoran” (“Ange,” Section 1, 11). al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 191. Nadia Al-Bagdadi elaborates on the relation among al-Shidyaˉq, Quatremère, and de Sacy, arguing that al-Shidyaˉq saw in nineteenth-century philology a way to preserve Arabic philology and to separate it from the exegetical tradition. See Al-Bagdadi (2015). al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 191–192. The unnamed Austrian scholar in question could be Aloys Sprenger. al-Shidyaˉq argues that for the British, “education consists in knowing Greek and Latin and their literatures, in addition to math, philosophy, and history” (Ibid., 253).

On cooks and crooks  37 66 al-Sulh situates al-Shidyaˉq and Lee’s disagreement over the translation of the Old ˙ ˙ Testament from Hebrew and the New Testament from Greek and Syriac in relation to classical Arabic theories of translation, one promoting word for word equivalence (Yu ˉ hannaˉ Ibn al-Batrıˉq, for instance) and the other translating the meaning of the ˙ sentence (Ibn Ishˉaq, ˙for instance) (al-Sulh [1987], 138). While Lee wanted a verbatim ˙ ˙ ˙ translation, al-Shidya ˉq wanted the meaning as a whole, drawing on the classical lexicons to deploy Arabic as a language of translation and learning rather than yielding to the philological tyranny of Hebrew and Syriac that demanded a form of linguistic correspondence that the meaning could not accommodate. 67 al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 195. 68 Ibid., 196. 69 This is an argument about fus hˉ a and ʿa ˉmmiyya in part, and why ʿa ˉmmiyya and mod˙ ˙ continue to be excluded from Orientalist curricula. ern Arabic culture and literature 70 This echoes in part his failed attempt to secure a position in England. It would seem that al-Shidyaˉq tried to acquire a job at Oxford rather than Cambridge, since the latter had, according to al-Shidyaˉq, good Arabists (Preston, Lee, etc.). However, this is not proven (al-Sulh [1987], 65). ˙ 196–198. ˙ 71 al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 72 al-Shidyaˉq quotes Voltaire’s Essai sur les mœurs: Il n’y avait point d’horloge sonnante dans les villes de son empire, et il n’y en eut que vers le treizième siècle. De là vient l’ancienne coutume qui se conserve encore en Allemagne, en Flandre, en Angleterre, d’entretenir des hommes qui avertissent de l’heure pendant la nuit. Le présent que le calife Aaron-al-Raschild fit à Charlemagne d’une horloge sonnante, fut regardé comme une merveille. A l’égard des sciences de l’esprit, de la saine philosophie, de la physique, de l’astronomie, des principes de la médecine, comment auraient-elles pu être connues? elles ne viennent que de naître parmi nous (Voltaire [1756], 198). See al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 317–318 73 al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 198. Here, al-Shidyaˉq is responding directly to the Russian Orientalist working in France, Alexandre Chodzko (d. 1891), to whose approach and mistakes he devotes an entire section in al-Sa ˉq’s appendix. In the opening passage of a book on Persian grammar [Grammaire persane, ou principes de l’iranien moderne] that he wrote in 1853, Alexandre Chodzko states, ‘The countries of Europe have long been possessed of everything needed for the study of oriental languages, as they are of libraries and schools and scholars well-qualified to direct them. With regard to the literature of the languages of Asia and their associated philosophy and history, the professors of the Persians, the teachers of the Arabs, and the Brahmans of India now have much to learn from our professors.’ I declare this claim to be lies, chicanery, mendacity, fakery, falsehood … al-Shidyaˉq (2014), vol. IV, 429 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

al-Sulh (1987), 129–130. ˙ (2009), ˙ Sacks 251–286, 254. al-Shidyaˉq (2014), vol. IV, 449–481. al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 188. Wensinck (1932), 135–136. See Calder (2013). Ibn Manzu ˉ r (1955), vol. III, 366–367. ˙ negative connotation, taqlıˉd generally means submitting to the authority Despite its of the other. See Calder (2013). 82 al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 238. 83 Ibid., 234.

38  Tarek El-Ariss 84 al-Shidyaˉq was the first to translate “socialism” into Arabic as al-tarıˉqa ˙ al-­ishtira ˉkiyya. See the introduction of al-ʿAzma and Traˉbulsıˉ (1995), 30. ˙ ˙ 85 al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 251–252. 86 al-Shidyaˉq (2014), vol. IV, 430. 87 Ibid., 431. 88 al-Shidyaˉq (2004), 190. 89 al-Sulh (1987), 120–122. ˙ ˙ from al-Jawa ˉʾib in al-ʿAzma and Traˉbulsıˉ (1995), 267. 90 Selection ˙ ˙ 91 See al-Ghazaˉlıˉ (2000). 92 See Ibn Rushd (1964). 93 al-Ghazaˉlıˉ (2000), 9. 94 See the introduction by Jamıˉl Salıˉbaˉ and Kamaˉl ʿAyyaˉd to al-Ghazaˉlıˉ (1967), 16. ˙ 95 See Arnaldez (2013). 96 Treiger (2011), 84. 97 Ibid., 94. 98 al-Ghazaˉlıˉ (2000), 2. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid., 6. 101 Ibid. 102 See Calder (2013). 103 al-Musawi (2014), 4. 104 See Tarek El-Ariss (2018).

2 An eastern scholar’s engagement with the European study of the east Amin al-Madani and the Sixth Oriental Congress, Leiden, 1883 Kathryn A. Schwartz Introduction In the summer of 1883, one year after the British occupation of Ottoman Egypt began, Amin ibn Hasan al-Halawani al-Madani (d. 1898) traveled from Cairo to the Kingdom of the Netherlands. He was a man of many cities, vocations, and learned interests who decided to go to Amsterdam to sell his collection of 664 manuscripts there at the Universal Exposition. Once al-Madani arrived in Amsterdam, his collection received little attention from buyers. That is until representatives of the famous Leiden publishing firm, Brill, learned of his presence and agreed to purchase his books in order to resell them to European and North American collectors. Through this transaction, al-Madani directly influenced the base from which western studies of the east would be undertaken. And perhaps more importantly to him, he accomplished his purpose in traveling to Amsterdam. Al-Madani also got an invitation to attend the Sixth Oriental Congress in Leiden, a triennial academic conference that helped formalize orientalism into a concerted scholarly discipline. He recorded the details of his experience at the Congress in a letter, which was, in turn, published twice that very same year: once in the original Arabic for its intended audience, the Egyptian readers of the Cairene newspaper al-Burhan (The Proof),1 and once in the Dutch translation of the orientalist Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857–1936), who assisted Brill’s production of it as a souvenir for the orientalists who had befriended al-Madani in Leiden.2 The academic orientalism that al-Madani participated in required collaboration and exchange between easterners and westerners. Yet, the role that easterners played in shaping this orientalism has been little studied.3 Eastern scholars helped western scholars to read texts, interpret them, and even acquire them. To highlight the extent to which orientalism was predicated upon this interconnectivity, and the efforts of easterners in particular, this article takes al-Madani as its focus. My reliance upon al-Madani as my protagonist is a strategic choice, for through him I am challenging the extent to which orientalism has tended to be perceived one-sidedly as the domain of western scholars. Against standard depictions of

40  Kathryn A. Schwartz easterners as mere subjects of orientalism or students of its teachings, this article demonstrates instead that easterners participated actively and crucially in the production of western scholarship. Al-Madani influenced the substance of orientalism in the west, as well as its material toll in the east. His descriptive reports on the congress are therefore important for offering an easterner’s perspective on orientalism, which he notably presented as an extension of Islamicate scholarship. To the extent that he detected differences between the work of European and eastern scholars, these arose from the benefits that Europeans received in the form of institutional support and state backing. By examining al-Madani as a partner in the study of the east from Europe, I am also continuing in the tradition of recent work that has grounded orientalism in the microhistories of individuals, the realm of practice, and the history of particular ideas.4 One effect of these approaches has been to historicize the ways in which orientalism has been taken up rather than to strive to define it, and throughout this article, I engage with the topic in such a manner. Hence to the extent that I invoke the term “orientalism,” I do so according to al-Madani: as a discipline and form of study manifesting itself through performative practice. That is to say, I do not use the word pejoratively to conjure a perspective or an approach that reinforced westerners’ ideas about civilization, knowledge, and power.5 Similarly, I use the terms “easterners” and “Europeans” in accordance with al-Madani’s portrayal of the world. Notably, al-Madani himself did not unpack these categories when he made reference to them in his reports on the congress. He instead depicted scholarship as a singular pursuit which cohered the world over. Insofar as he referred to the west, he did so when he invoked the distinctiveness of westerners by referring to them through their nationalities or more general terms such as Europeans (al-urubbˉawiyyuˉn) and Franks (al-ifranj). And with regard to orientalism, al-Madani neither transliterated the term into Arabic, nor did he establish an Arabic word for what would later become known as al-istishrˉaq. His equation of orientalism with Islamicate learning nevertheless required him to adapt the western understanding of orientalism. For al-Madani’s orient concerned the Islamicate east (al-sharq), and not the expansive east of the orientalists’ orient. In what follows, I describe al-Madani’s life before his trip to the Netherlands in order to situate him as a scholar in his own right. I then recount what is known of his time as a manuscript seller in Amsterdam and Leiden, before delving into his first-person account of orientalism in practice at the Sixth Oriental Congress. To demonstrate that al-Madani worked in parallel with orientalists in the years after the congress, I summarize the scholarly endeavors that he undertook until his death in 1889. I conclude by considering what al-Madani made of orientalism, and why his observations matter.

Al-Madani as a scholar in search of knowledge As al-Madani’s name attests, he was born in the holy Islamic city of Medina.6 He belonged to an elite family and his father served the amir of Mecca ʿAbdullah

Amin al-Madani and the Sixth Oriental Congress  41 ibn ʿAun (d. 1877).7 It is not known when al-Madani was born; however, appearances suggest that this was sometime between the third and fifth decades of the nineteenth century. Khayr al-Din al-Zirikli’s (1893–1976) entry for him in the biographical dictionary al-Aʿlam notes that he was “a distinguished traveler [rahhˉalatun fˉadilun]” who worked in the science of astronomy.8 He was also a ˙˙ ˙ teacher at the mosque of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina, where he taught on Muhammad’s life, the study of the Arabic language, and Islamic law.9 AlMadani did this in both speech and in writing, for during his time in Medina, he composed at least one tract in 1875/1876 concerning the correctness of those itinerants who, moving between the Ottoman Empire and South Asia, claimed to sell the “white and black hairs” of the Prophet.10 This tract may have been a fatwa, or nonbinding Islamic legal ruling which was composed in response to questions of believers around points of faith. In it, al-Madani doubted the origins of these hairs, argued that if they were indeed real they should be buried, and unequivocally condemned the peddlers as charlatans. He also noted that for this judgment, he did not wish to be considered a Wahhabi, or a member of the extreme orthodox Sunni sect that had originated in the Najd during the eighteenth century and spread throughout the Hejaz.11

Figure 2.1  A min al-Madani, 1883.12

42  Kathryn A. Schwartz Yet, al-Madani’s objection to the profiteers had to do with the spurious nature of their wares and not with itinerant salespeople generally. For he himself made money as a peripatetic trader. These journeys began from Medina in 1875 after al-Madani was accused of denying the legitimacy of Muhammad’s successors.13 Through them, he came to belong to the centuries’ old Islamic tradition of traveling in search of knowledge, wherein a scholar would fund himself to study from place to place in pursuit of greater learning. Al-Madani dealt in books toward this end to reach the Malabar Coast, Malaysia, Singapore, and Java, which then formed parts of British India and Dutch Indonesia.14 Several Indonesian students traveled to Cairo during the 1860s and early 1870s to study at Al-Azhar Mosque, the preeminent institution for Islamic learning in the world.15 And although al-Madani had first studied at al-Azhar in 1857, he again decided to venture there from Southeast Asia sometime during the late 1870s.16 From Cairo, al-Madani’s side trade in books became well-known to locals.17 Through this work, he likely detected western travelers’ deepening interest in acquiring eastern manuscripts as souvenirs and as sources for better understanding the east. He also probably learned about the Universal Colonial and Export Exposition, Internationale Koloniale en Uitvoerhandel Tentoonstelling, which was to be held in Amsterdam from 1 May to 31 October of 1883. As of the February before the start of the Universal Exposition, al-Madani had no intention of traveling to Amsterdam. Or at least this is what was reported by the wealthy Swedish orientalist, Carlo Landberg (1848–1924), who knew alMadani from Cairo and who helped to connect his manuscripts to the European market over the 1880s and 1890s as he traveled the Middle East studying contemporary Arabic dialects. But sometime thereafter, Landberg notes, al-Madani changed his mind. For he lost his money after entering into an investment that collapsed at the hands of “a dishonest Egyptian,” and he needed cash to pay off his other debts.18 He therefore made the rather bold decision to attend the Universal Exposition. And perhaps even more boldly, he decided to take more than six hundred manuscripts along with him.19 The promise of a tidy profit at the hands of westerner collectors surely called to him.20 But given al-Madani’s background, it is likely that intellectual curiosity and the lure of travel had appealed to him too.

Trading in manuscripts from the Netherlands Aside from al-Madani’s demonstrable confidence that he would find buyers for his books in Amsterdam, there is no indication that he would have considered this westward trip to be different from his other journeys. For he had already traveled by himself, and with his own funding, beyond the Muslim world to places where he did not speak the native language. His voyage to the Netherlands therefore continued in the vein of his previous searches for learning and the funds to sustain himself. I have found no details as to how al-Madani made his way to Amsterdam, and whether Landberg facilitated this mission.21 However, expeditiousness and

Amin al-Madani and the Sixth Oriental Congress  43 the extent of al-Madani’s luggage lead me to believe that this was primarily by steamship. If so, this would have been an expensive journey. The Baedeker travel guide to Egypt from 1885 lists a second-class ticket from Alexandria to Marseille as taking over six days and costing 250 francs, including 85–135 pounds of luggage, but not the 6.5 franc steward fee.22 As with previous Universal Expositions, the Amsterdam exposition was designed to exhibit western power, to bring the most quotidian and fantastic elements of the different nations of the world to one place, and to entertain the masses. Displays tended to be organized according to states, and also according to the types of materials which were dispatched to represent them. A visitor to the exposition in Amsterdam could encounter western innovations like the telephone, and quotidian objects from distant colonies such as dwellings and kitchen utensils.23 Human zoos, too, formed part of this spectacle, with native people from Suriname on display.24 Al-Madani chose willingly to become a part of the pageantry of the exposition by opening a stall in the Egyptian Department. His initiative was noteworthy on two accounts. First, his stall was the only one in the Egyptian Department to be established through the efforts of an individual rather than the state. Second, it was also the only stall at the entire exposition to deal in antiquarian books.25 These departures from the norm evince that al-Madani’s engagement with westerners was not happenstance, but rather, intentional. Yet, al-Madani’s unconventional choices did not capture the attention of visitors to the exposition during the first weeks of his trip. For according to Hurgronje, the only person to take an interest in him and his collection was the perfume seller named Mustafa who worked just next to him.26 Al-Madani kept to his stall each day, and sat like a statue among his books.27 He even maintained his position as he fasted over the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which coincided with July in the Gregorian calendar that year. But after these rather dreary beginnings, al-Madani experienced a burst of good fortune. For the simultaneous convening of the Sixth Orientalist Congress helped to lift him from his anonymity by gathering together orientalists, his target clientele, in the Netherlands. He somehow managed to cross paths with Landberg at the exposition. Then, Landberg introduced al-Madani to representatives from the famous Leiden publishing firm, Brill, which, in turn, determined to purchase his entire collection.28

Sourcing orientalism Before I turn to the Sixth Oriental Congress, allow me to pause upon the significance for orientalism of the realization of al-Madani’s goal in traveling to the Netherlands. At the level of exchange, his sale of books evinces that orientalism reflected the coming together of eastern and western scholars both. Al-Madani had himself gathered the six hundred and sixty-four titles which he brought to Amsterdam. These texts represented his own interests in, and access to, particular types of knowledge and their material embodiments. Hence, they

44  Kathryn A. Schwartz included works of poetry, history, religion, law, and culture from Yemen, the Hejaz, Egypt, and Damascus.29 Yet because al-Madani intended to sell these texts abroad, they also represented what he believed would appeal to western scholars of the east. It is therefore revealing of al-Madani and orientalists both that their contents ranged from rarities such as a manuscript about the legal consequences of insulting the Prophet by the controversial Mamluk Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328), who handwrote his official approval (ija ˉza) of the copy, to a holograph collection of treatises by the founder of Wahhabism, Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab (1703–1792), to a book of collected works by the Abbasid poet Abu Nuwas (756–815), to an assortment of chapters from a finely copied Qurʾan dating to around 1300.30 Indeed, al-Madani apparently tried to make the most out of selling his collection to orientalists by exaggerating the provenances of some of his texts, and by breaking single texts up into numerous volumes which he then bound separately.31 Yet more than just exemplifying the coproduced nature of orientalism, alMadani’s manuscript trade impacted the substance of it. This is because he was active during a period when western libraries sought to expand their collections of eastern texts in order to institutionalize orientalist scholarship. Brill purchased al-Madani’s books to capitalize upon this development, and it sold them to Leiden University that very same year.32 Leiden University’s acquisition of alMadani’s collection, in turn, helped to open up the study of Arabia from Europe by enabling important scholars like Hurgronje, who both studied and taught there from the 1870s to the 1930s, to lean upon these books for their research. Al-Madani shaped the work of orientalists beyond just Leiden. For he used his connection to Brill to make subsequent sales of manuscripts to the firm. The texts which he sourced thus came to be held by some of the most significant centers for orientalist scholarship in the world. Via Brill, books amassed by alMadani reached the Royal Library, now Staatsbibliothek, in Berlin in 1884, and they entered the collections of Princeton University in 1900 and 1904 through the gift of the Olympic athlete, archaeological hobbyist, and investment banker Robert Garrett (1875–1961).33 And this does not even account for the influence that al-Madani wielded from Cairo over the collections of his wider circle of clients and associates, like Landberg, who in 1900 sold eight hundred and ­t hirty-five of his manuscripts to Yale University.34 But a more immediate connection between al-Madani and orientalism took root on account of his initial transaction with Brill. For Brill secured an invitation for al-Madani to attend the Sixth Oriental Congress.

The Sixth Oriental Congress and its featuring in al-Burhan Between 10 and 15 September of 1883, the Sixth Oriental Congress convened in Leiden. This sixth congress followed in the tradition of bringing orientalists together every three years that first began from Paris in 1868. After that initial gathering, the congresses had been held in London, Saint Petersburg, Florence,

Amin al-Madani and the Sixth Oriental Congress  45 and Berlin. And by the time of the Leiden congress, the meetings had formed something of a pattern, which, in turn, helped to substantiate orientalism into a coordinated field of study. For states helped to host the congresses from important European capitals, affirming that orientalism had an inherent value and significance. And scholars’ ritual of reuniting regularly fostered the personal introductions, presentations of findings, and debates that together lifted orientalism from the work of discrete individuals into an academic field with an agenda, and even a loose taxonomy of the east consisting of Arabic, Semitic, Aryan, African (Egyptian), Far Eastern, and Malaysian and Polynesian sections.35 The fashioning of orientalism into an entity that could be lived in, and conceived of, in concert is attested to through the sizable body of literature that the members of the congresses produced about their proceedings.36 So far as I am aware, these publications never ventured a definition for “the orient.” Nor did they center it within any particular discipline, theme, or guiding question. Instead, the contents of these publications presented orientalism as a line of inquiry bounded geographically and temporally between western North Africa and East Asia, and antiquity and the contemporary.37 The source base for this inquiry lays in the physicality of what could be found to be authentic from the east: its artifacts, archaeology, texts, and even its inhabitants. Unlike the Universal Exposition, which had been intended for the general public, the Sixth Oriental Congress was meant to bring together scholars to advance learning. Yet, it too tapped into the theme of western power insofar as orientalist scholarship benefited from European states’ acquisitions of artifacts, commissioning of projects, and funding of expeditions. Indeed, even though the orientalists ran the congresses, they organized themselves according to the nations from which they hailed. It is into this framework for the study of the east that al-Madani entered when he joined the congress as a guest without state backing. Hurgronje reported that al-Madani was the sole Arab member in attendance; however by this, he probably meant that al-Madani was the sole Arab Muslim.38 The Ottoman minister of commerce and agriculture was also billed as being present, for example, as was the Arab Greek Catholic literary scholar from Mount Lebanon Ibrahim al-Yaziji (1847–1906).39 Al-Madani recorded his account of the Sixth Oriental Congress in a letter that he composed with a public readership in mind.40 It is likely that he wrote this letter in the Netherlands, and that he then passed it along to Landberg for al-Burhan received it from him.41 Al-Burhan was a newspaper (jarıˉda) that ran first from Alexandria between the summers of 1881 and 1882, and then from Cairo between February and November of 1883.42 From Cairo, it was published on Mondays and Thursdays under the banner of a “political, learned, educational, industrial, trade, and agricultural paper.”43 Al-Madani’s piece tapped into many of these themes. And al-Burhan published it over five installments that spanned from Monday, 22 October to Monday, 5 November 1883. Appearances would suggest that the editors of al-Burhan did not treat this firsthand account of orientalism any differently than their other columns.

46  Kathryn A. Schwartz They ran it within the second and third pages of their four-page paper. However, they noted that had it not been for the restricted size of their paper, they would have wished to relate the report on the congress at once in full. This means that the readers of al-Madani’s report found it sandwiched between features. The page from which the serialization first began, for example, contained recent telegraphs about British interests in Madagascar, Egyptian products held in quarantine in France, earthquakes in Gibraltar, and a revolt in Damascus against Ottoman employees there. Then followed announcements from Egypt’s Ministry of General Education alerting people to the fact that the state’s elementary school would at last open after some delay, so students should plan to start attending it soon, and also word of efforts to stop cholera from impacting the school schedule in the Upper Egyptian town of Asyut.44 Al-Madani’s account would also blend news with information about states in a way that projected a contemporaneity with, and mutual concern between, the east and west. But alMadani set an entirely more whimsical tone, as will be demonstrated later. Two banners announced the column under which al-Madani’s letter first appeared. Al-Burhan likely devised the principal banner, which read: “The Congress [jamʿiyya] of the Arabic Language in Europe.” Noticeably, this banner made no reference to the east at large, the concept of orientalism, or to the broader concerns of the congress beyond just Arabic. This branding of the Sixth Oriental Congress indicates that the concepts of the orient and of orientalism, as they were then being deployed in the west, were unfamiliar to al-Burhan’s readers. Moreover, it suggests that while these readers may have wished to read about European studies of their own language, it was less likely that they would have turned to the newspaper to learn about western studies of the languages of other easterners. The second banner was more accurate. Billed as “The Reports [akhba ˉr] on the Learned Congress in the City of Leiden,” it appears to have been composed by al-Madani as the title for his letter.45 And indeed, his piece was neither a rumination upon, nor a critique of, what he had seen at the congress. It was instead a recounting of his observations with occasional remarks about their broader significance. In what follows, I summarize the contents of al-Madani’s letters by closely following the wording that he deployed. I do this without reference to the literature that the orientalists themselves produced about their congress. For my aim is not to uncover what did, or did not, occur there. Rather, I seek to convey how al-Madani experienced the congress, how he related it to his Egyptian audience, and what this tells us about how one eastern scholar of the east perceived the contemporary western approach to its study.

Orientalism at the congress, from al-Madani’s perspective Al-Madani’s tone was upbeat and full of awe throughout his report. He consistently referred to the orientalists as scholars (ʿulama ˉʾ), suggesting through his choice of terminology that he found the learning on display at the Sixth Oriental Congress to be coherent with learning in the Islamicate context where he too

Amin al-Madani and the Sixth Oriental Congress  47 counted as a scholar. Yet, the forum that he entered was an unfamiliar one to him and his readers. He therefore began his account with a brief history of the congress, which he noted that the French Emperor Napoleon III (r. 1852–1870) had begun. This tradition caused all the scholars of the inhabited world to gather in one place and to get to know one another, and the very notion of a recurrent academic meeting amazed al-Madani. He likened the congresses to both the annual pre-Islamic festival of Suq Ukadh,46 and an official holiday for celebrating scholars (yawm ʿıˉd al-ʿulama ˉʾ).47 He explained that the goal of them was to plant the seeds of the latest trends (al-mu ˉda) among groups (al-tawa ˉʾif ) of ˙ scholars from across the globe, east and west (al-gharb), whatever their religions and creeds.48 He emphasized that the congresses allowed countries to display their achievements in learning, scholars to evaluate the merits of one another’s work, and for these discoveries to be exposed regardless of other beliefs due to freedom of thought (jamıˉʿ al-afka ˉri fıˉha hurratun). The congresses, he de˙ clared, ultimately caused marvels to be renewed (ustuhdithat al-ʿaja ˉʾibu), won˙ ders to be invented (ukhturiʿat al-ghara ˉʾibu), and printings to be made of books that had been known to him only in name.49 The staging of the congresses also departed from al-Madani’s sense of the norm. He noted that the congress in Leiden was arranged by its president, scribe (ka ˉtib), and members. These parties reached out to those who had attended the previous congresses, and also to whomever they reckoned would agree to participate in their meeting. Everyone who replied in the affirmative was charged six florins in the name of the congress, no matter how famous they were for their writings. This fee was sent to the person in charge of monitoring the finances for the Sixth Oriental Congress. Through it, the scholars would become members of the congress and they would also gain the right to attend its sessions and deliver presentations and papers. Newspapers and journals also advertised word of the congress. With these arrangements in place, people packed into the hotels of Leiden when the start date of the congress approached. Over three hundred scholars came to Holland (dawlat hawlanda) from as far as the lands of China, India, and Russia. These scholars did not speak of anything that might offend religion or belief. Their sessions were held in French, German, and English. And on the eve of the first day of meetings, the organizers published a pamphlet for the participants to announce that the congress would commence the next morning between the hours of nine and eleven from one grand meeting (nadwa, qahwa).50

Al-Madani’s wonder at that first meeting flowed from points big and small Everyone gathered together there, he told his readers. They introduced themselves, described who they were, and shook hands. This process permitted alMadani to observe a superfluous western custom, for one of the scholars slipped him his business card (waraqa), causing him to reciprocate, even though he had already learned the name of this man from the other scholars. Because al-Madani

48  Kathryn A. Schwartz communicated in Arabic, he was impressed when approximately twenty of the scholars could speak the language well. Some even knew Urdu (hindiyya), Farsi, and Turkish, such that there was no need for conversations in these languages to be held in translation. The scholars at the congress had a strong penchant for the Arabs and their compositions, he noted, which had drawn their hearts toward them (istijla ˉb qulu ˉbihimʾilayhim). Indeed, so much so that he did not know of any Europeans who were better in terms of their learning, humanity, morality, and inclination toward the eastern sciences (al-ʿulu ˉm al-sharqiyya). These upstanding Europeans stood in contrast to the ones who inhabited the east (al-sharq). For he explained that the good Europeans had not needed to leave their countries, unlike those whom he and his readers knew from Cairo as mere “traders, craftspeople, or fakers who were like robbers in their double-crossing, trickery, and delusional claims which they frequently express by protest.”51 He also noted that the best thing about the Europeans in Europe was the equal way (al-tasa ˉwıˉ) in which people of various standings and distinctions were free to communicate with one another.52 The combination of al-Madani’s observations on European customs, his attention to specific details about the event, and his interest in certain ideas guided his account. After an announcement was made which informed the scholars that their lunch would eventually be held in Leiden’s parliament, a bell rang to indicate that people should stop talking. They then took their seats for the morning session in a great space that was approximately forty meters long and twelve meters wide. The speaker of the congress set the agenda, and then the Minister of the Interior of Holland took to the podium to thank everyone for accepting the Dutch invitation to attend the congress and to testify to the value of the occasion. When he finished speaking, al-Madani explained to his readers, the people showed their approval by clapping their hands. Then, the president of the congress, the Dutch orientalist Michael Jan de Goeje (1836–1909), rose to speak about the history of Leiden University, and how its founding had been initiated at the behest of the residents of the city. He also spoke of the manuscript library of the Dutch emissary to the Ottoman Empire, Levinus Warner (d. 1665), which contained the works of the historian al-Maqrizi (d. 1442) and the literary scholar Ibn al-Jawaliki (d. 1134). Warner had donated his books to the university for public benefit. And al-Madani noted that it was right for Holland to be proud of Warner for this gift, and also that his library was open day and night.53 Perhaps on account of al-Madani’s own scholarly and vocational interest in books, he dwelt on what de Goeje had to say about the university library and the broader significance of texts for society. He reported that de Goeje took care to note that the university library lent its books to other libraries in Europe, and to the members of the congress. De Goeje also boasted that this library possessed a complete copy of a unique manuscript, and that it was the source for most of the Arabic books printed from Europe. These printings were more correct than those from the east. Finally, al-Madani reported that de Goeje claimed that Holland was more generous than England in lending out its books to readers. It was the custom of European libraries to lock up books in storerooms and to deny

Amin al-Madani and the Sixth Oriental Congress  49 readers the ability to derive benefit from them. But nations could not advance without transmitting their knowledge, and al-Madani related that “the easterners [al-sharqiyyıˉn] only fell behind recently after having been depleted of their books such that losing them from their hands brought about the punishment of (knowledge) being hidden [kitma ˉn] (from them).”54 Despite the bleak picture that European collecting painted for the east, it presented the orientalists with an opportunity to take pride in serving their nation (watan) and edifying the public. Al-Madani noted that after de Goeje’s remarks, ˙ for example, a French scholar spoke up in support of his passion (shaghaf ) for buying an abundant amount of Chinese and Indian antiquities (al-antıˉka ˉt) in order to erect a great space in Lyon to house them and two schools for studying these languages. He said that he did this for his country and its people.55 Al-Madani then related that this prompted another French scholar to tell of how he had gathered an Arabic library for his country and nation, some of which he displayed to the congress before reciting the well-known Arabic poetic verse: “These are our artefacts (a ˉtha ˉruna ˉ) which point to us / so those after us will look to the[se] artefacts.” Al-Madani also noted that when several scholars got up to present gifts of their works to the congress, or something else of consequence, they made speeches in which they thanked their governments.56 Al-Madani advanced a rough definition and structure for the orient when he next informed his readers of the agenda of the congress. He observed that the scholars split up into groups according to their areas of expertise after the first morning session had brought everyone together. By way of example, he explained that there was an Indian language group under the leadership of one of those who knew about it, which got its own hall in order to discuss whatever related to this language. So too went the groups for the Chinese language, Egyptian antiquities and hieroglyphics, and the Arabic sciences (al-ʿulu ˉm al-ʿarabiyya). Al-Madani joined this last group. He therefore informed his readers that he would not relate news of anything beyond what happened in the Arabic sciences group because he did not know about the matters of the others. Al-Madani’s modest remark on how the congress worked and how he chose to spend his time there sheds light on what he perceived orientalism to be, and how he positioned himself in relation to it. He understood that the congresses took the east as one great spatial and chronological whole, which was then divided into separate topics that tended to break according to place. Yet, he does not appear to have found this taxonomy of the east natural, for he managed to record for his readers only four of its six branches, and under linguistic rather than geographical terms at that, as he attempted to explain how it worked. The group which he chose to attend pertained to his own area of expertise, indicating that he opted for the one that best reflected his scholarly base of knowledge. Through this choice, al-Madani transmitted to the readers of al-Burhan a novel understanding of the west, a novel conception of the east, and a novel classification of what he referred to as the Arabic sciences. For the west now appeared to be epistemologically tied to the orient. The east was stretched to refer to a wider concept of the orient. And the Arabic sciences were extended to

50  Kathryn A. Schwartz pertain to any group of non-Southeast and East Asian people for whom written traces were discovered such as the tribe of Aad, the civilization of Thamud, and the Himyarite Kingdom. They were also extended linguistically to include Babylonian, Farsi, and Turkish.57 Al-Madani elaborated on what counted as the Arabic sciences within the congress through his reports of its sessions over the following four days. The Arabic sciences attracted about sixty scholars, of whom all were Christians save for twelve Jews and one Muslim. Ignác Goldziher (1850–1921), the Hungarian orientalist, delivered the first paper on the topic of the Zahirite school of Islamic jurisprudence. He argued that the Zahirites’ avoidance of analogy (qiya ˉs) within their legal rulings was in agreement with the Prophet. He said that he had written a tract in which he disputed the validity of using analogies through texts and proofs. He noted that he did this to renew interest in the Zahirite school because it had become forgotten unfairly. And he stated that he also wished to print Zahirite books to support this renewal. Al-Madani observed that Goldziher said “peace and blessings be upon him” whenever he mentioned the Prophet, and “God be satisfied with him” whenever he uttered the names of the Prophet’s companions and Muslim scholars.58 Next, a German scholar rose to speak about Arabic music as he had derived it from old books. Al-Madani deemed him to have mastered this art. Then, another one presented on the Persian poet Nasir Khusraw (1004–1088), and in particular, his belief in God which had wavered until he returned to religion toward the end of his life. The speaker noted that this phenomenon was common among famous Muslim poets. A third German scholar then rose to speak about the Hebrew language and its letters, which al-Madani said he did not pay attention to because he did not understand the point of the talk.59 The sessions within the Arabic sciences also featured presentations on topics ranging between the work of the physician Ibn Abi Usaibia (d. 1270), the inhabitants of the city of Harran,60 the state of learning under the Seljuks and Buyids,61 the false pilgrimages of the people of Greater Syria to what they held to be the grave of the Prophet Moses, the wisdom contained in the book of fables Kalila wa Dimna (Kalila and Dimna), Arabic calligraphy, the archaeology of the ancient city of Babel, the letters alif and lam among the Sabaeans, a corrective to the unfair estimation of the Kharijites,62 and the importance of lineage among the Arabs.63 Perhaps because of al-Madani’s limited facility in European languages, he found the scholarly jousts that transpired during the sessions worthy of comment. For example, after one Frenchman presented on the language of the Assyrians of Babylonia, he noted that another Frenchman got up to contradict what he had said sentence by sentence until it was clear to all that the latter excelled over the first without having ever been impolite.64 Another time, a long-winded English scholar spoke about the past and present tenses of the same language. When the same Frenchman challenged him, the two spoke at length but there was no forceful end to their discussion because neither one surrendered to the other.65 Al-Madani also detailed what happened when he turned to a French scholar sitting next to him and asked him to relate his greetings to

Amin al-Madani and the Sixth Oriental Congress  51 Ernest Renan (1823–1892), the French orientalist. Renan was not in attendance at the congress, but he had recently authored a treatise in which he denied that the Arabs had contributed to the field of philosophy. The mention of Renan’s name caused another English scholar to jump into their discussion to condemn this work. He informed al-Madani that Renan denied the many Arabic sources available to him, all of which disproved his point, and, moreover, that Renan wrongly treated these sources with disdain.66 The expeditions of the orientalists also proved noteworthy to al-Madani. He described how one scholar of the Himyartic language traveled to Yemen and suffered hardships at the hands of the Arabs whom he encountered there because they feared that those with blond hair were evil. This particular scholar had been able to overturn the received wisdom about ancient Yemen by visiting sites like the Maʾrib Dam and examining their previously unknown inscriptions with his own eyes. From these journeys, he had acquired over two hundred pieces of ancient stone, wood, pottery, paper, and leather.67 Al-Madani took particular pleasure in relating the presentation of Landberg, with whom he stayed during his time in Leiden and to whom he referred to as “the explorer” (al-rahhˉ ala). ˙˙ Landberg spoke of the importance that detailing the uses of the Arabic colloquial (al-ʿammiyya) held for scholars. Toward this end, he implored the congress to send a commission to the Arabic-speaking world to record people’s use of language.68 Al-Madani’s asides about these presentations highlighted the aspects of European practices and scholarly norms which he found to be especially quirky. For example, he was surprised that a scholar of Hebrew was himself a Christian (ʿıˉsawıˉ al-madhabi). This scholar refuted the accusation that every year the Jews kill some Christian children, take their blood, and mix it into flat loaves of bread. The scholar argued that priests spread this rumor, which he repudiated through rational evidence (dala ˉʾil ʿaqliyya) and received texts such as the Torah. A German scholar rose to concur in defending the Jews against this accusation by pointing to documentary evidence, and noting that beliefs based upon talk could not be trusted.69 Al-Madani also found European elegiac customs remarkable. When Landberg led a commemoration in honor of the life of the recently deceased former supervisor of the Khedivial Library, Sabita Bey, or the German orientalist, Wilhelm Spitta (1853–1883), he touched upon the significance of his work, displayed some of his writings, and extolled his commitment to the sciences and the public good. Then, Landberg stood up on his feet, causing everyone else in the group to do so as well in order to mark the sadness that afflicted them. Then, they sat down.70 The excursions of the Sixth Oriental Congress, which took place outside of the scholarly meetings, also struck al-Madani for their novelty. He wrote that after the first full day of sessions, the scholars attended a reception in Leiden between the hours of nine and midnight in a great hall that appeared to have nine thousand seats. There, European patriotic melodies played in between Indian and Arabic songs.71 On another evening, the scholars were invited to a party in The Hague. They traveled to it via railroad on the king of Holland’s train. Once they arrived,

52  Kathryn A. Schwartz they went to a big garden that looked like a natural forest. In it, a woman sang monarchical music. The scholars sat and drank until ten that evening, after which they moved indoors to eat. Then, they went to the parliament (majlis) of The Hague where the leaders of city greeted them in an official receiving line. They drank yet more until the king’s train returned them to Leiden well after midnight.72 The scholars were also given a tour of Amsterdam during one full day of the congress which had been set aside for this activity. They again took the king’s train to get there, whereupon they were met by steamboats hired by the government to take them around the canals of the city. Al-Madani relished passing beneath the bridges and through the markets of Amsterdam, and he told his readers of how this city was subdivided by waterways. He figured that its inhabitants and houses were only to be found at the edges of the canals, and that the rest of its lands were made up of gardens and parks. After this boat ride, the scholars entered the Universal Exposition and looked at all the crafts and marvels of the world. Then, the municipality received them officially before they all drank in honor of the king.73 On the final evening of the congress, the scholars dined at a banquet thrown for them by the king in the same hall from which the first session opened. Al-Madani explained to his readers the seating charts and menus for food and drink that he encountered there. These existed to inform everyone of his place and to help him determine whether or not he would like to consume a particular item. Flags were raised for all of the countries (duwal) that had their subjects (raʿa ˉya ˉ) at the congress, and each scholar stood beneath their flag but only one person stood beneath the Ottoman flag. Then, the king sent a telegraph to the banquet to wish the scholars well and to apologize that he could not attend their dinner in body, but that he was there in spirit. This set off a relay of telegraphs between the king and the congress. The scholars made toasts in his honor, by which everyone tapped their cup lightly against the cup of the person across from them to gesture their affection and happiness. Finally, the Minister of the Interior announced that a volcanic eruption had occurred in the lands of Java ten days ago. One of the islands sunk underwater, and fifty thousand people died. He therefore asked the scholars to lessen the survivors’ suffering by donating whatever they could to help, and to al-Madani’s amazement, approximately one thousand florins came in over that hour.74 Al-Madani began his conclusion of his report by relating de Goeje’s closing remarks to the congress. He noted how de Goeje chastised those nations that supported the destruction of manuscripts by purchasing only parts of them for their libraries. Knowledge, said de Goeje, could not smooth the way for reform unless it could be easily accessed and exchanged at low cost. His last act before adjourning the congress was to get everyone to agree that the next congress would be held in Vienna.75 Then, al-Madani reflected upon what he found to be the highlights of the congress for Egyptians. In doing so, he created a space for Egyptian pride in the same mold as that which he had observed of the Europeans throughout his stay in the Netherlands. Yet, he did this by leaning upon the paper of a German scholar of hieroglyphics. He noted that the scholar had found the ancient Egyptians to be so advanced that Europeans had yet to discover the secrets of some

Amin al-Madani and the Sixth Oriental Congress  53 of their crafts. And also that the scholar praised the ruling khedivial family of Egypt for easing scholars’ path to Egyptian antiquities, without which the Europeans could not have arrived to their discoveries.76 Poignantly, al-Madani recognized his need to articulate Egyptian accomplishment through a European prism. He lamented that easterners did not study the states (ahwa ˉl) of the Europeans, nor the sciences that they worked in, nor the ˙ books that they produced. By contrast, some of the European scholars studied Qurʾanic exegesis with their students, and one even recited a part of the Qurʾan by heart each day. The Europeans also printed Arabic books in no fewer than five hundred copies for each title, and al-Madani had never before seen many of these titles in the east. He feared that Europe would be made stronger by its extraction (yastakhrij) of learning from all of the rest of the world, including even the study of Islamic law (hatta fıˉ talabi al-ʿulu ˉm al-sharʿiyya al-isla ˉmiyya). ˙ ˙ For European kings paved the way for research, European scholars shared what they had, their books were easy to obtain, their countries were pleasant, their bodies were healthy, and their religions were free. These reasons, al-Madani said in closing, invited the scholar to be attracted (injidha ˉb) to them.77

Al-Madani’s engagement of orientalism after the congress Orientalism was not something that al-Madani referred to by name. Nor was it something he deconstructed. Yet, al-Madani actively participated in the orientalist discipline. He did this before the congress from Cairo when, perhaps with Landberg’s help, he detected westerners’ interest in the east and recognized that it could afford him the opportunity to enrich himself financially, personally, and intellectually. He did this from the Netherlands when he managed to convert on these counts by taking part in orientalist collecting, socializing, and scholarly proceedings. And he did this after the congress when, from Cairo once more, his report related news of what he encountered to others in Egypt who wished to learn about what the study of the east from the west looked like in action. The orientalism that al-Madani helped to shape drew inherently from exchanges between westerners and easterners. It therefore deserves recognition for being something that both sets of scholars initiated, perceived, and enabled together by linking the movement of people and objects to the transmission of ideas. About a month or so after the congress ended, al-Madani returned to Cairo where al-Burhan published his report through the assistance of Landberg.78 Thereafter, Hurgronje translated al-Madani’s account from Arabic into Dutch for Brill to print as a pamphlet. Brill’s doing so made al-Madani something of an intellectual peer of the orientalists in his own right. For as Hurgronje noted in his preface to the translation, he believed that al-Madani’s account was worthwhile for presenting a distinctive, if not always accurate, view of what had transpired at the congress.79 In the years after the congress, al-Madani appears to have blended his training as an eastern scholar in search of knowledge with some of what he had

54  Kathryn A. Schwartz encountered from Leiden. For he decided to travel again to the east where he got as far as Bombay and perhaps Lucknow during the mid-1880s and early 1890s.80 There, he steadily acted upon the importance of printing which the members of the congress impressed upon him. He published the manuscripts of others, of which two are particularly noteworthy. One was a compilation of poetry by Abu al-ʿAlaʾ al-Maʿarri (d. 1057), whose name had come up in Leiden during the discussion of important Muslim poets who had complicated relationships with religion.81 The other, Subhat al-Marjan fi Athar Hindustan (The Coral Rosary on the Antiquities of Hindustan), was a book on religion, language, and culture in India composed by the Bilgram-born poet Ghulam ʿAli Azad Bilgrami (1704– 1786).82 It extended al-Madani’s intellectual interests from Arabia to Southeast Asia in a manner that resembled the orientalist understanding of the east. Al-Madani also began publishing works of his own, which is something that he had not done before his trip to the Netherlands. Of his four printed works, three were published from South Asia. Their topics ranged from an abridgement of ʿUthman ibn Sanand al-Basri’s nineteenth-century history of Baghdad, to a criticism of Tarikh Misr al-Hadith (The History of Modern Egypt) written by the Beiruti and Cairene author and print entrepreneur Jurji Zaydan (1861–1914), to a legal treatise on how to breach agricultural contracts.83 The other text appears to have been published from Cairo. Printed in 1894 under the penname ‘Abd al-Basit al-Manufi, this treatise harkens back to al-Madani’s 1875 departure from Medina insofar as it criticizes a work on the validity of Muhammad’s successors.84 It appears that some easterners even deemed al-Madani to have acquired a western air over the years. In the late 1890s, according to his contemporaries, alMadani left Medina to travel around the Arab east. The light-skinned (abyad al˙ lawn), spectacle-wearing (yastaʿmilu naz zˉ aratan tibbıˉyyatan) scholar got as far ˙˙ ˙ as the Ottoman province of Tarablus in present-day Lebanon in 1898. But there, he encountered some Bedouins who mistook him for a foreign spy (ajnabiyyan mutajassisan) and killed him.85

Conclusion Orientalism tends to be appreciated as an idea rooted in the west, and oftentimes one that is synonymous with racism and imperialism. These views are indeed crucial for appreciating aspects of the evolution and impact of orientalism. Writing in 1904 of al-Madani’s manuscripts which had been bequeathed to Princeton, for example, the German orientalist Enno Littmann (1875–1958) posited that the collection was important “in order to maintain Christian authority over Islam…[by providing] a thorough understanding of the Mohammedans themselves, their history, their religion and their literature.”86 Littmann’s remarks exemplify how orientalism could portray the Islamicate world as threatening, inferior, and as something which could ultimately be controlled by acquiring expert knowledge of Islamic texts. They also serve to demonstrate how orientalism could reduce easterners to objects for dominating.

Amin al-Madani and the Sixth Oriental Congress  55 Ideas such as these ones have been highlighted and challenged. However, in so doing, scholars have tended to focus on orientalists alone, producing the effect that easterners remain silenced. I have tried to show in this article that because orientalism took the east as its focus, it was also premised upon encounters. Westerners and easterners’ common efforts, opportunities for mutual exploitation, and exchange of subjective impressions helped to guide the different shapes that orientalism took. And the roles played by easterners in particular within this process require greater attention. Endeavoring to understand the discipline of orientalism through the lives and opinions of eastern scholars in particular brings to the fore the neglected history of those who helped to develop this field of study. Al-Madani’s sustained engagement of orientalism shows how one such figure helped to constitute its very underpinnings during the modern era. As a scholar, a manuscript dealer, and a colleague, he assisted in shaping the practice of orientalism. And as a correspondent, he likely also shaped its estimation. Al-Madani’s observations on orientalism are important precisely because of these roles that he played. To him, orientalism counted as a legitimate scholarly discipline. It was a form of study that, through one of its subsets, cohered with the Arabic sciences of the east insofar as it allowed westerners to master these sciences and to spread them to other parts of the world. Orientalism did not represent something contemptuous. It instead marked an admirable feat and an ambitious approach to learning. Because al-Madani viewed orientalism as a cohesive project between the east and the west, he depicted his sale of books to the west unambiguously. The speeches at the congress had made frequent reference to the importance of texts to learning, and thus the necessity that their sanctity be preserved and that scholars receive open access to them. Yet, al-Madani did not reflect negatively upon his own role in restricting the possibilities for scholarship in the east through his westward transfer of texts. Instead, it appears that he believed his work facilitated the production of knowledge. Surely, such thinking was motivated in part by his personal interest in financial gain. But the notion that his manuscripts would be housed with those who appreciated them and made them accessible to scholars who were free to probe them as they wished rendered his work a service to scholarship the world over. On this last point, providing access to resources, al-Madani advanced significant distinctions between the scholarly tradition from which he arose and the one that he encountered in Leiden. In Leiden, he found a coordinated form of learning that was intrinsically tied to state power and the feelings of pride and purpose that patriotism inspired. He found a deep interest in the other which demanded applied expertise and analysis, if not travel abroad. He found a concern with materiality that extended from merely accessing the words of texts to possessing the very objects that supported them, along with any other physical trace of the past. And he found a commitment to making these objects available to those who wished to consult them, and to widely disseminating the results of their examination.

56  Kathryn A. Schwartz All this caused al-Madani to conclude that the tradition to which he belonged lacked an equivalent for studying the east or the west. He did not possess the support of a state or an institution to enable his work as a scholar, and from Egypt he had no equivalent means of rendering the west into an object of systematic inquiry. Al-Madani therefore deduced that the east would not mount a corresponding program of occidentalism, and, moreover, that it faced the threat of having the full extent of its learning relocated to the west if easterners could not benefit from comparable support. Still, he situated his anxiety within his vision of orientalism as a westward extension of Islamicate study. Al-Madani’s judgments are important for what they tell us about orientalism as it was forming as a discipline. But they also remain relevant today to Middle Eastern studies, the field that succeeded orientalism.87 Western and ­eastern-based scholars of the Middle East still aspire to collaborate with one another to advance a common field, however unequally in the face of differing degrees of freedom of expression, institutional support, and access to resources. And yet, most eastern-based scholars continue to remain in the historiographical shadows of their western-based counterparts.

Acknowledgments I owe a debt of gratitude to several people who helped me to develop this piece. Greg Halaby, Youssef Ben Ismail, Ahmed El Shamsy, Arnoud Vrolijk (to whom I also owe special thanks for sharing his expertise on al-Madani and the Exposition), Torsten Wollina, and Malika Zeghal provided me with crucial written feedback on my first draft. Ceyhun Arslan, Chloe Bordewich, Eleanor Ellis, Caroline Kahlenberg, Caitlyn Olson, Anne Sa’adah (in absentia), and Ari Schriber enabled me to draw out important themes of this article, and to discard less worthy ones at the Middle East Beyond Borders Workshop at Harvard University. Michael Hopper assisted me in acquiring al-Madani’s report to al-Burhan. Alison Edwards-Lange and Rutger-Jan Lange generously explained to me the contents of my Dutch sources. And Rijk Smitskamp first cultivated my interest in al-Madani when he gifted me with a copy of Snouck Hurgronge’s Het Leidsche Orientalistencongres. Support through the ANR – Labex is gratefully acknowledged. I alone am responsible for all errors.

Notes 1 Amin al-Madani, “Jamʿiyyat al-Lugha al-ʿArabiyya fi Urubba: Akhbar al-Jamʿiyya al-ʿIlmiyya fi Madinat Laydan,” Al-Burhan (1883): 22 October, 2–3; 25 October, 3; 29 October, 2–3; 1 November, 2–3; 5 November, 2. 2 Amin ibn Hasan al-Halawani and C. Snouck Hurgronje (trans.), Het Leidsche Orientalistencongres: indrukken van een Arabisch congreslid (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1883), 12. 3 Notable exceptions to this are: Lucette Valensi, Mardochée Naggiar: enquête sur un inconnu (Paris: Stock, 2008); Shaden Tageldin, Disarming words: Empire and the Seductions of Translation in Egypt (Berekley: University of California Press, 2011); Greg Halaby, “The Curious and Ordinary Life of Muhammad ‘Ayyad al-Tantawi”

Amin al-Madani and the Sixth Oriental Congress  57 (paper circulated to the Middle East Beyond Borders Workshop, Harvard University, 6 December 2016). 4 See, for example: Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies (London: Penguin Books, 2007); Edmund Burke III and David Prochaska (eds.), Genealogies of Orientalism: History, Theory, Politics (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008); Henri Lauzière, The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 5 For the prime articulation of this view, refer to: Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). On its relevance to the history of modern Islamic thought, see: Sadiq Jalal al-Azm, “Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse,” Khamsin 8 (1981): 5–26. 6 Hurgronje, Het Leidsche Orientalistencongres, 3. 7 ʿUthman ibn Sanand al-Basri and Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib (ed.), Khamsa wa-­ Khamsun ʿAman min Tarikh al-ʿIraq, 1188–1242 H. Wa-Huwa Mukhtasar Kitab Mataliʿ al-Saʻud bi-Taybi Akhbar al-Wali Dawud. Ikhtasarahu Amin ibn Hasan al-Halawani al-Madani (Cairo: al-Matbaʿa al-Salafiyya, 1951), ‫حي‬. 8 Khayr al-Din al-Zirikli, al-Aʿlam lam, Qamus Tarajim li-Ashhar al-Rijal wa-l-Nisaʾ min al-ʿArab wa-l-Mustaʿribin wa-l-Mustashiriqin (Beirut: s.n., 1969), 1:357. For more on the topic of astrology during the nineteenth century, particularly with a focus on Egypt, refer to: Daniel Stolz, The Lighthouse and the Observatory: Astronomy, Empire, and Islamic Authority in Late Ottoman Egypt (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). 9 Al-Zirikli, al-Aʾlam, 1:357; Hurgronje, Het Leidsche Orientalistencongres, 4. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 5–6. 12 Leiden University, Special Collections, Or. 18.097 S48: 10. This photograph of alMadani was taken from Leiden in 1883 (Luitgard Mols and Arnoud Vrolijk, “Introduction: Dutch Collectors in Western Arabia,” in Western Arabia in the Leiden Collections: Traces of a Colourful Past, unpublished version from personal correspondence with Arnoud Vrolijk, 11 January 2017, 1). For further background, refer to: Dirry Oostdam with contributions by Jan Just Witkam, West-Arabian Encounters: Fifty Years of Dutch-Arabian Relations in Images (1885–1935): Catalogue of an Exhibition in Leiden University Library, October 21–November 21, 2004 (Leiden: Legatum Warnerianum, Leiden University Library, 2004), 79–80. 13 Ibid., 6; al-Khatib, Khamsa wa-Khamsun, ‫كب‬. 14 Hurgronje, Het Leidsche Orientalistencongres, 6–7. 15 For more on the topic of Muslim Indonesia and Muslim Indonesians in Cairo, refer to: Michael Laffan, Islamic Nationhood and Colonial Indonesia: The Umma Below the Winds (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003); Michael Laffan, The Makings of Indonesian Islam: Orientalism and the Narration of a Sufi Past (Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press, 2011); Holger Warnk, “Some Notes on the Malay-Speaking Community in Cairo at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century,” in Insular Southeast Asia: Linguistic and Cultural Studies in Honour of Bernd Nothofer, eds. Fritz Schulze and Holger Warnk (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), 142. 16 Al-Khatib, Khamsa wa-Khamsun, ‫ ;حي‬Hurgronje, Het Leidsche Orientalistencongres, 7. 17 Ibid., 6. 18 Carlo Landberg, Catalogue de manuscrits arabes provenant d’une bibliothèque privée à El-Modina et appartenant à la maison E. J. Brill (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1883), v. 19 Ibid., vi. 20 Ibid., v; Hurgronje, Het Leidsche Orientalistencongres, 8. 21 Arnoud Vrolijk, who has for years studied from the collection of al-Madani at Leiden University, suspects that Landberg had more to do with this venture than he and his contemporaries maintained in writing (Arnoud Vrolijk, personal correspondence, 8 February 2017).

58  Kathryn A. Schwartz 22 K. Baedeker (ed.), Egypt. Handbook for Travellers (London: Dulau and Co., 1885), 1:8–10. 23 Catalogue de la Section des colonies néerlandaises à l’Exposition internationale coloniale et d’exportation générale, tenue du 1 mai au 31 octobre 1883, à Amsterdam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1883), 20, 65. 24 “Surinaamsche Negorij,” in Herinnering aan Amsterdam in 1883 (Amsterdam: Funke, 1883), 11. 25 Arnoud Vrolijk, personal correspondence, 8 February 2017. For an in-depth description of al-Madani at the Exposition, refer to: Vrolijk, “Introduction,” unpublished, 2–3. 26 Hurgronje, Het Leidsche Orientalistencongres, 8–9. 27 Ibid., 8. 28 Arnoud Vrolijk, “‘The Usual Leiden Types.’ A Compositor’s Personal Account of Brill’s Arabic Printing in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century,” in Books and Bibliophiles: Studies in Honour of Paul Auchterlonie on the Bio-bibliography of the Muslim World, ed. Robert Gleave (Cambridge: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2014), 120. 29 Stephan Roman, The Development of Islamic Library Collections in Western Europe and North America (New York: Mansell, 1990), 174; Torsten Wollina, “Tracing Ibn Tu ˉ lu ˉ n’s autograph corpus, with emphasis on the 19th–20th centuries,” forthcoming. ˙ 30 Luitgard Mols and Arnoud Vrolijk, Western Arabia in the Leiden Collections: Traces of a Colourful Past (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2016), 23, 25, 107, 21. Refer also to this text for detailed descriptions and photographs of important works from the al-Madani collection of Leiden University. 31 Ibid., 25; Sabine Schmidtke, personal conversation, 16 February 2017, regarding the division of the manuscript which was edited for publication in: Abu ˉ al-Qaˉsim al-Bustıˉ, Wilferd Madelung and Sabine Schmidtke (eds.), Kita ˉb al-Bahth ʿan Adillat al-Takfıˉr ˙ wa-l-Tafsıˉq (Investigation of the Evidence for Charging with Kufr and Fisq), (Tehran: Markaz-i Nashr-i Daˉnishgaˉhıˉ, 2003/2004), xiii. 32 For catalogs of this collection, refer to: Landberg, Catalogue de manuscrits; Arnoud Vrolijk, “Collection Amin b. Hasan al-Madani,” Leiden University, 2012, accessed 11 January 2017, https://socrates.leidenuniv.nl/R/-?func=dbinjump-full&object_id=2893709. 33 Vrolijk, “‘The Usual Leiden Types,’” 120; Roman, The Development, 121, 219–220; Philip K. Hitti, Nabih Amin Faris, and Butrus ʿAbd al-Malik, Descriptive Catalog of the Garrett Collection of Arabic Manuscripts in the Princeton University (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1938), iii–x. 34 Roman, The Development, 225. See also: Leon Nemoy (compiler), Arabic Manuscripts in the Yale University Library (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1956). 35 “Bulletin du sixième Congrès international des orientalistes” (Leiden?: s.n., 1883); Actes du sixième Congrès international des orientalistes (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1884– 1885), vol. 4. 36 Refer, for example, to the reports of the proceedings published after each congress. With regard to the sixth congress in particular, see: Ibid., vols. 1–4. 37 See, for example, the following papers: J. P. N. Land, “Recherches sur l’histoire de la gamme arabe,” Ibid., 2:35–168; Léon de Rosny “Comment furent écrits les plus anciens monuments de la littérature japonaise,” Ibid., 4:159–176; Karl Piehl, “Sur l’origine des colonnes de la salle des Caryatides du grand temple de Karnak,” Ibid., 4:201–222; Amelia Edwards, “On the Dispersion of Egyptian Antiquities,” Ibid., 4:177–181. 38 Hurgronje, Het Leidsche Orientalistencongres, 12. 39 Actes du sixième Congrès, 1:19, 20. 40 See, for example, al-Madani’s references to his collective readership in: al-Madani, “Akhbar al-Jamʿiyya,” 25 October, 3, 1 November, 2. 41 Ibid., 22 October, 2.

Amin al-Madani and the Sixth Oriental Congress  59 4 2 “Jaraʾid: A Chronology of Nineteenth-Century Periodicals in Arabic (1800–1900),” ZMO, accessed 6 December 2016, www.zmo.de/jaraid/. 43 Refer to the catalogue entry for al-Burhan at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, accessed 4 February 2017, http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=1&sid=be4ba 83d-4cbf-4d37-87d9-8f2522ea9f31%40sessionmgr102&hid=117&bdata=Jmxhbm c9ZGUmc2l0ZT1lZHMtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d. 4 4 Al-Burhan (1883): 22 October, 2. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., 25 October, 3. 48 Ibid., 22 October, 2. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., 3. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid., 25 October, 3. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid., 29 October, 3. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid., 1 November, 2. 63 Ibid., 5 November, 2. 6 4 Ibid., 25 October, 3. 65 Ibid., 29 October, 3. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid., 25 October, 3. 68 Ibid., 1 November, 2. 69 Ibid., 29 October, 2. 70 Ibid., 3. 71 Ibid., 25 October, 3. 72 Ibid., 29 October, 2. 73 Ibid., 3. 74 Ibid., 1 November, 2. 75 Ibid., 5 November, 2. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid. 78 Hurgronje, Het Leidsche Orientalistencongres, 11. 79 Ibid., 12. 80 Al-Zirikli, al-Aʾlam, 1:357; al-Khatib, Khamsa wa-Khamsun, ‫ ;ك‬Amin ibn Hasan al-Halawani, Hadhihi al-Risala Tusammaʾ Nabsh al-Hadhayan min Tarikh Jurji Zaydan (Lucknow: Matbaʿ-i Dabdaba, 1890). 81 Al-Khatib, Khamsa wa-Khamsun, ‫ ; ك‬al-Madani, “Akhbar al-Jamʿiyya,” 25 October, 3. 82 Al-Khatib, Khamsa wa-Khamsun, ‫كا‬. 83 Amin ibn Hasan al-Halawani, Hadha Mukhtasar Tarikh al-Shaykh ʿUthman ibn Sanad al-Basri al-Musammaʾ bi-Mataliʿ al-Suʿud bi-Taybi Akhbar al-Wali Dawud (Bombay: al-Matbaʿa al-Husayniyya, 1887); al-Madani, Nabsh al-Hadhayan; Amin ibn Hasan alMadani, Hadhihi Risala Tusammaʾ Ghany al-Nuhla fi Kayfiyyat Ghars al-Nakla (Bombay: s.n., 1887). Zaydan published a thirty-page response to al-Madani’s criticism. Jurji Zaydan, Radd Rannan ʿalaʾ Nabsh al-Hadhayan (Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Sharqiyya, 1891).

60  Kathryn A. Schwartz 84 ʿAbd al-Basit Manufi, al-Suyul al-Mughriqa ʿalaʾ al-Sawaʿiq al-Muhriqa (Cairo?: s.n., 1894). 85 Al-Zirikli, al-Aʿlam, 1:357. There is also an alternative view of al-Madani’s demise. According to one scholar who inquired after him in Medina during the early 1950s, someone there reported that he had died in India in an unknown year (al-Khatib, Khamsa wa-Khamsun, ‫)كب‬. 86 Enno Littmann, “Special Collections in American Libraries: The Garrett Collections of Arabic Manuscripts at Princeton University Library,” The Library Journal 29 (1904): 238–243, 238. 87 For more on this, with a particular emphasis on North America during the twentieth century, refer to: Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

3 The reception of the Brill Encyclopedia of Islam An Egyptian debate on the credibility of orientalism (1930–1950) Said F. Hassan and Abdullah Omran The Encyclopedia of Islam (EI) is the earliest encyclopedic work about Islam, involving international cooperation of leading1 Orientalists.2 The need for such a large-scale project was created by the growing inquiry about Islam, its civilization, culture and people,3 and the increasing colonial interest in Muslim countries during the nineteenth century.4 The production of this project should be seen as part of the historical debates and encounters between Christendom and the Islamic world, or between the Christian West and the Muslim East. Such encounters throughout history were mostly hostile: fighting over dominating territories, producing religious polemics, supporting missionary activities, and advocating colonialism. Even academic interest in the Middle/Near East came as an outcome of this tension.5 Oriental studies appeared as an outcome of this discourse, as part of the attempts to maintain political domination and cultural imperialism. Although there were attempts to develop impartial neutral academic studies of Islam in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, since there was an increase in the number of Islamic texts that were edited and the number of analytical studies that were undertaken, these attempts were not enough to shift or to take over the discourse. The production of an Encyclopedia on Islam at the turn of the twentieth century was not strange enough to draw the attention and suspicion of the Muslim world. Many Muslim scholars questioned the intention and the accuracy of its data. The reaction was first voiced in Egypt shortly after the completion of the first edition and after a partial translation in Arabic had emerged in 1933. The debate that took place afterward on the “authenticity” and “accuracy” of the information contained in the encyclopedia gave rise to an intriguing question: given the reaction pronounced by both opponents and proponents of the Encyclopedia, how recoverable and tolerable could the Encyclopedia be after dispensing with what the opponents saw as its built-in errors? This chapter adopts an onlooker approach to qualify the reaction toward the production of the Encyclopedia. It provides a contextual exploration of the history of the Encyclopedia and classifies the various stances taken by the Egyptian religious scholars, intellectuals, and writers concerning the accuracy, impact, and value of the encyclopedia. At the beginning, the arguments of the opponents are

62  Said F. Hassan and Abdullah Omran presented in a fashion that not only expresses what was said but also sheds light on the motives that could have possibly triggered their reaction, despite how aggressive it may sound. It gives them a context based on the Egyptian press of that time, which significantly helps to understand and properly evaluate this reaction. Much the same was paid to the proponents’ side. The central focus of both views was poised on how much trust the reader should have when reading about the Islamic world in the Encyclopedia, particularly under the threat of what was thought as “fundamental errors” – according to some critics.

The Encyclopedia of Islam: a historical overview The calls for the initiation of the project and the production of such an encyclopedic work were first heard during the Ninth Orientalists Conference in London, 1892. The project was approved and practical steps were taken during the annual international meetings of Orientalists assemblies.6 The first volumes started to appear by 19087 but were officially published between 1913 and 1938 in three languages: English, French, and German. The original title was: A Dictionary of the Geography, Ethnography, and Biography of the Muhammadan Peoples. It contains more than nine thousand articles, arranged alphabetically. Their length varies between fifty and fifty thousand words. The scope of the EI, first edition, is comprehensive as it covers everything concerning Islam until the early twentieth century. It covers philology, history, theology, law, literature, and much more. Given its significant success, high demand, reputation of its contributors, and the recommendation of the 21st International Congress of Orientalists,8 the publishing company decided to undertake the daunting task of producing a second edition. It took sustaining effort stretching from 1960 until 2004,9 only this time it extended to eleven thousand pages spread across twelve sizeable volumes. The topics covered therein encompass the whole range of Islamic culture, including but not limited to majors of creed, science, medicine, philosophy, politics, economics, etc.10 It was a major update given the time period it took to complete and the developments that had taken place in the Islamic world. The number of editors of this edition increased corresponding with its larger coverage. The editorial board featured H. A. R. Gibb, J. H. Kramers, Lévi-Provençal, and J. Schacht, being assisted by B. S. Stern as the secretary general. It also featured B. Lewis, Ch. Pellat, and J. Schacht, being assisted by C. Dumont and R. M. Savory as editorial secretaries. This was the extent of the editorial board until the fourth volume, when some new members, like E. Van Donzel and C.  E.  Bosworth, joined them. Starting from the sixth volume, a completely new team was responsible for editing the second half of the Encyclopedia along with E. Van Donzel and C. E. Bosworth. These included W. P. Heinrichs and G. ­L ecomte, assisted by P. J. Bearman, to name a few. The second edition, unlike the first, hosted a number of Muslim scholars as associate members who contributed several articles in the Encyclopedia.11 Due to the lengthy period of production of the second edition, the publishers decided to reprint

The reception of the Brill Encyclopedia of Islam  63 the first edition in 1993 to meet the immediate needs of academics, librarians, students of Islam, and others.12 Recently, in 2007, Brill started working on the ongoing third edition, which is published quarterly in slender volumes. This edition is different from the previous two. One main feature of the new edition is the extensive collaboration between Muslim authors and their peers of Orientalists. Furthermore, a good number of new entries were added and details about the sources were updated.

The Arabic edition13 Due to the enormous significance of this masterpiece as the single encyclopedic work on Islam, its popularity transcended the Western world. In Egypt, 1933, a group of junior researchers captured the great importance of the Encyclopedia and decided to engage in a long, exhausting attempt to translate it into the Arabic language. The team included Ibrahim Zaki Khurshid,14 Ahmad Ash-­ Shintinawi,15 Abdul Hamid Yunus,16 and Muhammad Thabit Al-Findi.17,18 They translated a good portion of the first edition of the Encyclopedia. The Arabic translation included a considerable number of commentaries by the translators and other prominent figures of the Muslim world. The nature of those commentaries will be discussed later. It was published in successive issues, one every two months, at least at the beginning of the project, starting from October 1933. Unfortunately, the attempt faced a holdup on the entries under the letter ‫ع‬ (‘ayn) due to the huge workload and the lack of institutional support. Some years later, in 1969, the same translators as well as some others who had joined them resumed their endeavor. This second attempt included new data from the updated second edition of the original English Encyclopedia; they revised the previously translated entries and updated them to correspond with the new update of the English version. The team of translators grew considerably and included the elite of the Egyptian professors, a matter which reflected the increasing interest in the production of the Arabic version to benefit all Arabic-speaking researchers, ­Muslims and non-Muslim alike. Yet, once again, after publishing sixteen volumes of the Arabic version, the translation attempt faced another obstacle.19 The reasons for the slow production of the Arabic edition could be attributed to the difficulty of translating such condensed specialized material that required a sustainable collective effort involving revision and consultation, not to mention the lack of patronage of any academic or official organization that could fund and support such a project. One more reason could be the lukewarm, sometimes hostile, reception from prominent figures – elaborated later – to the translation of the Encyclopedia. Moreover, the publication of the second edition of the English Encyclopedia increased the amount of work significantly; the new edition is thirteen volumes, each volume having roughly over 1.5 million words, a matter which required an extended length of time. Before the close of the century, in the mid-1990s, an initiative was taken to update and complete the already available partial translation of the Encyclopedia. The initiative was led by his Eminence, Sheikh Muhammad Al-Qasimi,

64  Said F. Hassan and Abdullah Omran a member of the Federal Supreme Council of the United Arab Emirates and Emir of Sharjah, in cooperation with the General Egyptian Book Organization and the Department of Culture and Information in Sharjah. The final outcome was thirty-two volumes, alphabetically organized, with a supplement including indices of names of prominent figures, places, and historical events to facilitate any search for the readers. The translation committee featured a large number of scholars and local translators. The names of the translator and the original author are written at the end of each article. The translator and/or the editor sometimes commented on the entry by correcting what they thought to be inaccurate information about Islam. They also updated information and their sources, standardized Qur’anic references based on the Azhar edition of the mus-haf, and similar details. This edition of the translation was not a full translation of the English original. It was somewhat abridged. According to the publisher’s preface, the new edition did not include entries that had become irrelevant to readers in the present time, such as names of certain poets or figures, or unimportant places. That is why this Arabic edition is called mujaz (i.e. a brief or summary). Moreover, the translation did not follow the same order of the English edition. They arranged their entries according to the Arabic alphabet, not according to the transliteration symbols used to represent Arabic sounds. So, for example, the letter ‫‘( ع‬ayn) comes in the middle of the Arabic edition, while it appears in the first volumes of the English edition being represented by the symbol (‘).20

Reception of the EI in the Egyptian intellectual landscape Tracking the reception of the EI in Egypt in the 1930s until the 1960s, 21 a pattern becomes apparent. Commentaries on the Encyclopedia, irrespective of their nature, consider such a work a product of Orientalism, which may carry negative implications on the Arabic culture. In other words, the commentators’ perception of Orientalism delineated their view of the Encyclopedia, considering it the most manifest expression (which could be viewed as positive or negative, depending on one’s perspective) of the Western interest in the Middle East and the Muslim world. Orientalism was seen by many Egyptian intellectuals throughout the first half of the twentieth century as a research field devised to serve the colonial interests of the Western hegemonic powers, the missionary work of the Christian church, and the supremacist attitudes of the European culture.22 The majority of Orientalists, according to many Egyptian intellectuals, were studying the Muslim faith not for its merit value, but to disclose whatever they could perceive of shortcomings and ill practices of Muslim communities, as if these practices were Islam per se. The Encyclopedia was introduced to promote these ideas and disseminate them even more among young researchers and Muslim readers. To confirm such an argument and to prove his stance against Orientalism and the Encyclopedia, one example, Anwar Al-Jundi (1917–2002), Egyptian intellectual, quoted Stephen Penroze (1908–1954), former president of the American University in Beirut, as saying:

The reception of the Brill Encyclopedia of Islam  65 In the field of publication, the most dangerous work that the Orientalists have produced was the issuance of the EI, whose volumes appeared during the period 1913–1934. This work took twenty years to prepare, was translated into a number of languages, and was recently reprinted. It is argued that the main reason of its danger lies in it distorting religious texts and interpreting political events and their implications in a way that corresponds to the Orientalists’ political interests and the expectations of their political leaders. Given the significance of this work, many Orientalists exerted their utmost efforts (to poison their readers) by presenting their distorted material in an acceptable way. They were able to make their EI a minaret: to stand as a scientific authority and to be used as a substantial source of reference by students and intellectuals, who, in turn, would penetrate into academic and scientific institutions, playing major roles in directing culture and politics…23 Not all voices were against the publication/translation of the Encyclopedia; there were Egyptian intellectuals who cautiously appreciated the efforts performed to bring such work into light. The majority of the Egyptian commentators on the Encyclopedia, however, criticized its contributors for presenting a disfigured, ill-motivated, and erroneous picture of Islam, which made it a channel to disseminate misconceptions about the Islamic faith. Generally speaking, both opponents and proponents of the EI voiced their “serious concern” about the accuracy of the information and how it was presented. The difference between both camps lies in the extent to which each camp decided to tolerate the content: either to devise a compromise whereby readers would benefit from the concentrated dosage of information in the entries but be simultaneously angled toward the correct version, or to disregard it altogether and avoid unnecessary spread of misconceptions. Some commentators believed that the EI was another episode, yet a perilous one, in the Western intellectual invasion of the Muslim world by distorting the religion of Islam as Muslims knew it.24 In addition, Orientalism, as a phenomenon, including its intellectual literature crowned by the EI, was considered one of the destructive forces aimed at the Islamic religion.25 On the other hand, other intellectuals held the EI as one of the most resourceful works and a one of a kind project about Islam.26 The major proponent of the EI was the team of translators who decided it was worth their laborious endeavor. Still, like their fellow Egyptian intellectuals, they had strong reservations on the content of certain entries related to essential ideas in Islam. A considerable number of annotations are found underneath some articles flagging the inconsistencies with the framework of traditional Islamic views. The following analysis will break down the different attitudes held by different Egyptian scholars and intellectuals toward the EI.

The opponents of the EI By the time the EI became known in the intellectual and academic circles, especially after some of its entries had been translated and published, a debate had started on its negative consequences. For example, the translation of the entry on Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) stirred a spiraling and intense debate and

66  Said F. Hassan and Abdullah Omran controversy on the real intention of Orientalists. The author of this article, Arent Jan Wensinck, 27 who had at the time just been appointed as a member of the Royal Academy of Arabic Language, was eventually dismissed from the Academy. According to him, his article “was merely a reproduction of Snouck’s theory, which was widely known in Europe.”28 A number of Muslim scholars who heavily criticized his article argued that his lack of knowledge and his desire to “attack Islam” were the main reasons that prompted him to write such an article.29 Muhammad Rashid Rida (d. 1935)30 became a severe critic of the EI. He argued that it was “a deceiving name,… and a front to destroy Islam.”31 He added, “This Encyclopedia contains historical and scientific errors, most critical of which is the consent presentation of historical and scientific points according to their (i.e. Orientalists) version, instead of presenting them for what they are.”32 He staunchly stood against any attempt to translate the EI, believing that it “brought more harm than benefit.”33 He argued that although the translators of the Arabic edition had commented on some of the errors of the EI, their comments were minor and were only confined to the first two volumes. Later volumes were left with no comments, a matter which made us argue that working on such a translation without correcting its errors was more harmful than the books of missionaries, as such books do not deceive Muslims as the Muslims know who wrote them and why. But the EI can easily deceive Muslims, even the educated among them, as its authors attribute their data to Muslim sources.34 It is worth mentioning, however, that Rida displayed a positive attitude toward a project of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Islamkunde (the German Society for Islamic Studies), by “inviting him and other Muslim scholars to cooperate with its editorial members.”35 This reflects Rida’s encouragement of any scholarly project on Islam, even cooperation with Orientalists on this endeavor, provided that Muslim scholars have significant participation. On the same line of rejection and condemnation, Muhammad Farid Wajdi (d. 1954), an author, journalist, and intellectual of religion, voiced similar concerns about the serious danger of the ideas promoted by the Orientalists in general and those written in the EI in particular.36 Compared with Rida, Wajdi was more vocal and straightforward in his criticism of the EI. He wrote two articles refuting Orientalists’ claims, especially those of Wensinck. He discussed the entries of “Abu Bakr” and “Ibrahim” in the Encyclopedia. In response to what he saw as inaccurate statements by the author of the “Abu Bakr” entry, Wajdi advised the author: to evaluate the conditions that coincided with the [al-ifk] incident,37… when one writes about a prominent figure… every single word counts. He should have realized that the environment the Prophet lived in relied wholly on lies in order to thwart Prophet Muhammad’s mission.38 Wajdi urged the author of the entry to weigh the statements carefully before presenting them and to investigate the historical nature of the Prophet’s era before

The reception of the Brill Encyclopedia of Islam  67 passing any judgments, as presenting them in the manner he did would lead to the conclusion that there were ulterior motives.39 Commenting on the EI author’s statement on the event of the treaty of Hudaybiyyah and how the Companions of the Prophet disliked the Prophet’s treatment of the situation,40 Wajdi stated that this was an obvious lie. The incident is self-evident of the exact opposite to how the author described the Companions of the Prophet and Abu Bakr their relationship to the Prophet as one they trusted, and their readiness to sacrifice themselves for his sake. There is a consensus that the Prophet was a wise man in everything he did. He always took great care of his Companions and would not cause them harm.41 Wajdi did not stop at criticizing some of the EI entries. Similar to Rashid Rida’s stance against translating such works, Wajdi discouraged the translators from translating for their fellow Arabic speakers the claims that challenge the fundamentals of Islam, because, according to him, they were driven by a hatred toward Islam.42 Translators, he stated, should only refer to these claims, without providing a full-text translation of them, along with refuting them with as many arguments as possible. Wajdi stated: This Encyclopedia contains a great deal of false accusations against Islam, its Messenger (peace be upon him), and the righteous people. They (the translators) know that the motive that drives some of those Orientalists into scheming this suspicious plot is the hatred in their heart towards this religion. Therefore, it is inappropriate for them [the translators] to carry the ‘sin’ of translating such nonsense into their language for people to read all over the Muslim world. I think they should not translate the content that involve any falsehood. They should only refer to them followed by a refutation using all the available proofs….If someone were to say this would be a betrayal of the translation process, we do not mean mistranslating it in a way that would change its original meaning; there is a great difference between the two. He added, “The translators’ notes are insufficient to refute this falsehood…. The only way out of this problem is not to translate them and only refer to them along with their respective refutation.”43 His argument implies that any researcher using this Encyclopedia has to reevaluate the information therein and ensure its correctness. In other words, it would be more productive for the researcher – or any reader for that matter – to search for information elsewhere. This debate with the Orientalists was not his first. Wajdi was an active author who used to write in a number of highly prestigious newspapers and magazines in Egypt at his time.44 He believed that the Orientalists’ research about Islam was fundamentally flawed. Some other Egyptian scholars did not feel the need to go into specific details about the EI to reject it. For them, being a by-product of Orientalism was enough a reason to reject it. In his series of articles on Orientalism in Al-Azhar magazine, in addition to his other publications, Dr. Muhammad Al-Bahy (d. 1982),

68  Said F. Hassan and Abdullah Omran former Egyptian Minister of Religious Endowments and an Al-Azhar-­educated scholar, noted the strong connection among Orientalism, missionary activities, and colonialism. Al-Bahy’s criticism of the EI was part of his rejection of this discourse.45 In one article, he highlighted the various means utilized by Orientalists when producing their intellectual efforts, including their institutions, books, journals, etc. Referring to the EI as one example of this, he considered the production of the Encyclopedia to be the most “dangerous” work Orientalists had ever undertaken in a number of languages (until the time of his article). He said, “Orientalists have deployed and dedicated all their resources to publish this Encyclopedia, which is a resource for many Muslims in their studies, despite the inaccuracies, distortions, and barefaced prejudice against Islam and Muslims found therein.”46 The cause for this outspoken tone of criticism and condemnation is, as he explained, his deep concern for Muslims who rely on the EI, reading and learning from it. However, his comment, “barefaced prejudice,” transcends the mere claim of misinformation. It accuses the contributors to the Encyclopedia of intentional manipulation of information about Islam. Further investigation of his works reveals his stance toward Orientalism’s literature in general. He believes that Orientalists exploit unsubstantiated claims to spread misconceptions about Islam.47 However, the reason why the circulation of Orientalists’ works, particularly the EI, is welcomed in the Muslim world is due to their well-­organized authorship and exhaustive coverage of historical events, which attract many Muslims to use their works.48 It is apparent that he admires the craftsmanship of the Western academia but strongly opposes their views about Islam. Interestingly, Al-Bahy received his PhD from Hamburg University, which means that he had considerable contact with orientalists, not to mention the international conferences on Islamic studies he attended. Nonetheless, he denounces Orientalism and considers it one of the ideologies that aim to destroy Islam.49 By the 1940s and 1950s, Anwar Al-Jundi, Egyptian Islamic writer (d. 2002), became a well-known active scholar in the debate over Islamization, westernization, and modernization of the Muslim world. He wrote extensively on the question of preserving the religion and culture from the impact of westernization and the cultural hegemony of the imperial West. His perception and reception of the EI were part of his discourse on how to revive the Ummah (Islamic world). Al-Jundi affirmed that the EI was a by-product of missionarism and Orientalism, and had the ultimate objective of “dressing” misconceptions about Islam in a scientific garb. The EI, according to Al-Jundi, extensively discussed matters that Muslims consider fallacies. These matters were taken for granted and used as reference points in the EI entries, while in fact Islam came to refute these fallacies and myths. The EI contributors, Al-Jundi argued, relied on unscientific sources from which they took myths which they then considered as foundations of the Shari’ah. One example of these sources is Edward Lane’s The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians.50 The EI contributors acknowledged that text and accepted its arguments as established facts, while Lane, according to AlJundi, was known for distorting facts. Lane, Al-Jundi claims, disguised himself

The reception of the Brill Encyclopedia of Islam  69 as a Turkish Muslim to intermingle with Egyptians and to listen to their myths which he later wrote about as if they were a true description of Egyptian customs and traditions.51 Al-Jundi stated that one of the most dangerous means of missionarism is to produce encyclopedias, such as the EI, the Munjid Dicionary,52 and Brockelmann History.53 This is because Muslim researchers use these works as easy available references without much critical assessment to their data out of their habit of trusting the printed word, especially with the authoritative names of their authors. The threat of these works is not confined to the distorted information they provide, but to the inferiority feelings that Muslims develop by reading these studies, a matter which gives rise to an intellectually confused generation who deny the legacy of the Ummah (Islamic world) and adopt Western perspectives.54 Some Egyptian scholars also tried to approach the EI from an academic perspective, but they still reached the same conclusion of rejection and condemnation. Two examples can be referred to in this context. Dr. Hussein Al-Harawi,55 an inspector at the Ministry of Health, in his commentary on the entries of “Ibrahim” and “the Ka’bah,” attacked the research methodology the Orientalists’ used, stating that it was entirely based on first conjecturing a conclusion, before conducting a proper research, and then searching for evidence to support this predefined conclusion. He explains, “Orientalists speak about Islamic history with the spirit of a historian whereas they speak about Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), Islam, and the Qur’an with an air of repulsion.”56 Taking a similar position, Amin al-Khuli (d. 1966), an Egyptian Islamic writer, angled his criticism toward the scientific research. Al-Khuli focused on the violations of the principles of objective research, such as drawing speculative conclusions57 and rash judgments.58 He stated that his course of criticism was wholly dedicated to correcting errors that violate principles of objective research.59 Still, after tracking a considerable number of research-based errors in the EI, especially the monotonic phrase “Muhammad (peace be upon him) did so-and-so,” he concluded that those consistent errors could only be conceivable if driven by prejudice.60 To sum up the opponents’ opinion of the EI, one can conclude that the abovementioned critics took the view that a considerable amount of the literature of Orientalism followed a systematic framework purposefully designed to challenge the fundamentals of Islam.61 By extension, this was largely reflected in the Orientalists’ writings about Islam and colored their conclusions.62

The proponents of the EI A significant number of Egyptian intellectuals, as noted earlier, were suspicious about the whole EI project and considered it as not only a covet Western plan to continue the Western hegemonic imperial strategy in order to gain control over the Muslim world, but also an attempt to “distort” Islam and everything Islamic. Yet, there was another trend that, though acknowledging the existence

70  Said F. Hassan and Abdullah Omran of inaccuracies in the EI, opted for ascribing the EI as an outstanding academic endeavor. They argued that reading the EI was a great opportunity to understand Orientalists and their research techniques, and derive benefit from such a voluminous, in-depth work on Islam.63 This trend encouraged the translation of the EI – unlike the other camp who maintained a reserving, sometimes aggressive, stance against Orientalists – so that Muslims may benefit from the works of Orientalists. They also viewed that they should connect and cooperate with them in order to avoid severing scholarly relations,64 especially when Orientalists’ contributions are significantly vital to the reproduction and revival of the Arabic literary heritage.65 The most enthusiastic group who endorsed the production of the Encyclopedia was the translation committee members. They started the project without any financial support from any official governmental or private organization. Promoting their work and the EI in general, it says on the back cover, “Subscribe to the largest scholarly work Egypt is carrying out in the modern era.”66 The translators were determined to undertake the task of translation, despite the overwhelming obstacles that usually stand in the way of scholarly and literary projects in Egypt, and therefore they decided to ignore these discouraging stances, and managed to overcome those obstacles one by one.67 In their introduction to the first Arabic edition in 1933, the translation committee praised the EI and its contributors in unequivocal terms: This (EI) is the fruit of substantial efforts exerted by prominent Orientalists, who – each according to his own specialization – contributed entries to the extent that each entry has become on its own a model of deep research and profound investigation. The EI is also distinctive as each entry is followed by a list of sources, as required by a sound scientific methodology…. The benefit of the EI is not only limited to cultural matters, but also to the revitalization of the Islamic civilization, the formation of Islamic public opinion, the maintenance of its tradition, and the promulgation of its high morals. We believe that the mission of the EI is more important than the mission of the university in forming public opinion (read here, culture) as its entries are not only comprehensive, deep, verified, and organized, but also tangible and eligible, a matter which makes it (its use easy for) the general public, and not only for the elite or the partially educated.68 The praise of the translating team was not confined to the content but also considered the translation of the Encyclopedia as a means to “contribute to the [Islamic] revival.”69 The translating team acknowledged that there were errors in some of the EI entries, but these were human errors.70 To redress these mistakes, they produced their work annotated with commentaries by notable Egyptian scholars, such as Mustafa Abd Al-Razzaq (d. 1947),71 Ahmad Amin (1954),72 Amin Al-Khuli (1966),73 Ibrahim Madkur (1995),74 and Mahdy `Allam (1992),75 among others. The nature of those commentaries was (1) to update some of the information as the translation was produced sometime after the English edition was published, (2) to correct some of the information, and (3) to provide more explanation for some of the entries that lacked proper coverage.

The reception of the Brill Encyclopedia of Islam  71 One of the major proponents of the EI was Zaki Mubarak (d. 1952)76 who strongly encouraged communication with Orientalists. He responded to the concerns of the opponents of the EI that the true motivation behind the works of Orientalists, especially the EI, was colonial, stating that some of the Orientalists may have had a colonial interest at the beginning of their studies because they wanted to work in the colonies. Others, however, were sincerely interested in partaking in extensive studies of the Near and Far East civilizations, and even became advocates of their glory; at which point, the colonial drive was weakened due to the overwhelming power of scholarly interest.77 One of the proofs for this was their interest in scholarly issues whose outcomes are completely disassociated with any colonial advantage, like studying differences among schools of Arabic grammar. In spite of his acknowledgment of some of the Orientalists’ errors and inaccurate conclusions pertaining Arabic-related issues and their assumptions in relation to the life of the Prophet, he still thought they served Islam and the Arabic language by providing myriads of neatly organized writings about Islam to the extent that even Al-Azhar organization would not be able to provide something of a similar caliber.78 Another advocate of the EI was Ahmad Amin, a famous Egyptian writer. He stated Besides referring to some of the finest resources where more information may be gained if required, the EI is one of the most key books that help researchers and guide them towards the most pertinent information on whatever subject they may need.79 He listed one of the major obstacles that stood in the way of the translation, “Many subjects in the EI have been treated differently than they are usually treated by Muslims. Orientalists have elaborated on issues whose importance is not central to Muslims, and some of them were prejudicial in their research.”80 He generally expressed his admiration of the team of translators because of the admirable endeavor they undertook voluntarily to translate this Encyclopedia. He eventually hoped for the project to succeed. Similarly, Ismail Mazhar (1962),81 a liberal Egyptian intellectual, expressed his admiration of the translators’ endeavor to translate such a magnanimous work encompassing a great variety of subjects.82 He, though, referred to some serious mistakes in the translation and provided some suggestions to improve the Arabic version of the EI.83 Other Egyptian writers have also voiced their support of the EI and its translation, believing it to be a very resourceful work on Islam that will help its readers to learn extensively about Islam, the Arabs, and the Middle Eastern and Eastern civilization in general.84 Reading the commentaries provided by the EI proponents to the Encyclopedia entries and their translation, one can note that the critical remarks took different forms, as follows: Explanatory comments: Some entries required, according to the commentators, additional information that needed to be added to the Arabic translation to

72  Said F. Hassan and Abdullah Omran help the Arabic reader comprehend the subject matter. This additional information would not be necessary in the English as they may be irrelevant to its readers. Examples of these entries are “Andalus,”85 “Talbiyah,”86 and “Tawrat.”87 Correcting some erroneous information in some entries: Some commentators attributed the causes of these incorrect data to the inadequate knowledge of the authors on Islam. Other scholars claimed that these were purposeful misrepresentations of Islam and its Prophet. These mistakes can be found in a legal ruling that the author had mistakenly concluded (like Schacht in his entry on umm walad),88 or assuming data which were inconsistent with the sources the author used (like Lammens on Hudhaybiyyah).89 Updating comments: Given the fact that the translation was performed after the publication of the EI, the translation committee incorporated new information that had emerged after the production date of the first edition. The updates cover the discovery of new resources that had not been available,90 updated statistics about different countries,91 noted the evolution of the education system in some countries,92 brought the political developments up-to-date,93 and provided elaborate information about entries whose original content did not pay the entry its due.94 It is worth noting that the debate on the colonial and imperial hidden agendas of the Orientalists was not mentioned by the promoters of the EI. The focus, instead, was on the scholarly aspects of the EI and how such work can be helpful in the ongoing debate on the Islamic revival. This position does not only mirror a position toward a scholarly work, but it also portrays the Egyptian intellectual landscape where there was an intense debate centered on the status quo of the Muslim world (Egypt being just a model of that world), especially after the demise of the Ottoman Caliphate and the following Western hegemonic race to colonize its lands. The debate revolved around the reasons of the decline and the needed procedures for liberation, revival, renaissance, modernization, etc. At that time, there was an ongoing debate among Egyptian intellectuals, scholars, activists, and politicians on nationalism, Arabism, and Islamism (i.e. the Muslim League), along with the heated discussion on liberation vs. westernization, modernization vs. tradition, Standard Arabic vs. colloquial, gender liberation vs. conservatism, etc. The discussion on the validity, credibility, and reliability of the EI is one reflection of the intellectual space in Egypt and its relationship to the West, be it a model of progress or a source of hegemony and exploitation.

Conclusion The connection between the East and the West was not, is not, and will never be a black-and-white picture of love and enmity, peace and war, faith and disbelief. It is not a mono-dialogue of supremacy and weakness. Rather, it is a complex multilayered discourse where the religious, the political, the cultural, and the social encounter each other. Orientalism is one such phenomenon that mirrors that discourse and history. Since its existence as an academic discipline,95 its productions reflect the trends of the relationship between the East and the West. This

The reception of the Brill Encyclopedia of Islam  73 paper does not discuss these trends,96 but it actually directs the gaze toward looking at how the Near East, represented here by a group of Egyptian intellectuals, received this representation from the other. The response, as elaborated in this paper, was not only limited to the scientific content, but it was directed to the whole discourse of the colonial other. For example, in commentaries by Wajdi, Al-Bahy, and Al-Khuly, one finds that the term “Orientalism” was used as a blanket generalization that brands the entire discipline, without exception. In other words, The result is that the implicit negativity of ‘Orientalism’ means that the question of who is an Orientalist (and thus, in a sense, what is Orientalism) has become bound up with the questions of who is and who is not a good scholar. Often, one man’s scholar is another man’s Orientalist.97 The tone of some of the articles criticizing the EI addresses only Muslims, serving as a warning against using the EI as a source of information about Islam. It extends judgment on erroneous articles and sections to the entire work of the EI, basing such judgment on an intentional agenda that is systematically poised at destroying Islam, as found in Al-Bahy’s criticism. What further supports that reserving attitude is how the EI promoted itself. In the introduction to the EI, it states, “The demand for an encyclopedic work on Islam was created by the increasing colonial interest in Muslims and Islamic cultures during the nineteenth century.” This is a further reason that puts the criticism of the EI in a proper perspective. According to its critics, Orientalists portray Islam in a specific image, different from the way Muslims see it, not for purely scholarly motives, but for colonial ones. Moreover, considering the contextual time period in which many of those critics lived, most of them lived during the British colonization of Egypt, which, in effect, evoked the idea of the self vs. the other in their writings, their opinions should be viewed as originating from a concerned voice for their fellow Muslims whose exposure to such an erroneous representation of Islam may weaken their identity and sense of belonging not only to their religion but also to their lands and people. However, the reception of the EI was not as gloomy as it looks. There were voices that had a different perspective on the EI, viewing it as a thought-­ provoking source for Muslim intellectual life. These voices mostly came from the liberal reformist circles. They do not carry with them the cultural package of earlier confrontations between the East and the West, nor do they want to dissociate themselves from the colonizers. They argue for independence, and social and political reforms, but also permit the process of modernization (for this opposing trend, it means westernization). They have a peculiar position toward tradition and how to relate to it. These two trends toward the EI did not dissipate with the passing of time. The Arab and Muslim debate on Orientalism is still ongoing and projects the same two basic trends of acceptance and rejection. However, a third trend started to

74  Said F. Hassan and Abdullah Omran appear in the eighties and afterward that argues for individual treatment of the materials and authors. Each text/author should be dealt with on its own merit. That change in attitude was not only limited to Muslims’ perspective on Western scholarships on Islam, but also entailed the assignment of more Muslim scholars to contribute to the ongoing third edition of the EI and the use of more sensitive language in the articles on religious belief and dogma. This cooperation itself is a positive landmark in contributing to better communication between the East and the West. With time, the reservation that once stood in the way of fair judgment by both entities involved will gradually fade away, if not eventually disappear totally, as long as room for increasing and responsive communication is given. By means of this, the earlier perceptions shall cease to exist and will be replaced by more scholarly oriented, less biased, and more respect-based perceptions, intended to advance the interest of knowledge rather than a selfish-driven interest of any entity. To conclude, the first Encyclopedia bore the hallmarks of an earnest desire to discover the Islamic world; yet, it was framed in a predefined vision of how Islam was presented in the Western world, a vision less favorable, of course, to how Muslims would have hoped. Such a vision, therefore, set off an angry reaction toward its production, despite some approval from some intellectuals. However, the evolution of the Encyclopedia in its next two editions imparted an impression that there was a realization of the inaccuracies contained in the first edition, coupled with an increasing cooperation by Muslims in producing the entries in those editions, which was clearly evident in the third edition in particular.

Notes 1 This description is both written on the cover page of the second edition of the Encyclopedia and acknowledged by many Muslim authors. See Hamilton A. R. Gibb, Johannes H. Kramers, Évariste Levi-Provencal, Joseph Schacht, B. Lewis, Charles Pellat, The Encyclopedia of Islam, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1986); Review of The Encyclopedia of Islam in Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 45 (1925): 95. Muhammad Thabit al-Findi, Ahmed al-Shintinawi, Ibrahim Zaki Khurshid and ­Abdel-Hamid Yunus (Trans.). Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah, vol. 1, no. 5 (Cairo: Matba`it Masr, June, 1934), back cover. See Mujaz Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah, ‫و‬. 2 There were very limited contributions of Muslims to the first edition. Abdullah Yusuf Ali, for example, contributed an entry on “Khodja” and on the nineteenth century sheikh Karamat Ali Jawnpuri and Prof. Muhammad Shanab’s contribution entry “Ibn Malik.” See, for example, M. A. Sherif, “Review of Encyclopedia of Islam (EIThree)” (Retrieved from http://salaam.co.uk/books/show_mini_review.php?book_ id=229&review_id=31); Muhammad Thabit Findi, Op. Cit., vol. 1, no. 5, 274. 3 M. Th. Houtsma, T. W. Arnold, R. Basset, and R. Hartmann (ed.), Encyclopedia of Islam 1913–1936, vol. 1. Reprint edition (Leiden: Brill, 1993), Publisher’s Preface. See also Muhammad Thabit al-Findi, Op.Cit. 4 See “The Opponents of the EI” section in this paper. 5 For example, in a letter dated May 9, 1636, the University of Cambridge academic authorities addressed the founder of its Arabic chair, The work itself we conceive to tend not only to the advancement of good literature by brining to light much knowledge which as yet is locked up in that learned

The reception of the Brill Encyclopedia of Islam  75 tongue, but also to the good service of the Kind and State in our commerce with the Eastern nations, and in God’s good time to the enlargement of the borders of the Church, and propagation of Christian religion to them who now sit in darkness. See A. L. Tibawi, “English-Speaking Orientalists, a Critique of their Approach to Islam and Arab Nationalism,” Islamic Quarterly, no. 1 (January 1964): 27. 6 The American Historical Review. vol. 7, no. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association, October, 1901): 191. 7 Ibid., vol. 13, no. 4, 926. 8 Fouad Ifram al-Bustani, “Mu’tamar al-Mustashriqin ad-Dawli,” Al-Mashriq, no. 42 (December, 1968): 499. 9 This date appears as the publishing date of vol. 12 of the EI second edition. Vol. 13 contains only indices and glossaries. 10 See Mujaz Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah. Arabic publisher’s preface (Sharjah: Markaz Sharjah of al-Ibda` al-Fikri, 1998), ‫ي‬. 11 For the list of editors and contributors, see: Gibb (et al.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam New Edition (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986), cover page, vi–x. 12 M. Th. Houtsma (et al.). First Encyclopedia of Islam 1913–1936. Reprint Edition, vol. 1 (Publisher’s preface) (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993), n. p. 13 The story of the translation was collected mainly through reading the various prefaces and introductions of the Arabic editions: the 1969 edition and the 1998 edition. See: Muhammad Thabit al-Findi, Op.Cit.; Mujaz, Op.Cit. 14 Ibrahim Zaki Khurshid (d. 1987), a writer and a literary critic, is one of the early graduates of the Faculty of Arts. He was appointed in various government posts in ministries of culture and education such as the director of the Translation Department in the Ministry of Education (known then as Wazarat al-Ma`arif ), and the general director of the Ministry of Culture. He dedicated a good part of his life to translate the EI. He also authored a number of important books such as Al-Tarjamah wa-mushkilatuha (Translation and its Problems), and Thaqafa wa-Kitab (Culture and a Book). He also translated a number of texts such as Atlas al-Tarikh al-Islami. During the last stage of his life, he contributed a number of articles to Al-Ahram alAdabi journal, engaging the cultural debates in the Egyptian space. See ’Muhammad Khayr Ramadan Yusuf, Tatimmat al-`Lam li-l-Zirkili, 2nd ed (Beirut: Dar Ibn Hazm, 2002), 14. 15 Ahmad al-Shintinawi was an active translator and participant in the Egyptian intellectual life in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to his participation in the translation of the EI, he participated in the translations of other works such as Hendrik Willem van Loon’s Story of Mankind. 16 `Abdul-Hamid Yunus (1910–1988) was considered the founding father of the academic study of Egyptian folklore. Because he lost his eyesight at the age of sixteen, he was declined admission to the Faculty of Arts. But after the intervention of Taha Hussein, he was admitted to the faculty and proved himself as an excellent student until he earned his PhD in the 1950. He later became a member of the Faculty and gradually got promoted in different academic positions until he became the head of the Arabic Department in the Faculty of Arabic Language. Yunus was a prolific author (40 publications), especially in the field of Egyptian and Arab folklore. He published a literary Encyclopedia of the Egyptian folklore, to be translated later on to various languages. Along with his participation in the translation of the EI, Yunus translated many other works such as the volume of the Middle Ages of The Story of Civilization of Will Durant, Edward Mark’s Marriage, and H. J. Wales’ The World of Tomorrow. He was also part of the Egyptian journalism career and got gradually promoted until he was the vice-chief editor of Al-Ahram Newspaper. See Muhammad Khayr Ramadan, Tatimmat al-A`lam, 273.

76  Said F. Hassan and Abdullah Omran 17 Muhammad Thabit al-Findi (1908–1993) was a philosopher. He earned his BA and MA from the Faculty of Arts and earned his PhD from the Sorbonne. He was appointed as a lecturer in the Faculty of Arts, to be promoted to different academic positions until he became the dean of the faculty in 1961 and then the dean of the Faculty of Arts in Beirut, 1966. He was the Egyptian representative to the UNESCO in 1947 and a representative of the UNESCOIN the UN. He was the founder of the first academic program in the University of Alexandria to study Mathematical Logic and philosophy of science. See Muhammad Khayr Ramadan, Tatimmat al-A`lam, vol., 2, 137. 18 These names appeared on the cover page of the separate issues of the first edition of the Arabic Translation of the EI. However, the first three names only appear on the introduction of the 1969 second edition. 19 Ibrahim Zaki Khurshid (et al.), Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah (Cairo: Dar alSha`ab, 1969), 3–9. 20 See, for example, the entry “`Abd.” It appears in the EI in Vol. 1, 24–40, while it comes in the Arabic edition in Vol. 23, 7095–7108. Similar differences can be noted with Arabic words that start with special sounds like words with letter ‫ج‬. They come in the EI under dj. Or ‫ ق‬and ‫ ك‬and ‫خ‬. These letters appear in the EI in order opposite to the Arabic alphabet. ‫ ق‬and ‫ ك‬start with the same letter (the dot under the qaf is not counted) so that words of the two letters mix. Then, ‫ خ‬comes next as it is transliterated as “kha.” 21 This is the time when the first two editions of the translation of the EI appeared and circulated among interested readers. 22 See, for example, Anwar al-Jundi, Mawsu`at al-Muqadimatwa al-Manahij: Al-­Tabshir wa-l-Istishraq wa-l-Da`awat al-Haddamah (Cairo: Dar al-Ansar, 1983): vol. 5.; Mustafa Khalidi and Omar Farrukh, Al-Tabshir wa-l-Isti`mar fi al-Bilad al-`Arabiyyah (Beirut: Manshurat al-Makatabah al-`Asriyyah, 1953(; Mustafa al-Siba`i, Al-Istishraq wa-l-Mustashirqun (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 1979). Muhammad al-Bahy, Al-Fikr al-Islami wa-Silatuh bi al-Isti`mar al-Gharbi (Cairo: Maktabat Wahbah, 1975). This impression remained and had its impact on contemporary writings on orientalism. 23 Anwar al-Jundi, Itar Islami li-al-Fikr al-Mu`asir (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 1980), 17; cf. Mundhir Mu`liqi, Al-Istishraq fi al-Mizan (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 1997), 20–21. Stephen B. L., Penrose, Jr., That They May Have Life: The Story of the American University of Beirut, 1866−1941 (New York: American University of Beirut, 1941). 24 Muhammad Farid Wajdi, “Dahd Muftarayat al-Mustashriqin,” Al-Azhar Magazine, vol. 5 (1934): 213. 25 Muhammad al- Bahy, al-Harakat al-Haddamah li-al-Islam (Cairo: Maktabat Wahbah, 1981), 30. 26 Ahmad At-Tabbakh, “Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah,” ar-Rislaha, vol. 19, Jumada al-Akhirah, 1352 AH, 1933. 27 Arent Jan Wensinck (1882–1939) is a Dutch orientalist who was known for his hadith concordance al-Mu` jam al-mufahras li-Alfaz al-Hadith, that was translated later by Muhammad Fu’ad Abdel-Baqi as Miftah Kunuz al-Sunnah. In 1908, he became the secretary of The Encyclopaedia of Islam. From 1912 until 1927, Wensinck was the professor of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac at the University of Leiden, and in 1927, he succeeded Snouck Hurgronje as the professor of Arabic and Islam at the same university, at which post he remained until his death. In recognition for his many contributions to the Arabic and Islamic studies, he was appointed as a member in the Royal Academy of Arabic Language. But soon his membership was withdrawn due to severe criticism from some Arab intellectuals who argued that his writings were hostile to Islamic tradition. 28 Umar Ryad, “The Dismissal of A. J. Wensinck from the Royal Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo,” in The Study of Religion and the Training of Muslim Clergy in Europe, ed. Willem B. Drees, Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld (Leiden University Press, 2008), 100.

The reception of the Brill Encyclopedia of Islam  77 29 Ibid., 116. 30 Muhammad Rashid Rida is a well-known scholar who was born in Lebanon in 1865 but moved to Egypt and became one of the pioneers who called for the renewal of faith. 31 Muhammad Rashid Rida, “Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah wa-Mafasidiha,” Al-­ Manar, vol. 5 (1934): 386. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., 387. 34 Sayyed bin Hussein al-`Affani, A`lam wa-Aqzam fi Midan al-Islam, vol. 2 (Jeddah: Dar Majid `Usairy li-al-Nashr wa-l-Tawzi`, 2004), 470–471. 35 Umar Ryad, Ibid., 113. 36 He published many articles in this regard. Dr. Rajab al-Bayyumi compiled some of his articles, debating orientalists or commenting on the EI in a volume under the title Munaqashat wa-Rudud, i.e. Discussions and Responses. See: Muhammad Farid ­Wajdi, Munaqashat wa-Rudud Compiled and reviewed by Muhammad Ragab Bayyumy (Cairo: al-Dar al-Misriyyah al-Lubnaniyyah, 1995). 37 This incident refers the claim of some hypocrites that Aisha, the Prophet’s wife, may have committed an improper act when she got separated from the caravan to look for her necklace. 38 Wajdi, “Dahd Muftarayat al-Mustashriqin,” 213; Wajdi, Munaqashat wa-Rudud, 102. 39 Ibid. 40 This treaty of al-Hudaybiyyah took place in the sixth year AH. The Prophet, along with a good number of Muslims, was set to visit the holy mosque in Makkah to perform `Umrah “minor pilgrimage.” The Qurashite prevented him and there was a war about to start but the situation ended by signing a treaty which required Muslims, among other things, to retreat to Madinah this year and to come back the following year to perform their ritual. Some Muslims did not like the treaty conditions, but at the end, they submitted to the Prophet’s decision. 41 Wajdi, Munaqashat wa-Rudud, 97. 4 2 Wajdi, “Dahd Muftarayat al-Mustashriqin,” 213. 43 Ibid. 212–213. 4 4 Muhammad Bayyumy, Muhammad Farid Wajdi: al-Katib al-Islami wa-l-Mufakkir al-Mawsu’i (Damascus: Dar al-Qalam, 2003), 45. 45 Muhammad Al-Bahy, Al-Mubashshirun wa-l-Mustashriqun wa-Mawqifuhum min al-Islam (Cairo: Matba`it al-Azhar, no date), 14. 46 Ibid. 47 Muhammad Al-Bahy, Islam fi Muwajaht al-Madhahib al-Haddamah (Cairo: Maktabat Wahbah, 1981), 31. 48 Ibid., 31. 49 Ibid., 30. (For another perspective on analyzing Al-Bahy’s position on orientalism and its relationship to one’s own perception of the self in relation to the other, see: Fedwa Malti-Doglas, “In the Eyes of the Others: The Middle Eastern Response and Reaction to Western Scholarship,” Comparative Civilizations Review, vol. 13 no. 13 (1985): 41-ff. In this article, Malti-Doglas argues that Al-Bahy approaches orientalism as the Other that should be eliminated or at least stay outside of the self (p. 41). He equates orientalism with Marxim, and free masonry, as being fundamentally destructive to religion (p. 46). 50 Edward W. Lane, The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (London: J.M. Dent. & Sons Ltd., 1923). 51 Anwar al-Jundi, Mawsu`at, 79–80. 52 Lewis Ma`luf, Al-Munjid fi al-Lughat wa-l-A`lam (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 1980). 53 Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur (Leibzig: C.F. Amelangs Verlog, 1909).

78  Said F. Hassan and Abdullah Omran 54 Anwar al-Jundi, Mawsu`at, 80. 55 Husayn al-Hawari’s work was actually a response to Wensinck’s articles in the EI. He published a series of articles in Al-Manar which were compiled in a piece of work in 1936 under the title al-Mustashriqun wa-l-Islam. He was the one who started the campaign in Al-Ahram against orientalists (Reviewer’s note). 56 Hussien Al-Harawi, “Ra’yan Mut`aridan: Hal Darar al-Mustashriqun Akthar min Naf `ihim,” Al-Hilal Magazine (January, 1934): 322. 57 Frant Buhl, Mujaz Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah, (Emirate: Markaz as-Sharjah Li al-‘Ibda` al-Fikri, 1998–1999), 6460. 58 Ibid., 6463. 59 Ibid., 6514. 60 Ibid., 6612. 61 Muhammad, Al-Bahy, al-Mubashshirun wa-l-Mustashriqun, 11–12. Wajdi, Munaqashat wa-Rudud, 169. 62 Muhammad Al-Bahy, al-Mubashshirun wa-l-Mustashriqun, 15. 63 Sayyid Nufal, “Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah,” Al-Hilal Magazine, 1st January (1976): 9–10. 6 4 Zaki Mubarak, “Naf `ihm Akthar min Dararihim,” Al-Hilal Magazine, 1st January (1934): 325. 65 Ibid., 327. 66 Al-Findy, Trans., Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah, vol. 1, no. 5 (June 1934). 67 Translation committee, Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah, introduction of the first edition, dated July 20, 1933 (Dar al-Sha’b, no date), 3; Nufal, “Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah,” Op.Cit., 12. 68 Translation committee, Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah, the Introduction, 3. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid. p. 4 71 Sheikh Mustafa `Abd al-Raziq (1885–1947) is an Egyptian scholar in the fields of Islamic law and philosophy. He was appointed as a minister of endowment for eight times and was eventually selected as the Grand Imam of al-Azhar in 1945. 72 Ahmad Amin al-Tabbakh (1886–1954) is an Egyptian historian and intellectual. He was the dean for the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, in 1939. He resided over the committee of authorship, translation, and publication for forty-five years, during which this committee translated and published many European landmark texts. He also established what was known as “the public university,” an institution that was developed later on to be “the Cultural centers” (in Arabic Qusur al-Thaqafah), affiliated with the Egyptian Ministry of Culture. 73 Sheikh Amin al-Khuli (1895–1966) is an Egyptian literary scholar. He was appointed as a judge, and then a professor of Arabic Language. He was promoted to be the head of the Arabic Department, and then the vice dean of the Faculty of Arts, King Fahd University. He is well known by his unique literary works. 74 Ibrahim Madkur (1902–1995) is an Egyptian professor, specialized in language and philosophy. He got his PhD from France in 1934. He was known with social reform ideas and activism. He was appointed as the president of the Arabic Language Academy (Majma` al-Lugha al-`Arabiyyah) in 1974. 75 Muhammad Mahdy `Allam (1900–1995) is an Egyptian literary scholar. He studied education in England. He worked as a professor of education in the Faculty of Dar al-`Ulum and a professor of philosophy in Al-Azhar University and Faculty of Law. He was also appointed as a member (in 1961), and then a vice-president for the Arabic Language Academy in 1983. 76 Zaki `Abd al-Salam Mubarak (1892–1952) is an Egyptian poet and man of letters. He was conferred three doctorates, one of them from the University of Sorbonne. He contributed more than forty books and one thousand articles in various journals.

The reception of the Brill Encyclopedia of Islam  79 77 78 79 80 81

82 83 84 85 86

87 88

89

90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97

Zaki, “Naf `ihim Akthar min Dararihim,” 325. Ibid., 327. At-Tabbakh, Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah, 37. Ibid. Isma`il Mazhar (1891–1962) is an Egyptian liberal intellectual and man of letters. He translated many important books into Arabic and also was a pioneer in publishing Arabic–English dictionaries. He called for social reform, but his political activism failed so he retreated to his dictionary-oriented publications. Isma’il Mazhar, “Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah: naqd wa-taqrir,” Ar-Rislaha Magazine (Jumada al-Akhirah, 1352 AH, 1933 AD): 40. Ibid., 40–43. See Nufal, “Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah,” Op.Cit.; ‘Abd al-Wahhab ’Azzam, Op.Cit. Seybold C. F., “Andalus,” in Mujaz Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah, 1301. The translator provided detailed commentary on the origin of the word Andalus as the name of the first residents of this territory. A. J. Wensinck, “Talbiyah,” in Mujaz Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah, 2369. Talbiyah refers to the prayer that the pilgrim initiates his pilgrimage with. It determines which type of pilgrimage (major or minor) is intended. The translator makes a comment here that the main criteria to determine which type of pilgrimage are intended in the intention of the pilgrim. Horovitz, J., “Tawraˉt,” in Mujaz Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah, 2412–2413. In this entry, the translator adds many footnotes to elaborate on the verses of the Torah referred to in the entry and their (dis)similarity to the Qur’anic account. Joseph Schacht, “Umm al-Walad,” in Mujaz Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah, 1193. Schacht argues that the master may deny that the baby from a slave girl is not his son to prevent the slave girl from her right to be umm walad, i.e. the mother of a baby (a status that gives the slave girl freedom of the bondage of slavery after the death of her master). The translator comments that this is incorrect as a Muslim can never deny his son his due right. H. Lmmens, “Hudaibiyah,” in Mujaz Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah, 3494. The author mentions˙ that the territory of Hudaibiyyah used to have a sacred well and tree. The translator states that this is not true. He also comments on some data used by the authors as uncommon among people if not fabrications. T. G. De Boer, “Ibn Sıˉnaˉ,” in Mujaz Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah, 232. Ettore Rossi, “Tripoli,” in Mujaz Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah, 6785. Ibid., 6797. S. D. Goitein, “al-Kuds,” in Mujaz Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah, 8135. Jospeh Shacht, “Rahn,” in Mujaz Da’irat al-Ma`arif al-Islamiyyah, 5224; check the same source in different entries: 121–122, respectively. Nagib al-`Aqiqi, Al-Mustashriqun (Cairo: Dar al-Ma`arif, 1964). Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage books, 1978); A. L. Tibawi, ­“English-speaking orientalists,” The Muslim World, vol. 53, no. 4 (October 1963): 298–313. Fedwa Malti-Doglas, “Middle Eastern Response to Western Scholarship,” 45.

4 Arabic literature for the colonizer and the colonized Ignaz Goldziher and Hungary’s eastern politics (1878–1918) Katalin Franciska Rac In 1907, the Austro-Hungarian colonial government of Bosnia-Herzegovina asked the Hungarian Jewish orientalist Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921) to author a textbook on Arabic literary history for Muslim high school students.1 On behalf of the Bosnian government, János Krcsmárik, the officer charged with public education and vakuf-affairs (Muslim charity and welfare) and a former student of Goldziher, negotiated the details of the textbook project. In his letters to Goldziher, Krcsmárik emphasized that he was the ideal candidate for this job: “It would be painful to ask a Brockelmann or another foreigner when we have a Goldziher.”2 Goldziher was to write the textbook in Hungarian, which “would serve national interest,” Krcsmárik wrote, adding that a Bosnian translation would be commissioned by the government. Krcsmárik noted that Muslim leaders in Bosnia knew Goldziher “par renommée.”3 Therefore, he argued, the Muslim scholars’ review of the textbook, a necessary measure before sending it to print, would be a mere formality. It must have resonated with Goldziher that the colonial government saw in him a Hungarian (and not a Jewish) scholar, whose name guaranteed (as the reference to Carl Brockelmann also signals) that the textbook would comply with the highest standards of western scholarship. Goldziher’s professional pride was probably also fanned by Krcsmárik’s remark that Goldziher’s name also ensured Muslim leaders’ continuing cooperation with the Monarchy’s educational policies. Goldziher accepted the commission and completed the manuscript by March 1908.4 The textbook, Kratka Povijest Arapske Književnosti (A Short History of Arabic Literature), was published in Sarajevo in 1909 and, despite the original intent and expectations of the Bosnian colonial government, it remained in usage long after the collapse of the ­Austro-Hungarian Empire.5 Today, the book is still used at the University of Sarajevo.6 The Bosnian imprint was followed by a Hebrew translation. An English edition, which includes many editorial changes and additions and recently a Hungarian edition, which is based on the handwritten manuscript housed in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, were also published.7 Similarly to the Bosnian one, the Hebrew, English, and Hungarian publications are still in use, demonstrating the textbook’s relevance also beyond the colonial framework. The remarkable and continuing career of the textbook outside of Habsburg Bosnia was apparently unintended and is in a way paradoxical. This essay,

Arabic literature for the colonizer and the colonized  81 however, examines another paradox: although written to serve the colonial regime, the textbook attests to Goldziher’s indifference toward colonial politics. The comparison of the textbook’s content with Goldziher’s other Hungarian writings on Arabic literary history in the first part of the essay demonstrates the ways in which Goldziher shaped the textbook’s historical narrative to serve the Monarchy’s educational agenda and to be a tool in the hands of the colonial power. The analysis also reveals that the textbook overwhelmingly overlaps with the narratives of Goldziher’s other works and lacks political messages of direct support for the colonial power. Accordingly, it gives an idea of Goldziher’s and the Monarchy’s understanding of knowledge production and transmission for educational and political purposes in a colonial setting. The second part of the essay demonstrates that the textbook commission was only one instance of Goldziher’s continuing involvement with Hungary’s eastern politics and explores Goldziher’s personal and professional motivations to cooperate with the Hungarian government. Hence, this essay disrupts the image of Goldziher as an unlikely ­n ineteenth-century orientalist constructed by scholars such as Hamid Dabashi and, recently, John Efron. Dabashi notes that “Goldziher was adamantly opposed to any kind of European colonialism,” whereas Efron even more decisively emphasizes Goldziher’s “vehement opposition to European imperialism.”8 Dabashi, Efron, and others aim to refute Edward Said’s claim that Goldziher was one of the western scholars who emphasized Islam’s “latently inferior” status, using his expertise to reinforce imperialist claims of domination over the Oriental other.9 Yet, the examination of the textbook and the exploration of Goldziher’s involvement with the Austro-Hungarian colonial regime in Bosnia do not support Said’s argumentation either. Rather than accepting the binaries set up by the Orientalism debate, the following discussion complements Suzanne Marchand’s insight into the complex dynamics of political, social, economic, and cultural forces that shaped nineteenth-century orientalists’ work, including Goldziher’s.10 Marchand suggests that Goldziher was a “classic liberal” and that his Orientalism was unique, shaped by his socialization as a Jew, traditional Jewish learning, and religiosity in addition to the philological training he received in Germany and the Netherlands. This uniqueness was also manifest in Goldziher’s ability to “understand Islamic history without overcoming it.”11 Equally important, Goldziher’s Jewish identity and minority status inevitably lent a political flavor to his career, in which feedback and acknowledgment from the Hungarian government and academic circles played important roles. The textbook reflects this and that the positive reception of his scholarship among Muslims strengthened his positive academic image in the eyes of the Hungarian decision makers. Moreover, the textbook commission also allowed Goldziher to advocate multiculturalism in imperial frameworks within the Muslim world, an ideal that must have resonated with him personally. Several of his Hungarian works on Arabic literary history, cited in this study, argued similarly as the textbook. Additionally, the letters exchanged between Goldziher and Hungarian officials, including Krcsmárik, which are held in the Oriental Collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, as well as the diary kept by Goldziher between

82  Katalin Franciska Rac 1890 and 1919 (Diary) and his Oriental Diary written during his Middle Eastern study tour in 1873–1874 are richly detailed sources for reconstructing Goldziher’s career, including the preparation of the textbook. Taken together, they offer insights into the complex dynamics between imperialism and minority integration in Hungary during the Dualist period (1867–1918).

About the history of Arabic literature In her introduction to the Hungarian manuscript edition, Kinga Dévényi notes that Goldziher completed the manuscript of the textbook without being able to consult the kind of reference works available today. He was left to his own means to collect all the information summarized in the book.12 In fact, in compiling the textbook, Goldziher could rely on his own previous research and several of his Hungarian studies. He could also consult other scholars’ publications as well.13 The textbook begins with a short description of the evolution of the Arabic language and its position within the Semitic language family, closely resembling the Hebrew textbook that Goldziher compiled forty years earlier for Hungarian Protestant theology students.14 Then, Goldziher describes the first written records in Arabic. The actual discussion of literary history begins with the earliest forms of Arabic poetry and the listing of poets of pagan Arabia. A “catalog” of poets and titles of their works follows. It is arranged according to a periodization that Muslim scholars developed and western scholarship embraced: it first discusses poets of the pagan era living in the desert and in royal courts. Next, Goldziher examines poets of the period of transformation who lived and worked before and after Muhammad’s appearance. Finally, he discusses the work of Muslim poets. Then, following a very brief – one sentence-long – definition of the Qur’an, Goldziher proceeds to talk – in chronological order – about the development of Arabic poetry and the ever-growing body of Arabic literature. Separate chapters are dedicated to the Umayyad period, the Abbasid era, and ­ bbasid western Islam. The last chapter describes the period after the fall of the A dynasty until the nineteenth century. Each chapter reviews authors who contributed to the most representative disciplines and genres of the era, from theology to sciences, philosophy to belletristic writing. Goldziher demonstrates that with the procession of time, Arabic texts came to be diversified and aestheticized. The structure of the textbook closely corresponds with the structure of Brockelmann’s History of the Arab Literature as well as with some of Goldziher’s previous studies. The immediate precedent to the textbook was Goldziher’s extended lexicon entry “Arabok” (Arabs) published as part of Gusztáv Heinrich’s Egyetemes irodalomtörténet (Universal Literary History) in 1903. It reconstructs Arabic literary history from the pagan period until after the fall of the Abbasids, including Medieval Muslim Spain. In addition, two scholarly works on closely related topics from 1891 and 1892 articulated Goldziher’s research methods and his view of Arabic literature’s role in the cultural development of pagan Arabia and

Arabic literature for the colonizer and the colonized  83 the broader Muslim world. His short study “A költo˝ a régi arabok fölfogásában” (The Poet in the Minds of the Ancient Arabs) was published in 1891 in the ­Hunfalvy-Album, a collected volume to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the doyen of Hungarian linguists, Pál Hunfalvy’s membership in the ­Academy. It focuses on the sociocultural role of pagan poets and their influence on ­Muhammad’s teachings. Goldziher delivered his inaugural lecture, “A pogány arabok költészetének hagyománya” (The Pagan Arabs’ Poetry Tradition), the following year, on the occasion of his election as a regular member of the ­Academy. In this lecture, he focused on Arabic poetry prior to the rise of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula. The fact that he chose to speak about Arabic poetry on this very important occasion indicates that he considered such research representative of his scholarship in general. Despite differences in focus, the aforementioned works as well as the textbook exhibit remarkable consistency, which is apparent in their treatment of subject topics such as the scope of the study of Arabic literary history and the role of ­A rabic as the Muslim lingua franca. What is striking, however, are the significant deviations of the textbook from the rest of Goldziher’s Hungarian oeuvre: the textbook omits certain key issues, such as the political and social roles of poets in pagan Arabia, Muhammad and the Qur’an, the relationship between Arabic and western literary scholarship and philology, and the dynamic influence of theology and philosophy on Muslim religiosity and thought. Both the textbook and the “Arabs” lexicon entry open with a list of “justifications” for the study of Arabic literary history, articulating Goldziher’s cultural imperial vision of Arabic as the language that connects different peoples who live far away from one another. The textbook explicitly argues that the “Arabic language is the intellectual bond between the multilingual believers, it represents their religious and cultural unity.”15 However, “Arabs” also notes that Arabic influenced the national literatures of the different Muslim peoples; moreover, it had a significant impact on the development of European thought and science. The textbook concentrates on the significance of Arabic language and literature “only” in the Muslim world, which, as Goldziher notes, spanned from Spain to Central Asia, from Turkey to the edges of the Sahara, and “from the shores of the Nile to the Indus and Ganges.”16 Probably because the textbook addresses Muslims, it omits references to ­European literature. Elsewhere, Goldziher would use such comparisons as a tool to help his readers understand the subjects he discussed. In “Arabs,” Goldziher compared the poet Abu ˉ Nuwaˉs (d. 810) to the German poet Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) because of his originality.17 A favorite of the Abbasid caliph H ­ arun al-Rashid, Abu ˉ Nuwaˉs nevertheless spent much time incarcerated because some of his poems mocked contemporary morals; however, he was able to earn his freedom because of the beauty of his poetry. He died succumbing to the wounds he suffered when an enraged family, victim of his satire, had severely beaten him.18 The textbook likewise lacks any reference to modern western scholars’ research on the history of Islam and Arabic literature.19 And while both the textbook and “Arabs” mention non-Muslim authors, such as the Jewish

84  Katalin Franciska Rac Maimonides or Solomon Ibn Gabirol (also known as Avicebron, author of Fons Vitae), in “Arabs,” Goldziher emphasizes Maimonides’s contribution to world literature. Probably due to its limited horizon, the textbook gives far less detail about ­Maimonides’s contribution to medical scholarship and religious thought communicated in Arabic.20 In contrast, it emphasizes the intellectual impact of ancient Greece on Arabic natural sciences on the one hand, and the presence of Arabic works in medieval European scientific literature on the other. All four works view poetry in pagan Arabia until the rise of Islam as the most ancient form of Arabic literature. Their perspectives on poets as chroniclers and, as discussed later, public intellectuals of their times, also correspond. Originally, the poet (sa ˉ’ir), who functioned similarly to a seer or priest (ka ˉhin), articulated messages under the influence of the spirit (jinni), which distinguished him from the rest of the tribe.21 The short study from 1891 quotes the biblical story of Balaam (Numbers 22–24) to highlight that all ancient Semitic peoples believed that the poet’s word possessed superhuman power.22 Since pagan Arab poets described their surroundings, their poetry, written before the rise of Islam, is helpful in reconstructing the social and cultural conditions of the Arabic Peninsula before the wake of Islam. In his inaugural talk at the Academy, Goldziher describes how Muslim and western philologists traditionally studied pagan poetry purely for its linguistic profile; only recently did western philologists turn to these poems in order to reconstruct life in pagan Arabia, as William Robertson Smith did in his 1885 pioneering study Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia.23 In contrast, in the textbook, Goldziher states that “In addition to its artistic value, pagan Arabic poetry is our main source to learn about the pagan Arabic living conditions, social institutions, and tribal histories.”24 He omits any discussion of the changing scholarly approaches to the material. Examining the different forms of poetry, Goldziher’s textbook explains that the ancient saj’, a prosaic rhyme, defined two characteristic genres of the era: ˉ’) and poems of mourning (marthiya), ­poems composed to mock adversaries (hija in which women authors especially distinguished themselves. The development of the more sophisticated poetic form qasˉda ı also reaches back to this period.25 ˙ While in his inaugural talk and “Arabs” the discussion of the poetic forms is closely connected to the examination of the poet’s persona, the Qur’anic text, and their social role, in the textbook it leads to a catalog of poets and their works. In “Arabs” and in his 1892 inaugural talk, Goldziher emphasizes the importance of saj’, by pointing out that poets, influential public figures at the time of Muhammad’s appearance, were accustomed to use this form.26 The suras of the Qur’an were also based on it. Corresponding with Goldziher’s pioneering two-volume Muhammedanische Studien (Muslim Studies) published in 1888 and 1890, “Arabs” describes Muhammad as a social and religious reformer. His teachings sharply contrasted the morals of pagan Arabia; hence, the reliance on the “customary” form of public expression was a crucial measure taken to successfully spread the word of Islam.27 “Arabs” and the 1891 article further support this claim by describing the resistance to Muhammad and his teachings on behalf of the poets.28 Goldziher depicts Muhammad’s appearance as a drama

Arabic literature for the colonizer and the colonized  85 in which poets first antagonized the Prophet, whose message was contrary to the morals of his times. However, later poetry served to praise Muhammad. Hence, poetry was a political issue for Muhammad and his followers, just as it had been for the earlier generations. This drama is missing from the textbook. When discussing poets in the “period of transition,” Goldziher refers to Labıˉd b. Rabıˉʽa (d. 662) and Maymuˉn b. Qays (d. 629), who became Muhammad’s followers and lived long lives as Muslims, illustrating the spiritual and aesthetic power of the Prophet’s message. Goldziher stresses that legend says that in his old age, Labıˉd b. Rabıˉ’a went to Medina where, hearing a part of the Qur’an, he gave up poetry.29 Maymu ˉ n b. Qays, in contrast, after meeting Muhammad in Mecca, joined his followers and ˘ arwal b. Aws al-Hutay’, wrote poems that praised the Prophet.30 The history of G who remained pagan and was thrown to prison by the Calif Umar because of his ruthless hija ˉ’ poems, however, demonstrates the dire consequences of not accepting Islam. Goldziher does not offer an analysis of the legend’s “message”; he silences his critical voice in which he would remind the reader of the significance of legends and other intellectual tools that shape collective memory. The next group of poets studied in the textbook are “the Prophet’s eulogists,” and other voices opposing Muhammad remain unmentioned in the textbook. Likewise, the textbook restricts the discussion of the Qur’an to a short definition: “In the Arabic literature, the first real book is the holy book of Islam, the Qur’an.”31 “Arabs,” in contrast, defines the Qur’an by closely connecting its text to Muhammad’s authorship, while subsequently also acknowledging the belief in its divine origin and that it is a revealed text: Muhammad’s announcements of his social and religious reforms are summarized in the book, which, in addition to its significance in the history of religions, is important in the history of Arabic literature, because in this literature this is the first closed [i.e. completed], whole work, in other words, the first book.32 Even Goldziher’s aesthetic evaluation of the Qur’anic text demonstrates how Muhammad’s prophetic mission was prone to the social and political changes that followed the emergence of Islam. According to him, Muhammad “in Mecca [was] an enthusiast, in Medina a politician.”33 As mentioned earlier, skipping the discussion of the Qur’an and Muhammad, from the pre-Islamic period the textbook directly proceeds to the Umayyad era. The textbook also avoids questions about the possible differences between the views of Muslim scholars and modern western scholarship, on the pagan period’s literary output. In comparison to the polemical tone of Goldziher’s inaugural talk, also in this case the textbook exhibits a synthetic approach. Talking to fellow academics, Goldziher outlines the dynamic relationship between “traditional” Muslim scholarship and modern western philology as he describes the pagan Arabic diwans (poetry collections) produced during the Umayyad period. The Umayyads’ Arab nationalist spirit animated the collection of pagan Arabic

86  Katalin Franciska Rac poetry as well as encouraged the composition of poems that imitated those from the pagan era. This poetry was regarded as an ideal archetype not only during the first centuries of Islam, but also in Muslim Iberia.34 Under the Abbasids, the collections continued; however, the philological work (which had been coupled with the collecting effort earlier) became more rigorous. This transformation occupies Goldziher in his inaugural talk. He notes that under the Umayyads, “The collector philologists also took care of the linguistic analysis and subject exegesis of the poems and sayings. They investigated [the poems’] historical and geographical references and preserved [their findings] along with the poems.”35 In the Abbasid era, while continuing to pay respect to traditional Arabic poetry, “sharp-minded Arab philologists” even considered the authenticity of the collected material, thus preparing the foundations of modern philological inquiry. For the western scholar, like Goldziher, only a critical examination of the authenticity of the poems could make it possible to “put the products of the desert’s muse and related traditions in the service of history and especially cultural history.”36 He argues that “our skeptical [i.e. critical] scholarship has more sensitivity, than the Asian critique that tends to be more gullible.”37 Goldziher ascribes this gullibility to the fact that scholars of the Abbasid era were much closer to the earlier century’s collectors and poets in time, culture, and mentality than modern scholars. Accordingly, medieval and modern scholars’ intellectual objectives differ; nonetheless, they are similarly respectful toward tradition. Goldziher stresses that “We are not judges of tradition … our task is to verify the tradition of ancient Arabic poetry as historical sources … before using them as a basis of our historical conclusion.”38 Quite understandably given the intended audience, the textbook eschews the analysis of the traditional Muslim and modern western philological concerns, does not dwell on the scholarly approach that it represents, and almost completely lacks Goldziher’s critical and polemical voice. Nevertheless, its historical character is clearly articulated beyond following chronological order. The canonization of the Qur’an began as Muhammad’s revelations were collected. Goldziher notes that as writing spread in Arabia, pagan poetry was also recorded because “the civilization brought about by Islam created literary interest.”39 In addition to emphasizing the significance of the poetry collections and the philological interest in pagan poetry beginning in the era of the Umayyads, the textbook stresses the continuous influence of pagan Arabic poetry on poets of the subsequent centuries and discusses forces of renewal that wished to introduce new aesthetic values and forms to Arabic poetry. It describes the opposition between the Arabic national pride of the Umayyads and the Abbasids’ religious fervor as well as multicultural imperialism, which opened the gates to eastern and western scholarly and literary influences equally. In Goldziher’s view, amidst the sweeping changes in the caliphate, the Muslim scholarly drive kept alive an interest in poetry collection and sharpened the philological inquiry into the collected texts. When discussing the influence of philosophy on Muslim thought during the Abbasid era, “Arabs” argues that Greek philosophy and Muslim theology were the two major forces that, enjoying the support of the elites, shaped Muslim intellectual

Arabic literature for the colonizer and the colonized  87 life in the last centuries of the first millennium.40 Conversely, the textbook refrains from dramatic descriptions of the persisting tension between religious and philosophical thinking and the way this tension influenced Islamic theology. It does depict the opposition between the views on philosophy of the theologian al-Ghazali and the philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes). However, Goldziher discusses the work of the first under theological writings, while the latter’s writings are described much later in the textbook under “western philosophy.” Goldziher’s historical thinking is also apparent when discussing the authors of works belonging to “religious literature,” such as Hadıˉth (records of the sayings and deeds of the Prophet), Fiqh (Muslim jurisprudence), and Tafsıˉr (exegesis). Goldziher defines these genres and emphasizes that social and cultural forces brought them to life. He even briefly explains the intellectual and political needs that these genres sought to satisfy but refrains from analysis or judgment. When naming the different authors, he provides minimal biographical background and occasionally notes their influence, as in the case of the historian and religious scholar Muhammad b. Garıˉr at-Tabarıˉ (sic) (838–923), whose Tafsıˉr collection was printed in 1903 in Cairo illustrating the long-term impact he had on Muslim religious scholarship.41 From the perspective of Goldziher’s scholarship, one could note that another paradox related to the textbook is that it discusses Hadıˉth and Fiqh, the two subjects that earned him fame in international orientalist circles, by providing succinct descriptions of the most notable authors’ lives and works without engaging with these genres in detail. The developments that Goldziher depicts with broad strokes in “Arabs” (i.e.  the growing repertoire of Arabic written culture, the evolution of more complex works that exhibited foreign cultural influences, and the widening circle of contributors to Arabic writing) correspond with the structure of the textbook, in which the narrative parts are dwarfed by the detailed and chronologically ordered listing of authors and their works. Most important, as Goldziher outlined in the introductions, “Arabs” and the textbook similarly emphasize how the common usage of Arabic across wast geographical regions fostered a rich literary tradition to which non-Arabs and non-Muslims also contributed. Both studies advocate an Arabic literary imperialism that culturally inspires both ruler and ruled. Brockelmann’s Arabic Literary History also included non-Muslim authors and their works. However, Goldziher may have aspired to invoke the multicultural character of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, given that he wrote the textbook to be used in a colonial context. Unfortunately, it remains a question to what extent, if at all, Goldziher was aware of this message of his work, which nevertheless, complied with the colonial government’s efforts to integrate ­Bosnia into the Monarchy.

The textbook and Goldziher’s contribution to Hungary’s eastern politics The textbook, as demonstrated earlier, shies away from the discussion of theological questions that Goldziher addresses in his other works. The examination of

88  Katalin Franciska Rac Goldziher’s correspondence with Krcsmárik and the Monarchy’s education policy in Bosnia highlights that the omissions were partly due to Goldziher’s compliance with the government’s requests regarding the content of the textbook. In addition, Goldziher’s own experience with Muslim scholars might have guided his pen. In his very first letter discussing the textbook to Goldziher, Krcsmárik mentioned that Ivan Popovic, an acquaintance of his, wished to translate “Arabs” into Bosnian; however, the text had to be slightly altered. He felt that some parts needed to be eliminated because the translation was intended for a Bosnian periodical about educational matters. The discussion of the differences between the Meccan and Medina suras and the earlier quoted description of Muhammad’s changing prophetic vein needed to be left out. Goldziher wrote: “In Mecca [he was] an enthusiast, in Medina a politician,” which, in Krcsmárik’s view, would have hurt religious feelings and met the ulema’s opposition.42 Unfortunately, it remains unclear if this translation was ever printed. Krcsmárik’s requests concerning the textbook were similar. It was intended for Muslim students in the last two years of Gymnasium, who learned Arabic following a pattern familiar from Hungary.43 There, Greek and Latin were instructed in Gymnasia and literary history complemented language instruction. Gymnasium in Hungary was a standard institution for secondary education designed to prepare students to continue their studies at the university level; however, a high school diploma sufficed to apply for lower-level administrative jobs as well. In Bosnia, the establishment of Gymnasia also served the ideological objectives of the colonial regime, as the historian Robert Donia emphasizes: “to fulfill its civilizing mission the monarchy required a secular native intelligentsia that shared the imperial vision.”44 Donia also notes that the establishment of Gymnasia contributed to the Monarchy’s “Pyrrhic victory” in reforming education in Bosnia.45 Despite their importance, only three Gymnasia were founded during the Austro-Hungarian rule, offering only a tiny minority of Bosnian Muslim youth opportunity for study at that level.46 The textbook inserted in the Gymnasia curriculum could not reach a significantly broad audience. The instructions regarding the textbook stemmed from the government’s concern with the proximity of parts of the textbook’s content to the religious curriculum. Krcsmárik emphasized to Goldziher that religious instruction in the high schools was the responsibility of the colonial state, even if the local religious authorities facilitated it. In Muslim religious schools, as he wrote medrese and mektebe, which were financed through the vakuf system, the government had no influence on the curriculum.47 Krcsmárik added that he hoped that the religious schools’ curriculum would also be subjected to the future comprehensive educational reform in Bosnia, which, in light of Robin Okey’s findings, remained an unrealized hope. Okey contends that Muslim education “eluded control because no plan could be set for them. Hence none was.”48 Goldziher asked whether the textbook should include the literature of Hadıˉth, Fiqh, and the Qur’an. Krcsmárik answered that although all three formed part of Arabic literary history, there should be no discussion about “the development of [the Qur’an’s] theological content, the persona of the Prophet, or about anything that a non-Muslim person

Arabic literature for the colonizer and the colonized  89 could not speak about in front of Muslims without feeling unease.”49 Krcsmárik’s view demonstrated how discretion regarding questions of religion was considered a matter of state policy. A 1908 report of the Monarchy’s Ministry of Common ­Finances confirms this political intention when concluding that “particular attention was devoted to the textbook-question as part of a larger-scale action, in the course of which current textbooks were revised … in order to protect denominational and national sensitivities.”50 In his study on Muslim progressive thinkers in Bosnia under Austro-Hungarian rule, Enes Karic´ demonstrates Bosnian intellectuals’ engagement with the Monarchy’s program of modernization in Bosnia. The discretion policy formed a part of it, though not appreciated by everyone. The author of a pamphlet on Muslim women, Dževad Beg Sulejmanpašic´, was dissatisfied with the low intensity of Austria-Hungary’s modernization efforts. In his view, it should have entailed the enforcement of compulsory public education everywhere in the country, education of women, and a reformed approach to the Qur’an and Sharia (Muslim law) – in other words, interference with religious education and practice.51 The pamphlet, thus suggests that the author viewed the Monarchy’s reform efforts and Muslim renewal as interconnected. The lack of discussion of Muhammad’s persona and his confrontation with poets who voiced public opinions as well as the laconic definition of the Qur’an in the textbook can be ascribed to Goldziher’s compliance with the Monarchy’s religious instruction policy that oddly aimed at modernizing Bosnian society but eschewed the most pressing issues of Muslim modernization. Aside from the warnings about “sensitive” topics, Goldziher received no other directives or requests from Krcsmárik, such as incorporating political messages into the text that history textbooks, for example, did include. As one contemporary author in the progressive periodical Huszadik Század (Twentieth Century) pointed out, history textbooks “Intend to instill love of the homeland in the hearts of the pupils through strict historical accuracy.”52 Krcsmárik’s letters to Goldziher suggest that, aside from such technicalities as the transcription of the Arabic terms, the manuscript was acceptable in the eyes of the government. In light of the information available about the expectations regarding the textbook’s content and tone, Goldziher’s creativity in transmitting western scholarly norms while also explaining Muslim scholarly terms and views is particularly noticeable. The textbook was necessarily a scholarly compromise, given that he had to comply with the limitations established by the government. The textbook’s format (i.e. the catalog-like listing of authors divided according the chronological order and genre) helped Goldziher “conceal” the gaps in the narrative without collapsing it into a mere list of texts. One should also take into consideration that Krcsmárik studied with Goldziher. He probably was familiar with Goldziher’s approach to Muslim scholarship and heard of Goldziher’s experiences in Muslim intellectual circles. Goldziher’s delicate avoidance of topics, such as the relationship between philosophy and religion in Muslim thought – a topic which occupied many scholars – probably did not need to be requested. Although a civilizing mission was an important part of the Bosnian government’s political ethos, Goldziher’s work fitted the educational policy exactly

90  Katalin Franciska Rac because it was completely free of colonial concerns. Goldziher’s praise for Arabic cultural imperialism and flexible scholarly argumentation were two qualities that likely justified the regime’s choice to give him the commission.

The Bosnian Muslim reception of the textbook In comparison to the government’s positive reaction to the textbook, almost nothing is known about the reaction of Bosnian scholars. In November 1908, several months after receiving the manuscript, Krcsmárik notified Goldziher in a letter that Ali Kadicˇ, Arabic teacher at Sarajevo’s main Gymnasium and author of the text collection that was added to Goldziher’s textbook in 1913, pointed out some problems with the language (i.e. translation) of the textbook and had some reservations about Goldziher’s definitions of Fiqh and other concepts. Krcsmárik added that the next day, there would be a meeting to discuss Kadicˇ’s concerns about the textbook and that he “will ask him to explain his position. If we find it worthy of consideration, I will let you know, and ask you to give your permission to make some amendments.”53 According to Krcsmárik, Kadicˇ nevertheless welcomed the textbook, which was “useful” and “made his work easier.” Krcsmárik also observed that “It seems he considers it very modern and European.”54 A few weeks later, Krcsmárik wrote to Goldziher and enclosed comments from Kadicˇ.55 However, these comments are missing from the correspondence and were not found in the rest of the Goldziher collection.56 One can only guess if Goldziher removed them or the notes were inadvertently lost possibly with other documents of the Goldziher bequest. Additional research may unearth Bosnian Muslim reactions in the flourishing Muslim press of the era, which scholars consider a product of the intensifying Muslim modernization in Bosnia. Preliminary research, however, demonstrates lack of interest from the local press in the textbook.57 As in the case of every research question, the lack of sources can be attributed to either technical and ideological factors, or even both. As Donia’s aforementioned remarks suggest, the textbook’s audience was rather restricted; hence, Muslim intellectuals may have seen it as an unworthy subject to engage with. One might also consider the possibility that local intellectuals neither recognized in the textbook a crucial tool of social or cultural modernization associated with the presence of the Austro-Hungarian regime, nor did they view it as an intrinsic component of Muslim reform, despite the fact that it was conceived as part of the Austro-Hungarian educational reform and the government sought the approval of Muslim scholars. As Leyla Amzi-Erdogdular recently noted, ­Muslim reform in Bosnia had a rather practical nature: theological questions and abstract notions were not discussed as part of the religious and social change.58 The textbook would have provoked minimal reactions to theological questions; as Krcsmárik’s letter illustrates, Kadicˇ questioned definitions of religious literature, such as Fiqh. This practical approach, however, may be detected in the fact that Goldziher’s lexicon entry “Arabs” had already generated interest in Bosnia. Pursuing the local initiative to have Goldziher’s text incorporated into

Arabic literature for the colonizer and the colonized  91 the instructional curriculum would have meant actively accepting, even internalizing western scholarship in local education. The textbook that appeared two years later was handed down from the colonial regime to local educators, who thus played a less active role in its introduction into secular education. Accordingly, it may not have called the same sort of attention from Muslim scholars. Future research may not only clarify how Muslim authors received the textbook but will likely also contribute to our understanding of how they perceived the connection between the reform brought by Austria-Hungary and Muslim renewal.59

Scholarship and politics The textbook’s political vein reveals Goldziher’s indifference toward the colonial context. A short glimpse of his career, including his contribution to Hungary’s eastern politics, further illustrates that from the beginning of his career, at the core of his cooperation with the government lies his desire for positive acknowledgment as a Hungarian scholar. In 1868 (a year after Jews in Hungary were granted civil rights), the eighteenyear-old Goldziher received a state scholarship to earn a doctorate in Germany in Semitic philology. He extended his studies to spend a semester in Leiden. The scholarship kindled his hope that post-feudal Hungary was about to build a merit-based academic system. His 1871 article “Zur Geschichte der Toleranz­ literatur” (On the History of Tolerance Literature) for the Ungarisch-Jüdische Wochenschrift (Hungarian Jewish Weekly) records what he perceived as the Dutch state’s capacity to provide opportunities for the Jewish minority and the deep impression it made on him. Addressed to Hungarian Jewish readers, the article argues that only the state – following the Dutch example – could ensure the integration of Jewish intellectuals into the academic system.60 Throughout his whole career, he expected the Hungarian state to recognize his uncompromising Jewish and Hungarian identifications and, when it came to professional advancement, disregard his (Jewish) religion. His initial hope that academia would be a religiously neutral space was crushed when he was not offered a regular professorship at the University of Budapest (hereafter University) after he received his doctorate. For the next three decades, he worked there in the lesser position of Privatdozent and earned his living as the secretary of the Pest Israelite Congregation. However, neither the Academy, which he joined as an external member in 1877, nor the Ministry of Education completely marginalized him. In 1872, shortly after his return to Pest from the Netherlands, the Minister of Education requested Goldziher’s expert opinion on whether a prospective Oriental academy should be organized as a separate institution or be integrated into the university, as well as how many and what kind of professorships it would require.61 Although the minister asked him to help shape an academic institution, Goldziher’s “Oriental expertise” was clearly being solicited for political intent, with which Goldziher readily cooperated. The Hungarian elite was keen to develop a Hungarian institution similar as the

92  Katalin Franciska Rac Oriental Academy in Vienna, founded by the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa in 1754 to train diplomats and consuls to be employed in the east. Only a decade after these requests were made of Goldziher, an Oriental language school was opened in 1883 under the auspices of the Commercial Academy (founded in 1857). It also offered courses of Southern Slavic languages, attesting to the Hungarian foreign political vision of establishing financially profitable commercial relations with Hungary’s eastern and southeastern neighbors. In 1899, the language instruction was expanded to an independent institution, the Oriental Commercial Academy, which was merged back into the Commercial Academy in 1920.62 While in 1872 his input was considered, Goldziher complained to his Diary in 1891 that he was not involved in the Education Ministry’s plans with the Oriental Academy.63 Nonetheless, during World War I, Goldziher gave lectures there.64 In 1873, Goldziher was awarded a second state scholarship to travel to the Middle East to learn both contemporary spoken Arabic and the formal language of diplomatic exchange.65 While traveling in Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt, from Fall 1873 to Spring 1874, Goldziher acted as a representative of the Dual ­Monarchy and the Hungarian state. His two diaries suggest that in this capacity, he did not disclose to Muslims whom he encountered that he was Jewish and that in his homeland, he was a politically and socially marginalized scholar.66 He performed as a European academic who was learned in the teachings and literatures of Islam. His correspondence with European scholars, the contacts that he made with Europeans, and his publications in scholarly and popular journals illustrate the authenticity of his western scholarly identification.67 In Damascus, Beirut, and Cairo, Goldziher developed a colorful network of relations with local Europeans, such as the Austro-Hungarian consul in ­A lexandria, István Burián (1851–1922), who in 1903 became the head of the Ministry of Common Finances, the governing administration of Bosnia. Goldziher wrote the Arabic textbook during Burián’s tenure.68 More important, Goldziher’s diaries record how he befriended Muslim intellectuals impressed by his knowledge of Islamic history and Muslim law and theology. He was even given the permission to visit classes at Al-Azhar, the most important school of Muslim higher education in the Middle East at the time.69 Goldziher’s diaries also suggest that he diligently studied there alongside Muslim students. Toward the end of his stay in Cairo, Goldziher, in turban and kaftan, joined the Muslim prayers on a Friday evening in a mosque.70 The act of dressing up, performing as a pious Muslim, and participating in Friday prayer can be seen as an extension of his studies at Al-Azhar, which, according to subsequent entries in his Diary, were instrumental in achieving one of his scholarly goals, namely, to learn Islam from within.71 He wrote: I decided to work myself into Islam and Islamic scholarship; that I will become a member of the company of Muslim scholars and will learn about those forces that during the centuries developed Islam’s mighty world religion from Mecca’s Judaized cult.72

Arabic literature for the colonizer and the colonized  93 The study tour, thus, provided him what Hamid Dabashi eloquently describes as “catholicity of learning, [which] granted Goldziher the virtue of being an outsider and insider, [and] was perhaps the most significant dimension of his scholarship.”73 The two diaries demonstrate that the scholarly networks he developed during his study tour served him for the rest of his life. His connections with Muslim scholars carried great weight in the eyes of Hungarian policy makers in requesting contributions from Goldziher to Hungary’s eastern politics, such as the textbook commission. To what extent the twofold commitments, to Hungarian political and scholarly goals, and to Muslim scholarship, occupied him throughout his career can be gauged by the Diary entries recording the invitation from the Egyptian Prime Minister, Prince Fuad, to the newly founded Cairo University in 1911. At this time, Goldziher was not only a full professor at the University but also a member of the Academy’s board of directors and a recipient of various honors from outside Hungary. In the Diary, Goldziher noted that Prince Fuad personally wrote to him. When Goldziher refused the invitation, the Prince traveled to Budapest and told Goldziher – according to the Diary – that he visited the Hungarian capital only to meet and invite him. “You are the greatest Arabist in the world,” Prince Fuad told Goldziher, adding that “it was his obligation to bring Western culture and scholarship to the Orient.”74 Goldziher also recorded that Prince Fuad told him that he had asked Austro-Hungarian foreign minister Aehrenthal to pressure Goldziher into accepting his invitation to Egypt.75 In a letter, the Hungarian Prime Minister, Count Károly Khuen-Héderváry, encouraged Goldziher to accept the invitation, noting that it would be an honor to the University and to the whole Hungarian academic community.76 According to the Diary, the state secretary at the Ministry of Culture also tried – ­unsuccessfully – to convince him to go to Cairo. Goldziher firmly refused the Egyptian offer, as he refused invitations to European universities, occasionally confessing to his Diary that he did not leave Hungary because of his responsibility for his family. While Goldziher constantly complained to his Diary that abroad he was more appreciated than at home, he failed to mention that when celebrating the fortieth anniversary of his career as university professor, he was congratulated not only by foreign scholars, but also by the same state secretary; he named him as “one of the excellent workers in Hungarian scholarship.”77 Goldziher’s repeated refusal of various distinguished posts all over the world can also be ascribed to his insistence on being accepted as a politically engaged Jewish scholar in Hungary.78 The Diary is an unambiguous record of the complex interplay between Goldziher’s reception in Hungary and in the Middle East.

Developing Oriental scholarship and communicating it to the broader public in Hungary Goldziher’s need for recognition also stemmed from the split within the ­Hungarian Oriental field. During his lifetime, Oriental studies in Hungary emphasized research on the Central Asian origins of the Hungarian forefathers.

94  Katalin Franciska Rac Linguistic research, in particular, promised to fill in the many gaps in the scarce historical record. The foundation of the chair in Altaic comparative linguistics in 1872 at the University supported this research. (Turkish was also important to the study of the history of Hungary under Ottoman occupation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.) Compared to German institutions, relatively little progress was made in Semitic philology and Middle Eastern studies in the Hungarian Christian theological faculties or the theological faculty of the ­University.79 In fact, the Rabbinical Seminary in Budapest, opened in 1877, was a flag bearer in Hungarian Orientalism. Through the examination of medieval Arabic records that mentioned the Central Asian nomadic Hungarian tribes, ­A rabic philology could offer but a meager contribution to research on Hungarian origins. Although Goldziher helped the Arabist Count Géza Kuun (1838–1905) examine such sources, he never participated in the “national” research program. Consequently, Goldziher was in a very peculiar position because in Hungary, his field of research played a different role than in Western European scholarship. While in Hungary he had to make efforts to raise awareness of the importance of his scholarly field, broader academic circles outside of Hungary appreciated his pioneering research on Islam. Participating in international conferences of orientalists, he further developed his academic networks and used his convention reports to the Academy to emphasize the significance of all Oriental subfields.80 As important as it was for him to be personally present at these conferences, he was also keen to be present as Hungary’s representative. His Diary suggests that his reputation grew at a much faster pace outside of Hungary than inside the country, and he felt that he failed to convert his success abroad to the sort of acknowledgment that he sought at home.81 Although he received the highest award in his field, the Golden Medal of Orientalists, in Stockholm in 1889, Goldziher became a regular Academy member only three years later, in 1892. Goldziher used this position to make Orientalism a mainstream academic field. In an 1892 proposal suggesting ways to better organize the diffuse efforts made in the Oriental field at the Academy, he seemed to be holding the scholarly work in Hungary to the standards of other European countries.82 In 1895, he organized a delegation of Hungarian professors to visit Egypt; after their return, the delegates published a volume of collected articles, contributing to Goldziher’s mission of “popularizing” Oriental studies.83 He continued his efforts to earn respect for Oriental studies in Hungary after becoming a full professor in 1905, and during the next fifteen years as he was elected to various prestigious academic positions: vice president of the Academy’s first department, member of the Academy’s board of directors (1911), and dean of humanities at the University (1917–1918). He also published articles in popular newspapers that also promoted his public intellectual image.

Bosnia and recognition Although Goldziher was involved with Hungary’s eastern politics practically from the beginning of his postgraduate career, he recognized that the

Arabic literature for the colonizer and the colonized  95 occupation of Bosnia was a new opportunity to broaden his professional activities in Budapest and, consequently, earn the acknowledgment he was hungry for. On July 4, 1895, seven years into the occupation of Bosnia, Goldziher noted in the Diary that for several years, he had been urging the Education Ministry to introduce Islamic legal studies into the university curriculum: “considering that 506,000 Muslim subjects live in the Monarchy, every learned subject of the ­Hungarian king should be familiar with the institutions and cultural history of this crowd.”84 He was furious that the Ministry refused his proposal. At this stage of his career, he was an internationally recognized authority in Oriental studies, but still not a paid regular faculty member at the University. He became full professor a decade later; according to the Diary, he had to wait nineteen years, until 1914, to be given permission to teach Islamic institutions at the faculty of law in Budapest. Then he was disappointed to realize that he was teaching only thirty students in a three-hundred-seat lecture hall.85 The textbook commission came during this waiting period, in 1907, but after his appointment in 1905 as the chair of Semitic philology at the University. As eastern politics gained further momentum after the outbreak of World War I, government interest in his expertise increased (again).86 In December 1915, Goldziher recorded in his Diary the invitations that he received from various government institutions established to promote Hungary’s interests in the east.87 He wrote that in most cases, he accepted the invitations without hesitation only to disassociate himself from most of these organizations shortly after. He argued that he could not suffer the members. While he shared with his Diary how the rampant “dilettantism” and “ignorance” disturbed him, the organizations’ support for colonialism did not appear to bother him as much, and he did not lament the ethical or moral aspects of his cooperation.

Conclusion Comparing the textbook to some of Goldziher’s academic and popular works reveals a rather consistent tone but selective treatment of the same material. The textbook demonstrates that although Goldziher was ready to offer his scholarship to the service of the colonial regime, he did not corrupt his tone or language to incorporate political messages from the Hungarian government. Perhaps his renown among Muslims shielded him from becoming the colonial government’s mouthpiece. In fact, he was not asked to incorporate propaganda into his work; rather, it was suggested that he treat his material selectively, considering religious sensitivities of the intended audience. The letters Goldziher received from his former student and colonial officer János Krcsmárik reveals that Goldziher’s scholarly attitude aligned with the Monarchy’s stated education agenda. The textbook not only exhibited a delicate treatment of certain issues, it advocated multiculturalism within imperial political framework and advanced the broader agenda of the Monarchy’s education policy. This policy aimed to integrate Bosnian Muslims – as well as the Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats – into the multiethnic and multireligious Monarchy,

96  Katalin Franciska Rac and, through the construction of a Bosnian political consciousness, counter the forces of political fragmentation along ethno-religious divides.88 While scholars agree that education was one of the chief tools of indoctrination for colonizers, it is also important to note that European decision makers likewise viewed education as a tool of nation building.89 The Monarchy’s education policy both within the Empire and in its Bosnian colony is a good example of this effort; Goldziher’s personal path of integration in Hungary sheds further light on it. At the core of Goldziher’s discussions of the history of Arabic literature stands a positive approach to the universal values created by the usage of Arabic among Muslims. Additionally, as his introduction to “Arabs” illustrates, Goldziher viewed the cultural history of Islam as part of universal human history. This was the essence of his Orientalism, which he most eloquently articulated in his 1893 lecture commemorating the death of the French Semiticist, Ernest ­Renan (1823–1892).90 Orientalism gave Goldziher the conceptual framework and vocabulary to discuss religion, tradition, science, social cohesion, politics, and other abstract concepts, and helped him introduce his readers to the world of Medieval Arabia, North Africa, and Spain. At the same time, he addressed issues, such as multiculturalism, tolerance, imperialism, and nationalism that were current topics in contemporary Hungary as well as in the Levant. The political message – if one can define it as such – of the textbook emphasized the close correlation between politics and culture as well as political power and intellectual development. By depicting the positive influence of the shared Arabic language on centuries of literary output by Muslims and non-Muslims equally, Goldziher articulated his affirmation of the beneficial cultural impact of Muslim empires and perhaps also the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Indeed, the lessons learned from the Umayyads or the Abbasids were of universal currency. Additionally, Austria-Hungary’s cautious approach to religious instruction can be viewed as an advantage for Goldziher, the modern western scholar. The limited treatment of the Muslim scripture as part of Arabic literary tradition that neither referenced nor denied the traditional Muslim interpretation of its origins and significance partially validated the secularized scholarly vein of modern religious scholarship Goldziher engaged with. While additional research can reveal how such a scholarly proposition was received by Bosnian religious scholars, the usage of the textbook demonstrates the acceptance of a modern literary approach that treats religious and secular writings evenhandedly. Not least important, it affirmed Goldziher’s approval of a religiously tolerant public sphere, supported by and supportive of his scholarship that, as mentioned earlier, Austria-Hungary nominally represented in Bosnia. Therefore, joining Lawrence I. Conrad, who has argued that Goldziher’s neutral German academic voice contrasted with his Hungarian publications’ partisan tone, this essay suggests that Goldziher’s stress on the correlation between imperialism and multiculturalism itself conveys a subtle political message.91 The textbook’s message reflected Goldziher’s innermost conviction of cultural pluralism while also serving additional personal objectives. It allowed Goldziher to shape political discourse as a politically active citizen and at the same time

Arabic literature for the colonizer and the colonized  97 reinforced his position as an authority on modern Orientalism – respected by Muslims and non-Muslims equally – and as a partner to the Hungarian state. The politicization of the textbook reflects Goldziher’s interpretation of the relationship between scholarship and political power, both on the personal and the institutional levels.

Notes 1 Complying with Article 25 of the Treaty of Berlin, the concluding document of the Congress of Berlin, the Austro-Hungarian army occupied Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1878. In 1908, the Monarchy annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, but governed it as a sep­ ereafter arate region under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Common Finances. H the shortened name of the province, Bosnia will be used. 2 Krcsmárik’s letter to Goldziher, January 7, 1907; HAS GIL/22/30/43. This was the first letter that mentioned the textbook commission. The letters written to ­Goldziher are available online at the website of the Oriental Collection of the ­Hungarian Academy of Sciences: http://real-ms.mtak.hu/view/collection/­Goldziher_bequest.html. Carl Brockelmann is still considered a leading authority on Arabic literary history. His History of Arabic Literature is a basic work on the subject that researchers c­ ontinue to consult today. In it, Brockelmann praises the critical method of Goldziher’s Hadıˉth study, noting that Goldziher cultivated literary history in its highest form by examining it within a broader social and cultural historical narrative. Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur 1 (History of Arabic Literature 1) (Weimar: Emil ­ oldziher’s Oriental Diary, Ferber, 1898). The folklorist Raphael Patai, translator of G studied in Breslau and attended Brockelmann’s lectures. He recalled that Brockelmann had always talked about Goldziher as “the great.” “There was scarcely a lecture period when he did not say ‘Und der grosse Goldziher sagt …’ (‘and the great Goldziher says’).” Ignaz Goldziher and Raphael Patai, Ignaz Goldziher and His Oriental Diary: A Translation and Psychological Portrait (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), 13. 3 Krcsmárik’s letter to Goldziher January 31, 1908; HAS GIL/22/30/23. 4 Krcsmárik expresses his appreciation that the manuscript is ready in a letter to Goldziher written on March 20, 1908; HAS GIL/22/30/24. Krcsmárik’s letter to Goldziher from May 6, 1908 reflects that by then he actually received the manuscript in his hands from the ministry where Goldziher sent it. HAS GIL/22/30/25. 5 In fact, no positive evidence was consulted that the textbook was continuously used until the end of the Austro-Hungarian rule in 1918. Available sources point to its us­ ungarian age in higher education after World War II. According to the editor of the H manuscript edition, Kinga Dévényi (see footnote 7), in contrast to the date on the cover of the Bosnian publication, it appeared in 1910. Kinga Dévényi, Introduction to A klasszikus arab irodalom története (The History of Classical Arabic Literature) (Budapest: MTAK, 2013), x. 6 A syllabus of Prof. Dr. Jusuf Ramicˇ’s course “Arapska književnost” (Arabic Literature) at the University of Sarajevo lists Goldziher’s book among the readings. From my correspondence with Dr. Esad Durakovic´ from the University of Sarajevo (September 15, 18, 2015), I learned that the faculty uses Goldziher’s book as a reference. 7 The Hebrew translation, ‫( קיצור תולדות הספרות הערבית‬Kitsur toldot ha-sifrut ha-ʻAravit/A Short History of Arabic Literature), was published at least twice in Israel in the early 1950s and 1970s. The translation was based on the “Croatian” publication that is the Bosnian textbook. Dévényi suggests that Goldziher likely submitted a typed manuscript to the government, which is missing. It was probably a clean copy, perhaps with

98  Katalin Franciska Rac amendments, of the handwritten manuscript housed in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The handwritten manuscript was first published as a university textbook in 2001 and, with editorial amendments, in 2013: Ignác Goldziher and Kinga Dévényi (ed.), A klasszikus arab irodalom története (The History of Classical Arabic Literature) (Budapest: MTAK, 2013). In this study, I cite the 2013 Hungarian edition as The History of Classical Arabic Literature and the second publication of the Hebrew translation as A Short History of Arabic Literature (translated by Pessah Shinar, Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1971). Dévényi notes that she did not alter the content of the handwritten manuscript, except for clarifying sentences and additions she marks in the introduction. I consider this edition of the handwritten manuscript an accurate record of Goldziher’s intent with the textbook. The Hungarian and Hebrew publications correspond. Joseph Desomogyi, Goldziher’s last student, translated the Hungarian manuscript to English and published it in 1957– 1958 in Islamic Culture and in a broadened form, as a book, in 1966 titled, A Short History of Classical Arabic Literature. It includes his additions as well. About the Hungarian and English editions, see Dévényi, Introduction to The History of Classical Arabic Literature, x–xiii. 8 Hamid Dabashi, “Introduction to the Aldinetransaction Edition” of Ignaz ­Goldziher’s Muslim Studies (New Brunswick and London: Aldinetransaction, 2006), lxxiv; John M. Efron, German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic (­Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2016), 228. 9 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 209. 10 Suzanne Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (Washington, DC, Cambridge and New York: German Historical Institute, Cambridge University Press, 2009), xxi–xxii; 323–332. 11 Marchand, 330. 12 Dévényi, Introduction to The History of Classical Arabic Literature, xviii. 13 Goldziher also published his literary historical research in German. The best-known work is probably “Über die Vorgeschichte der Hidzsá’-Poesie,” in Abhandlungen zur arabischen Philologie I (Leiden: Brill, 1896), 1–105. 14 Goldziher, A héber nyelv elemi tankönyve (The Elementary Textbook of the Hebrew Language) (Pest: Petri, 1872). 15 Goldziher, The History of Classical Arabic Literature, 5; A Short History of Arabic Literature, 3. 16 Goldziher, The History of Classical Arabic Literature, 5; A Short History of Arabic Literature, 3. 17 Goldziher, “Arabok” (Arabs), in Egyetemes irodalomtörténet (Universal Literary History) ed. Gusztáv Heinrich (Budapest: Franklin, 1903), 308. 18 Goldziher, The History of Classical Arabic Literature, 78–79; A Short History of Arabic Literature, 68–69. 19 A Short History of Arabic Literature includes references to modern Western scholarship. They describe western scholarly interest, but not the arguments the referenced works offer. These parts are missing from The History of Classical Arabic Literature. 20 Goldziher, “Arabs,” 322, 325; The History of Classical Arabic Literature, 105; A Short History of Arabic Literature, 98. 21 Most of the transliterations of Arabic terms follow the spelling of Encyclopedia ­Britannica, while the names of the mentioned authors are written as in The History of Classical Arabic Literature. 22 Goldziher, “A költo˝ a régi arabok fölfogásában” (The Poet in the Minds of the ­A ncient Arabs) in Hunfalvy-Album (Budapest: Hornyánszky, 1891), 177. 23 In the lecture, he builds on the previous three decades of western research on pagan Arabic poetry and society, including works by Theodor Nöldeke, Alfred Kramer, Rudolf Geyer, Wilhelm Ahlward, Julius Wellhausen, Jules Soury, Robertson Smith, and Gustav Weil.

Arabic literature for the colonizer and the colonized  99 24 Goldziher, The History of Classical Arabic Literature, 13; A Short History of Arabic Literature, 9. 25 Goldziher, The History of Classical Arabic Literature, 7–9; A Short History of Arabic Literature, 5–7. 26 Goldziher, A pogány arabok költészetének hagyománya (The Pagan Arabs’ Poetry ­Tradition) (Budapest, Franklin, 1893), 20. 27 Goldziher, “Arabs,” 258, 261–262. 28 Ibid., 265. 29 Goldziher, The History of Classical Arabic Literature, 24; A Short History of Arabic Literature, 21. 30 Goldziher, The History of Classical Arabic Literature, 25; A Short History of Arabic Literature, 21. 31 Goldziher, The History of Classical Arabic Literature, 36; A Short History of ­Arabic Literature, 23. In addition, Dévényi inserted the whole chapter on Muhammad and the Qur’an from “Arabs” into the textbook to ensure that it complied with the current university curriculum. The insertion is seamless, which illustrates that Goldziher’s prose was rather even throughout his works. Joseph de Somogyi likewise inserted parts from “Arabs” into the English version of the textbook. However, he went further and completed the original text with additional extensions and edits and, thus, transformed its tone. 32 Goldziher, “Arabs,” 257. 33 Goldziher, “Arabs,” 259. Goldziher’s argumentation corresponds with Theodor Nöldeke’s findings in his 1858 Geschichte des Qora ˉns (History of the Qur’an). See, Nöldeke, The History of the Qur’an, ed. and trans. Wolfgang H. Behn (Leiden, ­Boston, MA: Brill, 2013), i/143fn. 1. 34 Goldziher, The History of Classical Arabic Literature, 127; A Short History of Arabic Literature, 124. 35 Goldziher, Pagan Arabs’ Poetry, 34. 36 Ibid., 5–6. 37 Ibid., 35. 38 Ibid., 43. 39 Goldziher, The History of Classical Arabic Literature, 36; A Short History of Arabic Literature, 23. 40 Goldziher, “Arabs,” 305. 41 Goldziher, The History of Classical Arabic Literature, 51; A Short History of Arabic Literature, 38. 4 2 Krcsmárik’s letter to Goldziher, January 7, 1907; HAS GIL/22/30/43; Goldziher, “Arabs,” 259. 43 Dévényi, Introduction to The History of Classical Arabic Literature, xi. In a letter to Goldziher dated August 7, 1907, Krcsmárik listed the Gymnasium’s Arabic language curriculum by year; HAS GIL/22/30/18. Goldziher also suggested attaching a collection of Arabic literary sources to his textbook soon after he received the request. Only in 1913 and not in Goldziher’s edition was one integrated into the high school curriculum. See Krcsmárik’s letter to Goldziher, September 23, 1907; HAS GIL/22/30/20. 4 4 Robert J. Donia, Sarajevo: A Biography (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 84. 45 Donia, 88. 46 According to the Austro-Hungarian Ministry of Common Finances, in 1907/1908, three high schools operated in Sarajevo, Mostar, and Turla. Altogether, 157 students studied in the three schools, and compared to the previous year, 24 more students matriculated in that year. It means that about 35 hundredth of a percent of the Bosnian population studied in the three schools. There were other, though not numerous, institutions of secondary education. K. Und K. Gemeinsamen Finanzministerium,

100  Katalin Franciska Rac

47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57

58 59

60 61 62

63

Bericht über die Verwaltung von Bosnien und Herzegovina (­Report on the Administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina) (Vienna: K. K. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1908), 67. Krcsmárik’s letter to Goldziher, September 23, 1907; HAS GIL/22/30/20. Robin Oley, Taming Balkan Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 156. Krcsmárik’s letter to Goldziher, September 23, 1907; HAS GIL/22/30/20. K. Und K. Gemeinsamen Finanzministerium, Bericht über, 68. Enes Karic´ , “Islamic Thought in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 20th Century: Debates on Revival and Reform,” Islamic Studies 41, no. 3 (Autumn 2002): 416. Lajos Zs. Szeberényi, “Bosznia és Hercegovina” (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Huszadik Század (Twentieth Century) 9 no. 11 (November 1908): 388. Krcsmárik’s letter to Goldziher, November 24, 1908; HAS GIL/ 22/30/31. Ibid. Krcsmárik’s letter to Goldziher, December 18, 1908; HAS GIL/22/30/32. In his letter dated February 10, 1909, Krcsmárik wrote that Goldziher’s reply to Kadicˇ’s comments, approved by the ulema as well, was forwarded to Kadicˇ. Krcsmárik welcomed the agreement on the discussed details noting that in his view, there were no substantial differences between Goldziher’s and Kadicˇ’s positions. Krcsmárik’s letter to Goldziher, February 10, 1909; HAS GIL/ 22/30/34. In an e-mail on October 7, 2016 Dévényi confirmed that since the publication of the manuscript they have not been found. I would also like to use this opportunity to thank Dženita Karic´ for her generous help researching the Bosnian Muslim press for reactions to Goldziher’s textbook. She did not find any sign that it was discussed publicly. Neither could she find traces of Kadicˇ’s comments on the textbook. Similarly, I consulted with Edin Hajdarpasic. In an email from June 11, 2018, he sent me a reference to the textbook in the periodical Gajret. An article from 1912, a short praise of Goldziher’s work, included the acknowledgement of the translation of a short Arabic literary history book to “our language.” The focus of this short article, however, is on Goldziher’s Vorlesungen über den Islam, published in 1910. It also quotes Goldziher’s views on Islam. F.N., “Predavanja o Islamu” (Lectures on Islam) Gajret 5, no. 4 (1912): 52. I would like to use this opportunity to thank Edin Hajdarpasic for sharing his insights and generously assisting my research. Leyla Amzi-Erdogdular, “Alternative Muslim Modernities: Bosnian Intellectuals in the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 59, no. 4 (2017): 933. In his book Whose Bosnia?: Nationalism and Political Imagination in the Balkans, Edin Hajdarpasic points out that acceptance and hostility toward Habsburg initiatives of modernization and Bosnian nation building coexisted since the occupation of the province. Edin Hajdarpasic, Whose Bosnia?: Nationalism and Political ­Imagination in the Balkans, 1840-1914 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2012), 179–181. Ignaz Goldziher, “Zur Geschichte der Toleranzliteratur” (On the History of ­Tolerance Literature), Ungarisch-Jüdische Wochenschrift 1 (1871): 196–197. Minister of Education Tivadar Pauler’s letter to Ignaz Goldziher from June 10, 1872; HAS GIL/33/18/01. B. Ph, “Die Orientalische Handelsakademie in Budapest” (The Oriental Commercial Academy in Budapest), Keleti szemle: közlemények az ural-altaji nép- és nyelvtudomány körébo˝l. A Magyar Néprajzi Társaság Keleti szakosztályának és a ­Keleti Kereskedelmi Akadémiának Értesíto˝je (Oriental Review: Studies on Ural-Altaic linguistics, ethnology, and ethnography. Newsletter of the Hungarian Ethnographic Society’s Oriental Department and of the Oriental Commercial Academy) 1–3 (1900–1902): 73–76. Goldziher, Tagebuch (Diary) (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 128.

Arabic literature for the colonizer and the colonized  101 6 4 Goldziher, Diary, 301. Between 1899 and 1919, Goldziher’s protégé, the T ­ urkologist Ignác (Ignaz) Kunos (1860–1945) was the director of the Oriental Commercial Academy, a post he continued to hold after the reintegration with the Commercial Academy. 65 The first occasion that he could practice his Arabic presented itself at the ­V iennese universal exposition a couple of months before his departure to the Mideast. G ­ oldziher, Diary, 55. 66 A conversation with a professor in Al-Azhar, recorded on January 17, 1874 in the Oriental Diary, offers an insight into how successfully Goldziher performed his European identity. The professor explained to Goldziher that “the Jews are the most contemptible people of the world and that the Christians are closer to Islam; he thought he paid me a compliment thereby.” The same professor also tried to convince Goldziher to convert to Islam. Oriental Diary, 153. 67 For example, his articles for the Pester Lloyd. 68 Almost a year after Krcsmárik first wrote to him, on December 13, 1907, Goldziher met with the head of the department who officially asked him to write the textbook. In his diary, Goldziher records that he found the offer made in the name of “Minister Burián, my friend from my youth” dignifying and he readily accepted it. Goldziher, Diary, 258. Dévényi argues that only after this December 1907 meeting did Goldziher began to write the textbook and thus completed it in three months. Dévényi, Introduction to The History of Classical Arabic Literature, xviii. 69 Goldziher, Diary, 68. 70 Ibid., 72. 71 Raphael Patai, translator and editor of the Oriental Diary, viewed Goldziher’s participation in the Friday prayer as an act that revealed Goldziher’s unstable belief in Judaism. Hamid Dabashi refuted these claims. See Patai, 62 and Dabashi’s reaction, Dabashi, xviii. 72 Goldziher, Diary, 56. 73 Dabashi, xviii. 74 Goldziher, Diary, 270. 75 Two letters from Prince Fuad to Goldziher are held in the Oriental Collection of the Academy. They were written in 1911 and 1912 and support Goldziher’s description of the Egyptian politician’s insistence to win him for the new University. Fuad hoped that Goldziher would teach Muslim philosophy in Arabic at the University. HAS GIL/10/28/05 and GIL/10/28/01. 76 Ibid. Károly Khuen-Héderváry’s letter to Goldziher, October 16, 1911; HAS GIL/21/14/01. 77 Jeno˝ Balogh’s letter to Goldziher, December 19, 1911; HAS GIL/02/19/06. 78 For example, see Goldziher, Diary, 135–136. (March 22, 1892). 79 For the institutional development of Oriental scholarship in Germany, see Ursula Wokoeck, German Orientalism: The Study of the Middle East and Islam from 1800 to 1945 (London and New York: Routledge, 2009). 80 See Goldziher, “Jelentés az orientalisták IX. nemzetközi kongresszusáról, 1892” (Report on the Orientalists’ 9th International Congress, 1892), Akadémiai Értesíto˝ (Academic Newsletter) III, no. 11 (November 1892): 632–659. 81 See Róbert Simon’s essays on Goldziher’s career and his reception in Hungary in his Goldziher Ignác (Budapest: Osiris, 2000). 82 Ignaz Goldziher, “Indítvány a keleti tanulmányok elo˝mozdítására szolgáló bizottság felállítása tárgyában” (Proposal to convene a committee for the advancement of ­Oriental studies), Akadémiai Értesíto˝ (Academy Newsletter) (1892): 732. 83 László Ko˝rösi, Egyiptom: Tanulmánykönyv (Budapest, 1899). 84 Goldziher, Diary, 191. 85 Ibid., 281–282. 86 Politicians occasionally asked him to translate letters to Arabic, which also indicates that he earned the trust of the political elite.

102  Katalin Franciska Rac 87 Goldziher, Diary, 288–292. 88 See Robin Okey, “A Trio of Hungarian Balkanists: Béni Kállay, István Burián and Lajos Thallóczy in the Age of High Nationalism,” The Slavonic and East European Review 80, no. 2 (April, 2002): 234–266. 8 9 See Martin Carnoy, Education as Cultural Imperialism (New York: David McKay, 1974) and Thomas Wiggins’s review of Carnoy’s book in American Educational Research Journal 12, no. 4 (Autumn, 1975): 524–526, which mentions other important works on this topic, for example Albert Memmi’s The Colonizer and the Colonized. János Gyurgyák, Ezzé lett magyar hazátok: a magyar nemzeteszme és nacionalizmus története (This Is What Your Homeland Has Become: The History of the Hungarian Nation Concept and Nationalism) (Budapest: Osiris, 2007), 82–83. 90 Goldziher, Renan mint orientalista (Renan as Orientalist) (Budapest: Magyar ­Tudományos Akadémia, 1894). 91 Lawrence I. Conrad, “The pilgrim from Pest: Goldziher’s Study Tour to the Near East (1873–1874),” in Golden Roads: Migration, Pilgrimage and Travel in ­Medieval and Modern Islam, ed. Ian Richard Netton (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1993, 2005), 110–111.

5 Islamic modernism between colonialism and orientalism Al-Manar’s intellectual circles and Aligarh’s Mohammedan AngloOriental College, 1898–1914 Roy Bar Sadeh1 Between the late nineteenth century and World War I, the Aligarh-based ­Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College (M.A.O. College; est. 1875; renamed the Aligarh Muslim University in 1920)2 and its founder Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–1898) enjoyed widespread popularity among Islamic modernists in Egypt and the Levant. As the first Indian Muslim educational institution that claimed to be structurally and methodologically based on the British educational models of Oxford and Cambridge (Oxbridge), the M.A.O. College quickly became a space of engagement where Islamic modernists from Egypt and the Levant interacted with the college’s intellectual circles, European orientalists, and British colonial officials. The journal al-Manar (1898–1935), founded by the Syrian-born Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865–1935) and published in Arabic from Cairo – but with transregional ambitions – constitutes an important example of the enabling role of the M.A.O. College for Islamic modernists in the Arabic-literati world. Al-­Manar’s intellectual circles shared the M.A.O. College’s educational aims of bringing together Islamic and modern sciences as a tool for advancing Muslims. The fact that the journal praised the M.A.O. College may thus at first glance seem unremarkable. However, two major sources of inspiration for Rida – the famous ­Muslim scholar and anti-colonial globetrotter Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838–1898) and the grand mufti of Egypt Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849–1905) – ­polemicized against the M.A.O. College in its initial years of activity.3 Exiled to Paris for anti-colonial activities by the British colonial authorities in Egypt, al-Afghani and ‘Abduh inveighed against Sayyid Ahmad and his supporters in an article published in 1884, accusing members of the M.A.O. College’s intellectual circles of materialism and support for British imperialism.4 Therefore, the promotion of the M.A.O. College as a legitimate Islamic modernist educational model by al-Manar from 1898 to World War I reflects a change in the attitudes toward the college among major Muslim intellectual circles in Egypt and the Levant. What accounts for the changing view of the M.A.O. College from the writings of al-Afghani and ‘Abduh to those of Rida? What informed and characterized the connections between al-Manar’s intellectual circles and the M.A.O.

104  Roy Bar Sadeh College? What was the role of European orientalists and British colonial officials and institutions in these intellectual exchanges? And what caused the cessation of al-Manar–M.A.O. College connections during World War I? Though scholars have explored the intellectual debates between Rida’s major sources of influence – particularly al-Afghani – and their polemics against Sayyid Ahmad and his supporters,5 scholarship on al-Manar–M.A.O. College connections is scarce. Apart from brief reference to these connections in the work of Donald Malcolm Reid,6 Muhammad Qasim Zaman’s work has thus far been the only study to address the interactions between al-Manar’s intellectual circles and the M.A.O. College. Addressing these connections in the context of his broad and important study on Muslim scholarly networks in the Middle East and South Asia and their debates during the years 1912–2012, Zaman argues that al-Manar’s engagement with the M.A.O. College was characterized, for the most part, by disagreement. Zaman refers to Rida’s critique of an over-imitation of British educational practices by the College’s intellectual circles, as well as his disagreements with prominent figures at the college – especially Sayyid Ahmad’s close associate, Muhsin al-Mulk (1837–1907) – about the possibility of reforming the ʿulamaʾ (Muslim scholars).7 While agreeing with Zaman’s point about the existence of disagreements between these two intellectual movements, this article contends that between the period of al-Manar’s establishment and World War I, such disagreements did not hinder the general positive attitude of al-Manar’s intellectual circles toward the college. Moreover, between 1898 and World War I, al-Manar’s intellectual circles, in opposition to al-Afghani and ‘Abduh, deemed the M.A.O. College to be a primary educational model to be emulated by Islamic modernists in Egypt and the Levant. The reimagination of the M.A.O. College into an educational model for ­Islamic modernists in Egypt and the Levant also reflected the shifting attitudes of al-Manar’s intellectual circles toward colonialism and orientalism during the period in question. As this chapter will demonstrate, intellectuals affiliated with al-Manar, such as Rida and Sayyid ‘Abd al-Haqq Haqqi al-A‘zami al-Baghdadi al-Azhari (1873–1924), the Ottoman Iraqi-born deputy Arabic language professor of the college, utilized the intellectual space of the College to engage with Aligarh’s intellectual circles, as well as with European orientalists and British colonial officials. These close connections between both intellectual circles came to an end when the increased British colonial involvement in Arab affairs during World War I revived anti-M.A.O. College discourse among al-Manar’s intellectual circles, leading to a weakening of ties between both these intellectual movements. This chapter will explore two main issues in relation to the trajectory of ­al-Manar–M.A.O. College connections. The first is the M.A.O. College’s role in establishing a transnational relationship between Muslim intellectuals from the Indian subcontinent and the world of Arabic literati. This relationship involved an engagement with the college’s European orientalists and British colonial officials, especially in their encouragement and privileging of Arabic as

Islamic modernism between colonialism and orientalism  105 a Muslim lingua franca. The second issue concerns the complex and diverse reactions that this relationship engendered – from al-Manar’s active support for orientalist knowledge production, to criticism of pro-British sympathies among Islamic modernists in a period of imperial transition, as well as the contrast between the support for the Ottoman Caliphate among Indian Muslim intellectuals and criticism of it among key Islamic modernists affiliated with al-Manar. Taking into account the techno-political links between the Indian subcontinent and Egypt, which reflected the age of British High Imperialism but at the same time facilitated connections between the intellectual circles of al-Manar and the M.A.O. College, I shall first discuss al-Manar and its Indian trajectory through a historical mapping of the spatial connectivity between both regions.

Al-Manar: a lighthouse of transregional Islamic modernism Founded by the Ottoman–Syrian born Muhammad Rashid Rida, al-Manar was published regularly between 1898 and 1935, and was one of the most important intellectual outlets of Islamic modernism around the world. In its first two years of activity, al-Manar was a weekly periodical and later became a monthly journal, remaining as such until Rida’s death in 1935. While in the beginning of its activity the journal had a limited readership of around 300–400 subscribers, distributing 1,500 copies per month, within a few years’ time, al-Manar doubled its readership and reached approximately three thousand subscribers.8 Aiming to become a “beacon” (manar) of guidance to its Muslim readers across various regions, the journal issued fatwas (legal responses), while its articles dealt with a variety of topics such as religious polemics, politics, eugenics, and technology. Demonstrative of its call for Islamic renewal (tajdid) and reform (islah), al-Manar sought to produce a standardized and synchronized Muslim identity and demonstrate the compatibility of Islamic law with the changing times, in particular by combining religious and modern sciences. This was done by advocating independent legal reasoning (ijtihad) instead of the exclusive “blind following” (taqlid) promoted by the proponents of the four Sunni schools of ­Islamic jurisprudence (the Hanafi, Maliki, Hanbali, and Shafi‘i schools; madhhab/pl. madhahib), whose totality and exclusiveness al-Manar’s intellectual circles rejected. Emerging from the global moment of late nineteenth-century religious modernisms,9 al-Manar placed its intellectual project “within history” rather than beyond it. This form of thought promoted identification with a historical “Golden Age.”10 For al-Manar, such a “Golden Age” was synonymous with the age of the salaf (Pious Forebears). This discourse idealized the teachings of the first three generations of Muslims – the companions of the Prophet (sahaba), their followers (tabi‘un), and the followers of the followers (tabi‘u al-tabi‘in).11 By glorifying the age of the salaf as the age of perfectness, harmony and M ­ uslim advancement, al-Manar’s articles stressed the journal’s vision of promoting ­Islamic unity (al-jami‘a al-Islamiyya), based on educational reform. As a key for

106  Roy Bar Sadeh such educational reform, the journal stressed the importance of reviving and utilization of the classical Arabic language. Many of the journal’s writers connected what they perceived as the “medieval Muslim decline” to the lack of sufficient knowledge of classical Arabic among Muslims. Thus, for al-Manar’s intellectual circles, promoting the study of Arabic was a means of reconstructing and returning to what they considered the Muslim Golden Age. This message was circulated by a group of transregional intellectuals who, regardless of their ethnicity, were mostly fluent in Arabic, educated in Cairo under the guidance of Rida, and published articles and translations of works from their native languages in the journal. This group of intellectuals, which was not devoid of internal tensions and disagreements, adapted the journal’s message of unity, renewal and reform for various Muslim communities around the world, while introducing their world views to the journal’s readership. A major target audience of this intellectual movement was the Indian subcontinent.

Al-Manar and the Indian subcontinent Home to the world’s largest Muslim population at the time, the Indian subcontinent had been connected to Egypt, al-Manar’s base of publication, since the middle of the nineteenth century by new technologies of telegraph, steam, and print. These technologies intensified transregional encounters and created parallel and subversive spaces from which various historical agents, including members of al-Manar’s intellectual circles, were able to benefit. Indicative of the Indian subcontinent’s connectivity with Egypt is Rida’s depiction of both regions as equivalent, considering them as the world’s most prominent Muslim intellectual centers.12 Geographically speaking, “India” or al-Hind in Arabic was perceived and imagined by the journal’s intellectual circles as the British-controlled parts of the subcontinent. Al-Manar’s publications on and references to cities and towns such as Bombay, Lahore, Delhi, Calcutta, Aligarh, Deoband, Lucknow, Madras, and Benares (today’s Varanasi) reflected this spatial perception, including many articles on Islamic institutions, scientific developments, and political events occurring in British India. If one reviews al-Manar’s front pages over the course of these operational years, the subcontinent consistently emerges as a primary circulation destination, alongside Egypt, the Sudan, and the Ottoman and Russian Empires (until they collapsed).13 Rida, like many of his fellow writers in al-Manar, was also interested in India for financial and logistical purposes. He considered India a source of financial support for his intellectual activities, such as the publication of Tafsir al-Manar – the exegesis of the Qur’an written by ‘Abduh and Rida– whose circulation was supported by Indian Muslim philanthropy.14 Other philanthropic opportunities for al-Manar were found in Bombay’s Gulf-originated mercantile communities who resided in the city’s Colaba district. These communities were connected to the ruling families of Bahrain, Kuwait, and other parts of the Gulf.15 They contributed articles to al-Manar and supported the journal financially and logistically.16

Islamic modernism between colonialism and orientalism  107 We do not have much data on al-Manar’s circulation in the subcontinent. However, we do know that while the circulation of the journal to the Ottoman Empire was unstable – its censors tended to view Rida with suspicion, considering him to be an anti-Ottoman dissident – 17the circulation of the journal to British colonial territories was much smoother. Though Rida and his emissaries were followed by British agents who were anxious about his “Pan-Islamism,” the British Royal Mail did prevent the easy and efficient circulation of the journal in India. Rida himself attested to this fruitful circulation during his 1912 visit to the subcontinent.18 One can assume that smooth circulation in the subcontinent also depended on cooperation with book and journal suppliers like Aligarh’s Matba‘-i Ahmadi, which was part of the booming printing enterprise based at the town’s M.A.O. College.19 While the exact readership of al-Manar in India remains unknown, we know that it was certainly popular among various intellectual circles in the subcontinent. Indian students at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University were exposed to al-Manar’s intellectual circles and their ideas about Islamic reform. Urdu translations of Muhammad ‘Abduh’s writings were also available in the subcontinent.20 Likewise, Indian Muslim readers sent fatwa requests to Rida and ‘Abduh, seeking their approval on rulings regarding various political and religious issues.21 Aware of the competition between various journals in Egypt, Rida also sought to increase his readership by collaborating with journals, periodicals, and newspapers in Indian cities such as Lahore and Bombay. A case in point is Rida’s friendship with Mahbub ‘Alam (1863–1933), who was the editor of the Lahore-based Paisa Akhbar (Penny Newspaper) – a daily newspaper with connections to the M.A.O. College.22 Rida’s Madrasat al-D‘awa wa al-Irshad (The School for Propagation and Guidance) was also a religious educational site that promoted the journal’s ideas in the subcontinent. Hosting Muslim students from around the world, the school aimed to produce an Islamic intelligentsia that would circulate views of Islamic reform as published in al-Manar and preach against Christian missionaries threatening Islam.23 The Indian graduates of the madrasa were connected to various scholarly networks in the subcontinent, importing intellectual discourses prevalent in India to al-Manar and vice versa. Despite these diverse readerships and paths of circulation, al-Manar’s circles faced many obstacles in its propagation throughout the subcontinent. Even though he considered India a source of funding, Umar Ryad has discovered in Rida’s private correspondence that the latter often rebuked his Indian readers for not paying their subscription fees on time.24 In addition to these complaints, al-Manar’s emphasis on the primacy of Arabic language alongside the glorification of Arab history stood in tension with what Nile Green defines as the ­‘Urdusphere.’ This term refers to the linguistic sphere dominated by the Urdu language that had developed into a transregional lingua franca since the mid-nineteenth century, connecting “Muslim intellectuals as far apart as ­K abul and Madras, not to mention readers in such maritime Urdu outposts as Durban, Istanbul, and Cairo.”25 In other words, al-Manar’s promotion of A ­ rabic among Indian Muslims coincided with the primacy of Urdu as an Indian Muslim

108  Roy Bar Sadeh language. Thus, the journal had to cooperate with India-based intellectual circles that viewed its message positively, as well as finding creative ways to reconcile the journal’s promotion of Arabic with the particular lingual needs of Indian Muslim communities. Taking into account these limitations, al-Manar depended significantly on collaboration with major Indian Islamic institutions that sympathized with the journal’s message. As a result, Al-Manar’s intellectual circles came into contact with several Indian Muslim educational institutions. Major examples include Lucknow’s Nadwat al-‘Ulama’ (The Convention of the Religious Scholars; est. 1894), Bombay’s Anjuman-i Islam (The Association for Islam; est. 1874), and Lahore’s Anjuman-i Himayat-i Islam (The Association for the Service of Islam; est. 1884). But it was al-Manar’s encounter with the M.A.O. College that was the most complex one, for it required an ideological compromise – i.e. rejecting the legacy of al-Afghani and ‘Abduh’s 1884 polemic against the intellectual milieu of the college that viewed the latter as a collaborator with British colonialism.

Legitimizing the M.A.O. College in al-Manar Al-Manar’s relationship with the M.A.O. College began with the journal’s first issue in 1898. In a two-part article called “The Revival of the Muslims of India” (nahdat Muslimi al-hind), Rida offered his support for Sayyid Ahmad’s program of educational reform. Sayyid Ahmad portrayed the Indian subcontinent as a center of both religious and scientific progress (taraqqi), while criticizing the lack of such progress in the Mashriq (what today constitutes the Arab parts of the “Middle East”). Rida explained to his readers that in contrast to the Arab lands of the Mashriq, where, as he argued, Muslims rejected the study of sciences taught in Europe, Indian Muslims took a different stance by refusing to lag behind the non-Muslim populations, in particular the Hindus, to whom Rida referred in his article “idol worshippers” (wathaniyyun). Unlike in the Mashriq, he contended, Indian Muslims adjusted to the new scientific conditions of the day by utilizing British India’s booming public sphere for promoting educational reforms that emphasized the combination of Islamic and modern sciences.26 Rida explained that the Indian subcontinent had become a center of Islamic reform as a result of the activities of Sayyid Ahmad. Lauding the latter’s activities, Rida told his readers that “the first one to disseminate education among Indian Muslims was Sayyid Ahmad Khan,” adding that “this man of renewal pondered the issues of his land and saw that the idol-worshippers have already gotten ahead of the Muslims in sciences, knowledge, work and material profits.”27 Realizing this situation, Sayyid Ahmad had discovered “the straight path” (al-sirat al-mustaqim) which, as Rida explained, was based upon the circulation of education (al-ta‘lim wa al-tarbiya) through the M.A.O. College. Rida’s utilization of the Arabic terminology of al-ta‘lim wa al-tarbiya is also important here, for it accorded with Khan’s educational philosophy (ta‘lim awr tarbiyat in Urdu). As David Lelyveld explains, for Sayyid Ahmad “one [i.e. ta‘lim] prepared a person for an occupation, the other [i.e. tarbiyyat] was designed to bring

Islamic modernism between colonialism and orientalism  109 out innate qualities of character.”28 Notwithstanding the M.A.O. College’s hardships during its first years of activity – it had only a few students and local teachers – Rida concluded that the M.A.O. College became successful, hosting hundreds of students and employing several European lecturers. Enchanted by the M.A.O. College’s scholastic possibilities, Rida mentioned that the graduates of the college were now trained in all professions, consequently stirring much pride in the subcontinent.29 Rida’s article reflected a much broader trend in pedagogical writing among Islamic modernists in the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, India, and Central Asia from the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the 1930s. Regardless of their area of publication, these articles, for the most part, focused on the relative status of Muslim education and education reform projects in different regions.30 Rida’s accolades for Sayyid Ahmad, however, were much more than a mere pedagogical tool. In praising the M.A.O. College and Sayyid Ahmad, Rida also diverged from two of his major sources of influence: al-Afghani and ‘Abduh, who had criticized Sayyid Ahmad in a joint August 1884 article published in exile in Paris in their short-lived journal al-‘Urwa al-Wuthqa (The Firmest Bond; 1884–1885).31 Al-Afghani and ‘Abduh considered Sayyid Ahmad to be an opportunist who was willing to state that the “Pentateuch and the New Testament are not distorted” and write against the idea of a Muslim Caliphate in order to gain British favor and material benefits.32 They claimed that Sayyid Ahmad’s new religion was “naturalism” (al-tabi’iyya or naychiriya), which Al-Afghani and ‘Abduh viewed as synonymous with “materialism.”33 As they argued, Sayyid Ahmad Khan had deceived his fellow Muslims in order to promote his views, telling them that “Europe was advanced in its science and industry” because its inhabitants had rejected their contemporary religions and returned to the roots of the “natural religion.”34 Sayyid Ahmad and the “Eastern materialists” were regarded by al-Afghani and ‘Abduh as a much worse version of their European counterparts. While European materialists remained loyal to their place of birth, advocated for its advancement, and protected it against foreign invasions, Muslims such as Sayyid Ahmad Khan and his followers not only became infidels but also betrayed their homelands by cooperating with and supporting colonial rule.35 Al-Afghani and ‘Abduh also attacked other members of the Aligarh movement. A case in point is Sami‘ullah Khan (1834–1908), the first secretary of the M.A.O. College managing board. In 1884, Sami‘ullah was selected by his acquaintance Lord Northbrook (1826–1904), former Viceroy of India (1872– 1876), to accompany a British colonial mission to Egypt.36 Furious over Sami‘ullah’s collaboration with the British rule, al-Afghani and ‘Abduh called him “the greatest of materialists in [his] deceitfulness” due to what they perceived as his utilization of a counterfeit Islamic discourse that legitimized British rule in both India and Egypt.37 In addition, both accused Sami‘ullah of spreading lies about the so-called “justice” of British rule and for damaging Egyptians’ bonds with the Ottoman Empire by promoting hatred toward the latter.38 According to Nikki R. Keddie, although al-Afghani utilized religious arguments to justify his anti-colonial polemics against Sayyid Ahmad, “the attack was

110  Roy Bar Sadeh not, as sometimes thought, on Ahmad Khan’s rationalism, reformism and scant orthodoxy, all of which al-Afghani shared.”39 Al-Afghani initiated the polemics …against Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s belief in cooperation with the British… and against his willingness to borrow as much as possible from the British and openly to abandon much of the Indian Muslim heritage, thus ridding the Indian Muslims of a source of nationalist, anti-imperialist pride.40 In other words, al-Afghani’s polemic against the intellectual circles of the M.A.O. College was politically motivated. Despite the tremendous impact of Afghani and ‘Abduh on Rida, the latter did not follow the former’s diatribe against Sayyid Ahmad’s thought. Though he was aware of the existence of the polemic – Rida was an avid reader of al-Afghani’s Paris-based newspaper and writings – Rida followed the opinions of different sources of information. Until Rida’s associates began to directly engage with the Aligarh movement at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, one can assume that he received his information on the M.A.O College from various intermediaries in Egypt, such as British colonial officials, and was also impressed by the supportive environment of Cairo’s booming press toward Sayyid Ahmad’s ideas.41 One may also understand Rida’s positive views toward the M.A.O. College in the context of ‘Abduh’s political shift following his return from exile in Paris in 1888, which was characterized by the latter’s focus on educational reform rather than anti-colonial struggle.42 Taking into account ‘Abduh’s extensive involvement in the publication of al-Manar until his death (1905), it seems unreasonable to assume that he was not aware of Rida’s rehabilitation of Sayyid Ahmad’s image and ideas among Cairo’s Islamic modernist circles. But regardless of ‘Abduh’s shift, which perhaps affected his views on the British rule in general and the M.A.O. College in particular, Rida still had to face the specter of al-­A fghani’s accusations against the Aligarh movement. It is clear then that Rida did not get involved in the earlier polemics by ­A fghani and Abduh. Instead, he had to show that the college did not compromise the interests of the Muslim umma for the sake of British colonial rule and omit any signs of British management of the college. It is worth noting that al-­Manar’s editor and writers never mentioned the word “Anglo” when invoking ­ adrasat the College’s name in their articles and preferred the following names: M al-‘Ulum (The school for sciences), al-kulliyya al-Islamiyya fi ‘Alikrah (The ­Islamic College at Aligarh), or Dar al-‘Ulum al-Sharqiyya al-Kubra fi ‘Alikrah (The Great Eastern House of Knowledge at Aligarh). Their variety notwithstanding, all these names reflected al-Manar’s positive views toward the M.A.O. College, especially with regard to its promotion of both Islamic and modern sciences. More importantly, the lack of any reference to the British or colonial connotations of its title suggests that al-Manar portrayed the college not as a British institution but rather as an Islamic one that did not serve the interests of the British colonial rule. As for the specter of al-Afghani’s polemic against Sayyid Ahmad, Rida addressed this issue in a 1900 article on the visit of his Lahore-based journalist

Islamic modernism between colonialism and orientalism  111 Mahbub ‘Alam to Egypt. There, in the context of ‘Alam’s disappointment at the educational level at al-Azhar, Rida told his readers about Indian Muslims’ misconceptions about the progress of Muslims in Egypt and the Ottoman Empire. As he contended, the latter populations were much less scientifically and religiously developed than Indian Muslims. After writing that Sayyid Ahmad was the source of Indian Muslims’ religious revival and the first one to acknowledge the need for educational reform among his community, Rida invited his readers to read al-Manar’s writings on Sayyid Ahmad, arguing as follows: Among the issues that ought to draw one’s attention is the tradition of Allah the Sublime with regard to reformers, who, seen as having corrupt intentions, are generally treated with suspicion. One such example was Sayyid Ahmad Khan. He was accused of being encouraged by the English government to corrupt the education of Muslims in his circulation of and beliefs in ‘naturism’ (i.e. materialism) among Indian Muslims [since] the British did not find any other mean to exterminate [Muslims]. It is intriguing that such accusation was supported by the great philosopher, Sayyid Jamal alDin al-Afghani, who showed animosity towards Sayyid Ahmad Khan, slandering him as an act of religious zeal and defense for the Muslims. However, it is now clear that the only hope for Muslims in recovering their miracle was through the school of Sayyid Ahmad Khan, his students, their followers and the imitation of such examples. If not for Jamal al-Din al-Afghani’s strongly felt contempt for the English, he was not misguided in his impression of Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the suspicion towards Sayyid Ahmad Khan was not that strong.43 By regarding al-Afghani’s anti-colonial stance as the main reason for his polemic against Sayyid Ahmad, Rida sought to show that al-Afghani was “blinded” by his hatred toward the British and thus did not see the benefits of the M.A.O. College. In his defense of Sayyid Ahmad, Rida portrayed the former’s engagement with the British as instrumental and merely a means to preserve Indian Muslims’ political and economic advantages over non-Muslims. For this reason, as Rida explained, Sayyid Ahmad saved British lives during the 1857 rebellion.44 As we shall now see, the legitimization of the M.A.O. College also opened new possibilities for producing direct connections between the intellectual circles of al-Manar and the college. It was in this historical moment that M.A.O. College became an educational model for al-Manar’s intellectual circles, as well as a site of engagement between Islamic modernists from the Mashriq, European orientalists, and British colonial officials.

Making the M.A.O. College into an educational model in al-Manar In the summer of 1906, Doctor Ziauddin Ahmad (1878–1947), the M.A.O. College’s professor of mathematics at the time, visited Egypt. Ziauddin stayed in

112  Roy Bar Sadeh Egypt for two months on his way back from Europe, where he had lived for several years.45 During his time in Egypt, Ziauddin scrutinized various Egyptian educational institutions, looking for ways to increase the cooperation between his college and various Cairo-based intellectual circles. A few days before his return to the Indian subcontinent, Ziauddin gave a speech in English to his local acquaintances and owners of Egyptian newspapers who came to greet him during his stay in Cairo. There, he expressed his thoughts on the ideal educational model Egyptians should espouse, in addition to his vision regarding the intellectual relationship between the M.A.O. College and Egypt.46 Ziauddin’s visit to Egypt took place in the context of heated debates concerning the establishment of the first modern Egyptian university. Local intellectuals as well as Khedival and British officials were divided over the question of which educational model the future university should be built upon.47 Contrary to the existing historiography on the establishment of the first Egyptian university, Rida did not criticize the M.A.O. College’s educational model, but actually considered the college to be an educational model for Egypt until World War I, since he viewed the college as a means to promote modern education without neglecting the teaching of Islamic sciences and the observance of the shari‘a.48 In order to adopt the M.A.O. College’s model, Ziauddin argued that Egypt needed to become educationally self-dependent, i.e. reducing the number of foreign teachers, and to open its institutions to wider crowds, in particular to the poor. Thus, he called on Egyptians to establish a secondary school for the “sons of the poor,” to be funded by scholarships as in Aligarh. Moreover, although the M.A.O. College did hire European professors for specific fields, Ziauddin argued against what he saw as Egypt’s excessive dependence on European teachers whose high costs were one reason for the lack of educational initiatives in Egypt. He invited Egyptians to learn from the M.A.O. College where not only foreigners but also locals taught English and various professional skills.49 But to acquire educational independence, Ziauddin contended, Egyptians would first have to receive educational training abroad. Although he agreed that European institutions were more advanced than the M.A.O. College, Ziauddin claimed that Egyptian Muslim teachers would receive better training in Aligarh. Apart from the reduced costs – the M.A.O. College’s tuition and living costs were much cheaper than those offered by European institutions – the M.A.O. College was, in Ziauddin’s opinion, a better fit for Egyptian Muslim students on account of its “Islamic atmosphere” (jaw islami).50 Telling his audience that the College hosted Muslim students from India, Iran, Afghanistan, and South ­A frica, Ziauddin explained that such an environment gave students the possibility of acquiring modern scientific training in a Muslim institution that promoted the observance of Islamic law.51 For Rida, the most important aspect of ­Ziauddin’s speech was the latter’s remark on the college’s Muslim ecumenical position, which meant that it rejected the exclusive adherence to specific school of jurisprudence or sect, hence accommodating both Sunni and Shi‘i students. Although in reality the college’s promotion of collective Muslim identity reflected its managing board’s inability to produce religious reforms and its

Islamic modernism between colonialism and orientalism  113 continuing reliance on the ‘ulama’, for Rida, the M.A.O. College’s ecumenical point of view implemented al-Manar’s vision of eradicating the “blind following” of a specific madhhab.52 Ziauddin’s speech also emphasized the college’s status among colonial mechanisms and its comparison to renowned British colleges. For example, Ziauddin mentioned the respect British officials showed toward the school by quoting the Irish-born British civil servant Sir Antony MacDonnell (d. 1925), who saw the M.A.O. College as the “Cordoba of the contemporary East” that would produce both political and religious advancements.53 In another part of his speech, Ziauddin compared the M.A.O. College’s identification with Islam to Oxford and Cambridge’s identification with the Church of England. In the same context, he explained that similarly to these institutions, which hired and admitted non-Christian scholars and students, the M.A.O. College also accepted non-Muslim students and hired professors of all religions and ethnicities, emphasizing the college’s support for any exchange of knowledge.54 Ziauddin’s discussion of the M.A.O. College’s connections to British institutions did not provoke criticism from Rida. Rather, the latter contended in his commentary on the speech that it was Indian Muslims in general, and the M.A.O. College’s scholars in particular, who implemented the modernist ideas of his mentor, ‘Abduh.55 While agreeing with Ziauddin that Egypt could become the guiding light to Muslims around the world due to its reputation as a center of Islamic learning, location, and the Arabic language of its inhabitants, Rida explained that ‘Abduh’s attempts to exploit these advantages and transform Egypt into a global Muslim educational center were never achieved due to his death in 1905 and the lack of an able successor. It was now the Indian subcontinent that possessed the “wisest and most advanced” Islamic scholars in the world.56 Whether or not such an ideal depiction of the Indian subcontinent and the M.A.O. College was accurate, it is clear that Rida saw India as the torchbearer in his vision of Islamic reform from which local Egyptian institutions, such as Al-Azhar University, should learn. In his speech, Ziauddin also enjoined his audience to establish a mechanism that would facilitate connections between Egyptian educational institutions and the M.A.O. College. As he suggested, such cooperation would be worked out through the establishment of an “Aligarh-Egypt friendship association.” ­Ziauddin delineated the responsibilities of this association: first, the circulation of publications related to the M.A.O. College in Egypt; second, providing ­Egyptians with information about the college; third, overseeing the educational program and the budget of the Egyptian students studying at Aligarh; and fourth, assisting the M.A.O. College in issues that its managing board was unable to solve by itself. Such issues included the selection of Arabic teachers, for which Egypt was well-known, the purchasing of books not available in the subcontinent, and facilitating Indian women’s study in Egypt (due to the social limitations facing women studying in Indian institutions).57 Although Ziauddin’s visit did not persuade Egyptian Khedive to espouse the Aligarh’s model – the Khedival-supported Egyptian University (est. 1908) was

114  Roy Bar Sadeh ultimately based on the French model – his call to strengthen the connections between his institution and Egypt-based intellectual centers was taken seriously by al-Manar’s intellectual circles. A case in point is the encounter of Rida and his Ottoman Iraqi-born disciple, Sayyid ‘Abd al-Haq Haqi al-A‘zami al-­Baghdadi alAzhari, with the college and its affiliated orientalist scholars and British colonial officials.

Circulating al-Manar’s message through the M.A.O. College: the question of Arabic In keeping with Ziauddin’s calls on Egypt-based intellectual circles to assist the M.A.O. College in Arabic pedagogy, al-Manar seized the opportunity to circulate through the college a main element of the journal’s Islamic modernist discourse: the promotion of classical Arabic. This was done through the involvement of al-Manar’s intellectuals in issues concerning the teaching of Arabic in the college. Such involvement allowed al-Manar to enjoy the technological and financial possibilities offered by the college. A demonstrative example is the story of Sayyid ‘Abd al-Haq Haqi al-A‘zami al-Baghdadi al-Azhari, who became in 1908 the vice-head of the college’s Arabic department. Born in Baghdad in 1873, al-Azhari studied in his youth at Baghdad’s prominent Hanafi Sunni institution al-A‘zamiyya (est. 1065), where he specialized in Hanafi jurisprudence – the madhhab that most Indian Muslims followed. He moved to British India at the end of the nineteenth century, but after a short period left for Egypt for unknown reasons. There, he became acquainted with Rida and other members of al-Manar’s affiliated circles. In 1899, he returned to India, where he worked until 1908 as a trader of Arabic books and an imam in one of Bombay’s mosques, corresponding with the journal on various issues. Later, he moved to Aligarh to become the deputy Arabic lecturer at the M.A.O. College, remaining there until 1924. During his stay in the subcontinent, al-Azhari corresponded with various prominent Indian Muslim intellectuals, like Mulana Hamiduddin Farahi (d. 1930) and Sir Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938). He mastered Urdu and produced translations of Urdu poems into Arabic, while also publishing books in Arabic on various themes, such as the M.A.O. ­College’s educational advancement, the importance of the Arabic language, the historical role of Arabs in Islamic history, and a summary of Rida’s 1912 visit to India.58 During his stay at the Aligarh, al-Azhari used his teaching position at the college to promote and fund al-Manar. A major example was his 1913 treatise, al-Arab wa al-‘arabiyya bihima salah al-umma al-islamiyya wa jam‘ al-umam al-bashariyya (The Arabs and Arabic: With Them There Will Be Wellness of the Islamic Nation and All Human Nations). Funded by ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Dhakir, one of al-Azhari’s well-off students at the college who belonged to a Bahraini family of pearl merchants originating from the Arabian Peninsula (today’s Saudi Arabia),59 this treatise demonstrated the pre-World War I journal’s views on Islamic history, colonial rule, and European orientalism.

Islamic modernism between colonialism and orientalism  115 In his treatise, Al-Azhari offered an ethnohistorical explanation for what he perceived as the “Muslim decline,” arguing that it began after the Arab conquerors of Persia (651 C.E.) started to mix with Zoroastrians of Persian origin. Building on the historical narrative of the ‘arabi-‘ajami 60 rivalry, i.e. the tension between Arabic- and Persian-speaking Muslims in the first centuries of Islam, al-Azhari, who utilized a racial discourse, portrayed the Arabic–Persian blend as a disease destroying the Muslim body. “To the structure of this great body,” he explained, “entered corrupted components, harmful blends, inferior organs, useless germ cells, unrecognized parts and foreign bodies which mixed with [this body’s] parts….”61 According to al-Azhari, this “disease” spread within the Arab Muslim body and “began to eat away this beautiful body and [its] splendid structure, like the moths eat away the wood, and diffused [the] bacteria of its harmfulness, corruptions and evilness, spreading the cancer in the body afflicted by it.”62 However, since the “ideal” Arab body was destroyed due to its blend with the Persian body, al-Azhari argued that the only way of reconstructing such an ideal body was through the promotion of the study of Arabic among all Muslims, regardless of their ethnicity. […] Mutual understanding between Muslims will not exist, except through the language of their shared religion- that is the Arabic language - which did not belong to the Arab race by descent, the same as Islam does not belong solely to the Arabs.63 To al-Azhari, Arabic was a solution for Muslim disunity. Moreover, its mastery promised all Muslims an equal share in the umma. The study of Arabic enabled the transmission of the qualities of the first generations of Muslims, who were identified by al-Azhari as Arabs. Another important theme of al-Azhari’s al‘Arab wa al-‘arabiyya was the proper method of promoting the study of Arabic. A major path for such promotion went through European orientalists, whom al-Azhari considered guardians of the Arab legacy and Arabic language. The Muslims are indeed grateful to these orientalists from Europe who were among those interested in the study of the Arabic language, keeping its scientific reservoirs, collecting its literary and historical legacy, searching for its valuable books, spending large amounts of money for acquiring them in order to save [these books] from damage and loss, and putting out to print the Arabic language’s wonders. [These orientalists] also serve the Arabic language by writing long indexes and taking care of the counting of the large abundance of manuscripts found in the Eastern and Western books. [They] also undertake, may God reward them good from us, the writing of the history of Arabic literature in honesty and justice. The Muslims of India are more than thankful for [these activities] to the government of India.64 As it appears from his opinion, al-Azhari argues here that among the biggest supporters of al-Manar’s educational programs, including the study of Arabic,

116  Roy Bar Sadeh were European orientalists and British officials living in the subcontinent. However, as Umar Ryad has shown, one should also take into account the fact that al-Manar’s intellectual circles were ambivalent toward Western orientalism, dividing Western scholars of Islam into “good” and “bad” based on their support for al-Manar’s vision of reform and their affection toward Muslims in general.65 Al-Manar’s binary attitude toward European orientalism reflects the ambivalent relations between Arab intellectuals and European scholars of Islam from the late eighteenth century to the 1950s. As contended by Ronen Raz, though such encounters were taking place in the context of European colonialism, they often facilitated exchanges of knowledge through which “East–West” binaries were constantly reworked by both sides.66 Al-Azhari’s positive view of orientalists might have been related to his connections with the M.A.O. College’s professor of Arabic language and history, the German-Jewish scholar Josef Horovitz (d. 1931), who taught at the College during the years 1907–1914.67 In addition to being a professor at the College, Horovitz also worked for the British government as a clerk in charge of ancient Islamic manuscripts.68 Though hired by the British Indian colonial authorities, Horovitz was well-known for his anti-colonial views and tried unsuccessfully during his stint to persuade the British government to elevate the status of the College to a university,69 which would have increased the institution’s budget. Horovitz’s connections to al-Azhari reflected the hybrid intellectual environment of the college since its earliest days. Striving to bring its Islamic modernist discourse and British education into conversation with each other by creating a “British–Muslim friendship,”70 the M.A.O. College frequently came into contact with European orientalists, often hiring European professors of various disciplines. One such case was that of Thomas Walker Arnold (d. 1930), who served, during the years 1888–1898, as the College’s philosophy professor. During his stay in Aligarh, Arnold shifted his focus from Sanskrit to Arabic and Islamic history, becoming a friend of Shibli Nu‘mani (d. 1914), then the Persian and Arabic instructor of the college. Arnold was both Nu‘mani’s student and instructor, studying Arabic and Islamic sources under him, while teaching Nu‘mani French and contemporary European philosophy.71 In 1896, Arnold published a study called The Preaching of Islam in which he argued that early Islamic propagation was conducted peacefully through ­Muslim missionaries and was not imposed by force, as many European orientalists argued.72 Al-Manar noticed The Preaching of Islam and praised the service of the author to the Muslim umma. In a comment made by an unnamed writer for al-Manar, Arnold was described as “among the honorable Englishmen who are independent in their opinion and impartial in their judgment.” The writer added that “he (Arnold) did not obtain his knowledge on Islam from the preaching of Christianity and from politicians [hostile to Islam].”73 This opinion suggests that al-Manar’s editorship considered Arnold’s work academic proof of the greatness of Islam. Like Arnold, Nu‘mani utilized similar apologetic and Western historiographical methods in his collection of biographies named Heroes of Islam,74 as well as in his defense of Islamic practices such as jizya (poll tax).75

Islamic modernism between colonialism and orientalism  117 Al-Azhari and Horovitz worked for the common cause of elevating the status of Arabic within the college – an issue that frequently provoked debates among the college’s managing board. In its first years of existence, the college had two separate educational programs from which its students could choose. One was the English-speaking program, while the other permitted students to pick among Urdu, Arabic, and Persian, which were taught in the college’s Oriental Department. Although this department, which attracted only a few students,76 was shut down in 1885, Arabic continued to be taught in the college. In 1904, British officials headed by Theodor Morrison, the college’s principal from 1899 to 1905, offered to establish an advanced Arabic program for promoting an “Islamic intellectual revival” through British education. This plan, however, was received with suspicion by the College’s students and lecturers, since it was perceived as an attempt by the colonial administration to hinder Muslim progress by preventing Muslims from gaining relevant knowledge in modern sciences and English.77 Moreover, unlike Urdu, which was perceived by Indian Muslims as a modern Indian indigenous language, Arabic was thought of as a classical language, which did not serve the local population’s immediate practical needs. On the British side, colonial officials were divided in their views on these educational plans, since they were afraid that such policy would lead to Islam-inspired anti-British agitation.78 Notwithstanding the British reservations, in 1907 the M.A.O. College Board did decide to hire Horovitz as a Professor of Arabic language and History, which may have indicated a pedagogical turning point among the college managing board. Al-Azhari was not the only intellectual affiliated with al-Manar who supported Horovitz’s promotion of the study of Arabic. In 1912, when Rida visited Horovitz in his private residence in Aligarh in the company of al-Azhari as his Urdu translator, they exchanged ideas on how to promote the study of Arabic at the institution.79 Although there is very little information available about this meeting, we do know that al-Azhari mentioned in his summary of Rida’s visit to India that Horovitz had mastered Arabic completely, thereby allowing Rida to converse without a translator, as opposed to the majority of conversations during his stay.80 For Rida and al-Azhari, an orientalist like Horovitz contributed to the spread of al-Manar’s opinions in the subcontinent by encouraging Arabic instruction. Therefore, Rida praised Horovitz’s work and expressed considerable respect for his efforts.81 Al-Manar’s close connections with orientalists like Horovitz were entangled with the British colonial involvement in the College. Al-Manar’s intellectual circles considered British colonial administration in India a positive force to the extent that it facilitated Arabic education. This attitude was related to the ambivalent British policy regarding the study of Arabic. On the one hand, since the mid-nineteenth century, British officials had promoted the study of Arabic in India due to their consideration of it as one of the classical languages of the subcontinent, in addition to Sanskrit, Persian, and Urdu.82 On the other hand, however, as was mentioned earlier, in the case of the M.A.O. College, this policy was inconsistently implemented, owing to British fears of “Muslim agitation.”

118  Roy Bar Sadeh Such ambivalence also reflected the connections between al-Manar’s intellectual circles and British colonial rule in the pre-World War I era. As shown by both Umar Ryad and ‘Abd al-Wahhab Habib, these attitudes toward the British were ambivalent and strategic, depending on the political situation and needs of the hour. On the one hand, al-Manar’s intellectuals, in particular Rida, feared British colonial expansion in the Ottoman territories and suspected them of having supported Christian missionary work that hindered the advancement of ­Muslims.83 On the other hand, Rida considered his pre-World War I cooperation with the British and their allies, referring to those from the Hashemite dynasty headed by Husayn of Mecca, to be a tool for establishing an independent Arab Caliphate instead of the Ottoman one and circulating al-Manar’s ideas among Muslim subjects in territories under the British Rule.84 This ambivalence toward the British characterized the diverse opinion among al-Manar’s intellectual circles over these issues. As for al-Azhari, he took a supportive view in his 1913 treatise regarding the British policy on Arabic, pointing to British encouragement for the study of Arabic in the subcontinent. This government allowed the study of the Arabic language in its public schools and [allowed] for the appointment of Arabic teachers in its elementary schools, high schools and higher education schools, in order to teach [this language]. It also allowed Arabic to become one of the languages which are learned by choice, such as French and Sanskrit. It encourages and motivates the people of India to study Arabic and enthusiastically approach its study by various kinds of incentives… It allots Arabic literates salaries and grants them rewards and presents. It also assists their non-­governmental schools by granting them special aid for Arabic teaching and concern to [the promotion of this language]. In summary, [the British Indian Government] strives strenuously to circulate the study of the language of the Qur’an among the Muslims of India….85 For al-Azhari, the British government was to be rewarded with gratitude as long as it promoted and supported Arabic instruction. Thus, in response to Indian Muslim intellectuals who were suspicious of British motives for encouraging the study of Arabic, al-Azhari wrote that he hoped British interests in the learning and circulation of Arabic would also “open the eyes of this great nation and the rest of the many Western nations [to the light of Islam] ….”86 Al-Azhari’s positive views regarding British support for Arabic education were similar to those of Rida during the latter’s 1912 India visit, where he stated that Muslims “should be pleased with the fact that the teaching of Arabic language is spreading in India, no matter the reason for the British attention to [this] issue, since the teaching of Arabic strengthens Islam and does not harm it.”87 Rida made it clear during his visit that only through extensive educational reform and help from the British colonial administration would Arabic be able to regain its elevated status in the Muslim world.88 During his 1912 visit to Aligarh, Rida was invited to the house of the British principal of the M.A.O. College, J. H. Towle.

Islamic modernism between colonialism and orientalism  119 There, Rida, who praised Towle and his wife’s concern and hospitality, discussed the need to promote the study of Arabic in India, and in Aligarh in particular. He offered Towle the educational model of his Cairo-based Islamic modernist institution, Madrasat al-Da’wa wa al-Irshad.89 In addition, while stressing during his visit to India the poor situation of Muslims under Russian, French, and Dutch colonial rules, Rida held that the British were an exception, claiming that “there are no [other] Muslim lands in which there is freedom of education, study, and the vigilance of thought which [possesses] wealth, as in Egypt and India.” 90

Al-Manar and the M.A.O. College: between colonialism and anti-colonialism Rida came to British India in 1912 at a time when his relations with the Ottoman Empire were growing increasingly tense. Following the Young Turk revolution in 1908, which overthrew ‘Abd al-Hamid II, Rida returned to Ottoman Syria and called for unity among Arabs and Turks throughout the Ottoman Empire.91 Initially, Rida believed that the new regime in Istanbul would support his vision of unity between Turks and Arabs and assist financially with his plans to establish the Madrasat al-Da‘wa wa al-Irshad. However, by 1910, it was clear to Rida that the Young Turks would not support him politically or financially and eventually severed his connections with Istanbul.92 Therefore, Rida rejected the Ottoman claim to the Caliphate by situating Egypt and India as competing centers to Istanbul, which he held responsible for the poor state of the Empire’s Arab regions. More importantly, Rida started to perceive the rule of the British Empire as more beneficial for Muslims than that of the Ottoman Empire.93 However, while al-Azhari and Rida both supported British efforts to promote Arabic in the subcontinent, many among the subcontinent’s Muslim population did not share their enthusiasm. Aligarh College’s managing board, for example, promised Rida in 1912 an increase in the number of hours dedicated to Arabic instruction, but made it conditional on the British government’s decision to upgrade the College’s status to a university, which only occurred in 1920.94 Moreover, although it was established as a college based on the British curriculum, in the early 1910s, the M.A.O. College became a center of support for the Ottoman Empire.95 The crisis in the relations between Aligarh’s intellectual circles and the British–Indian Government was related primarily to the 1911 Italian invasion of Ottoman Tripolitania (today’s Libya) which raised suspicions regarding British intentions toward Muslims in general and Indian Muslims in particular. Thus, the Urdu-i Mualla, published in Aligarh, criticized Rida’s positive remarks toward the British. Invoking yet again al-Afghani’s polemic against Sayyid Ahmad, which challenged the legacy of the latter, the newspaper claimed that like Sayyid Ahmad, Rida’s pro-British political views “are totally wrong.” 96 As for Rida, he lamented the Ottoman popularity in the subcontinent, and was frustrated that some of the money meant to subsidize Aligarh’s upgrade to a university was donated to the Ottoman Empire.97 However, in order to maintain his influence

120  Roy Bar Sadeh and status among the M.A.O. College intellectual circles, Rida gave in to the pro-Ottoman faction, asking the students to reduce the money intended for his honorary dinner and repurpose it in favor of the Tripolitanian cause.98 Criticism toward Rida in the subcontinent also pervaded al-Manar’s intellectual circles in India. The Lucknow-born Abdur Razzaq Malihabadi, who was Rida’s associate and also known as the biographer of Abul Kalam Azad (d. 1958), often argued with Rida over the latter’s compromising approach toward the British government. Malihabadi described their debate over this issue when the two men were on the hajj together in Mecca. One night I and he (Rida) were sitting in the Haram (the Great Mosque of ˙ Mecca which surrounds the Ka‘ba). Before us [stood] the House of Allah with its black curtain. The same old debate was transpiring between us. His opinion over the political discussion of that time was that the Arabs would be able to gain benefit from the English [rule] if they act with wisdom. I was against this opinion and said that the English will certainly deceive the Arabs. There is no need to believe their (i.e. the English rule’s) promises, since we in India have already become aware of all of their tricks. But the late ustad (referring to Rida by an honorary title of a learned man) hesitated in believing [my words]. He said that the English had already given promises to sharif Husayn of Mecca (1854–1931) and the Arabs, and [therefore] it is impossible that they will go back on [their promises]. By God! Due to their foolishness, the Arabs could get themselves into such a state that they would not be able to reap any benefit from these promises. This discussion lasted for a few hours. In the end, the late ustad was overcome by emotion and said with strong sincerity, while raising his hands towards the Ka‘ba: “My child! Look! In front of me [stands] this most holy house of God. I swear by the Lord of the Worlds that I do not have any connection with the English. Whatever I say is for the benefit of the Muslim umma. Thus, you should heed my words.” 99 Malihabadi represented himself in this scene as a “protector” of Arab interests, while Rida, who came from the Mashriq, feared that his own lack of support for the Ottomans might cause him to be perceived as a traitor by fellow Muslims. Although Malihabadi remained in contact with Rida and continued publishing in al-Manar until the latter’s death, this political issue caused them to drift apart during World War I.100 As for the British colonial rule in India, its officials were highly suspicious of al-Manar’s intellectual circles. For example, Rida claimed that the British tried to prevent his arrival in India in 1912 and, being unable to do so, followed him everywhere. He added that the British also attempted to forbid the major Islamic educational institution of Lucknow’s Nadwat al-‘Ulama’ from holding a festive reception in his honor and to reduce his role as the chairman of the conference. However, Shibli N‘umani, Rida’s associate and one of the founders of the Nadwat, utilized his orientalist contacts and knowledge of their works to dissuade

Islamic modernism between colonialism and orientalism  121 the British from further restricting Rida’s activities in India. He presented the colonial authorities with a summary of a lecture given by the British orientalist David Samuel Margoliouth (1858–1940). Margoliouth confirmed that Rida’s heading of the Nadwat conference would not harm colonial rule.101 In other words, demonstrative of al-Manar’s ambivalent attitude toward European scholarship on Islam, orientalist knowledge was cited by N‘umani as a source of authority in his contacts with the British, making this form of knowledge into a site of engagement through which the British and members of al-Manar’s milieu found a common ground.

Conclusion Al-Manar’s connections with the M.A.O. College gradually declined in the post-World War I period. After the war, the M.A.O. College received little mention in the journal’s articles, although the college continued to be considered an ­Islamic institution by al-Manar, in addition to the continuous friendship between Rida and al-Azhari until the latter’s 1924 demise during the hajj.102 Notwithstanding his lack of critique in al-Manar, Rida’s other writings reflect a deeper rupture with his prewar attitude toward the M.A.O. In his 1931 biography of Muhammad ‘Abduh, Rida criticized Lord Cromer (1841–1917), the ­British Consul-General of Egypt (1883–1907), for not being attentive to ‘­Abduh’s advice to establish an Islamic modernist educational institution in Egypt. As Rida claimed, Cromer took an opposing view to that of his mentor, seeking to import a British educational model to Egypt based on that of the M.A.O. ­College.103 This view, as well as al-Manar’s few references to the M.A.O College after 1914 were due to Rida’s post-World War I disappointment with the deepening British colonial involvement in the affairs of Muslims around the world. Rida therefore sought an alternative educational and scientific model to those offered by British-modeled institutions, such as the M.A.O. College. As this chapter has shown, until World War I, the M.A.O. College and ­al-Manar maintained intensive connections, reflecting an ideological shift in the Islamic modernist genealogies from which al-Manar itself emerged. This shift entailed a process of legitimizing the college among the journal’s readers, which entailed a divergence from al-Afghani’s polemic against the Aligarh Movement. ­ l-Manar’s This divergence, as this article has demonstrated, was connected to a instrumental view of both British colonialism and European orientalism, which it sought to utilize in order to promote its own message. In other words, al-­Manar’s view of the M.A.O College was informed by its view of British colonialism and European orientalism. Nevertheless, members of al-Manar’s milieu in the subcontinent faced a nowin situation in their encounter with the college. While al-Manar popularized the college’s religious reputation by making it an Islamic modernist educational model, and members of its intellectual circles, like Rida and al-Azhari, became involved in the teaching of Arabic in the college, al-Manar’s attempt to implement an Arabic-based educational project through the college ultimately failed.

122  Roy Bar Sadeh While these close ties with the M.A.O. College brought Rida and al-Azhari into close contact with British officials and European orientalists, these connections, especially with the British, who themselves were uncomfortable with al-Manar’s publications, led to criticism by various groups of Indian Muslim intellectuals, particularly those affiliated with al-Manar’s intellectual circles, like Malihabadi. Thus, al-Manar was not able to escape the shadow of al-Afghani’s polemic against the M.A.O. College, leading eventually to a weakening of its connections with the college in the aftermath of World War I.

Notes 1 PhD candidate, Department of History, Columbia University. Email: rb3159@ columbia.edu. I am very grateful to Manan Ahmed, On Barak, Marwa Elshakry, Aaron Glasserman, Susannah Heschel, David Lelyveld, Anupama Rao, Umar Ryad (Amr), Gianni Sievers and Muhammad Qasim Zaman for their helpful and insightful comments on previous drafts of this essay. 2 For major studies on the M.A.O. College, see: David Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978); Aijaz Ahmad, Aligarh Muslim University: An Educational and Political History, 1920-47 (Ghaziabad: Lata Sahitya Sadan, 2015); Ema Esa Jaina, The Aligarh Movement: Its Origin and Development, 1858-1906 (Agra: Sri Ram Mehra, 1965). 3 For further information, see: Assad N. Busool, “Muhammad R. Ridaˉ and Relations with Jamâl A. Alafghânî and Muhammad Abduh,” The Muslim World 66, no. 4 (1976): 272–286. 4 For further information, see their polemic in Arabic against Sayyid Ahmad: Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad ‘Abduh, “al-Dahariyyun fi al-Hind,” al-‘Urwa al-Wuthqa 1884–1885 (Reprinted in Qom and Teheran, 2001): 444–452. 5 For two major examples, see the two following studies by Nikki R. Keddie: An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal adDin “al-Afghani” (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983); Sayyid Jamal al-Din “al-Afghani”: A Political Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972); Aziz Ahmad, “Sayyid Ahmad Khaˉn, Jamaˉl al-dıˉn al-Afghaˉnıˉ and Muslim ˙ 55–78. India,” Studia Islamica 13 (1960): 6 In his study, Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt, Donald Malcolm Reid has briefly noted that during the debates over the first Egyptian University in the first decade of the twentieth century, Rida rejected the educational model of the M.A.O. College due to his view that it served only British interests. However, Rida’s criticism of such model, which Reid brings into view, is taken from the biography of ‘Abduh, which Rida published in 1931, long after he became a harsh critic of British colonialism as a result of World War I. For further information, see: Donald Malcolm Reid, Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt (New York: ­Cambridge University Press, 1990), 19–20. 7 As Zaman claims, while Rida, like his mentor ‘Abduh, shared the view with Sayyid Ahmad and al-Mulk that the ‘ulama’ were a main cause throughout the centuries for a “Muslim decline,” nonetheless, both Rida and ‘Abduh believed that Muslim scholars would be able to contribute to the advancement of Muslims if they agree to be reformed. And thus, both contentiously called for educational reform at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University. For further information, see: Muhammad Qasim Zaman’s Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age: Religious Authority and Internal Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 144–148.

Islamic modernism between colonialism and orientalism  123 8 As reading practices during the period in question have demonstrated, people read as part of social activities, reading aloud and exchanging journal volumes, hinting that al-Manar’s sphere of circulation was actually much larger. Moreover, the journal’s extensive dissemination also inspired the creation of similar publications mirroring its themes in North Africa, South, and Southeast Asia. For further information, see: Kosugi Yasushi, “Al-Manar Revisited: The ‘lighthouse’ of the Islamic revival,” in Intellectuals in the Modern Islamic World Transmission, Transformation, Communication, ed. Stéphane A. Dudoignon et al. (London and New York: ­Routledge, 2006), 10; Ziad Fahmy ‫ ‏‬, Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 33–36. See also: Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). For further information on al-Manar’s circulation data, see: Umar Ryad, “A Printed ‘Lighthouse’ in Cairo: al-Manar’s Early Years, Religious Aspiration and Reception (1898–1903),” Arabica 56 (2009): 43. 9 In the Indian subcontinent, for example, this moment was characterized by the appearance of various religious revival movements such as Bombay’s Parsi reform organizations and the Hindu Arya Samaj (est. 1875). For further information on the late nineteenth century moment of “religious modernisms,” see: Marwa Elshakry, Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860–1950 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 164–165. 10 This notion is similar to the theorization of the late French historian, Raoul Girardet. The latter conceived the myth of the Golden Age (l’âge d’or) as a set of particular nostalgic images which glorified the past in relation to what was perceived as the decay of the present. For further information, see: Raoul Girardet, Mythes et Mythologies Politiques (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1986). On the importance of Golden Age theories among intellectuals in the colonial world, see: Elshakry, Reading Darwin in Arabic, 11–12. 11 For further information, see: Henry Lauzière, The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 33–49. 12 Muhammad Rashid Rida, “al-Khutba al–ra‘isiyya fi nadwat al-‘ulama’ li-sahib al-manar,” al-Manar 15 (1912): 333. 13 Another sign was British India’s continuous listing on the first page of al-Manar as a circulation destination. The journal’s price in British India, as listed on its first edition, was ten shillings. 14 The donor was Muhammad Insha’ Allah, the owner of the Indian newspaper Watan, who financed the circulation of more than one hundred copies of tafsir al-Manar in India and the Ottoman Empire. For further information, see: Amira Bennison, “Muslim Internationalism: Between Empire and Nation-State,” in Religious Internationals in the Modern World: Globalization and Faith Communities since 1750, ed. ‫ ‏‬V incent Viaene et al. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 180–181. 15 As British Colonial officials witnessed, al-Manar was also widely read among these communities. This information is quoted from the following work: Charles Kurzman, “Introduction,” in Liberal Islam: A Source Book, ed. Charles Kurzman (New York: Oxford university Press, 2009), 9. 16 For example, members of these families gave Rida logistic and translation services during his 1912 visit to the subcontinent. For further information, see: Muhammad Rashid Rida, “rihlatuna al-hindiyya: shukr ‘alani,” al-Manar 16 (1913): 77–78; Sayyid ‘Abd al-Haq al-Haqi al-A‘azmi al-Baghdadi al-Azhari, al-Kahf wa al-raqim fi mulakhkhas rihlat al-muslih al-‘azim wa al-mujaddid al-hakim muhammad rashid rida (Aligarh: al-Matb‘a al-Ahmadiyya, 1912), 8–10, 36–38. 17 Ryad, “A Printed ‘Lighthouse’ in Cairo,” 43, 48. 18 al-Manar 15 (1912): 450–451. 19 Striving to bring the Arab-speaking world to its British Indian readers, this ­A ligarh-based printing press sold original works in Urdu, Persian, and Arabic, while

124  Roy Bar Sadeh offering services of book delivery to customers interested in the latest technical and scientific books from Egypt and Beirut. For example, Rida’s Iraqi Ottoman-born emissary utilized the Matba‘-i Ahmadi when he published in May 1912 a detailed summary of Rida’s visit to India. For further information, see: al-Azhari, al-khaf wa al-raqim. 20 See the following example: Muhammad ‘Abduh, ‘Isaiiyyat o Islam ka tamaddun (Moradabad: dia’ al-islam, 1910). 21 ‘Abduh was also involved in issuing fatwas for Indian Muslims. Rida depicted one of these queries in his biography of ‘Abduh which he first published in 1931. See: Muhammad Rashid Rida, Tarikh al-ustad al-imam (Cairo: Dar al-Fadila, 2003), 647–666. This query is on the issue of cooperation between Muslims and non-­ Muslims in the subcontinent. 22 Rida, for example, depicted ‘Alam’s unflattering description of Al-Azhar University during his visit to Egypt in 1900. For further information, see: Muhammad Rashid Rida, “al-Jami‘ al-Azhar,” al-Manar 3 (1901): 773–776. See also ‘Alam’s depiction of his meetings with Rida and ‘Abduh in Cairo: Mahbub ‘Alam, ­Safarnama-i Europe va bilad-i Rum-Sham va Misr (Lahore: Steam Press, 1908), 961–962. Rida and ‘Alam met again in 1912 during the former’s visit to Lahore. The Paisa Akhbar reported that “[Rida’s] private talks left no room for doubt that he holds independent views and is a highly enlightened religious man.” For further information, see: ­Indian Newspaper Reports, c1868–1942, From the British Library, London, ­M icroform: IOR/L/R/5/87, reel 14: United Provinces Newspapers Reports 1912, 270–271 (citing Lahore’s Paisa Akhbar, April 1912). 23 For further information, see: Umar Ryad, Islamic Reformism and Christianity: A Critical Reading of the Works of Muhammad Rashid Rida and his Associates 1898– 1935 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 163; Zaman, Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age, 9. 24 Ryad, “A Printed ‘Lighthouse’ in Cairo,” 47. 25 For further information, see: Nile Green, “The Trans-Border Traffic of Afghan Modernism: Afghanistan and the Indian ‘Urdusphere’,” Comparative Studies in ­Society and History 53, no. 3 (2011): 485. 26 For Rida’s two part article, see: Muhammad Rashid Rida, “Nahadat Muslimi ­a l-hind,” al-Manar 1 (1898): 369–371, 389–392. 27 al-Manar 1, (1898): 389. 28 Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First Generation, 128. 29 al-Manar 1 (1898): 391. 30 For example, Islamic modernists in both Afghanistan and Russian-occupied central Asia often used what they perceived to be the “advancement” of India to promote reform in their own societies. For further information, see: Adeeb Khalid, “Visions of India in Central Asian Modernism: The Work of Abdurauf Fitrat,” in Looking at the Coloniser, eds. Hans Harder and Beate Eschment (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2004), 253–274; Green, “The Trans-Border Traffic of Afghan Modernism”, 479–508. 31 The intellectual roots of the attack against Sayyid Ahmad “materialism” can be found in al-­A fghani’s 1881 treatise, “The Refutation of the Materialists” (al-radd ‘ala ­al-dahriyin), which was translated to Arabic from Persian in Cairo under the supervision of ‘Abduh following his return to Egypt from his exile in Paris. For further information, see: Elshakry, Reading Darwin in Arabic, 118–125. See also the following study: Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism, 73–84. 32 Al-Afghani and ‘Abduh, “al-Dahariyun fi al-hind,” 445, 447. 33 Ibid., 446. 34 As Marwa Elshakry argues, al-Afghani’s utilization of the term “naturalism” was vague, allowing him “to group such people [like Sayyid Ahmad] together with atomists, evolutionists, nihilists, and materialists as “enemies of religion” and “destroyers of civilization.” For further information, see: Elshakry, Reading Darwin in Arabic, 120.

Islamic modernism between colonialism and orientalism  125 35 al-Afghani and ‘Abduh, “al-dahariyun fi al-hind,” 447. 36 As David Lelyveld shows, while Sayyid Ahmad sought to increase the British pedagogical involvement in the M.A.O. College, Sami‘ullah wanted to further the connections between the institution and scholastic networks affiliated with the ‘ulama’, in particular regarding the college curriculum. For further information, see: Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First Generation, 59, 270–271. For further information on ­Sami‘Allah’s 1884 visit to Egypt, which also include several of his personal documents, see the following biographical study: Muhammad Zaka’ullah, Sawanih ‘umri Haji ­Muhammad Sami‘ullah Khan Bahadur (Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Urdu Academy, 1997) 139–170. 37 al-Afghani and ‘Abduh, “al-Dahariyun fi al-hind,” 448. 38 Ibid., 449. 39 Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism, 67. 40 Ibid. 41 For example, the Cairo-based scientific journal al-Hilal (est. in 1892) highly regarded Sayyid Ahmad’s ideas on the promotion of Western education and published a eulogy in honor of the latter in 1898, the same year of the first publication of al-Manar, describing his activities as the “latest scientific renaissance of the East” due to his institution’s success in showing that modern sciences do not constitute any contradiction to religion. For further information, see: “Bab ashhar al-­hawadit wa a‘zam al-rijal: al-Sayyid Ahmad Khan,” al-Hilal 7 (1898): 1–8. In reality, however, Sayyid Ahmad’s plans for religious reform, which Rida glorified, were never implemented since the College’s founding generation remained focused on promoting secular sciences, preferring to avoid internal-Muslim disagreements. For further information about Sayyid Ahmad’s attempts to implement his reforms, see: David Lelyveld, “Disenchantment at Aligarh: Islam and the Realm of the Secular in Late Nineteenth Century India,” Die Welt des Islams 22, no. 1 (1982): 85–102. Rida’s possible reliance on the views of al-Hilal and British officials regarding the M.A.O. College is also connected to his lack of direct engagement with about Sayyid Ahmed’s theological writings, such as his Tafsir al-Qur’an (Exegesis of the Qur’an; 1880–1895) in which the latter attempted to demonstrate that both divine and natural laws do not constitute a contradiction. This relates to the lack of availability of Arabic translations of Sayyid Ahmad’s Urdu writings during the first years of al-Manar. 42 Ryad, “Islamic Reformism and Great Britain,” 263. 43 Muhammad Rashid Rida, “al-Akhbar al-tarikhiyya: sihafi hindi,” al-Manar 3 (1900): 614–615. 44 Ibid., 615. 45 The Meerut-born Ahmad earned his PhD in Mathematics from Göttingen University in 1904 and was the first Indian subcontinent-born scholar to receive the prestigious Sir Isaac Newton Scholarship from Cambridge University which was granted to him in 1904. A major figure in the M.A.O. College, Ahmad became, in 1934, the first vice-chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University, a position he held until 1946. 46 The complete version of Ahmad’s speech was translated to Arabic from English and published on January 1907 in al-Manar: Muhammad Rashid Rida, “Khutbat al-duktur Zia’ al-Din Ahmad,” al-Manar 9 (1907): 933–942, 938–939. 47 The suggested educational models were the bureaucratic and centralized French model – usually preferred by Egyptian nationalists and khedival officials – the utilitarian and relatively more diffused British model – preferred by British officials and Egyptian liberals for the most part – and the Islamic modernist model, preferred by ‘Abduh and Rida. For further information on these debates, see: Haggai Erlich, Students and University in Twentieth Century Egyptian Politics (London: Frank Cass, 1989), 9–44.

126  Roy Bar Sadeh 48 For further information, see: Reid, Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt, footnote 6. 49 al-Manar 9 (1907): 937–938. 50 Ibid., 937. 51 Ibid., 937–938. 52 Ibid., 938, 940. 53 Ibid., 934. 54 Ibid., 936. 55 Ibid., 941. 56 Ibid., 941–942. The issue of female education was not further elaborated by ­Ziauddin and thus shrouded in vagueness. In reality, traveling from India to a foreign country, such as Egypt, could have caused even more difficulties for women seeking to receive higher education. 57 Ibid., 939. 58 In 1899, al-Azhari published his first article in al-Manar concerning holidays among different religions: Sayyid ‘Abd al-Haq al-Haqi al- A‘azami al-Baghdadi al-Azhari, “al-A‘ayad,” al-Manar 2 (1899): 97–103. See also al-Azhari’s request for a formal legal response (istifta‘) from Rida in 1903 which dealt with the utilization of Urdu during his Friday sermons in Bombay, where he worked as an imam. Muhammad Rashid Rida, “Bab al-as’ila wa al-ajwiba,” al-Manar 6 (1903): 506–508. The biographical details on al-Baghdadi are taken from the following sources: Mukhtar alDin Ahmad, “Shaykh ‘Abd al-Haq Haqi Baghdadi,” Tehzeeb-ul-Akhlaq (December, 1994): 4–7; Mir Basri, A‘lam al-adab fi al-Iraq al-hadith (London: dar al- hikmah, 1999), 418. 59 This information appears in the title page of the book, where al-Azhari thanked ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Dhakir, mentioning that he is the son of al-Haj Muqbil al-­Dhakir – a well-known pearl merchant whose philanthropic activities were appreciated by al-Manar. Consider al-Manar’s obituary for Haj Muqbil al-Dhakir: Muhammad ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Mani‘, “Wafat rajul kabir wa muhsin shair, hua al-haj Muqbil al-Dhakir,” al-Manar 24 (1923): 559–560. For the treatise, see: Sayyid ‘Abd al-Haq al-Haqi al-A‘azami al-Baghdadi al-Azhari, al-‘Arab wa al-‘arabiyya bihima salah alumma al-islamiyya wa jam‘ al-umam al-bashariyya (Cairo: matba‘at ­al-Manar, 1331 H./1913). 60 It is important to stress that the words ‘ajami or ‘ajam can also be translated, apart from “Muslim of Persian decent,” as “non-Arab Muslim.” Its translation is dependent on its different historical contexts. 61 al-Azhari, al-‘Arab wa al-‘arabiyya, 7. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid., 21. 64 Ibid., 22. 65 Umar Ryad, Islamic Reformism and Christianity, 48. 66 Ronen Raz, “The Transparent Mirror: Arab Intellectuals and Orientalism, 1798– 1950” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1997). 67 al-Manar 16 (1913): 104–105. 68 For further information on Horovitz, see: Ruchama Jonston-Bloom, “Symbiosis ­R elocated: The German-Jewish Orientalist Ilse Lichtenstadter in America”, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 16, no. 1 (2013): 4; Ruchama Jonston-Bloom, “Oriental Studies and Jewish Questions: German Jewish Encounters with Muhammad, The Qur’an, and Islamic Modernities” (PhD diss., The University of Chicago, 2013), 126–232; Shelomo Dov Goitein, “Yosef Horovitz,” Davar, March 13, 1931, 3. 69 This only took place in 1920. 70 Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First Generation, 243. 71 Ibid.

Islamic modernism between colonialism and orientalism  127 72 For further information, see: Thomas Walker Arnold, The Preaching of Islam: A History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith (Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co., 1896). 73 Unknown Writer, “al-Islam wa huriyyat al-‘akida wa kitab al-da‘wa al-islamiyya,” al-Manar 16 (1913): 929. 74 Jan-Peter Hartung, “The Nadwat al-‘Ulama’: Chief Patron of Madrasa Education in India and a Turntable to the Arab World,” in Islamic Education, Diversity, and National Identity: Dini Madaris in India Post 9/11, ed. Jan-Peter Hartung and Helmut Reifeld. (New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2006), 140. 75 By utilizing pre-Islamic sources from sixth-century Persia, Nu‘mani rejected European intellectuals’ accusations that the Jizya was a symbol of Muslim aspirations to humiliate their non-Muslim subjects, depicting it instead as a tax which exempted subjects, for a low price, from military service. For further information, see: Shibli Nu‘mani, “The Jizya or Capitation Tax” (Translated in from Urdu into English by One of the Author’s Friends in 1894), Khuda Bakhsh Library Journal 93–95 (1994), 1–14. 76 Lelyveld, “Disenchantment at Aligarh,” 92. 77 Jonston-Bloom, “Oriental Studies and Jewish Questions,” 181–182. For an extensive study on the educational politics of the M.A.O. College, see: Gail Minault and David Lelyveld, “The Campaign for a Muslim University, 1898–1920,” Modern Asian Studies 8, no. 2 (1974): 145–189. 78 Jonston-Bloom, “Oriental Studies and Jewish Questions,” 182. 79 al-Azhari, al-Kahf wa al-raqim, 27. During his visit to the college, Rida also gave a speech on issues related to education which are beyond the scope of this article. For further information, see: “al-Tarbiya wa wajah al-haja ilayha wa taqasimha: khutba irtijaliyya‘ulqiyyat fi madrasat al-‘ulum al-kuliyya bi-‘Alikarh,” al-Manar 15 (1912): 567–586. 80 Ibid. 81 al-Manar 16 (1913): 104–105. 82 Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 2002), 46–47. 83 Zaman, Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age, 9; Muhammad Rashid Rida, “alKhutba al–ra‘isiyya fi nadwat al-‘ulama’ li-sahhib al-Manar,” al-Manar 15 (1912): 624. 84 For further information, see: ‘Abd al-Wahhab Habib, “Eiropa l-oro shel ha-­m igdalor: a-m’aarav be-mishnato shel muhammad rashid rida,” in Sheki‘at ha-ma‘arav, ‘aliyat ha-Islam? ‘iyunim be-hagut ‘al ‘atid ha-tsivilizatsyot, ed. Uriya Shavit (Bene ­Berak: ­ ritain,” ha-kibuts ha-meuhad, 2010), 95–113; Ryad, “Islamic Reformism and Great B 263–284. 85 al-Azhari, al-‘Arab wa al- ‘arabiyya, 22–23. 86 Ibid. 87 al-Manar 15 (1912): 457. 88 Ibid., 457–458. 89 al-Azhari, al-Kahf wa al-raqim, 26–27. 90 Ibid. This comment should also be viewed in the context of Rida’s rivalry with the Ottoman Empire. 91 Ryad, Islamic Reformism and Christianity, 7. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid., 7. 94 al-Manar 15 (1912): 456–457. 95 Azmi Özcan, Pan-Islamism: Indian Muslims, the Ottomans and Britain 1877–1924 (Leiden, New York and Koln: Brill, 1997), 144. 96 Indian Newspaper Reports, c1868–1942, From the British Library, London, Microform: IOR/L/R/5/87, reel 14: United Provinces Newspapers Reports 1912, 488 (citing Aligarh’s Urdu-i Mualla, May 1912).

128  Roy Bar Sadeh 97 al-Manar 15 (1913): 105. 98 Ibid. 99 Abdur Razzaq Malihabadi, Mazamin-i Malihabadi (Lucknow: Khami Press, 1989), 172–173. 100 During the postwar period, Malihabadi also took a leading role in the Indian ­Muslim Khilafat movement (1919–1924). 101 al-Manar 15 (1912): 624. 102 After his demise, al-Azhari’s body was shipped to Bombay where he is buried today. For further information, see: Ahmad, “Shaykh ‘Abd al-Haqq Haqqi Baghdadi,” 6. 103 Rida, Tarikh al-ustad al-imam, 1066.

6 The frustrating authority of Mr. Wells Islam and the politics of orientalism in Republican China Aaron Nathan Glasserman1 The July 1937 issue of Yu Gong, China’s leading journal of historical geography, featured an article with the following indictment of Western scholarship on ­A rabs and Islam: Westerners received the gifts of Arab culture and created a great age, but there has never been a fair account of this in their written works. They hold a religiously and racially self-interested view, and whenever they mention Islam or Arab civilization, they all have a knack for erasure and slander, believing that, were they to acknowledge that a barbarian nation of the desert has been their scholarly and cultural guide – then what greater humiliation for Europeans could there be? This inherited narrowmindedness… unfortunately does generally represent the authoritative scholars of the day, and the generations of Voltaire, Renan, and Wells have all inevitably been confined to parochial self-interest and thoughtless blabber.2 The article was actually an excerpted preface to the recent Chinese translation of Muhammad Kurd Ali’s (1876–1953) Islam and Arab Civilization (Al-Islam wa’l-H adara al-’Arabiyya, 1934, Chinese translation 1936).3 The translator ˙ ˙ of the book and author of the preface was the influential Chinese Muslim intellectual Na Zhong (1909–2008). Na hailed from a backwater county in the southwestern province of Yunnan, but he wrote from across the globe in Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the millennium-old center of Islamic learning, where he and a small cohort of Chinese Muslims were studying Arabic language and history and Islamic sciences.4 Why did Na see these three men as exemplars of Western ignorance of Islam? Perhaps the two Frenchmen are unsurprising; Voltaire’s scathing adaptation of the life of the Prophet Muhammad for the stage5 had just celebrated its bicentennial, and Renan’s half-century-old invectives against Islam6 continued to circulate and provoke rebuttals from Muslims worldwide. The latter in particular received considerable attention in the very book Na had translated. But what was Herbert George “H.G.” Wells (1866–1946), the popular English writer, doing there? In fact, Na Zhong was not the first Chinese Muslim intellectual to take up the pen against H.G. Wells. Nor was the translator’s preface to Islam and Arab Civilization the last time Na would invoke the popular author – though he would

130  Aaron Nathan Glasserman not always do so to criticize him. Indeed, in other writings, Na and his associates commended Wells’ historical works, extracting and disseminating favorable quotations on Muhammad and Islam.7 As I will show in this essay, Wells’ historical writings, in particular his Outline of History (1920, first Chinese translation 1927)8 and subsequent A Short History of the World (1922, first Chinese translation 1930)9 featured prominently and ambiguously in Chinese Muslims’ writings and activism regarding their place and the place of Islam in both Chinese and world history throughout the 1930s and 1940s. As a popular writer with no philological training, H.G. Wells does not fit the archetype of the orientalist scholar of Islam. The Outline of History did not present original research, and as critics outside of China were quick to point out, Wells did not know Arabic or indeed any “oriental” language. Chinese Muslim intellectuals thus had ample ground on which to challenge Wells’ characterizations of their religion and prophet. That Na Zhong and his peers overlooked these scholarly shortcomings when citing Wells’ favorable commentary is unsurprising. What is curious is that they declined to exploit them when refuting Wells’ criticism. Rather, they preferred to discredit Wells by emphasizing his Englishness and exaggerating his Christianity, ignoring the well-known scorn with which he wrote about the Church.10 Many of Islam’s Western critics were fiercer than Wells; many of its Western sympathizers were warmer. So why did he attract so much attention from Chinese Muslim intellectuals? On one hand, these intellectuals had little choice but to confront Wells. Wells’ historical writings enjoyed immense popularity in China and widespread use as world history textbooks in Chinese schools. Wells also received attention, both critical and laudatory, in the pages of multiple transnationally circulating Islamic journals, increasingly available to Chinese Muslims in the 1930s. As Na Zhong bemoaned in his 1937 preface, Wells was an authority. On the other hand, although these Muslim intellectuals did not introduce Wells to the Chinese scene, they helped keep him there. These intellectuals continued to cite and write about Wells in the 1940s and into the 1950s, excerpting, translating, and even forging quotations on Islam. Two contrasting images of Wells emerged: Wells the Islamophobe and Wells the Islamophile. As we will see, each image had its use in Chinese Muslim discourse and politics. When they needed an enemy against whom to mobilize, Chinese Muslim intellectuals cast Wells as a polemicist with a cultural or religious bias against Islam. When they needed an ally to support their claims that Islam was a modern, rational religion, they recast him as a fair-minded scholar. The remainder of this essay proceeds as follows. I review how Chinese Muslim intellectuals used Wells’ The Outline of History alongside orientalist scholarship in their efforts to demonstrate (a) that their communities constituted an integral and historic part of the Chinese nation and (b) that the West had inherited science and reason from Islamic civilization. The subsequent two sections address Chinese Muslim representations of Wells as an Islamophobe and an Islamophile, respectively. I conclude with a brief discussion of Edward Said’s notion of orientalism as the “corporate institution for dealing with the Orient”11 and

The frustrating authority of Mr. Wells  131 its usefulness for making sense of Chinese Muslim engagement with orientalist scholarship and Western representations of Islam.

Wells and the history of Chinese Islam One of the challenges following the collapse of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) was to define the Chinese nation and the status of China’s diverse, non-Han peoples within it. Han chauvinism helped drive the revolution to topple the Manchu dynasty, but the desire to hold on to the massive territory of the old empire – including the borderlands heavily populated by ethnic minorities – led the government of the new republic to adopt inclusive rhetoric about the composition of the nation. Under the ideology of “Five Races in Harmony” (Wu Zu Gonghe), the struggling new state appealed to Mongolians, Tibetans, ­Manchus, and Muslims to join the Han as partners in the Chinese Nation (Zhonghua Minzu). However, by the late 1920s, China had experienced decades of disintegrating infighting and foreign encroachment. Intensifying nationalism and the imperative of nationwide mobilization to defend against a looming Japan fed a new discourse of a unitary Chinese nation.12 The need to determine – or contrive – Chinese descent spurred professional study of Chinese Muslim history.13 Interest in this budding field was not limited to Chinese Muslims. Some of its early lights were prominent non-Muslim historians.14 In one of his earliest writings on Chinese Muslim historiography, the famous Muslim historian Bai Shouyi (1909–2000) remarked on the dearth of Muslim voices in the field. Indeed, by the 1930s, this class of patriotic Muslim intellectuals was driven by an acute awareness that their history would be written and taught with or without them. Bai did not object to the use of non-­Muslim scholarship in the study of Islamic history; in fact, he recognized Western and non-Muslim sources as essential to his field and called for their translation alongside the collection, organization, and translation of Chinese and Islamic sources.15 Bai and other Chinese Muslim historians were already making use of Western scholarship, in particular the works of the Baltic-German sinologist Emil Bretscheider (1833–1901) and the Scottish orientalist Henry Yule (1820–1889), to determine when Islam first came to China. Bai’s translations of some of Bretschneider’s English-language scholarship, including chapters from Medieval ­Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources (1875–1877),16 appeared in Yu Gong in 1937.17 That same year, Yu Gong ran a special issue on Islam, which featured as its opening article a translation of a long review essay by the French Arabist Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes (1862–1957) surveying recent orientalist scholarship.18 The issue also included a bibliography of works on Islam in China that was first published in the missionary quarterly The Moslem World (1911–1947).19 Yu Gong’s special issue was welcomed as an important step in the development of the study of Islam in China. Its heavy reliance on Western scholarship did not go unnoticed in the Chinese Muslim press, 20 but observers expressed no objection to the use of non-Muslim scholarship per se.

132  Aaron Nathan Glasserman Establishing Chinese Muslims as historic and integral members of the Chinese nation hinged on the question of when Islam first entered China. Even if Bai Shouyi maintained that Chinese Muslims were indeed a distinct nationality and not simply Hans who believed in Islam, he and his colleagues still recognized the benefits of setting an early date for Islam’s arrival. Since at least the early eighteenth century, Muslims in China had circulated origin myths dating their arrival back to the early Tang Dynasty (618–907).21 Many now looked to corroborate that early date with other sources. Enter Wells. In The Outline of History, Wells makes passing reference to an Arab envoy dispatched by Muhammad reaching the court of Emperor Taizong (r. 626–649) in the year 628 CE.22 Wells became known in China as an authoritative exponent of this theory. In 1931, Crescent China (Yue Hua, 1929–1948), the leading Chinese Muslim periodical of the Republican period, published an article evaluating various theories on the origins of Islam in China. The author, the young Chinese Muslim historian Jin Jitang (1908–1978), 23 cited Wells’ Outline of History along with two other sources as proof of the theory that Islam first came to China in 628.24 The 628 theory appealed to Chinese Muslims for two reasons. First, it placed the origin of Chinese Muslims safely before the invasions of the foreign Jin (1115–1234) and Yuan (1271–1368) Dynasties. If Muslims were in China by that point, then they were truly Chinese, or so the logic went. Second, as Chinese Muslims increasingly associated Islam with the Arab Middle East, 25 they found foreign affirmation that Arabs first brought Islam to China (as Wells’ passing comments assert) especially appealing. Likewise, some sought to challenge the emerging consensus that Central Asians brought to China during the Mongol Yuan Dynasty were the ancestors of modern Chinese Muslims. As John Chen has insightfully observed, the 628 theory both pushed this ancestry back some five centuries and Arabized it.26 Again, Wells was not the only source for this early dating of Islam’s arrival in China, but he was becoming one of the more popular ones. In his seminal Studies in the History of Chinese Islam (1936), Jin Jitang again cited The Outline of History as support for the 628 theory and praised Wells as “an uncommon historian.”27 A later survey of the various theories of the origins of Islam in China also listed Wells as one of the sources for the 628 ce date.28 Chinese Muslim intellectuals were keen to demonstrate not only that they were full members of the Chinese nation but also that Islam was a rational, modern religion that was not only compatible with science but actually championed it. On this point, Wells made for an eloquent ally. His work recognized and helped popularize, at least in China, the notion that Western Civilization had inherited a great deal from Islam. As he wrote of the scientific method in The Outline of History, “Through the Arabs it was and not by the Latin route that the modern world received that gift of light and power.”29 Citations of The Outline appeared in several Republican-era Chinese publications bespeaking Islam’s contributions to social and political progress. The earliest such citation came in 1923 in the mainstream, non-Muslim Literary Supplement to the Morning Post (Chenbao Fujian, 1921–1928) in Shanghai. The

The frustrating authority of Mr. Wells  133 serialized article “The Relationship of the Rise of Islam to Western Civilization” included three sections: (1) the political and religious situations of the world before Islam; (2) the basic tenets of Islam and outline of its early rise; and (3) Islam and Western Civilization, a section devoted entirely to the Islam’s contributions in terms of philosophy, science, literature, education, industry, and commerce. The author opened the piece with the table of contents followed by a list of the seven sources consulted, the last of which was Wells’ Outline of History, in English.30 Another citation of Wells came in December 1929, when Crescent China ran an essay, “On the Contributions of Islam to Social Progress,” which listed Wells’ Outline of History (English edition) as one of just four works cited.31 Chinese Muslim intellectuals thus cited The Outline of History as evidence for two historical arguments: that Chinese Muslims were an integral part of the Chinese nation, and that modern progress, especially in the West, owed much to the former glory of Islamic civilization. Despite this utility, Chinese Muslim historians soon abandoned Wells for more credible scholars. Writing in 1937, the Chinese Muslim scholar Fu Tongxian (1910–1985) challenged Jin Jitang’s recent citation of Wells (mentioned earlier), pointing out that Wells offered no evidence for the 628 date, but was instead probably repeating the ideas of other Europeans.32 But Chinese Muslim engagement with Wells was far from over. By the second half of the 1930s, Chinese Muslim historians may have turned away from Wells as a historian, but the Englishman remained a central figure in ongoing debates over the proper representation of Islam. At the core of these debates was the question of the relationship between Islam and violence. The association of Muslims with violence had a long history in China and grew stronger as Christian missionaries and Chinese authors circulated the charge that the Prophet Muhammad spread Islam through the use of force.33 As we will see, Chinese Muslims variously identified Wells as the source of this accusation and as an example of a Western, Christian scholar who rejected it. Before examining how Chinese Muslims constructed these two versions of Wells – the Islamophobe and the Islamophile – let us review two reasons why he continued to attract so much attention. First, little could be done to counter the popularity of Wells’ historical writings in Chinese classrooms. In the 1930s and 1940s, influential Chinese Muslims repeatedly lamented the widespread use of The Outline of History as a world history textbook. The Outline and A Short History of the World were both translated into Chinese multiple times in the 1920s and 1930s. Chinese Muslim intellectuals were not alone in their complaints; Chinese scholars in general vied to dominate the profitable and prestigious textbook market and saw writing world history textbooks in particular as a means to shape the next generation of citizens and secure their own cultural capital.34 Wells was important enough that the first Chinese translation of The Outline of History was reviewed by the renowned Chinese historian Lei Haizong (1902–1962) in 1928. Lei’s review was republished with an addendum in 1930 upon the second Chinese publication of The Outline. In the first review, Lei acknowledged Wells’ popularity as a novelist

134  Aaron Nathan Glasserman and a thinker but rejected the Outline of History as a proper work of historical scholarship. In Lei’s judgment, Wells was a utopian thinker and “a product of the era of nationalist reaction.” His book was no work of history, at the very least not of world history. Indeed, Wells seemed to confuse “world history” with “Western history,” as reflected in his distribution of chapters, which mostly focused on Western nations. Lei’s 1930s addendum was even more critical. Over the previous two years, Lei lamented, the book’s popularity had not diminished; rather, “whether ordinary readers or middle school and university students, many readers till take this book to be an authoritative world history.”35 For Muslim and non-Muslim scholars alike, Wells was an authority who could not be ignored. Second, Chinese Muslim intellectuals also found reasons to continue to engage with Wells in the pages of several transnational Islamic journals, which were increasingly available in the late 1920s and 1930s, especially in the eastern cities along or near the coast.36 In the interwar period, the English-language The Islamic Review (1913–1971) and The Genuine Islam (1936–1941?), published in Surrey, England and Singapore, respectively, both ran several articles on Wells and his views on Islam. References to Wells also appeared multiple times in the prominent Arabic-language journal Al-Manar (1898–1935), published in Cairo for nearly forty years by the well-known Islamic reformist Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865–1935).37 Chinese Muslim intellectuals in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Guangdong read these journals and occasionally translated articles into Chinese.38 These transnational Islamic journals included both critical and favorable reviews of Wells’ work. For example, writing in Al-Manar in January 1930, Shakib Arslan (1869–1946), the famous Druze Pan-Islamist and contributor to Rida’s journal, concluded a review of the Swiss orientalist Eduoard Montet’s (1856– 1934) biography of Muhammad with a favorable mention of Wells’ Outline of History, noting that Wells, “though not devoid of some illusions in his remarks on the prophetic biography, in many places is fair on this overall point.”39 Na Zhong almost certainly read Arslan’s review, if not in China, then in Cairo, where he studied for most of a decade. In 1947, Na penned an essay reviewing several Western authors’ writings on the Quran and addressed Wells and Montet together in a single paragraph, a coupling which suggests the direct influence of Arslan’s article.40 The Islamic Review and The Genuine Islam also featured some of Wells’ more favorable commentary on Islam,41 but for the most part, they presented Wells as ignorant if not hostile to Muslims and Islam.42 As Chinese Muslim intellectuals read these condemnations, they must have felt a sense of solidarity with their coreligionists abroad in the fight against anti-Islamic defamation. But their strategy for discrediting Wells differed. Chinese Muslim intellectuals emphasized Wells’ cultural and religious (Christian) biases. In contrast, when The Islamic Review and The Genuine Islam authors repudiated Wells’ assertions that Islam was inherently violent, that the Quran was not divine, or that Muhammad was of questionable character, they stressed Wells’ ignorance of Arabic. As one critic put it: “One can understand Mr. Wells’ inability to see the worth of the Quran:

The frustrating authority of Mr. Wells  135 he is ignorant of its language.”43 For writers in The Islamic Review and The Genuine Islam, it was a matter of scholarly credentials, not religion or nationality. Later reviews of The Outline of History in both The Islamic Review and The Genuine Islam also attributed Wells’ “bias” to his dependence on translations. Both reviews charged that Wells was a poor historian. His Christian background was irrelevant. Chinese readers could not have misunderstood this logic. Moreover, The Islamic Review separately covered and criticized Wells’ disparagement of the Church of England.44 Yet, time and again, Chinese Muslim intellectuals would attempt to discredit Wells by insinuating that his Christianity biased him against Islam. It should come as no surprise that when so few among their ranks could claim fluency in Arabic, these intellectuals dropped linguistic mastery as a requirement for speaking authoritatively about Islam. But why were they so keen to read and portray Wells as a Christian?

Wells the Islamophobe As early as 1925, Chinese Muslims complained of the “Christianization” of ­Chinese education and the spread of Western history books that taught that Muhammad spread Islam through violence. Muslim opposition to representations of Islam in Chinese teaching materials continued over the decade. In 1929, Crescent China published a report by Muslims in Shanxi Province on various insults against Islam contained in two of the Commercial Press’s textbooks.45 In 1934, Ha Decheng (1888–1943) and Da Pusheng (1874–1965), two of the so-called “Four Great Imams of Modern China” and part of the same intellectual circle as Na Zhong, took to the airwaves to decry the growing number of Western misconceptions about Islam permeating Chinese society. A third of their halfmonth series of radio broadcasts were devoted to dispelling these myths, most egregious of which were the charges that Islam was violent and that Muhammad had spread it by military force. The two imams lamented that works by ignorant Western authors were not only in high demand among Chinese readers but were also becoming textbooks for elementary and middle school students. Lacking good information, student simply took these ideas about Islam and Muhammad as fact, trusting textbooks without considering “who the author was, and which religion he professed.”46 Ha and Da left little doubt over the target of their criticism once they were on the air. Chinese students, Muslims included, were being fed misinformation and slanders about Muhammad and Islam in their school textbooks, and the root of all this was one man and one book: Whence the sentence “Muhammad used military force to spread religion, holding a Quran in one hand and a sword in the other,” which everyone says in unison? This sentence can be seen in all sorts of books. And so pray tell, from where does what is said in those books come? They all emerge from The Outline of History. Who wrote The Outline of History? The name of the original English-language author is H. G. Wells,47 a Christian.48

136  Aaron Nathan Glasserman That Wells was a well-known critic of Christianity was of little concern to Ha and Da. What distressed them most was the wide dissemination of Wells’ c­ omments – or, rather, the wrong comments – among China’s younger generations. The first part of the sentence they quote, “Muhammad used military force to spread religion,” does correspond to one of the subchapter headings (in full, “The Period When Muhammad Used Military Force to Spread Religion”) in Chapter 31, “Muhammad and Islam,” in the Chinese translation of The Outline of History.49 The Chinese translation of the heading seems to have sharpened the critique of the prophet; the original English text, “Muhammad Becomes a Fighting Prophet,”50 arguably connotes struggle and perseverance rather than coercion and fanaticism. Slight variants on this language (though “military force,” wuli, remained unchanged) did appear in multiple publications, including the aforementioned 1923 essay in the Literary Supplement to the Morning Post, and would be reproduced in 1935 in a popular Chinese test-prep book.51 As for the second part of Wells’ alleged sentence, “holding a Quran in one hand and a sword in the other,” this formulation does not correspond to any part of The Outline of History or A Short History of the World, in English or Chinese. Why the false attribution? Why the attempt to portray Wells as a vituperative Christian polemicist rather than an ambivalent amateur in all things Islamic? By casting Wells as an Islamophobe, Chinese Muslim intellectuals created the enemy they needed to mobilize their communities and legitimize their own authority to represent Islam in China. During the 1930s, different organizations claiming leadership of Chinese Muslims mushroomed across the country. Though these institutions often worked together and shared the goals of promoting dual religious and nonreligious education and protecting Chinese Muslim economic and political interests, in some cases they competed for official recognition and authorization. One way these institutions enhanced their legitimacy was by taking action against anti-Islamic defamation. In the 1930s, ­Chinese Muslim newspapers frequently reported on perceived insults, or “cases of religious offense” (wujiao an), in Chinese publications. These religious offense cases emerged as an important category in the 1930s Chinese Muslim press. Editors and other Muslim leaders catalogued and advertised these incidents, and, just as importantly, their actions taken to redress them. A 1936 article in the periodical Tu Jue (1933–1944), another influential Muslim periodical published at the Central School of Politics in Nanjing (then the capital of China), featured a chart itemizing thirty-four cases from the past decade along with details about nature of each incident and Muslim institutions’ responses to them.52 One of the last items on the chart mentioned what was by then a notorious little book: A Short History of the World. The incident in question began in late 1935, when the Commercial Press in Shanghai published another Chinese translation of A Short History of the World (Jianming Shijie Shi), the short follow-up to The Outline of History. It was a wise business decision by any judgment, given the author’s popularity. But things did not go smoothly. In the first week of January 1936, Crescent China published editorials and reported on Muslim organizations across the country

The frustrating authority of Mr. Wells  137 protesting the book,53 which repeated many of the unfavorable characterizations of ­Muhammad found in The Outline of History and added the charge that the Quran was “certainly unworthy of its alleged divine authorship.”54 Beginning in the central city of Hankow after a local newspaper published parts of the chapter and then spreading from city to city, major Chinese Muslim outlets condemned Wells, the translator, and the Commercial Press and demanded that all copies be withdrawn, revised, and submitted for review by Chinese Muslim institutions. In addition, they charged, any future Commercial Press publications on Islam should have to go through a similar process of censorship. On January 11th, the Commercial Press announced that it was, in effect, acquiescing to these demands. Although copies that had already been sold could not practicably be recalled, those in bookstores were already being taken back for revision and approval by Ma Liang (1875–1947), the chairman of the China Islamic Guild (Zhonghua Huijiao Gonghui, est. 1934), to whom the press’s future publications on Islam would likewise be submitted for approval. A subsequent letter added the Shanghai-based Chinese Islamic Learning Society as another censor.55 Executives at the Commercial Press were probably most concerned about arousing any undesirable and unprofitable government attention. By agreeing to censor their publications and to submit them for Muslim approval, they might avoid exacerbating tensions with a minority community. But this new arrangement also affected intra-Muslim politics. In the mid-1930s, the China Islamic Guild56 was competing with other institutions to represent Chinese Muslims. A 1935 article in Crescent China noted that although Ma Liang had received official support to organize the Guild, numerous other Muslim organizations protested his appointment and rejected his pretension to be the leader of ­Muslims nationwide.57 In a boon to his claim of Muslim leadership, Ma Liang emerged as one of the heroes of the campaign against A Short History of the World. As mentioned, the censorship arrangement also empowered the China Islamic Learning Society, which could now more effectively shape the representation of Islam in Chinese books. Ha Decheng and Da Pusheng, the two imams who condemned Wells on the radio less than two years before, were leading members of the Society. The campaign against Wells did not put an end to anti-Islamic defamation, but it did give Muslims – or certain Muslims – greater control over the representation of Islam in Chinese discourse. One can understand how the missionary outlet Friends of Moslems in China, with its own alarmist zeal, called the campaign “another example of the power of Islam in China.”58 Chinese Muslim engagement with Wells began as a reaction to the latter’s stubborn popularity, a way of making the best of an undesirable situation. By the mid-1930s, this engagement entailed a creative manipulation of his authority. By exaggerating Wells’ Christian identity, Chinese Muslim intellectuals turned him into the enemy they needed to mobilize their constituents. If the objective was simply to minimize Wells’ influence, nonrecognition would have been the best policy. But in multiple instances, Chinese Muslim intellectuals deliberately drew attention to Wells’ writings on Islam.

138  Aaron Nathan Glasserman We have already seen how Ha Decheng and Da Pusheng focused on Wells in their radio broadcast. Similarly, in 1948, the editor of the journal Hui Culture (Huizu Wenhua, January–February 1948) identified Wells as the source of the association of Islam with violence. The inaugural issue of the journal featured “A Letter from a Non-Muslim Comrade: Did or Didn’t Muhammad Hold a Quran in His Left Hand and a Sword in His Right One?” and an editorial response. The letter writer made no mention of The Outline of History or A Short History of the World but specified two other books where he had read that Muhammad spread Islam by force. In his response, the editor not only repudiated the allegation but also corrected its genealogy, specifying that it originated in The Outline of History, “written by the Christian H.G. Wells.”59 The designation “the Christian” echoed earlier mischaracterizations of Wells’ religious identity. We have seen how Chinese Muslims exaggerated Wells’ Christianity to make him a compelling opponent. But these intellectuals attempted a similar recasting when they invoked Wells in support of their arguments. We can see this mirror maneuver as far back as Jin Jitang’s 1936 Studies in the History of Chinese Islam, mentioned earlier. As Jin wrote, Mr. Wells’s thought has not escaped the scope of the Jesuits, and there are rather numerous slanders against Islam and against the Prophet Muhammad throughout the book. Yet the point of Islam’s entrance into China in [628]60 is truly the greatest mark of the glory of China’s Muslims. Thus in this mark of glory, coming from the mouth of an opponent, I am confident beyond doubt.61 Jin argued that if even a Christian would concede the 628 ce date for Islam’s entry into China – something that glorified Chinese Muslims and therefore ran counter to Christian interests – then surely it must be true. Jin here points to Wells’ Christianity as evidence for objectivity and therefore the validity of the 628 ce theory. Remember that Jin also praised Wells as an “uncommon historian.” Christian belief discredited Wells the Islamophobe as biased but legitimated Wells the Islamophile as objective, a true scholar. As we will see, intellectuals who commended Wells’ favorable writings on Islam adopted a similar technique of emphasizing their author’s objectivity.

Wells the Islamophile In 1941, a Yunnan-based Muslim periodical published an article on “Western Scholars’ Criticism of Islam and the Quran” (Xifang Xuezhe duiyu Huijiao yu Gulan Jing de Piping).62 The author was none other than Na Zhong, who had penned the invective against Wells with which this essay opened. Na apparently meant “criticism” in the neutral sense; the passage he quoted from The Outline of History was unambiguously positive. Na gave what appears to be a loose translation of the following excerpt of The Outline: Islam from the outset was fairly proof against the theological elaborations that have perplexed and divided Christianity and smothered the spirit of

The frustrating authority of Mr. Wells  139 Jesus… Islam to this day has learned doctors, teachers and preachers; but it has no priests… It was full of the spirit of kindliness, generosity and brotherhood; it was a simple and understandable religion; it was instinct with the chivalrous sentiment of the desert; and it made its appeal straight to the commonest instincts in the composition of ordinary men.63 Perhaps Na felt compelled to omit Wells’ intervening disparagements of Christianity and Judaism. For example, he did not translate the following passage, which filled part of the gap between “spirit of Jesus” and “Islam to this day” in The Outline of History: “Against [Islam] were pitted Judaism, which had made a racial hoard of God; [and] Christianity talking and preaching endlessly now of trinities, doctrines, and heresies no ordinary man could make head or tail of”. Nor did Na include ellipses or indicate in any way that he stitched nearby sentences together. His Chinese translation went as follows: Christianity has, due to divisive theological questions, been completely drained of its vigor. From its early period, Islam has not had this sort of theological division. Islam has men of learning. It has professors. But it has no priests. Islam promotes the spirit of gentleness, generosity, and friendship. Moreover, it overflows with the innate noble bravery of the desert, and it was therefore able to enter deeply into the hearts of men….64 When introducing this passage, Na referred to Wells as “a historian” and made no mention of his religious identity. Na’s choice of passage and language reflect contemporary anxieties over Islam’s legitimacy as a religion and its legacy as a civilization. The outbreak of full-scale war with Japan in July 1937 had increased the already high pressure on religious leaders to clarify how their traditions could contribute to national defense and progress. This passage from The Outline of History not only underscored Islam’s inherent unity, a priority in this time of national crisis, but also alleged that Christianity falls short of this mark. In another nod to the needs of war, Na implies that Muslims possess an “innate noble bravery” (tiansheng de haoyong) – a timely, martial upgrade from the “chivalrous spirit” in Wells’ original. But Na did not push any further on the point of military might. Moreover, aside from the note on bravery, his translation highlights Islam’s inclination toward peace. Indeed, when it came to Islam’s gentle spirit, he chose to translate “full of” as “promotes,” once again rendering Islam not merely an example of what a modern religion ought to be, but a champion of it. Na’s translation of a passage of The Outline of History quoted earlier continues: …Moreover, [Islam] overflows with the innate noble bravery of the desert, and it was therefore able to enter deeply into the hearts of men… Islam is a religion of righteousness and should get people’s respect. Non-Muslims should have a relationship based on fraternity with Muslims. The most important condition for this relationship is to absolutely respect Islam, to understand the true nature of Islam. Through the introductions of some scholars without selfish

140  Aaron Nathan Glasserman motives, and the accounts of travels through the Islamic countries of the East, Islam will gradually come to be understood by Europe.65 The italicized text does not correspond to any part of The Outline of History or A Short History of the World; the words are entirely Na’s (or some other sympathetic author’s) invention. The phrase “selfish motives” echoes Na’s 1937 comment about Western scholars’ “parochial self-interest.” The requirement to “absolutely respect Islam” also seems out of place until we remember the emotional language of “indignation,” “insult,” and “offense” that saturated contemporary Muslim and official discourse on religion. Far from disparaging Islam and its prophet, this doctored Wells enjoined his fellow Europeans to show Muslims and their tradition the respect they deserved, while cautioning against reliance on the confused accounts of most Western scholars. Finally, for a Chinese Muslim readership that saw true Islam as emanating from the “Western lands” of the Arabia, Egypt, and the Levant, the implicit inclusion of China in “the Islamic countries of the East” or “the Orient” must have been a welcome admission into the global umma. Curiously, Na himself quoted this passage again in a 1947 article “Westerns on Islam and Their Arguments,” but he dropped the part after “to enter deeply into the hearts of man,” that is, the part that Wells did not write.66 This omission suggests that Na had second thoughts about such blatant fabrication. The same passage (including the falsely attributed part) would appear in full at least once more, along with multiple other false attributions to Wells, in the appendix of Chen Keli’s 1951 Seeing Islam from Muhammad, one of the most popular Chinese primers on Islam. The appendix, entitled, “General Scholars’ Assessments of Muhammad and Islam,” included around two dozen passages from Western and Chinese works, which Chen introduced as “objective criticism” (keguan de pipan). Chen emphasized that none of [the authors] were Muslims, nor did they have any relation to Islam… They do not at all resemble ordinary non-Muslims, who see through tainted lenses, harbor prejudice, deliberately twist facts, attack the Prophet Muhammad, and insult Islam. [These authors] are able to judge objectively.67 Here, Wells was not a slanderer but a scholar, an exemplar of objectivity precisely because he had overcome religious bias to see and write the truth about Islam.

Conclusion: Muslim engagement with orientalism as a corporate institution This essay has shown that Chinese Muslim intellectuals in Republican China constructed two conflicting images of H.G. Wells: Wells the Islamophobe and Wells the Islamophile. These intellectuals initially cited Wells in support of their historical claims about Islam’s early entry into China and the contributions of

The frustrating authority of Mr. Wells  141 Islamic civilization to the Western world. Multiple translations into Chinese increased the popularity and influence of The Outline of History and A Short History of the World in China, especially in schools, where they were used as world history textbooks. Despite his lack of scholarly credentials, Wells’ writings had become authoritative sources, much to the chagrin of professional historians, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Unable to counter Wells’ appeal, Chinese Muslim intellectuals doubled down on it. To undermine unfavorable commentary on Islam and Muhammad in The Outline of History and A Short History of the World, these intellectuals exaggerated Wells’ Christianity, portraying him as the religiously biased critic of Islam par excellence. At the same time, to legitimize those books’ occasional praise for Islam and Muhammad, they stressed Wells’ objectivity, depicting him as a fairminded scholar, cognizant of true Islam despite his Christianity. Each image had its own use: Wells the Islamophobe made for a compelling enemy against whom Chinese Muslim elites could mobilize their constituents; Wells the Islamophile lent an authoritative name to Chinese Muslim claims that Islam was a rational religion that deserved a place in modern China. In his 1978 classic, Edward Said described orientalism as a “corporate institution.” For Said, orientalism encompasses more than either the universities and scholars that produce knowledge about the East for the West or the general “style of thought” about East that pervades Western journalism, literature, and institutions. Orientalism encompasses both of these poles of common knowledge and scholarly expertise, as well as the “interchange” between them. It is, in other words, a complex, internally diverse “institution for dealing with the Orient.”68 We can take this analysis one step further. Orientalism is not just an ideological project. It is a complex system emerging from internal divisions and competition within the system as well as the ideological orientation of the system as a whole and the interests it serves. I suggest that something similar, a mirror “corporate institution” conditions subaltern engagement with orientalism. Like orientalism, this system is complex, the product of internal politics as well as a broader encounter between Western and non-Western representations of the East. The point is not only that non-Western scholars have both drawn on and contributed to Western representations of their own societies and traditions,69 nor only that the essentialist distinction between East and West can serve a spectrum of interests that transcends that division, from imperialist to Islamist.70 The case of Wells in China shows that it is insufficient to limit inquiry into Muslim engagement with orientalism and Western representations of Islam to the academy or mosque. Na Zhong condemned, praised, and forged Wells’ writings not just because they suited or contradicted his own intellectual sensibilities, but because of what Wells meant to Chinese readers. Chinese Muslim engagement with Wells was above all else political, both internally, as different elites competed to represent all Chinese Muslims, and externally, as those same elites used every means available to defend Islam’s place in modern China. Though Wells’ enduring presence in Chinese classrooms and public discourse may have frustrated these intellectuals

142  Aaron Nathan Glasserman in private, their public strategy was to keep Wells at center stage and capitalize on his authority as both an Islamophobe and an Islamophile.

Notes 1 Ph.D. candidate, Department of History, Columbia University. Email: aaron. [email protected]. I thank Roy Bar Sadeh, David Brophy, John Chen, Dotan Halevy, ­Susannah Heschel, Kristian Petersen, and Amr Ryad for their insightful comments on previous drafts of this essay. 2 Na Zhong, “Huijiao yu Alabo Wenming Xumu” [Islam and Arab Civilization: Preface and Table of Contents], Yu Gong, vol. 7, no. 10 (1937), 49. This translation and all others in this chapter by the author. 3 Na Zhong, Yisilanjiao yu Alabo Wenming [Islam and Arab Civilization] (Shanghai: Shanghai Huijiao Shudian [Shanghai Islamic Bookstore], 1936). 4 For more on the “Chinese Azharites” see Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, “Nine Years in Egypt: Al-Azhar University and the Arabization of Chinese Islam,” HAGAR: Studies in Culture, Polity & Identities, vol. 8, no. 1 (2008), 1–21 and John Chen, “Re-Orientation: The Chinese Azharites between Umma and Third World, 1938–55,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 34, no. 1 (2014), 24–51. See also Yufeng Mao, “A Muslim Vision for the Chinese Nation: Chinese Pilgrimage Missions to Mecca during World War II,” Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 70, no. 2 (2011), 373–395; Yufeng Mao, “Selective Learning from the Middle East: The Case of the Sino-Muslim Students at al-Azhar University,” in Islamic Thought in China: Sino-Muslim Intellectual Evolution from the 17th to the 21st Century, ed. Jonathan Lipman (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 107–146. 5 François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire, 1694–1778), Mahomet, 1736. The play was first performed in 1741. See Denise Spellberg, “Islam on the Eighteenth-Century Stage: Voltaire’s Mahomet Crosses the Atlantic,” in Views from the Edge: Essays in Honor of Richard W. Bulliet, eds. Neguin Yavari, Lawrence Potteer, and Jean-Marc Ran Oppenheim (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 291–303; Adam Perchard, “The Fatwa and the Philosophe: Rushdie, Voltaire, and Islam,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 51, no. 3 (2016), 465–482. 6 Ernest Renan (1823–1892), “Islam and Science,” lecture delivered at The Sorbonne, 29 March 1883. For more on Muslim responses to Renan’s writings, see Dietrich Jung, Orientalists, Islamists and the Global Public Sphere: A Genealogy of the Modern Essentialist Image of Islam (Sheffield; Oakville, CT: Equinox Publishing, 2011), ˉl ad-Dıˉn “al-Afgha ˉnıˉ”: A Political Biography 97–117; Nikkie Keddie, Sayyid Jama (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 189–199. 7 Contemporary transnational Islamic journals also employed this strategy of quoting Western authorities’ positive commentary on Islam, as did nineteenth-century Muslim scholars endeavoring to persuade readers that Islam and modernity were fully compatible. See, for example, the Ottoman official and later Grand Vizier Khayr al-Din (Hayreddin) Pasha (1820–1890) in Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in a Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962; reprint, 2013), 89–90. 8 Wei Ersi [Wells], Shijie Shigang [The Outline of History], trans. Liang Sicheng (Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan [The Commercial Press], 1927). For translation dates and additional information on Wells’ reception in China, see Zhu Ci’en, “Lüelun Weiersi ji Qi ‘Shijie Shigang’ zai Zhongguo de Yingxiang” [Wells and the Influence of His The Outline of History in China], Langfang Shifan Xueyuan Xuebao, vol. 29, no. 5 (2013), 60–64. 9 The first Chinese translation of A Short History was published with a modified title. Wei Ersi [Wells], Shijie Wenhua Shigang [A Historical Outline of World Cultures], trans. Zhu Yinghui (Shanghai: Kunlun Shudian [Kunlun Bookstore], 1930).

The frustrating authority of Mr. Wells  143 10 For more on Wells’ repudiation of Christianity, as well as the influence of Christianity on his thought, see Willis B. Glover, “Religious Orientations of H.G. Wells: A Case Study in Scientific Humanism,” Harvard Theological Review, vol. 65, no.1 (1972), 117–135. 11 Edward Said, Orientalism (1978, repr., New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 3. 12 Since the early days of the Republic, Chinese-speaking Muslims concentrated in the eastern metropolises had sought to distinguish themselves from their largely Turkic and allegedly backward coreligionists in the country’s far northwest. Some eastern Muslims simply saw themselves as Muslim members of the Han race. See generally Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Frank Dikötter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (London: C. Hurst, 1992). For more on the debates over whether Chinese Muslims constituted a distinct ethnicity, see Wlodzimierz Cieciura, “Ethnicity or Religion? Republican-Era Chinese Debates on Islam and Muslims,” in Islamic Thought in China, ed. Jonathan Lipman (Edinburgh: ­Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 107–147. 13 See Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, “From ‘Literati’ to ‘Ulama’: The Origins of Chinese Muslim Nationalist Historiography,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, vol. 9, no. 4 (2004), 83–109; see also Ma Jing, Minguo Shiqi Yisilanjiao Hanwen Yizhu Yanjiu [Chinese Islamic Literature in Republican China] (Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe [Social Sciences Academic Press], 2014), 382–407. 14 See, for example, Chen Yuan (1880–1971), “Huihuijiao Ru Zhongguo Shilüe” [A Historical Outline of Islam’s Entrance into China] (1928), in Zhongguo Yisilanjiao Shi Cankao Ziliao Xuanbian 1911–1949 [Selected Reference Works in the History of Chinese Islam, 1911–1949], vol. 1, eds. Li Xinghua and Feng Jinyuan (Yinchuan: Ningxia Renmin Chubanshe [Ningxia People’s Press], 1985), 3–17. 15 Bai Shouyi, “Zhongguo Huijiao Shiliao zhi Jilu” [The Collection of Historical Materials on Islam in China] (1935), in Bai Shouyi Wenji [The Collected Works of Bai Shouyi], vol. 3 (Kaifeng: Henan Daxue Chubanshe [Henan University Press], 2008), 282. 16 The work consists of a series of essay first published 1875–1877 and then republished as a single volume in 1910. 17 Emil Bretschneider, “Yelü Chucai Xiyou Lu Kaoshi” [Criticism and Explanation of Yelü Chucai’s Account of a Journey to the West] (original title in Medieval Researches: “Extract from the Si Yu Lu”), Chinese trans. Bai Shouyi, Yu Gong, vol. 7, no. 1–3 (1937), 223–230; “Zhongshiji Zhongguo Shu zhong de Huijiao Jilu” [Accounts of Islam in Chinese Medieval Treatises] (original title in Medieval Researches: “Chinese Mediaeval Notices of the Mohammedans”), Yu Gong, vol. 7, no. 4 (1937), 19–25. Na Zhong’s preface appeared in a separate 1937 issue (no. 10). 18 Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes, “Studies of Islam by Westerns in the Past Fifty Years,” Chinese trans. Han Rulin, Yu Gong: Huijiao Zhuanhao [Yu Gong: Special Issue on Islam], vol. 7, no. 4 (1937), 1–18. 19 “Moslem World zhong Guanyu Zhongguo Huijiao zhi Lunwen Mulu” [Bibliography of Works Related to Islam in China in The Moslem World], trans. Wang Weiling, Yu Gong: Special Issue on Islam, 104, 162. 20 An Shuyong, “Jieshao Yu Gong Huijiao Zhuanhao” [Introducing Yu Gong’s Special Issue on Islam], Yue Hua [Crescent China], vol. 9, no. 12 (1937), 11–12. 21 Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, “‘Even unto China’: Displacement and the Chinese Muslim Myths of Origin,” Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies, vol. 4, no. 2 (2002), 93–114. 22 Herbert George Wells, The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and ­Mankind (London: Cassel, 1920), 312. 23 The author wrote under the name “Xihalunding,” one of Jin Jitang’s several pen names. For a list of these pen names, see Ma Jing, Minguo Shiqi Yisilanjiao Hanwen Yizhu Yanjiu, 176.

144  Aaron Nathan Glasserman 24 Jin Jitang (Xihalunding), “Huijiao Laihua de Yanjiu” [Studies on Islam Coming to China], Crescent China, vol. 3, no. 19 (1931), 4–5. 25 Benite, “Nine Years in Egypt,” 13–14. 26 John Chen, “‘Just Like Old Friends’: The Significance of Southeast Asia to Modern Chinese Islam,” SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, vol. 31, no. 3 (2016), 704–707. 27 Jin Jitang, Zhongguo Huijiao Shi Yanjiu [Studies in the History of Chinese Islam] (Beijing: Beijing Chengda Shifan Xuexiao [Beijing Chengda Normal School], 1935), 54–55. 28 Min Sun, “Huijiao Chuanru Zhongguo Ge Shuoshu Ping” [Review of Each Account of the Spread of Islam into China] (1939), in Selected Reference Works in the History of Chinese Islam, 1911–1949, vol. 1, eds. Li Xinghua and Feng Jinyuan (Yinchuan: Ningxia Renmin Chubanshe 1985), 112–116. 29 Wells, The Outline of History, 335. 30 Yu Bingxiang, “Huijiao zhi Xingqi yu Taixi Wenming zhi Guanxi” [The Relationship of the Rise of Islam to Western Civilization], Chenbao Fujian [Literary Supplement to the Morning Post], 22 April 1923, 1. 31 Zhi Wu, “Huijiao duiyu Shehui Jinhua shang de Gongxian” [The Contributions of Islam to Social Progress], Crescent China, vol. 1, no. 6 (1929), 1. 32 Fu names the French diplomat and sinologist Claude-Philibert Dabry de Thiersant (1826–1898) as the likely source of Wells’ theory. Fu Tongxian, Zhongguo Huijiao Shi [The History of Chinese Islam] (1940, repr. Taipei: Taiwan Shanghai Shangwu Yinshuguan [Taiwan Shanghai Commercial Press], 1969), 16–18. Fu wrote the book in 1937, but it was first published in 1940. See Ma, Chinese Islamic Literature in ­Republican China, 396. 33 For a discussion of Chinese stereotypes of Muslims as violent and rebellious, see Jonathan Lipman, Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (­Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), xxxi–xxxiii; 3–17; for Republican-era accusations and Muslim responses, see Ma, Chinese Islamic Literature in Republican China, 312–330. 34 Robert Culp, “‘Weak and Small Peoples’ in a ‘Europeanizing World’: World History Textbooks and Chinese Intellectuals’ Perspectives on Global Modernity,” in The Politics of Historical Production in Late Qing and Republican China, eds. Robert Culp and Tze-Ki Hon (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2007), 211–245. 35 Lei Haizong, “Shu Ping: Shijie Shigang” [Book Review: The Outline of History], Shi Xue [Historical Studies], vol. 1, no. 1 (1930), 233–247. 36 For an overview of foreign Islamic intellectual influence on Chinese Muslims, see Ma, Chinese Islamic Literature in Republican China, 88–99. Many Chinese Muslim publications that translated and published foreign Islamic literature were based in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Guangdong. 37 On Rida’s engagement with Christianity and orientalist scholarship, see Umar Ryad, Islamic Reformism and Christianity: A Critical Reading of the Works of Muhammad Rashıˉd Ridˉ a and His Associates (1898–1935) (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2009). ˙ ˙ 38 For more on Islamic links between Egypt and China during the Republican period, see Matsumoto Masumi, “Rationalizing Patriotism among Muslim Chinese: The Impact of the Middle East on the Yuehua Journal,” in Intellectuals in the Modern Islamic World: Transmission, Transformation, Communication, eds. Stephane Dudoignon, Komatsu Hisao, and Kosugi Yasushi (New York: Routledge, 2006), 117–142; Francoise Aubin, “Islam on the Wings of Nationalism: The Case of Muslim Intellectuals in Republican China,” in Intellectuals in the Modern Islamic World, eds. Dudoignon et al., 241–272; Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, “Taking ‘Abduh to China: Chinese-Egyptian Intellectual Contact in the Early Twentieth Century,” in Global Muslims in the Age of Steam and Print, eds. James Gelvin and Nile Green (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 249–267.

The frustrating authority of Mr. Wells  145 39 Shakib Arslan, “Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya bi-Qalam al-Masiu Muntah al-Mustashriq al-Suisri” [Prophetic Biography by the Swiss Orientalist Monsieur Montet], ­Al-Manar vol. 30 (January 1930), 524–534. 40 Na Zhong, “Xifangren Lun Huijiao ji Qi Bianzheng” [Westerns on Islam and Their Arguments], Xibei Tongxun [Northwest Dispatch], no. 3 (1947), 24. 41 See, for example, the excerpt from H.G. Wells’ 1916 work What Is Coming, which predicted “a new intellectual movement in Islam,” featured in both “Mr. H.G. Wells on Islam,” The Islamic Review, vol. 25, no. 6 (June 1937), 217–219 and “The Future of Islam: Reproduced from ‘What Is Coming’ by H.G. Wells,” The Genuine Islam, vol. 1, no. 9 (September 1936), 30. 4 2 See, for example, J.A. Sproul, “Muhammad: A Western Estimate of the Arabian Prophet,” The Islamic Review, vol. 12, no. 10 (October 1924), 362–368; T. L. Vaswani, “Islam as Misunderstood by H.G. Wells,” The Islamic Review, vol. 26, no. 2 (February 1938), 51–54; “H.G. Wells’s Remarks on the Prophet and the Holy Quran,” The Genuine Islam, vol. 3, no. 9 (September 1938), 284–289; W.H. Stephens, “Lost His Balance as Historian: Wells’ Remarks on Islam a Bundle of Errors,” The Genuine Islam, vol. 3, no. 11 (November 1938), 375–376. 43 M. Yakub Khan, “Six Greatest Men in History,” in The Islamic Review, vol. 11, no. 2 (February 1923), 61. 4 4 See, for example, “Mr. Wells’ Indictment of the Church,” The Islamic Review, vol. 11, no. 4 (1923), 121–123; Mauwli Aftab-ud-Din Ahmad, “Personality in a Religious Movement,” The Islamic Review, vol. 22, no. 6 (1934), 193–200. Discussing George Bernard Shaw’s and H.G. Wells’ views on religion, Ahmad states: “Now Messrs. Wells and Shaw are notorious as ruthless critics of Jesus and of Christianity in general…,” 195. 45 For an account of the episode, see Ma, Chinese Islamic Literature in Republican China, 322–324. 46 Da Pusheng and Ha Decheng, Boyin [Broadcasts] (Shanghai: Shanghai Huijiao Jingxue Yanjiushe [Shanghai Islamic Classics Research Society], 1934), 41. 47 They give his name in Arabic and Latin letters, further suggesting the transnational influence on the Chinese Muslim discourse on Wells. 48 Ibid., 42. 49 Wei Ersi [Wells], Shijie Shigang [The Outline of History] (Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1933), 505. The Chinese text is “Muhanmode yi Wuli Bujiao Shidai.” 50 Herbert George Wells, The Outline of History (New York: Garden City Publishing, 1920), 9, 263, 266. 51 Pan Zhigeng, Che Zengxun, Hong Maoxi, and Li Changchuan (eds.), “Zongjiao” [Religion], in Kaoshi Bibei Baike Changshi Wenda: Zhongwai Shidi zhi Bu [Essential Encyclopedia of General Knowledge Questions and Answers for Examinations: Section on Chinese and Foreign History and Geography] (Shanghai: Dongfang Wenxue She [Oriental Literature Press], 1935), 116–118. 52 Wang Pei, “Jin Shinian Lai Wujiao’an Jianbiao” [Chart of Religious Offense Cases of the Past Ten Years], Tu Jue vol. 3, no. 9 (1936), 24–29. 53 See generally Crescent China, vol. 8, nos. 2, 3. 54 Herbert George Wells, A Short History of the World (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922), 251. 55 See Parts 1 and 2 of “Jianming Shijie Shi Wujiao Shijian Jiaoshe Ji” [Record of Correspondences Regarding the Religious Offense Incident of A Short History of the World] in Crescent China, vol. 8, no. 2 (30 January 1936), 11–12 and no. 3 (15 February 1936), 10–11. 56 Not to be confused with the similarly named Chinese Islamic Guild, Zhongguo ­Huijiao Gonghui, established in 1929 in Shanghai. 57 Yigang Mu, “Wu Nian yilai zhi Zhongguo Huimin Zuzhi” [Chinese Muslim Organizations over the Past Five Years], Crescent China, vol. 6, no. 28–30, 33–37. 58 “Moslem News in Brief,” Friends of Moslems in China, vol. 10, no. 2. (1 April 1936), 35.

146  Aaron Nathan Glasserman 59 Liu Zhijie, “Yi Wei Feihuijiao Tongzhi de Laixin: Muhanmode Shifou Zuo Shou Zhang Jing You Shou Chi Jian” [A Letter from a Non-Muslim Comrade: Did or Didn’t Muhammad Hold a Quran in His Left Hand and a Sword in His Right Hand] and the editor’s reply, Huizu Wenhua [Hui Culture] no. 1 (1948), 33–34. 60 Jin here followed the Chinese convention of referring to years based on the “reign name” of the emperor at the time, in this case Taizong, also known as Zhen Guan, of the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE). 61 Jitang, Studies in the History of Chinese Islam, 54–55. 62 Na Zhong, “Xifang Xuezhe duiyu Huijiao yu Gulan Jing de Piping” [Western Scholars’ Criticism of Islam and the Quran], Qingzhen Duobao [The Islamic Crier], no. 4 (1941), 2–4. 63 Wells, The Outline of History, 326. 6 4 Na, “Western Scholars’ Criticism of Islam and the Quran,” 3. 65 Ibid., 3. 66 Zhong, “Westerns on Islam and Their Arguments,” 24. 67 Chen Keli, Cong Muhanmode Kan Yisilanjiao [Seeing Islam from Muhammad] (­Beijing: Beijingshi Huimin Xuexihui [Beijing Municipal Muslim Study Association], [1951]1986), 224. 68 Said, Orientalism, 2–3. 69 Ronen Raz, “The Transparent Mirror: Arab Intellectuals and Orientalism, 1798– 1950,” PhD Dissertation, Princeton University, 1997. 70 Jung, Orientalists, Islamists and the Global Public Sphere; see also Arif Dirlik, “­Chinese History and the Question of Orientalism,” History and Theory, vol. 35, no. 4 (1996), 96–118.

7 Orientalist triangulations Jewish scholarship on Islam as a response to Christian Europe Susannah Heschel

Even as the East was reading the West, the East within the West developed its own counter-hegemonic, Jewish identification with Islam. Central European Jews, who spent the course of the nineteenth century struggling for political emancipation and social integration, were designated “Orientals” in Europe. The Jewish response was twofold: embracing the designation by building synagogues in Moorish architecture and combatting the designation by insisting on Judaism as a religion of rational ethical monotheism. The two responses merged as Jewish scholars in Europe founded the field of Islamic Studies and created an image of Islam as derived from Judaism and sharing its key principles of monotheism, religious law, tolerance, openness to science, and rejection of anthropomorphism. Uniting Islam with Judaism was an effort to undermine the denigrations of European Orientalism as well as polemicize against Christian hegemony in the West. Viewed from Islam and Judaism, Christianity was the nonrational, intolerant, and clearly inferior religion. The identification of Judaism with Islam is striking: Jews were called “German speaking Orientals” by the historian Heinrich von Treitschke, “orientalische Fremdlinge” by the publicist Wilhelm Marr, and “Wüstenvolk und Wandervolk” by the economist Werner Sombart.1 Furthermore, Jews functioned as “Orientals” in the scholarship of European Christians, who viewed the Orient as a shelter from the vicissitudes of progress, or, better put, presented Islam as timeless and Judaism as regressing. Both the philologists Friedrich Max Müller and Ernest Renan spoke of “Semitic monotheism” as the product of desert nomads foreign to European Aryans as part of their construction of the linguistic category, Semitic, that quickly became a term for cultural difference and, finally, a racial designation.2 As Gil Anidjar has pointed out, Renan viewed both Islam and Judaism as stagnant Semitic religions, incapable of development and lacking mythology, while he favored Arabs as charming remnants of biblical Israelites. Within Europe, Orientalism functioned both as a degenerate, even dangerous and infectious mentality, but also as a source for rejuvenating Europeans trapped in a hyper-rational, desiccated society.

148  Susannah Heschel The Jewish fascination with Islam reveals an identification of German Orientals with the Orient in order to repudiate anti-Jewish and Islamophobic discourses in Europe. The rise of the Wissenschaft des Judentums in the nineteenth century focused attention on medieval Jewish philosophy and poetry written in Arabic, and on the flourishing of Jewish culture under Muslim rule in Spain – the so-called “Golden Age” – that John Efron has traced as the “Sephardic mystique.”3 Indeed, Jews seeking a liberalization of Judaism at times described Islam as a model for the ways they hoped to transform Judaism. Writing in opposition to Renan, the great Hungarian Jewish scholar of Islam, Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921), argued that Islam has a receptive nature, a capacity to assimilate foreign ideas and rituals and to adapt itself to changing circumstances. Goldziher made similar arguments about Judaism in his early study, Mythology among the ­Hebrews and its Historical Development.4 In his monumental study of the ­Hadith, Goldziher wrote that it is precisely the unreliability of isnads, chains of Hadith transmission, that proves the dynamic nature of Islam: “Minute study soon reveals the presence of the tendencies and aspirations of a later day, the working of a spirit which wrests the record in favour of one or the other of the opposing theses in certain disputed questions.”5 In other words, isnads were used to legitimate later teachings by projecting them into the past and thereby granting them authority, but only by concealing the late origins of those teachings. Determining which Hadith were authentic traditions of the Prophet ­Muhammad was difficult, but the inconclusive dating of a Hadith was a sign, for Goldziher, of Islam’s progressive development beyond the Meccan and Medinan period because it demonstrated that later traditions could be seamlessly integrated into the Islamic framework, which was constantly developing and never stagnant. Goldziher, who lived in Hungary, where a particularly rigid Orthodox rabbinate was dominant, was an advocate of liberalizing Judaism and his arguments about the Hadith bear clear implications for liberalizing rabbinic law. In his 1876 book, Mythology among the Hebrews, Goldziher polemicized against Renan’s claim that Judaism lacked mythology as proof of its stagnation. Indeed, German Protestant scholars of the New Testament had long depicted first-century Judaism as “late” or even “dead,” in order to highlight the teachings of Jesus and to explain why more Jews did not become followers of Jesus (they were spiritually lifeless, thanks to their religion). Goldziher’s rejoinder to Renan was to demonstrate the vitality of Judaism’s Midrashic literature, commentaries on the Bible written over the course of many centuries that imagined the personalities of biblical figures and the later developments of biblical stories: this was Jewish mythology. Moreover, even as the isnads of the Hadith can be analyzed to reveal historical development, so, too, can the chains of attribution within rabbinic literature be analyzed to demonstrate social and cultural changes and the rabbis’ responses to external conditions. The Orthodox rabbis in Hungary rejected historicization of rabbinic texts and did not receive Goldziher’s work well, even complaining to the Hungarian government about his supposed “heresies,” but this demonstrates the multidirectional agenda of his scholarship.

Orientalist triangulations  149 The scholar James Pasto was the first to call attention to a brief passage in the Introduction to Edward Said’s monumental 1978 book, Orientalism, in which Said writes that his study is the history of a strange secret sharer of Western antisemitism. That antisemitism, and as I have discussed it in its Islamic branch Orientalism resemble each other is a historical, cultural, and political truth that needs only be mentioned to an Arab Palestinian for its irony to be perfectly understood.6 Said’s preternatural insight concerning the links between Orientalism and antisemitism, which he does not explore further in his writings, is an important window into the emergence of European Orientalism.7 Pasto is one of several scholars who have examined Orientalist motifs within European anti-Semitic rhetoric, both in academic discourse and boulevard rhetoric, and it is clear that classic European anti-Semitic images were either borrowed directly or reconfigured to target Islam and Muslims, even as the actual political circumstances for Jews and Muslims in Europe have differed drastically during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Said’s suggestion also points to a more complex trajectory: How Jewish scholars of Islam, themselves viewed as Orientals, negotiated the currents of European antisemitism to produce a counter-Orientalism that spoke of Islam not in eroticized language, nor with concern over Ottoman military strength, and never by questioning its legitimacy as a religion. On the contrary, European Jewish scholars of Islam praised Islam as a rational religion that shared with Judaism an emphasis on an ethical religious legal system, strict monotheism, and rejection of anthropomorphism. Jewish counter-Orientalism saw Islam as a rational religion, in contrast to Christianity’s set of nonrational dogma, and used Islam to de-Orientalize the image of Judaism in Europe, even while promoting an image of Sephardic Jewish men as cosmopolitans and women as enticing figures of romance. This was motivated by a broad Jewish political and intellectual resistance to the hegemonic Christianity that dominated Europe, as Jews shaped several generations of scholarship on Islam, from the 1830s until the 1930s, when the Nazis expelled Jewish professors from the Reich universities. Synagogues that look like mosques: these were among the earliest and most concrete representations of the emergence of a global religious field, religions defining themselves through the language and images of other religions, thanks to the spread of European imperialism and the fascination inspired by Orientalism. Synagogues were occasionally built in Romanesque architecture, but never in Gothic, a style that is instantly recognized as Christian. Signifying Judaism architecturally via Islam, however, was widespread in Europe and even the United States. The phenomenon of Orientalist motifs in European architecture was not limited to synagogues, as some public buildings, such as the waterworks of Potsdam, were also constructed in Orientalist style; yet, Moorish architecture did not spread to churches. Yet, a Catholic, Lutheran, or Reformed church in Europe did not present itself in the visible shape of a mosque, nor did Christian

150  Susannah Heschel theologians attempt to identify the greatness of Christianity with reference to the greatness of Islam. Jews, however, did so. A generation before Goldziher, the identification of Judaism with Islam was defined by Abraham Geiger (1810–1874) and Gustav Weil (1808–1888), two of the earliest and most influential German Jewish scholars of early Islam. Geiger’s prize essay at the University of Bonn, published under the title, Was hat Muhammad aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen?, was hailed by scholars as a breakthrough for demonstrating widespread parallels between the Qur’an and rabbinic literature. He described his effort this way: We have tried to show in the first part [of the book] that external circumstances must have raised in Muhammad the desire to borrow much from Judaism…. Muhammad really did borrow from Judaism… conceptions, matters of creed, views of morality, and of life in general, and more especially matters of history and of traditions, have actually passed over from Judaism into the Qur’an.8 Throughout his book, Geiger portrayed Muhammad in language far more sympathetic than was common at the time. Muhammad was not an imposter or seducer, but a product of his social context, with a clever political skill and a

Figure 7.1  Abraham Geiger (1810–1874), unknown artist. Reproduced with the permission of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York City.

Orientalist triangulations  151 desire not to create a new religion but to spread monotheism. The argument Geiger developed concerned not only the ways Muhammad composed the Qur’an to solidify his own position of leadership, but also concerned the transmission of Jewish learning. Geiger saw Muhammad’s political canny within the text, even as he did not discount his underlying religious motivation and sincere belief. Ultimately, Geiger’s study is not only a revolutionary way of understanding the context of the Qur’an, but also a contribution to the history of Arabian Jews, who were learned and happy to share Jewish teachings with pagan Arabs. ­Muhammad’s intention, according to Geiger, was not to impose a new code of laws, but rather to spread new and purified religious (that is, Jewish) views (much as Geiger subsequently argued about Jesus), and as an Arab, Muhammad didn’t want to deviate too far from established custom. While Geiger pursued a career in the rabbinate, and was at the forefront of efforts to create a liberal (Reform) Judaism, he continued his work as a scholar, writing mostly about medieval Jewish biblical exegesis, and about early Judaism of the Second Temple period, including the origins of Christianity (Figure 7.1). Geiger’s friend and, briefly, his fellow student at the University of Heidelberg, Gustav Weil, spent eight years in his youth studying at the yeshiva in Metz, France, beginning his studies of Arabic in Heidelberg. Weil then left for Paris for additional Arabic studies under Silvestre de Sacy, director of the École des Langues Orientales. His arrival in Paris coincided with the presence of several prominent Arab intellectuals, Muslim and Christian, including Rifaˉ’a alTahtˉawıˉ, an Egyptian Muslim who had been sent to France to study European ˙ ˙ scientific methods. Within a few years, Tahtawi and Weil were reunited in Cairo, where Weil studied for several years with the distinguished Egyptian philologist ­Muhammad Ayyaˉd al-Tantawıˉ (1810–1861), while supporting himself by ˙ ˙ teaching European languages and writing articles for German journals. In the late 1820s and early 1830s, Cairo was a city of about 250,000 inhabitants, with a small community of European researchers that included several Egyptologists from Britain: Gardner Wilkinson, Robert Hay, James Burton, and Joseph Bonomi. Weil was one of several Europeans studying with Tantawi at that time; one of his fellow students who became a good friend was the British Orientalist and Arabist Edward Lane (1801–1876). Lane’s travels in Egypt, 1825–1828 and 1832–1835, led to the publication of his widely read An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836), an Arabic lexicon, as well as an English translation of the Thousand and One Nights, a text that Weil translated into German at around the same time (Figure 7.2). When Weil returned to Germany, receiving a doctorate from the University of Tübingen, he worked as an assistant librarian at the University of Heidelberg while teaching Arabic, Persian, and Turkish and carrying out an active program of publications. His translation of the Thousand and One Nights became a popular seller in Germany, but it was the biography of the Prophet Muhammad, published in 1843, that brought Weil to the attention of the academic world. Next came a study of the Qur’an that sought a chronological ordering of the

152  Susannah Heschel

Figure 7.2  G  ustav Weil (1808–1889), photograph by Fritz Langbein, 1878. Image: Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Graph. Slg. P_1878, CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Suras, Einleitung in den Koran (1844), into three Meccan and one Medinan context. The next year, 1845, he published a study comparing the Qur’an with a medieval collection of rabbinic commentaries, Biblische Legenden der Muselmänner. His final major project was a multivolume history of the caliphate, published between 1846 and 1862. What is significant about Weil is not only the pathbreaking nature of his scholarship, which was acknowledged in his day by figures such as Theodor Noeldeke, and by the many awards he received throughout Europe, but also the conclusion that he drew about Islam as a kind of Enlightenment religion: A Judaism without the many ritual and ceremonial laws, which, according to Mohammed’s declaration, even Christ had been called to abolish, or a Christianity without the Trinity, crucifixion, and salvation connected ­t herewith—this was the creed which, in the early period of his mission, Mohammed preached with unfeigned enthusiasm.9 Both Weil and Goldziher visited Egypt as young men in their 20s. Weil was there for several years in the late 1830s, while Goldziher stayed only for a few months

Orientalist triangulations  153 in the 1870s. While in Cairo, Weil earned a living teaching European languages and writing articles about Egypt for a German journal. After joining Friday prayers at a mosque in Damascus during a visit in the 1870s, Goldziher wrote: “I became inwardly convinced that I myself was a Muslim.” A few weeks later, in Cairo, he visited another mosque and wrote, “In the midst of the thousands of the pious, I rubbed my forehead against the floor of the mosque. Never in my life was I more devout, more truly devout, than on that exalted Friday.”10 Such comments by Weil and Goldziher are striking because they were seldom heard from Jewish scholars who visited a church. Judaism’s alliance with Islam in contrast to Christianity represents a triangulation that was not uncommon in colonial settings. By identifying Judaism with Islam, Christianity was theologically marginalized as the religion resting on miracles, the supernatural, and on dogma contrary to reason – as well as being intolerant of other religions. Goldziher’s scholarly productivity was extraordinary. While breaking with some aspects of the Jewish narrative of Islam, he reshaped others. After earning his doctorate from Fleischer at Leipzig, he spent some months in Berlin, where he met Geiger, whose work he credited with influencing his own understanding of the historicist methods of the Tübingen School, methods Geiger had applied to the study of Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism. Goldziher used those methods to juxtapose and analyze Hadith and Qur’an. In Mecca, he argued, Muhammad intensified the religious mood, whereas in Medina, where a large Jewish community lived, Muhammad created rules and institutions. In Mecca, the revelation was visionary and Muhammad was a prophet; in Medina, the revelation was colorless and Muhammad presented himself in the line of Abraham: From the point of view of cultural history it is of little account that ­Muhammed’s teaching was not the original creation of his genius which made him the prophet of his people, but that all his doctrines are taken from Judaism and Christianity. Their originality lies in the fact that these teachings were for the first time placed in contrast to the Arab ways of life by ­Muhammed’s persistent energy. If we consider how superficially Christianity influenced the few Arab circles in which it penetrated, and how alien it was to the main body of the Arab people despite the support which it found in some districts of Arabia, we must be convinced of the antagonism of the Arabs to the ideas which it taught. Christianity never imposed itself on the Arabs and they had no opportunity to fight against its doctrines sword in hand. The rejection of a viewpoint diametrically opposed to their own found its expression only in the struggle of the Arabs against Muhammed’s teachings. The gulf between the moral views of the Arabs and the prophet’s ethical teachings is deep and unbridgeable.11 We see in Goldziher’s Islam a template for presenting Judaism to the European Christian audience. Like Islam’s Hadith, Judaism has Aggadah; like shari’a, Judaism has halakha. Both are religions of monotheism, rejection of

154  Susannah Heschel anthropomorphism, and emphasize ethical behavior. With Goldziher, Islam’s function in modern Judaism reached a pinnacle as the projected image of what Judaism ought to become. Goldziher wrote, “My ideal was to elevate Judaism to a similar rational level [as Islam].”12 By creating an alliance between Judaism and Islam, Christianity is theologically marginalized; it is the religion that rests on dogma contrary to reason, miracles, and the supernatural. As religions of reason, Islam and Judaism were linked, at least by Jewish thinkers, by pointing to the alleged anomaly of Christianity, with its dogma of virgin birth, etc., as a religion in violation of reason. That liberal Protestantism, by now well established in Germany, had long abandoned miracles and supernatural dogma in favor of the teachings of the historical figure of Jesus, diverted attention to Catholicism as the religion contrary to reason.13 By the middle of the nineteenth century, the field of Islamic Studies in Germany began to take formal shape at the universities. The study of Arabic at German universities had been the responsibility of Old Testament professors, but gradually, as the field of Oriental Studies emerged, Arabic philology was transformed into the study of Islam, with an emphasis on the early era and its texts. At first, it was a lonely field, as Suzanne Marchand demonstrated,14 because most Germans were more interested in Indian culture and religions, but Islamic Studies came into bloom in the final decades of the nineteenth century thanks to the work of several talented German scholars and the growing involvement of the German government in Islamicate regions, particularly the Ottoman Empire. Thus, while the study of Islam was initially limited to philological analyses of the Qur’an and earliest Islamic texts, political developments began to require the establishment of institutes for the study of more recent aspects of Islamic history, politics, theology, and religion. At the same time that Jewish scholars were leading the field of Islamic Studies in the 1830s through the 1860s, professorships at German universities were not readily open to Jews who rejected baptism until the end of the century. Indeed, Gustav Weil petitioned the University of Heidelberg annually for a professorship, which was certainly due to him, given his numerous important publications and the recognition he achieved for his scholarship throughout Europe; yet, he was denied a professorship by members of the faculty on the grounds that he was Jewish. Ultimately, government authorities intervened, and Weil was elevated from assistant librarian to tenured professor in 1861, at the age of fifty-three. Until the professorships opened, most works of Jewish scholarship on Islam were written by men who were rabbis or community officials, or who left for France, England, or Palestine, where academic positions were more readily obtained. Individual exceptions remained: Georg Freytag, professor at the University of Bonn, encouraged his Jewish students to pursue the study of Arabic; those students including Geiger, Ullmann, and Derenbourg, whose subsequent scholarly contributions were significant. In addition, while Jews were not permitted to publish in Protestant academic journals, their contributions were welcomed in the most important German journal of Oriental Studies, the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft. That journal was founded and edited

Orientalist triangulations  155 by Heinrich Lebrecht Fleischer, professor at the University of Leipzig, who granted numerous doctorates to Jewish scholars. Indeed, of the one hundred and thirty-one doctoral dissertations he supervised, fifty-one were written by Jews, including Ignaz Goldziher.15 However, much Jewish scholars of Islam were marginalized in the German academic world; their scholarship engaged and often refuted the claims of their Christian colleagues. The major line of distinction concerned knowledge of Hebrew and rabbinic literatures, material known intimately by Jewish scholars and deployed by them in their readings of Islamic texts, but generally unknown to Christian scholars. Apart from the study of Old Testament, Hebrew, especially postbiblical Hebrew, was not taught at German universities nor included in faculties of Oriental Studies; indeed, even the institute for Oriental languages directed by Sylvestre de Sacy in Paris did not include the study of Hebrew. For that reason, it was difficult for the claims made by Geiger and subsequent Jewish scholars concerning the influence of rabbinic literature on the Qur’an, and of Judaism on Islam, to be properly assessed or even refuted on philological grounds. Instead, the counter-arguments tended to focus on demonstrating a Hellenistic or Christian milieu of early Islam. If parallels between Jewish and Islamic ideas could be demonstrated, Julius Wellhausen argued, those Jewish ideas had been transmitted to Islam by Christians. Geiger, Weil, and Goldziher were part of a larger phenomenon of young Jewish men from religious homes, deeply educated in classical rabbinic texts, who turned to the study of Islam. Their work was groundbreaking and long-lasting; even as Jewish scholars launched the field of Islamic Studies in the 1830s and 1840s, they continued a tradition of disproportionate engagement, well into the 1920s and 1930s, when Jews in Germany, who consisted of less than one percent of the population, occupied over twenty-five percent of the professorships in Islamic and Arabic Studies at German universities. For some, the primary interest was demonstrating parallels between passages in the Qur’an and rabbinic teachings, while others, including Weil and Goldziher, commented infrequently about explicit parallels, yet implied that an ideal Judaism would be a liberalized Judaism, and they saw Islam as a step in that liberalizing direction. Their work included translations of the Qur’an: Ludwig Ullmann’s German translation appeared in 1840, and the French translation by Albin de Biberstein and Hermann Reckendorff’s Hebrew translation both appeared in 1857. Others delved into the parallels between Islam and Judaism in greater detail: Isaac Gastfreund, Mohammed nach Talmud und Midrasch (1875); Hartwig Hirschfeld, Jüdische Elemente im Koran (1878); Israel Schapiro, Die haggadischen Elemente im erzählenden Teil des Korans (1907); Eugen Mittwoch, Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des islamischen Gebets und Kultus (1913); Fritz Goitein, Das Gebet im Qoran (1928); and Heinrich Speyer, Die biblischen Erzählungen im Qoran (1931). As Theodor Noeldeke (1836–1930) summarized that line of scholarship: The principal source of the revelations was undoubtedly Jewish scripture…. Muhammad’s entire doctrine carries already in its first su ˉ ras the obvious ˙

156  Susannah Heschel traces of this origin. It would be superfluous to explain here that not only most of the histories of the prophets in the Koran but also many of the dogmas and laws are of Jewish origin.16 Such comparative studies were part of the broader globalization of religion that made possible interactions of Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Jews and stimulated “relations of reciprocal reinvention.”17 Still, the playing field was not level. Christianity was the dominant imperial power, in its hegemony within Europe, as a political tool of European imperialism, and in its theological claim to be the only path to salvation. Yet, it was the very hegemonic position of Christianity that stimulated Jewish scholarship and gave it a distinctiveness. Jewish scholars, particularly Geiger, were keenly aware of Christian control over university faculties in Europe, where the study of Judaism did not exist, apart from the tendentious claims of Protestant New Testament scholars of Judaism’s growing degeneracy from the prophets to the Talmud. Lacking an interest in Judaism, Christian scholars had never considered its contribution to early Islam or the parallels between the Qur’an and rabbinic texts. Hebrew texts, when studied, were often misread or presented in a lifeless fashion; the critique of European scholars of Arabic by Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (Libanon, 1804–1886) echoed Geiger’s critique of Christian scholars of Hebrew. Judaism’s lack of interest in missionary work was another distinctive element in Jewish scholarship of Islam and, especially, the travels of European Jews to Muslim communities. For example, Avril Powell points out that the Scottish Christian Orientalist, William Muir, who knew Arabic and was a scholar of Islam, hoped to convert Muslims in India to Christianity. However, Indian Muslims spoke to him of Christianity’s allegedly unfair treatment of the Old Testament and the Jews as a reason not to convert.18 Moreover, Muir, who served with British colonial administrators in India from 1837 to 1876, was unable to overcome his animosity, suggesting that Muhammad was inspired not by God, but by the “Evil One,” a suggestion that has no counterpart among Jewish scholars of the era. If the Jewish scholars of Islam who spent time in Muslim countries, such as Weil, Goldziher, Max Herz, Arminius Vambery, Josef Horovitz, and Gottlieb Leitner, among others, had no interest in attempting to convert Muslims to Judaism, there were Jews, such as Arminius Vambery and Lev Nissimbaum, who pretended they were Muslims, much to the delight of Europeans. A more notable difference is found in their travelogues. Gustav Weil helped to support himself in Cairo both by giving language lessons and by writing articles about his experiences for German publications. His articles illustrate a fascination with the oriental nature of Egyptian society, and he even complains that Istanbul, which he also visited, was far too cosmopolitan and European, lacking the oriental charm he found in Cairo. Ruchama Johnston-Bloom points out that Weil’s articles, published in the popular German press, composed in the 1830s, focus on Egypt’s need for religious and political reforms and describe an Eastern mystique, while the scholarly relationships and academic work he undertook in

Orientalist triangulations  157 Egypt’s libraries are not described.19 In general, Jewish travel reports lack both the sexual references and the depiction of Islamic despotism and primitivism found in the travelogues of other European of the same era, such as Gustav Flaubert, Richard Burton, Gérard de Nerval, Louise Colet, and Anne Blunt. In later decades, Jews who visited Muslim lands established scholarly connections; Goldziher was warmly received at al-Azhar during his Middle East travels in 1874, and corresponded extensively with Muslim scholars throughout his career, while Josef Horovitz engaged with Muslim colleagues and students while teaching in India from 1907 to 1914, and influenced their appreciation for Hebrew philological comparisons with Arabic texts. Furthermore, the depictions of Muhammad by Geiger, Weil, Goldziher, and other Jewish scholars stand in striking contrast to those of Christian scholars of the same era. The multivolume Life of Mohammad: From the Original Sources, by the Austrian scholar Alois Sprenger, originally published in 1861 and recently reprinted, presents Muhammad as an epileptic suffering from hallucinations and hysterical frenzy, an interpretation that came to be frequently applied in German Protestant scholarship of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries both to Muhammad and to the Old Testament prophets.20 Sprenger writes that he is investigating “the victory of a false religion.”21 Indeed, nearly every page of Sprenger’s book reiterates his claim of the falsehood of Islam and the degenerate nature of Muslims: “Excess in love was, indeed, the leading vice of the Arabs.”22 Similarly, the Protestant biblical scholar who also wrote on Islam, Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918), writes in his 1883 Encyclopedia Britannica article, “Muhammad,” that pre-Islamic ideas “lodged themselves in a [Muhammad’s] natural temperament that had a sickly tendency to excitement and vision, and so produced a fermentation that ended in an explosion.”23 Wellhausen adds, It is disputed whether Muhammad was epileptic, cataleptic, hysteric, or what not: Sprenger seems to think that the answer to this medical question is the key to the whole problem of Islam. It is certain that he had a tendency to see visions, and suffered from fits which threw him for a time into a swoon, without loss of inner consciousness.24 Links between Jewish intellectuals and Muslim scholars were forged over shared scholarly interests and also in opposition to colonialism. During Goldziher’s visit to the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, he came to know several scholars, religious reformers, and political leaders.25 Many of Goldziher’s writings on the Qur’an and Hadith were subsequently translated into Arabic and published in Egypt by ‘Ali Hassan Abd al-Qadir (1900–1990), who taught at al-Azhar during the mid-twentieth century.26 Goldziher was also in contact with Jamal al-Din ­a l-Afghani (1838–1897) and defended him after the notorious debate between al-Afghani and Ernest Renan.27 Josef Horovitz (1874–1931), the son of an Orthodox rabbi in Germany, studied at the University of Berlin and then was appointed as the Professor of Arabic from 1907 to 1914 at the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College in India,

158  Susannah Heschel founded in 1875 by Sir Syed Ahmad Kahn and later known as the Aligarh Muslim University. One of his colleagues was Hamid al-Din al-Farahi (1863–1930), 28 the teacher of Amin Ahsan Islahi (1904–1997). Both were important Qur’an scholars who included Hebrew texts in their commentaries. Indeed, Horovitz and al-Farahi studied Hebrew and Arabic texts together. While in India, Horovitz also came to know Muhammad ‘Ali Jauhar (1878–1931), a poet and political activist who held a leading role in the founding of the All-India Muslim League. Horovitz subsequently published a book expressing his opposition to British rule in India.29 After returning to Germany, Horovitz held a professorship at the University of Frankfurt and designed a plan for establishing an Oriental Institute at Hebrew University, at the request of its president, Judah Magnes. His visit to Israel in 1925 sparked the creation of Brit Shalom, a binational movement among Jewish intellectuals. Another kind of collaboration was experienced by the Hungarian Jewish architect Max Herz, who had studied at the University of Vienna, and became a consultant in Cairo at the turn of the century for restoring the Al-Azhar and Al-Rifai’i mosques, and who also established the collection that ultimately became the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo.30 A less positive engagement with Islam can be found among Jewish scholars of the early twentieth century, whose work does not simply look for parallels or influences between Judaism and Islam but denies Islam’s originality. One example is Hartwig Hirschfeld (1855–1934) born to a religious family in Thorn, Prussia, close to the Prussian–Russian border, and studied in Posen, part of the chunk of Poland that was acquired and colonized by Prussia during the Polish partitions of the 1770s. His university studies took place in Berlin, Strasbourg, and Paris, where he studied with Joseph Derenbourg, a former classmate of Geiger’s at Bonn. He was a highly prolific scholar of medieval Arabic and Hebrew philosophy as well as Qur’an, and moved to England in 1889, where he taught at Montefiore College and later at Jews’ College. His scholarship was widely known and influential, particularly his study of the composition of the Qur’an, published in 1902, which contributed to debates over the chronology of the Suras. Hirschfeld saw little that was original in Islam: “the great teachings of the Bible worked themselves through a channel of very ordinary clay into a broad and living stream. The Quran, the textbook of Islam, is in reality nothing but a counterfeit of the Bible.”31 Like Weil, Wellhausen, and other scholars of the Qur’an, Hirschfeld distinguished between early, prophetic Meccan suras and those of the later, Medinan era of consolidation and institutionalization of the religion: The chief doctrines of Islam are found especially in the Meccan, early Suras, for which superficial acquaintance with Judaism was sufficient; individual commandments, words, and especially customs are mostly found – of course not without exception - in Medinan suras. That is better demonstrated in individual examples. For in Medina many things became much clearer to him [Muhammad] that formerly still appeared incomprehensible.32

Orientalist triangulations  159 Hirschfeld built his work on Geiger’s, asserting that some elements of the parallels between Islam and Judaism only became apparent to later researchers. Indeed, he raises numerous issues that Geiger did not address. For example, Hirschfeld interprets Sura 48:29 as a reference to phylacteries that are worn by Jewish men during morning prayers, writing that Muhammad must have seen those phylacteries hundreds of times in Medina.33 He finds other confusions in the Qur’an over biblical and rabbinic laws. The laws of sotah, accusing a married woman of adultery (Deuteronomy 22:14–20, Ketubot 46a), find a distorted expression in Sura 24:4, “And as for those who accuse chaste women, but then do not bring four witnesses, flog them eighty lashes and never accept any testimony from them. And it is they who are the iniquitous.”34 In biblical and rabbinic laws, the suspected woman is brought to the priest and undergoes a ritual that supposedly determines her guilt or innocence of adultery. Hirschfeld’s analyses of the Qur’an invariably conclude by asserting the superiority of Judaism. An example is Sura 5:45, which repeats the biblical injunction of “eye for an eye” (Exodus 21:23–25) without seeming to be aware that rabbinic law drastically altered that prescription to monetary compensation for injury.35 Instead, the Sura continues that one who forgoes the lex talionis receives an expiation. Geiger had presented the passage in the Qur’an as expressing Muhammad’s observation that Jews were not practicing lex talionis because the Mishnah had changed the law; in Geiger’s interpretation, the Sura describes a historical reality.36 Weil, who viewed Islam as an enlightened religion, regarded the passage as indicating Islam’s superior leniency, in contrast to biblical injunctions of retribution.37 Hirschfeld, too, suggests that the passage might signal Muhammad’s “praiseworthy effort to curb vendettas among Arabs”38 but, Hirschfeld continues, the biblical text offers cities of refuge for those who have committed an unintentional manslaughter (Numbers 21:10–25), thus “expressing a humanity that is nowhere to be found in the Qur’an.”39 With Eugen Mittwoch (1876–1942), Jewish scholarship on Islam reached a peak of influence. Born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Posen, he studied to become a rabbi at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. However, his classes on Islam under Eduard Sachau (1845–1930) at the University of Berlin led him to earn a doctorate in Islamic Studies, and he ultimately succeeded Sachau as the director of the Seminar for Oriental Languages at the University of Berlin. During World War I, Mittwoch became involved in the German government’s propaganda efforts, especially Germany’s call for a Muslim jihad against British and French colonial powers, as Hilmar Kaiser has described.40 He was appointed as the head of the Nachrichtenstelle für den Orient during World War I, a propaganda organ of the government, and after the war, he became the director of the Institute for Oriental Languages at the University of Berlin, which had been founded by Sachau in 1887. Mittwoch traveled to the Middle East and East Africa, and was especially engaged with Ethiopian Jews and promoted study of Amharic at the University of Berlin. Indeed, the Institute he directed offered an extraordinary array of languages, including classical philology and contemporary dialectics. Students were able to earn certification from the Institute that

160  Susannah Heschel enabled them to work in diplomacy, government foreign service, and international trade. Mittwoch was also very active in Zionist and Jewish communal service, and his scholarship ranged broadly, from ancient Aramaic inscriptions to Ethiopic to the origins and development of Islamic prayer. He was one of the many Jews to lose his professorship under the Nazi race laws; he moved with his family to England in 1939, and died in 1942. A 1935 Nazi plan to transform his Institute from the study of Semitic languages to the study of Aryan philology did not ultimately take place.41 Mittwoch’s study of prayer in Islam argued that virtually all aspects of Muslim prayer, purity laws, and fasting practices, as well as birth, circumcision, marriage, divorce, and funeral practices, were derived from Judaism.42 His study was written to counter the claims of C.H. Becker that Islamic prayer was modeled after Eastern Christian Sunday services.43 To this, Mittwoch replied that Christian prayer was also derived from Judaism.44 Focusing on terminology, Mittwoch argued, for instance, that the qiraˉ’a, reciting from the Qur’an, was derived from the Kri’at Sh’ma, reciting the Sh’ma prayer (of divine unity); the salaˉt (prayer) from ˙ the Aramaic term, Tslota, referring to the central Jewish prayer, the Shemonah Esre (Eighteen Benedictions), which is referred to in the Talmud as prayer, tefilla, and the centrality of niyya (Arabic: intention, concentration at prayer), derived from Kavana, the Hebrew linguistic equivalent. The overall historical purpose, for Mittwoch, was to demonstrate that Jewish influence on Islam continued far beyond Muhammad’s lifetime, shaping Islamic religious practices in broad strokes as well as in minute detail, and mediated by the vibrant Jewish communities in Babylonia, not only in Arabia. At stake was no longer a philological analysis of the Qur’an, with wide-eyed enthusiasm at the parallels between Islamic and Jewish teachings, but an insistence on Judaism’s generative ­influence – and on its own autochthony. Scholarship became a tool to claim influence for Judaism and assert its central role in the history of European religion. The era of Jewish scholarship closed in Germany with the publication of a remarkable doctoral dissertation by Heinrich Speyer, published posthumously after Speyer’s sudden death in 1935, Die biblische Erzälungen im Qoran.45 Speyer’s book suggests a new approach to Islam that might well have flourished had the political circumstances been different. A student of Josef Horovitz at the University of Frankfurt, Speyer brought gnostic and Samaritan texts to bear on his study of the Qur’an and expanded the methods developed by Horovitz of an intra-Qur’anic shaping of the text. Speyer saw both Christian and Jewish influences in a complex fashion, and his scholarship benefited by the growing number of critical editions of rabbinic literature that had been published in recent decades by German scholars. Describing the Qur’an’s readings of biblical stories, Speyer writes of a “mutual influence on the religious world of imagination of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” He notes further that Jewish beliefs were picked up by Christianity and transmitted to Islam, and then subsequently appeared in Jewish legendary texts.46 There is a religious dynamism among the three religions, a scenario of mutual influences and interactions. The radical nature of Speyer’s work, which was neglected for decades, is highlighted by its contrast to

Orientalist triangulations  161 that of Shlomo Dov Goitein (1900–1985), who categorically denied Christian influence on the Qur’an, writing that it is “entirely impossible to assume that Christians, or even Judaeo-Christians, should have been the mentors of Muhammad,” as the figure of Christ and “everything else Christian” is absent from the fifty to sixty oldest chapters of the Qur’an.47 Rather, for Goitein, Muhammad is entirely indebted to Judaism. Though he does not say so explicitly, Goitein’s arguments imply that the tolerance of Islam toward Judaism was derived, like all of Islam, from Judaism. A turning point of German Jewish scholarship on Islam began with the early twentieth-century Zionist settlements in Palestine.48 Zionism meant a negation of Jewish exile, but it also expanded Jewish attitudes toward European Orientalism. Jews had been Orientalized in Europe as a tool to exclude them from European society. Increasingly after World War I, as European attraction to the Orient grew, Jews began identifying themselves as Oriental, turning to East European Jews as figures of authenticity and fascination. Within Palestine, the Jews could turn themselves more realistically into the object of European Orientalist fascination; Jews were now in the East and turned to the Arabs for an authentic identity they could appropriate. Jewish ­self-orientalization became part of the effort to legitimate Jewish settlement in the land. Like Ernest Renan and many of the travelers to Palestine during the nineteenth century, early Zionists viewed the Arabs as having preserved a biblical identity, and some young Jewish pioneers would wear a keffiyah and ride camels, trading their European Jewishness for a new, Israelite self. Thus, some of the European Jews who arrived in Palestine prior to World War II experienced a reverse conversion. They traveled to the Holy Land not as missionaries who wanted to convert native Arab Christians and Muslims to Judaism, but rather to be reconverted by them to their lost Jewish identity. They sought to appropriate elements of Arab identity in order to purge themselves of European Jewishness and restore an Israelite Jewish identity. Their experience mirrored that of the scholars who studied the Qur’an not only to learn about Islam, but also to uncover unknown aspects of late antique Judaism. Islam restored elements of Judaism and served as a historical example of how contemporary Jewish religious practices might be liberalized and reformed after the model of Islam. This is not to deny the Orientalist nature of the Zionist aliyah; even Christian missionaries were seeking not simply to convert the natives to Christianity, but to experience a taste of biblical life in the Holy Land, a dual mixture of piety and modernization, as Usama Makdisi points out.49 Imperialism affected Jewish scholarship in two ways. On a material level, European imperialism brought books and manuscripts to European libraries and enabled European scholars, such as Weil, Horovitz, and Goldziher, to travel to Muslim countries and establish relationships with scholars there. The material data provided by imperialism was a crucial basis for the historical and philological investigations undertaken in Europe, and that scholarship also provided assistance with imperialist political and economic activities. Germany may not have had colonial holdings until late in the nineteenth century, when it gained

162  Susannah Heschel pieces of Africa and Asia, but Germany was a major force within Europe, especially in monetary and diplomatic engagements with France and Britain, starting much earlier, as those countries acquired territories abroad. Germany’s influence was exerted in major investments in finance and building projects, including railroads, and in military and political involvements, particularly in the Middle East and the Ottoman Empire. Strongest of all was the supremacy of scholarship exerted by Germany, a scholarly vitality that attracted intellectuals from colonized regions, such as India, as well as Europeans.50 Layered over these was a German “diplomacy of mediation” that sought to achieve German supremacy within the empires of Europe even without extensive colonial holdings.51 Once Hitler came to power, the field of Islamic Studies was decimated in ­Germany. Jewish scholars, who constituted a significant portion of the professors, instructors, and students, were forced out of the universities. Some emigrated and were able to resume their careers in other countries, bringing German scholarly methods with them, while others were murdered. Moreover, the history of their scholarly contributions was largely ignored. Johann Fück’s history of the field, published in 1952, omitted many of the Jewish scholars, such as Abraham Geiger and Gustav Weil.52 The well-known Hebrew texts from the rabbinic corpus, translated into Arabic in the Qur’an, appeared to Geiger as uncanny: simultaneously recognizable and alien. As subsequent Jewish scholars continued to investigate the parallels, the Qur’an gradually lost its sense of foreignness. Jewish scholarship carried a sense of pride, demonstrating Judaism’s influence on a major world religion, but gradually, by the turn of the century, the scholarship also took on a tone of domination, at times using the parallels to deny the originality and distinctiveness of the Qur’an, illustrating Said’s point about the imperialist tone of European discourse on Islam. Throughout, Islam was textualized, losing sight of religious practices, and focusing almost exclusively on the earliest era of Islam. In his critique of the scholarship, Shahab Ahmed argued that the focus produced a narrow definition of an “authentic” Islam, so that subsequent, broader cultural and theological developments within Islam came to be described as deviant or marginal. Because Orientalists were governed by the principle that “the original is the authentic,” they reified Islam based on texts of the so-called “classical period” of 700–1050.53 That narrow set of texts created a distorted historical paradigm, whereas Ahmed has urged scholars to “conceptualize Islam in expansive, capacious and contradictory terms.”54 Recent scholarship on the Qur’an has continued the polar debates between Jewish versus Christian influence, but the mediating voice has grown stronger, particularly in the groundbreaking, revisionist scholarship of Angelika Neuwirth. Rather than attempt to single out Jewish or Christian, Neuwirth, in keeping with contemporary scholarship on both early Judaism and early Christianity, speaks of the late antique era as an “epistemic space” in which multiple religious traditions intermingled.55 The Qur’an, in her work, is not a repository of other religions’ ideas, nor an archive of their texts, but rather an agentic reader of those

Orientalist triangulations  163 texts, practices, beliefs, debates, prayers, and pieties. The Qur’an, in Neuwirth’s remarkable scholarship, is no longer passive, but a new and energetic interpreter on the religious scene, what Sidney Griffith has called the Qur’an’s effort to be “polemically corrective” with Christian tradition – that is, intended neither to defeat nor to acquire in a supersessionist fashion, but to engage, debate, and improve teachings viewed as in need of perfecting.56 A similar process was undoubtedly at work in relation to Judaism. The multivocal nature of late antiquity that Neuwirth delineates also might be a useful way to understand nineteenth-century scholarship on the Qur’an. Qur’an studies were inaugurated by Jewish scholars in Europe with a strong background not only in rabbinic texts, but also in German methods of philological analysis. Their scholarship coincided with debates over Jewish emancipation as well as the rise of antisemitism, including denigrations of Judaism as well as violent attacks against Jews. In response, Islam became a template for defending key elements of Judaism, including monotheism, rejection of anthropomorphism, ethical religious law, and religious tolerance. Moreover, European Jews were sympathetic to the situation of Muslims living under colonial domination, since theirs was a similar political and social condition. Finally, the alliance between Judaism and Islam demonstrated the influence of Judaism in creating one of the greatest monotheistic religions and also carried a polemic against Christianity for its religious exclusivity, intolerance, and nonrational dogma. Jewish intellectuals described both Christianity and Islam as Judaism’s “daughter religions,” but Islam was the good daughter, retaining the most important Jewish theological principles and offering an environment of intellectual and cultural flourishing to medieval Jews. One of the last of the great German Jewish scholars, S.D. (Fritz) Goitein, wrote of a “symbiosis” of Judaism and Islam, and declared that “Islam saved the Jewish people.”57

Conclusion For Jewish scholars, the study of Islam was part of a larger political effort to win emancipation and social integration for Jews in Europe. Their studies of Islam constituted an ideological effort to demonstrate Judaism’s significance in the production of Western culture. By demonstrating the centrality of rabbinic literature in deciphering the Qur’an (and also the New Testament), they hoped to convince their academic colleagues of the importance of establishing professorships in Jewish theology and training Christian scholars in classical rabbinic texts. Islam’s purported rationalism and tolerance were identified with Judaism and held as exemplary for integration into a modern society built on rational science, tolerance, and liberalism. The scholarship on Islam in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims participated became its own epistemic space, bringing a variety of lenses and always inflected by contemporary concerns and assumptions: political debates over the emancipation of Jews; an ongoing discourse in which Jews were labeled “oriental” and Judaism denigrated as unsuitable for German Kultur;58 the rise of colonial

164  Susannah Heschel fantasies in Germany and its emergence as an imperial power; and theories and methods of scholarship, drawn primarily from Classics and biblical studies. Yet even as Jewish scholars insisted on reading the Qur’an in the context of rabbinic Judaism, Christian scholars insisted on a Hellenistic or Christian context; the political debates inflected the scholarship. While most of their philological conclusions may be viewed today as dated and untenable, of broader interest is the way their scholarship negotiates the political and theological debates of their era, making studies of Islam a vehicle not only for modern Jewish ­self-understanding, but for the larger project of Christian–Jewish struggles for theological dominance. Indeed, in this multivocal epistemic space of nineteenth-century Central European scholarship, Islam should be seen not simply as a passive receptacle of scholarly dissection, but as an active voice in the ongoing discussions over religion, secularism, scholarly method, and the nature and history of the West. From regarding the Qur’an as an uncanny repository of rabbinic teachings, ­Jewish scholars ultimately came to incorporate Islamic teachings into their understanding of Jewish history and into their vision for a multicultural Europe.

Notes 1 Axel Stähler, “Orientalist Strategies of Dissociation in a German ‘Jewish’ Novel: Das neue Jerusalem (1905) and Its Context,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 45:1 (2008), 51–89. 2 Gil Anidjar, Semites: Race, Religion, Literature (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). 3 John Efron, German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). 4 Ignaz Goldziher, Der Mythos bei den Hebräern und seine geschichtliche Entwickelung (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1876). 5 Ignaz Goldziher, “The Principles of Law in Islam,” Muslim Studies, trans. C.R. ­Barber and ed. S.M. Stern, vol. 2 (New Brunswick: Aldine Transaction Press, 2006), 302. Note that D.S. Margoliouth, a contemporary of Goldziher’s, took the argument further, as did Henri Lammens and Joseph Schacht. 6 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 27–28. 7 James Pasto, “Islam’s ‘Strange Secret Sharer’: Orientalism, Judaism, and the Jewish Question,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 40:3 (July 1998), 437–474. 8 Abraham Geiger, Was hat Muhammad aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? (Bonn, 1833; reprinted Leipzig: M. W. Kaufmann, 1902; Osnabruck: Biblio Verlag, 1971), 196. 9 Gustav Weil, The Bible, the Qur’an, and the Talmud (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1846), ix. 10 Martin Kramer, “Introduction,” The Jewish Discovery of Islam: Studies in Honor of Bernard Lewis (Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African ­Studies, 1999), 15. 11 Goldziher, Muslim Studies (New Brunswick and London: Aldinetransaction, 2006), 21. 12 Goldziher, Tagebuch, ed. Alexander Scheiber (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 59. 13 That Jews insisted on presenting Christianity as a religion of doctrine contrary to reason, even though Protestants had abandoned such doctrines, is a phenomenon traced by Uriel Tal in his classic work, Christians and Jews in Germany, trans. Noah Jacobs (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976). A more recent study focusing on Jewish views of Catholicism is Ari Joskowicz, The Modernity of Others:

Orientalist triangulations  165

14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30

31 32

Jewish Anti-Catholicism in Germany and France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013). Suzanne L. Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Religion and Scholarship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 102–156. Universitätsarchiv Leipzig, Philosophische Fakultät, Promotionen. Others included Daniel Chwolson, Morris Jastrow, Immanuel Loew, Wilhelm Bacher, Eduard Baneth. Theodor Nöldeke et al., The History of the Qur’an, ed. and trans. Wolfgang H. Behn (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 5. Marion Eggert, “Introduction,” Religious Dynamics under the Impact of Imperialism and Colonialism: A Sourcebook, ed. Björn Bentlage et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 3. Avril Powell, Scottish Orientalists and India: The Muir Brothers, Religion, Education and Empire (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010). Ruchama Johnston-Bloom, “Jews, Muslims and Bildung: the German-Jewish Orientalist: Gustav Weil in Egypt,” Religion Compass 2:2 (2014), 49–59. Alois Sprenger, Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammad, nach bisher grösstentheils unbenutzten Quellen bearbeitet, 3 vols, vol. 1 (Berlin: Nicolai’sche Verlagsbuchandlung, 1861–1865), 313: “Burning enthusiasm, paired with low cunning, pure sacrifice for a higher aim with mean selfishness, indulgence, even dependence upon others, with obstinacy, devotion with treachery; those are a few of the contradictory psychic qualities of Muhammad’s character.” Ibid., 1. Ibid., 39. Julius Wellhausen, “Muhammad,” Encyclopedia Britannica (1883), 547. Ibid., 547, footnote. Josef van Ess, “Goldziher as a Contemporary of Islamic Reform,” in Goldziher Memorial Conference, hrsg. von Eva Apor und Istvan Ormos (Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2005), 37–50. G.H.A. Juynboll, The Authenticity of Tradition Literature: Discussions in Modern Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 1969), 35ff. The Arabic translations of Goldziher include Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung (Leiden: Brill, 1920); Walid Saleh, “An Arabic Translation of Ignaz Goldziher’s Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung,” Journal of Quranic Studies 14 (2012), 201–214. Birgit Schäbler, Moderne Muslime. Ernest Renan und die Geschichte der ersten ­Islamdebatte 1883 (Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2016). Among his important studies of the Qur’an: Dala ˉ’il al-Nizˉ am, Azamgarh: al-Da ˉ’irah al-H amıˉdıˉyah wa-Matabatuha ˉ, 1968 und al-Takmıˉl fıˉ Us˙u ˉl al-Ta’wıˉl, Azamgarh: al˙ Da ˉ˙’irah al-H amıˉdıˉyah wa-Matabatuha ˉ, 1968. ˙ Josef Horovitz, Indien unter Britischer Herrschaft (Leipzig, Berlin: Verlag von B. G. Teubner, 1928). Istvan Ormos, “Preservation and Restoration: The Methods of Max Herz Pasha, Chief Architect of the Comite de Conservation des Monuments de l’Art Arabe, 1890–1914,” in Historians in Cairo: Essays in Honor of George Scanlon, ed. Jill ­Edwards (Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 2002), 123ff. Hartwig Hirschfeld, New Researches into the Composition and Exegesis of the Qor’an (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1902), ii. Hartwig Hirschfeld, Jüdische Elemente im Korân: ein Beitrag zur Korânforschung (Berlin: Im Selbstverlag, 1898), 14. Die Hauptlehren des Islam finden wir besonders in den mekkanischen, früheren Suren, da hierzu oberflächliche Bekanntschaft des Judenthums genügte; einzelne Gebote, Wörter besonders Gebräuche finden sich meist – natürlich nicht ohne ­Ausnahme – in medinischen Suren. Das wird sich an den Einzelheiten besser zeigen. Denn in Medina ward ihm vieles klarer, was früher noch unverstanden aussieht.

166  Susannah Heschel 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

4 2 43 4 4

45

4 6

47 48

49 50 51 52 53

Hirschfeld, Jüdische Elemente, 59. Ibid., 62. Ibid., 62–65. Geiger, Was hat Muhammad, 201. Weil’s point is cited by Hirschfeld, but he does not give the name of Weil’s text, only a page number: 227, fn 356. Ibid., 63. Ibid., 64. Hilmar Kaiser, Imperialism, Racism, and Development Theories: The Construction of a Dominant Paradigm on Ottoman Armenians (Ann Arbor, MI: Gomidas Institute, 1997). University of Berlin Archives, Personalakten UK M 225, page 25. Letter to the ­R ektor from Der Reichs- und Preussische Minister für Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung, dated December 6, 1935: “Der Lehrstuhl für Semitische Philologie wird künftig für Arischen Philologie in Anspruch genommen werden.” Eugen Mittwoch, Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Islamischen Gebets und Kultus (­Berlin: Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1913). C.H. Becker, “Zur Geschichte des islamischen Kultus,” Der Islam 3:1 (1912), 398f. Ibid., 4. Becker’s argument based itself on a small study published in 1906 by Anton Baumstark (1872–1948), a German orientalist who was to become a major scholar of liturgy, Die Messe im Morgenlande (Kempten: J. Kösel, 1906). Baumstark argued that the pre-Eucharist section of the Christian religious service was divided into four parts, to which Becker claimed Muslim parallels. The most important evidence, according to Becker, was the prayer for the prince that Baumstark argued concluded the Christian service and was then adopted by Islamic liturgy. The difficulty in publishing Speyer’s book in Nazi Germany is recounted by Franz Rosenthal, “The History of Heinrich Speyer’s Die biblischen Erzählungen im Qoran,” in “Im vollen Licht der Geschichte”: Die Wissenschaft des Judentums und die Anfänge der kritischen Koranforschung, ed. Dirk Hartwig et al. (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2008), 113. Heinrich Speyer, Die biblische Erzählungen im Qoran (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1961), xiii: “Jüdische Sagen und Vorstellungen verschwinden, sobald das Christentum sich für seine Dogmenlehre auf sie bezieht, gehen vom Christentum in den Islam über, um auf diesem Umwege spater wieder in der üüdischen Haggada aufzutauchen.” S.D. Goitein, “Muhammad’s Inspiration by Judaism,” Journal of Jewish Studies 9 (1958), 162. On this topic, see Gil Eyal, The Disenchantment of the Orient: Expertise in Arab Affairs and the Israeli State (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006); ­Yonatan Mendel, German Orientalism, Arabic Grammar and the Jewish Education System: The Origins and Effect of Martin Plessner’s, “Theory of Arabic Grammar,” ­Naharaim 10:1 (2016), 57–77. Usama Makdisi, “Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical Modernity,” American Historical Review 102:3 (1997), 680–713. Kris Manjapra, Age of Entanglement: German and Indian Intellectuals Across Empires (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 5. Joern Thielmann, “Islam and Muslims in Germany: An Introductory Exploration,” in Islam and Muslims in Germany, ed. Ala Al-Hamarneh and Joern Theilmann (­L eiden: Brill, 2008), 2. Johann Fück, Die arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: O. Harrassowitz, 1952). Robert Wisnovsky, “Islam,” in M.W.F. Stone and Robert Wisnovsky, “Philosophy and Theology,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, ed. Robert Parnau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 2, 687–706.

Orientalist triangulations  167 54 Shahab Ahmed, What Is Islam: The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 83. 55 Angelika Neuwirth, “Introduction,” Qur’anic Studies Today, ed. Angelike Neuwirth and Michael A. Sells (New York: Routledge, 1916), 4. 56 Sidney Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the People of the Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 33. 57 Shlomo Dov Goitein, “On Jewish-Arabic Symbiosis,” Molad 2 (1949), 261 [Hebrew]; idem., Jews and Arabs: Their Contacts Through the Ages (New York: Schocken, 1974), 289–299; idem., “Muhammad’s Inspiration by Jews,” Journal of Jewish Studies 9 (1958), 144–162. For a critique of the term “symbiosis,” see Steven M. Wasserstrom, Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 4–7. 58 Daniel J. Schroeter, “Orientalism and the Jews of the Mediterranean,” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 4:2 (1994), 183–196; Axel Stähler, “Orientalist Strategies in a German ‘Jewish’ Novel: Das neue Jerusalem (1905) and Its Context,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 45:1 (2009), 51–89.

8 “Dieses wirklich westöstlichen Mannes” The German-Jewish Orientalist Josef Horovitz in Germany, India, and Palestine Ruchama Johnston-Bloom As the editors of the recent volume, Colonialism and the Jews, write in the introduction, “historians have been surprisingly reticent to explore the complex ways in which Jews interacted with nineteenth- and twentieth-century overseas empires.”1 This is due in large part to debates regarding Zionism and the State of Israel, which “rendered colonialism a veritable minefield for Jewish Studies.”2 However, the volume Colonialism and the Jews is itself evidence that scholars have finally begun to explore the complexity of European Jewish engagement with empire. One facet of this engagement that has received growing attention is the complicated position of Jews vis-à-vis Orientalism. European Jews varyingly embraced, rejected, inverted, and “thought with” Orientalist tropes linked to European colonialism. Jewish Orientalist scholarship has also received recent scholarly attention, and Jewish scholars have been recognized as bringing a particular set of questions to the study of Islam. One such scholar, the ­German-Jewish Orientalist, Josef Horovitz (1875–1931), whose career took him to both British India and Mandatory Palestine, where he was the founding director of Islamic Studies at Hebrew University, is a particularly interesting figure in light of questions about European Jewish scholars working in colonial contexts, as well as questions regarding the connections between European scholars and scholarship and modern Arab and Islamic thought, and the reception of ­German-Jewish scholarship in the Mashriq and India. In addition to being the founding director, mostly in absentia, of Islamic Studies at Hebrew University, Horovitz served as the inaugural director of the Seminar for Oriental Studies at the University of Frankfurt from 1915 until his death in 1931, and taught at the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh, India, from 1907 to 1914. Horovitz’s career raises interesting questions about the history of Islamic Studies in Mandatory Palestine and the State of Israel. In particular, did his stay at the M.A.O. College play any role in shaping his approach to the study of Islam, which he promoted in Jerusalem? In what way might the examination of his time in India help us understand the project of Hebrew University? Most of the scholarship on the early days of Hebrew University has focused on how the university’s founders sought to transfer German Wissenschaft to Palestine.3 However, scholars have recently begun to think about

“Dieses wirklich westöstlichen Mannes”  169 Hebrew University comparatively – suggesting that it makes sense to look at Hebrew University alongside other universities established in colonial or quasi-­ colonial settings.4 Examining Horovitz’s career, as he moves from one site in the British colonial sphere to the next, provides a way to recontextualize the history of Hebrew University. This chapter has a twofold focus – after a brief overview of Horovitz’s life and scholarship, it explores his reception in the Middle East, where his scholarship did not make a major impact, and then turns to connections between his time in Aligarh and his vision for Islamic Studies in Jerusalem. Horovitz was critical of colonialism and his vision of Jewish-Arab cooperation in Palestine is often credited with inspiring the formation of Brit Shalom, a group that in the late 1920s and early 1930s called for the creation of binational state in Palestine.5 I will argue that Horovitz’s aspirations for Islamic Studies at Hebrew University, as well as his critical assessment of both British activity in the Middle East and political Zionism were linked to his academic experience in India.

Biography and scholarship Born in 1875, Horovitz was the second son of the rabbi Markus Horovitz (1844–1910),6 and he grew up in Frankfurt, where his father was appointed as rabbi in 1878. He received his PhD in Oriental Languages and Literature from the University of Berlin, where he studied under the mentorship of Eduard Sachau (1845–1930) and focused his research on early Islamic history.7 During 1905–1906, he took his first trip to the Middle East with the Italian Orientalist Leone Caetani (1869–1935), and in 1907, he left Berlin for India, where he taught until World War I (WWI). While in India, he also served as the Government Epigraphist for Moslem Inscriptions, and thus as part of the colonial apparatus of the British Raj. Horovitz was set to return to Frankfurt to accept a chair in Semitic philology at the University of Frankfurt when WWI broke out. After briefly being interned by the British in India, he was allowed to return to Germany in 1915, after pledging not to contribute to any German war efforts. He remained at the University of Frankfurt until his death, as well as becoming the founding director of Islamic Studies at Hebrew University, directing things (mostly) from afar. He took two further trips to Middle East during the interwar period and was planning another trip to India when he died.8 Horovitz’s main scholarly foci were early Islamic history, pre-Islamic poetry, and Qur’anic studies. In the assessment of perhaps his most famous student, S. D. Goitein, Horovitz typically produced monographs, in which he used available sources to produce “exhaustive pictures” of specific phenomena, rather than large summary works.9 Horovitz died relatively young and suddenly, he left several major projects unfinished, including a plan to write a Qur’an commentary. His important publications include Qur’anic Examinations, which examined the different kinds of historical narratives and the proper nouns found in the Qur’an by identifying parallel narratives and names of Jewish and Christian origins.10 He also published an important article on the origins of the isna ˉd, in which he argued that hadıˉth literature is comparable to the Oral Torah, and other significant ˙

170  Ruchama Johnston-Bloom articles on the development of legends about Muhammad, and Qur’anic images of Paradise.11 However, unlike many previous scholars, Horovitz did not simply reduce the Qur’an (and Islam) to what the text supposedly “borrowed” from Judaism and/or Christianity. In his scholarship on the Qur’an, Horovitz often focused on the internal development of the text.12 As Susannah Heschel has argued, Horovitz’s approach to the Qur’an restored “agency” to the Qur’an and his anticolonial stance can be seen in his scholarship – in which “Islam is not simply the colonized presence of Judaism or Christianity in Arabia but an autonomous religion.”13

Reception Thanks to his international curriculum vitae, Horovitz was on good terms with some of the leading Muslim figures of his day – including the Egyptian Mufti Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849–1905) and the Indian Muhammad Ali (1878–1931), a leader of the Khilafat movement14 – and Muslim scholars have generally received his scholarship more positively than the scholarship of other Orientalists, including Ignác Goldziher (1850–1921) and Joseph Schacht (1902–1969),15 because Horovitz does not problematize Islamic tradition to the same extent. For example, Horovitz took a temperate approach to one of the most, if not the most, contentious issue regarding the reception of German-Jewish and indeed Western Qur’an scholarship: the issue of hadıˉth criticism and the authenticity of “early” ˙ Islamic writings. Horovitz’s position regarding hadıˉth criticism is less “radical” ˙ than Goldziher’s and those of the scholars who followed him. As Herbert Berg has argued, Horovitz thought that Goldziher’s conclusions needed to be “tempered” and deemed “isnaˉds to be sufficiently reliable [and early] to determine the earliest biographies of Muhammad.”16 Therefore, Horovitz is sometimes ˙ cited in order to bolster arguments for the authenticity of Islamic tradition. For example, the renowned Muslim scholar of Hadıˉth, Muhammad Mustafa Azami, ˙ cites Horovitz in his critique of Goldziher and Schacht and in his defense of the authenticity of hadıˉth.17 Horovitz also endorsed the authenticity of pre-Islamic ˙ poetry – another controversial subject.18 Perhaps due to his failure to produce anything that could be considered a magnum opus, only a smattering of his articles and monographs have been translated into Arabic and other Islamic languages. His most often translated work is The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet and their Authors, which has been translated into Arabic (in 1949),19 Urdu (1972), 20 and Turkish (2002)21 and which Lawrence I. Conrad brought out a new [English] edition of in 2002. The work is a revision of Horovitz’s 1902 Habilitationsschrift, and was first published in 1927–1928, in English in the first two volumes of Islamic Culture, a journal put out in Hyderabad and edited by the British convert to Islam, Marmaduke Pickthall. The aim of the new journal was to publish work by learned Muslims and Orientalists and to “uplift the standard of Islamic culture.”22 Conrad argues that the 1949 Arabic translation of The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet and their Authors by Husayn Nassˉar is a product of the “rising ˙ ˙˙

“Dieses wirklich westöstlichen Mannes”  171 national and cultural consciousness in the Arab world.”23 Post-W WII, Arab scholars were hungry for sources and texts related to early Islamic history, and the translation enjoys wide circulation. 24 Nassˉar’s translation of Horo˙˙ vitz was subsequently used by Abdul-Aziz al-Du ˉ rıˉ, the important Iraqi historian of early Islam, as a source for The Rise of Historical Writing among the Arabs. 25 Interestingly, as Conrad notes, this work is in some ways “anomalous” for Horovitz, in that although he did revise it for publication in Islamic Culture (more than twenty years after he submitted it for his Habilitation), he did not integrate more recent scholarship on the topic. The work instead is firmly focused on the primary sources, and as Conrad argues, its (implicit as opposed to explicit) thesis is “controversial” in that it argues for the “continuous transmission of sira tradition from a very early date.”26 Horovitz’s most translated work therefore does not pose a substantial challenge to the authenticity of Islamic tradition. It also originally already appeared in an Islamic publication, which may have increased the likelihood of its being translated into Arabic, Urdu, and Turkish. Horovitz has also more recently been translated and cited by Nabil Fayyad, a contemporary Syrian writer who is generally interested in using German-­Jewish Orientalist scholarship to argue that Islam needs to develop something like Biblical Higher Criticism. For example, Fayyad has translated Horovitz’s article on Muhammad’s Journey by Night (al-’Isra ˉ’ wal-Mi’ra ˉj), as well as work by Horovitz’s (Jewish) student, Heinrich Speyer (1897–1935).27 As the example of Fayyad demonstrates, German-Jewish Orientalist scholarship is still discussed in the Middle East. That Horovitz’s approach to Islamic Studies may have itself been influenced by his time in India illustrates the global circulation of ideas in the age of empire.

Aligarh In his obituary of Horovitz, Gotthold Weil, who briefly succeeded Horovitz at the University of Frankfurt before relocating to Palestine, discussed the connection between Horovitz’s time in India and his ideas for Hebrew University. Weil writes: What these seven years of teaching in Aligarh and his previous and later travel to Egypt, Palestine and Syria offered him, India in particular, was intercourse and intimate contact with the leaders of the local Muslims, an experience which not only humanly and politically, but also scientifically, allowed him to mature … [At Hebrew University] he wanted to implement the lessons that he had gained in India. He wanted to create a place in which the scientific methodology of the West could fashion the abundant material of the Orient, and in which young Jewish and Arab students could mutually humanize each other, so that in this way something of human worth could accrue from scientific research.28

172  Ruchama Johnston-Bloom While this obituary is clearly hagiography, it also neatly encapsulates the questions outlined earlier regarding the connection between Horovitz’s time in ­India and his activity as the founder of Islamic Studies at Hebrew University. It is my contention that Horovitz’s vision of the efficacy of Oriental Studies at Hebrew University, as well as his critical engagement with Zionism are better understood when viewed in relation to the time he spent in colonial India. At the M.A.O. College, Horovitz taught at an institution self-consciously designed to introduce Western science to India – just as Hebrew University was conceived of as pioneering in providing Western science in Palestine and the broader region. The founder of the college, Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–1898), wanted to close what he saw as the “achievement gap” between Indian Hindus and Muslims by reforming Muslim education. He argued that it was important for Muslims to engage with European science: yes, if the Musalman be a true warrior and thinks his religion right, then let him come fearlessly to the battleground and do unto Western knowledge and modern research what his forefathers did to Greek philosophy. Then only shall the religious books be of any use. Mere parroting will not do.29 Out of this desire to reform Islam and Islamic education, Sayyid Ahmad founded the College in 1875. In 1886, he went on to found the All-India Muhammadan Educational Conference and in 1906, this body founded, in turn, the All-India Muslim League, which was to become the leading political vehicle for Muslim involvement in the Indian independence movement and then in the creation of Pakistan.30 When Horovitz arrived at the M.A.O. College in 1907, it was therefore one of the Indian epicenters of Muslim political activity. During his time there, he got to know Muhammad Ali and other anti-imperialists involved in India’s fight for self-rule. Horovitz gave his support to the campaign to found a Muslim University (which was eventually successful in 1920), and he taught Arabic literature in a setting in which the study of Arabic was envisioned as contributing to an ­Islamic intellectual revival. He was also aware of the struggles between the school’s Indian trustees and alumni and the school’s British principles and faculty over who actually controlled the school. Furthermore, during his years in India, ­Horovitz witnessed the All-India Muslim League rejecting its former loyalty to the British in favor of siding with the Indian National Congress and joining the fight for Indian self-rule.31 Horovitz would focus his writings on Indian political developments. And the familiarity with British colonialism that he gained in India may have played a part in his rejection of imperialism in the Middle East and his criticisms of Zionist policies. These experiences may also have influenced his vision of students and scholars at Hebrew University engaging with the wider world of contemporary Arabic and Islamic literature and thought. Arabic was not a neutral subject at the M.A.O. College, or at any school in British India.32 When founding the M.A.O. College, Sayyid Ahmad supported the idea of teaching in the vernacular language of Urdu, but conceded the importance of English, arguing: “as long as our community does not, by means of

“Dieses wirklich westöstlichen Mannes”  173 English education, become familiar with the exactness of thought and unlearn the looseness of expression, our language cannot be the means of high mental and moral training.”33 In this climate, Arabic was perceived as a classical language, the study of which did not necessarily advance the contemporary cause of Indian Muslims. The M.A.O. College originally had two different tracks: students could study primarily in English or primarily in the “Oriental department,” in Urdu and Arabic or Persian. Although the Oriental track was abolished in 1885, Arabic remained a subject of study.34 During 1903–1904, the idea of establishing an advanced Arabic school at the College was floated. Gerald Gardner Brown (1876–1917), an English history professor there, wanted to make Aligarh a part of the contemporary revival of Arabic he saw taking place in Egypt. The plan’s European proponents saw the advanced Arabic school as a place where British officials could learn Arabic but also where an “intellectual revival” of Islam could take place, away from more “orthodox” Muslim circles in India. However, some Muslim trustees and staff at the school were not in favor of the idea, as they saw it as an effort to turn the school into a “madrasa,” and they thought that the emphasis of the College should be placed on science and other “western” subjects. There was also a concern on the part of the British government that the program could become a hotbed for revivalism.35 The British tension between the desire to foment “intellectual revival” and being concerned about anti-colonial Islamic “revivalism” is indicative of the complex work Arabic language and literature could do in the colonial context. In the end, the British government agreed to subsidize one European professor of Arabic and an Indian assistant, but also assured those concerned that the professor would be under the direction of the trustees.36 This professor, selected by a committee in Europe, was Josef Horovitz.37 When he arrived, the Arabic program was designed for MA students, but, because the program was not attracting many students (who were mostly interested in the sciences and other more practical courses), in 1910, he proposed revamping it. He suggested dropping the requirement of a BA in order to attract students who had received more traditional Islamic educations. However, the goal of attracting more students was possibly complicated by the fact that the program now required that students have good command of English, French, and German. He also proposed adding courses in history and geography. Horovitz’s willingness to work with students from traditional Islamic educational backgrounds at the M.A.O. demonstrates his interest in bringing together E ­ uropean Orientalism and traditional Islamic science, an approach that is also evident in his plans for Islamic Studies at Hebrew University. Horovitz’s interest in Arabic as a living language is apparent from his activities at Aligarh. There, he spearheaded the re-cataloging of Islamic manuscripts in the library and, in 1908, along with another professor of Arabic, Abdul Haq Baghdadi, revived the previously defunct Arabic Society (an Oxbridge-style club). This society focused on the study of texts in both “classical” and modern Arabic. For example, in 1911, members of the Society, under Horovitz’s guidance, not only read selections from Ibn Battuta, but also read contemporary Arabic essays

174  Ruchama Johnston-Bloom and were encouraged to discuss the essays in Arabic.38 In this way, the ­A rabic Society, with Horovitz’s help, encouraged M.A.O. students to engage with the contemporary revival of Arabic. In his interest in promoting modern Arabic ­ ebrew at Aligarh, we can see similarities to his vision for Arabic Studies at H ­University – where he also did not want to approach Arabic as merely a “classical” language. One of the other contributions Horovitz made at the College was the introduction of Hebrew as a subject of study. In his development of the program in 1910, he suggested adding both Hebrew and Syriac to the curriculum. He also taught Hebrew more informally. According to Hamıˉd al-Dıˉn Faraˉhıˉ’s (1863– ˙ 1930) disciple, Amˉın Ahsan Islaˉhˉı, Horovitz and Faraˉhıˉ spent time t­ ogether – ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ with Horovitz teaching Faraˉhıˉ Hebrew and Faraˉhıˉ working with Horovitz on his Arabic.39 Faraˉhıˉ (1863–1930), who pioneered the concept of nazm or the coher˙ ence of the Qur’an, regarded “the Bible as an important source of Qur’anic exegesis” and drew on it “to explicate, sometimes by comparison and sometimes by contrast, not only Qur’anic theology, but also Qur’anic philology, stylistics and imagery.”40 While Horovitz’s own approach to the Qur’an did not emphasize its “coherence” – his student Johann Fück, for instance, wrote that ­Horovitz’s method had the danger of dissolving the Qur’an into a “­mosaic” – this exchange between Faraˉhıˉ and Horovitz is interesting in terms of German-Jewish Orientalists advocating the use of Hebrew and Jewish sources as tools for reading and understanding the Qur’an. During Horovitz’ stay in Aligarh, the campaign to turn the college unto a Muslim University was revitalized. Previously, the British had rejected the idea of founding a Muslim University on the grounds that while colleges could be denominational, universities should not be. But in 1910, the campaign for a Muslim University was renewed; and in 1911, Horovitz was drafted (along with the president J. H. Towle) by the University Constitution Committee to write the regulations and bylaws. Once again, the attempt to found a university was unsuccessful. The proposal the Committee put together gave more autonomy to the proposed university than the British Raj was willing to accept. During Horovitz’s time in India, there were ongoing conflicts between the European staff and the British officials and the school trustees and alumni (the school had an active “Old Boys” club). And, as Muslim nationalism grew, the British became worried about the eruption of agitation at Aligarh. They banned publications, and in 1910, they expelled the first Egyptian student to attend Aligarh because they were concerned that he would spread “nationalism of the Egyptian type.”41 It seems, as a German, Horovitz may have occupied a somewhat in-between position. The year he arrived in India, he joined the rest of the European staff in signing a letter supporting the outgoing (British) president of the College, who was complaining about the board of trustees not allowing him to actually run the school. However, once WWI broke out, Horovitz was interned and although he had some freedom of movement, he was expressly forbidden from seeing any of his Aligarh students – presumably because the British were worried about him fomenting insurrection.

“Dieses wirklich westöstlichen Mannes”  175 At Aligarh, Horovitz also became acquainted with Muhammad Ali, who had attended the M.A.O. College prior to Horovitz’s tenure there, but who had remained involved with the school and who was an important figure in the ongoing campaign to establish a Muslim University. The two maintained contact after Horovitz left India, and Horovitz esteemed Muhammad Ali highly enough to complain about the British blocking him from entering Palestine in 1928. In a letter to Judah L. Magnes (1877–1948), the first chancellor of Hebrew ­University, Horovitz wrote: I was sorry to read in the paper that Mohamed ‘Ali (the leader of the ­K hilafat movement), who is an old acquaintance of mine and with whom I had a talk only a few weeks ago, was not allowed to enter Palestine; he is anything but anti-Jewish … of course he is a very outspoken anti-Imperialist and … against political Zionism.42 In various newspaper articles and talks about “the Arab question,” H ­ orovitz often criticizes the fear mongering of some Europeans regarding pan-­ Islamic movements, a position which may relate to his acquaintance with Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali was an outspoken critic of the European staff at the M.A.O. and he argued that the envisioned Muslim University at Aligarh should not rely on European teaching and administrative staff. However, Muhammad Ali apparently considered Horovitz a valuable member of the college. An anecdote from another obituary of Horovitz illustrates this point. A footnote in the obituary, published in the Frankfurt Jewish community’s newspaper, reports that following a 1931 lecture on Jewish-Arab relations, Horovitz recounted a conversation he had with Muhammad Ali, as Horovitz was preparing to vacate his position at Aligarh and return to Germany. According to Horovitz, regarding the matter of who should replace him at Aligarh, Muhammad Ali said “take care that … [your replacement] is also a Jew!”43 Apparently, Mohammad Ali thought that if the college had to hire another European Arabist, a Jew would be better than a non-Jew. But while Horovitz used the anecdote to emphasize Jewish–Muslim affinity, the obituary footnote continues: “a few weeks ago Mohammed Ali died, [and] he was not interred in his homeland but in the mosque of ‘Umar in Jerusalem, the contemporary center of anti-Jewish politics.”44 For the editor of the newspaper, Horovitz’s anecdote, in conjunction with Muhammad Ali’s 1931 anti-Zionism, is characteristic of “the transformation in Jewish-Arab relations,” that is to say, what the editor perceived as the deterioration of those relations between 1915, the year Horovitz left India, and 1931, the year both Horovitz and Muhammad Ali died.45 The editor sees Muhammad Ali’s opposition to Zionism, and his interment in Jerusalem (at the invitation of the Mufti, Amin al-Husseini) as being at odds with Muhammad Ali’s previous desire for another Jewish professor of Arabic at Aligarh. But Horovitz himself did not see Muhammad Ali’s politics as anti-Jewish, as his 1928 letter to Magnes shows. For Horovitz, Muhammad

176  Ruchama Johnston-Bloom Ali’s political opposition to Zionism did not necessarily negate the connection between Muslims and Jews. So what did these experiences in India mean for Horovitz? His book, India under British Rule, in which he outlines the impoverishment and exploitation India suffered at the hands of the British and argues that England can no longer exploit India as it once did, earned him his reputation as an anti-imperialist.46 However, it is important to remember that German Orientalists tended to support the German war effort by critiquing British colonial rule, engaging in what Suzanne Marchand has called “Schadenfreude Orientalism.”47 Be that as it may, in India under British Rule, Horovitz warns that the days of British rule are limited: “everywhere in these regions, the belief in the naturalness of European foreign rule is shaken and the desire for autonomy awakes.”48 His awareness of this desire for autonomy also shaped his thinking on British and Zionist activities in Palestine. Additionally, having witnessed the campaign for a Muslim University and the important role education had played in the ongoing fight for independence, Horovitz also imagined Oriental Studies at Hebrew University as contributing to the rejuvenation of the East.

Jerusalem Though he did not spend substantial amounts of time in Jerusalem, Horovitz and his students played a decisive role in “transplanting” German-Jewish Orientalism to Palestine.49 In Palestine/Israel, S. D. Goitein and Yosef Yo’el R ­ ivlin, two of his students, in particular established dynamic careers that reached beyond the academy to shape educational policy in the Yishuv more broadly.50 Perhaps the most lasting impact Horovitz had on Hebrew University was his instigation of two large research projects, a concordance of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry and an edition of an important early Islamic history.51 Just as the ­A rabic school idea at Aligarh came in for criticism for not being practical enough, these projects at Hebrew University also received some criticism for being nonutilitarian.52 But they were in keeping with the philological Orientalist scholarship of the time, and they were, at least in part, conceptualized as providing opportunities to create academic ties with Arab scholars in the region.53 The poetry concordance project, for example, was seen as providing opportunities to collaborate with Arab scholars. In 1928, the Anglo-Jewish Arabist Levi Billig reported to Magnes during the international congress of Orientalists in London that he had spoken with some Egyptian scholars who were working on an ­A rabic dictionary about giving them access to the concordance. Billig writes that he thinks that Magnes might be able to further this project on his [Magnes’] trip to Cairo: “it would be satisfactory if we established relations with the learned world of Cairo, which is looked up to by Moslems in Palestine.”54 This reveals that he is highly aware of the symbolic value of collaborating with Egyptian intellectuals.55 In general, in his plans for Islamic Studies at Hebrew University, Horovitz emphasized collaboration with Arab intellectuals. For instance, he proposed that

“Dieses wirklich westöstlichen Mannes”  177 the Hebrew University scholarly journal should accept articles in Arabic as well. He also wanted to treat Arabic as a living language, which he earlier advocated at the M.A.O. College. From the very beginning, he suggested having an Arab scholar to teach modern Arabic literature. In May 1925, he wrote a memorandum regarding the proposed Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies that treated potential directors for the school, the necessity of employing an Arab scholar, the possibility of also employing Arab shayks to teach traditional branches of Islamic science, and the development of the Institute’s library.56 In the memo, he makes the case for teaching modern Arabic literature by arguing that Hebrew University should not adopt the model of European schools where Arabic has become merely a “classical language.” Rather, he is interested in maintaining ties with contemporary, living Arabic. He writes: As in Egypt and Syria, also in Palestine, if not also in the same high quantity, written Arabic is a means of expressing the highest intellectual life of the present. The full disassociation of the scientific research of the Arabic language and its literature from a connection to the contemporary literary movement is neither natural nor desirable.57 It was with this end in mind that he suggested inviting the Egyptian Taha ­Hussein (1889–1973) or the Syrian Muhammad Kurd ‘Ali (1876–1953) to teach in Jerusalem. However, an Arab scholar was not actually hired, and Rivlin, who had grown up in Jerusalem, was eventually asked to teach Arabic.58 As indicated in his writings about British India, Horovitz thought that education was vitally important to national movements and to the awakening of the East. This insistence on the connection between education and awakening links his work in and on India and Palestine. Just like his plans for Arabic at Aligarh, Horovitz envisioned the School of Oriental Studies at Hebrew University as bringing enlightenment to the East. Yet, due in part to his time in India, he was aware of the complexity of this endeavor, and his writings on the university take into account Arab opposition to Zionism. This can be seen in an article that Horovitz wrote for the Frankfurter ­Zeitung about the university.59 In the article, Horovitz contextualizes the Hebrew University project by comparing Hebrew University to other universities in the region. Presenting a taxonomy of Middle Eastern universities, Horovitz first contrasts new institutions like Hebrew University to older institutions like alAzhar and then divides the new institutions into two groups: those that owe their existence to foreigners and teach in foreign languages and those that are supported nationally and teach in national languages. In Horovitz’s schema, the American University of Beirut belongs to former group and the Egyptian University to the latter group. Hebrew University, according to Horovitz, falls somewhere in between these two models. It is administered from abroad (at least temporarily) but it teaches primarily in the national language of the country: Hebrew.60 This taxonomy of universities interestingly notes how each university is situated vis-à-vis colonial power.

178  Ruchama Johnston-Bloom In the Frankfurter Zeitung article, Horovitz criticizes the decision to invite Lord Balfour to the Hebrew University inauguration. He writes that the Arabs had not generally been supportive of the fledgling university and that Balfour’s presence had made this worse.61 On his way to the inauguration, Horovitz stopped in Egypt, and according to Magnes, once Horovitz arrived in Jerusalem, he reported: Egyptian scholars are … now definitely hostile. The university has political aspect in their eyes now. Only help for this is over a number of years to do useful scholarly work, particularly in language, literature, cultural of the east. The Jews [are] the tool of imperialism.62 In his Frankfurter Zeitung article, Horovitz blames the British for breaking the promises they made regarding Arab independence during WWI, and he blames the Zionist leadership for their support of British imperialism. However, he concludes that Hebrew University cannot be held responsible for this; and he hopes the School of Oriental Studies can help build bridges. Oriental Studies is thus understood as playing a reconciliatory role between Zionism and Arab nationalism. Horovitz’s vision for Arab-Jews reconciliation and cooperation has been credited as the inspiration for the founding of Brit Shalom. While in Palestine for the inauguration of Hebrew University in 1925, Horovitz was in contact with those who would go on to found the group. On April 26, he gave a talk at Arthur Ruppin’s house, which Ruppin described as follows: It was very instructive and very much the opposite to the agenda that the Austrian journalist Dr. Wolfgang von Weisl developed yesterday evening for about 20 guests at my house. Horovitz wants to bring Jews and Arabs together to work, Weisl wants to direct the Jews as pioneers of Europe [to make] outposts in Asia against the Arabs.63 In Ruppin’s description of Horovitz’s talk, Horovitz’s vision for Jewish activity in Palestine is presented as an alternative to Weisl’s unambiguously colonial vision. Although the precise significance of Horovitz to the founding of Brit Shalom has been debated, his emphasis on Arab and Jewish cooperation is quite similar to the group’s ideas.64 What both the Frankfurter Zeitung article and Horovitz’s talk at Ruppin’s house show is Horovitz’s readiness to think about the Yishuv as situated in and part of the Middle East, as opposed to an outpost of Europe in Palestine. I suggest that this readiness stems in part from his own history of interaction and engagement with Arab and Muslim intellectuals, starting in India.

Conclusion Horovitz’s time at the M.A.O. College, his firsthand experience with pan-­ Islamic and anti-imperialist movements, and his contact with such figures as Muhammad Ali put him in a position to be able to realistically assess M ­ uslim responses to the Zionist movement and the British policy in Mandatory Palestine.

“Dieses wirklich westöstlichen Mannes”  179 The time he spent at Aligarh may have also caused him to emphasize Hebrew University’s location in the Mashriq and to want to take advantage of that location to engage with contemporary Arab and Islamic thought. Far from being the inconsequential philological study of pre-modern Islamic texts, when practiced in both British India and Mandatory Palestine, Orientalism took on symbolic significance. At both the M.A.O. College and Hebrew University, the study of Arabic literature and history was politicized and conceived of as serving specific functions: in the case of India, producing a particular kind of Muslim and connecting Indians to the wider Islamic world, and in the case of Palestine, producing students who could help revitalize Islamic civilization via scholarship and engagement. For Horovitz, Jewish Orientalists in Palestine could provide the conduit through which a revitalized Arab world could engage in dialogue with European thought. As far as Horovitz’s reception in the Mashriq and India, his work has not been particularly influential. However, the fact that he produced (still relevant) detailed philological studies and did not entirely follow Goldziher and Schacht regarding hadıˉth criticism means that his work has been taken up by scholars like ˙ Muhammad Mustafa Azami, who are interested in borrowing from European scholarship to defend more traditional Islamic understandings of the early development of Islam. In this way, the reception of Horovitz’s scholarship, like to his own educational and political endeavors during his lifetime, points toward the possibility of building bridges between the West and Islam, between Muslim and Jew.

Notes 1 Ethan B. Katz, Lisa Moses Leff, and Maud S. Mandel, “Introduction: Engaging Colonial History and Jewish History,” in Colonialism and the Jews, ed. Ethan B. Katz, Lisa Moses Leff, and Maud S. Mandel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 1. 2 Ibid., 2. 3 See, for example, Menahem Milson, “The Beginnings of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,” Judaism 45, no. 2 (1996): 169–183 and Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, “The Transplantation of Islamic Studies from Europe to the Yishuv and Israel,” in The Jewish Discovery of Islam, ed. Martin Kramer (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1999), 249–260. 4 David N. Myers, “A New Scholarly Colony in Jerusalem: The Early History of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University,” Judaism 45, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 142–158. 5 The most comprehensive study of Brit Shalom is Shalom Ratsabi, Between Zionism and Judaism: The Radical Circle in Brith Shalom, 1925–1933 (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 6 For more on Markus Horovitz, see Gudrun Jäger, “Für die Einheitsgemeinde: Markus Horovitz (1844–1910), Orthodoxer Rabbiner in Frankfurt am Main,” Tribüne; Zeitschrift zum Verständnis des Judentums 171 (2004): 195–202 and Renate Heuer, “Markus Horovitz,” in Lexikon deutsch-jüdischer Autoren, vol. 12 (München: Saur, 1992–2012), 265–271. His mother, Auguste Ettlinger (1851–1920), was the granddaughter of Jacob Ettlinger (1781–1871), an important Orthodox opponent of the nascent Reform movement. Ettlinger’s students included both Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888) and Azriel Hildesheimer (1820–1899), two of the most significant

180  Ruchama Johnston-Bloom architects of Modern Orthodoxy. (Josef Horovitz’s elder brother, Jakob Horovitz [1873–1939], followed their father into the rabbinate and is an interesting figure in his own right, participating in the Babel-Bibel Streit.) For more on Jacob Ettlinger, see Judith Bleich, “Rabbi Jacob Ettlinger and the movement for counter-reform,” Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division B: History of the Jewish People (1981): 85–89. For more information on Jakob Horovitz, see Renate Heuer, “Jakob Horovitz,” Lexikon deutsch-jüdischer Autoren, vol. 12 (München: Saur, 1992–2012), 259–261. 7 His dissertation was on the Kitab al-Maghazi of al-Waqidi (Maghazi literature [­accounts of Muhammad’s military campaigns] is often considered a key source for the biography of the prophet and the dawn of Islam) and his Habilitationsschrift, which I will discuss further, was on the earliest historical literature of the Arabs. Under the direction of Sachau, he also edited two volumes of the important biographical dictionary of Ibn Sa‘d (d. 230/845), Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kubra. Lawrence I. Conrad, introduction to The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet and their Authors, by Josef Horovitz, ed. Lawrence I. Conrad (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 2002), xxi. On Ibn Sa‘d and his biographical dictionary see J. W. Fück, “Ibn Sa‘d,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Brill Online, 2013), accessed 1 September 2016, http://ezproxy. library.nyu.edu:2090/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_3343. 8 Gudrun Jäger, “Josef Horovitz—Ein jüdischer Islamwissenschafter an der Universität Frankfurt und der Hebrew University of Jerusalem,” in “Im vollen Licht der Geschichte”: die Wissenschaft des Judentums und die Anfänge der kritischen Koranforschung, ed. Dirk Hartwig et al. (Würzburg: Ergon, 2008), 117–130. 9 S. D. Goitein, “Josef Horovitz,” Islam 22 (1935): 122–127. 10 Josef Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen (Berlin und Leipzig: W. de Gruyter & Co., 1926). 11 Horovitz argued that the isna ˉd, which became such a pivotal instrument of Hadıˉth ˙ criticism, was based on a model used within Jewish schools in the Talmudic period. 12 See Angelika Neuwirth, “Orientalism in Oriental Studies? Qur’anic Studies as a Case in Point,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 9 (2007): 115–127. 13 Susannah Heschel, “The Rise of German Imperialism and the German Jewish Engagement in Islamic Studies,” in Colonialism and the Jews, ed. Ethan B. Katz, Lisa Moses Leff, and Maud S. Mandel (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2017), 72. 14 Muhammad Ali and his brother Shaukat Ali (1873–1938) were leaders of the Khilafat movement and alumni of the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College. See M. Raisur Rahman, “‘We can leave neither’: Mohamed Ali, Islam and Nationalism in colonial India,” South Asian History and Culture 3, no. 2 (2012): 254–268. 15 On the reception of Goldziher and Schacht, see Josef van Ess, “Goldziher as a Contemporary of Islamic Reform,” in Goldziher Memorial Conference, June 21–22, 2000, ed. Éva Apor and István Ormos (Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2005), 37–50. 16 Herbert Berg, The Development of Exegesis in Early Islam : The Authenticity of Muslim Literature from the Formative Period (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000), 38. 17 Ibid., 23. 18 A major controversy regarding the authenticity of pre-Islamic poetry erupted in 1926 when the Egyptian Taha Hussein (1889–1973) published On Pre-Islamic Poetry, in which he drew on Orientalist scholarship and called into question the authenticity of the poetry. See Donald Malcolm Reid, “Cairo University and the Orientalists,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 19, no. 1 (February, 1987): 66–68. 19 Al-Maghazi al-ulá wa-muallifuha, trans. Husayn Nassˉar (Misr: Maktabat Mustafá ˙˙ ˙ al-Babi al-Halabi, 1949). 20 Sirat-i nabvi ki ibtadai kitaben aur unkke muallifin, trans. Nisar Ahmad Faruqi (­Dehli: Idarah-yi Adabiyat-i Dilli, 1974). 21 Islâmi tarihçiligin dogusu: ilk siyer/megâzi eserleri ve müellifleri, trans. Ramazan ­A ltinay and Ramazan Özmen (Ankara: Ankara Okulu, 2002).

“Dieses wirklich westöstlichen Mannes”  181 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41

4 2

43

“Introductory Remarks,” Islamic Culture 1 (1927): i. Conrad, introduction to The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet, xxix. Ibid. Conrad, introduction to The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet, xxx. Du ˉ rıˉ, ‘Abd ­a l-‘Azıˉz, The Rise of Historical Writing among the Arabs, ed. and trans. by Lawrence I. Conrad (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). Horovitz did not however claim that an early starting point meant they were accurate. See Fayyad’s website: http://www.nabilfayad.com/, accessed 02 September 2016. Gotthold Weil, “Josef Horovitz zum Gedächtnis,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 5 (1931): 328 (translation my own). Qtd. in S. Irfan Habib “Reconciling Science with Islam in 19th Century India,” Contributions to Indian Sociology 34, no. 63 (2000): 71. Also see pages 68–79 for a discussion of Sayyid Ahmad’s reconciliation of modern science and Islam. Hafeez Malik, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Muslin Modernization in India and Pakistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980). Aziz Ahmed, Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan 1857-1964 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 131. Horovitz himself would repeatedly write about the ongoing debate regarding what languages should be taught in India. In the 1830s, Lord Macaulay had famously won the debate between the “Orientalists” and the “Anglicists” over what the language of instruction should be in schools supported by the British in India. This debate revolved around introducing English at the expense of the “classical” languages of Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit. On the Orientalists and the Anglicists, see Richard King, Orientalism and Religion (New York: Routledge, 1999), 87–90. Horovitz was a strong critic of Lord Macaulay, writing that “in his utter lack of understanding for the values of India’s past Macaulay proves himself a typical representative of progressive, enthusiastic rationalism.” Horovitz, Indien unter britischer Herrschaft (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1928), 62 (translation my own.) Quoted in David Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1977), 206–207. Ibid., 205. Ibid., 156. Ibid. The committee first invited Carl Heinrich Becker, but he turned them down. Dietrich Jung, Orientalists, Islamists and the Global Public Sphere: A Genealogy of the Modern Essentialist Image of Islam (Sheffield: Equinox, 2011), 201. Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental College Calendar 1911–1912 (Allahabad: The Indian Press, 1911), 35. In the calendar, Horovitz and his wife are both thanked for the “keen interest and hospitality they invariable afforded the members” of the Arabic Society. ibid. Mustansir Mir, Coherence in the Qur’a ˉn : A Study of Is la ˉhˉ’s ı Concept of Nazm in ˙ ˙ Tadabbur-I Qur’a ˉn (Indianapolis, IN: American Trust Publications, 1986), 7. ˙ Mustansir Mir, “Elephants, Birds of Prey, and Heaps of Pebbles: Faraˉhıˉ’s Interpretation of Su ˉ urat al-Fıˉl,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 7, no. 1 (2005): 40. Ashraf Faruqi, “European Involvement in the Aligarh Movement: the Role and Influence of the European Faculty in the Social and Political Aspects of the Mohamedan Anglo-Oriental College, 1875–1920,” PhD diss., Duke University, 1978, ProQuest 7821304, 338. Central Archives of the Hebrew University (CAHU), Oriental Studies 1928, folder 91 aleph. Letter, Josef Horovitz to Judah L. Magnes (December 5, 1928). Muhammad ‘Ali had traveled to Europe in 1928. S. Moinul Haq, Mohamed Ali: Life and Work (Karachi: Pakistan Historical Society, 1978), 32. Martin Plessner, “Josef Horovitz: der Orientalist und der Jude,” Gemeindeblatt der Israelitischen Gemeinde Frankfurt am Main 9, no. 7 (1931): 224.

182  Ruchama Johnston-Bloom 4 4 Ibid. 45 Ibid. For an assessment of whether or not those relations had indeed deteriorated, see Neville J. Mandel, The Arabs and Zionism before World War I (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976). 46 Josef Horovitz, Indien unter britischer Herrschaft, 128, 131. 47 Suzanne L. Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (Washington, DC and New York: German Historical Institute, ­Cambridge University Press, 2009), 442. 48 Ibid., 35. 49 Lazarus-Yafeh, “Transplantation of Islamic Studies.” 50 Goitein has worked for the Department of Education in Mandatory Palestine from 1938 to 1948. Students of Horovitz’s who immigrated to Palestine (or who were born there and returned after studying in Frankfurt) include: Shlomo Dov Goitein, Yosef Yo’el Rivlin, Sara Kohn and Israel Ben-Zeev. 51 Al-Baladhuri’s Futuh al-Buldan. For al-Baladhuri and Futuh al-Buldan see, C.  H.  Becker and F. Rosenthal, “al-Baladhuri,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Brill Online, 2013), accessed 01 September 2016, http://ezproxy.library.nyu. edu:2090/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0094. 52 For example, when the Hartog Committee conducted an inquiry into the organization of Hebrew University in 1934, it concluded: whatever one may think about the means that might lead to a better understanding between Jew and Arab, so necessary for the building up of Palestine, it is now quite evident that no Arab will change his political views on the Jewish question because of the preparation by the Hebrew University of a Concordance of Ancient Arabic Poetry. Quoted in Milson, “Beginnings of Arabic and Islamic Studies,” 176 53 These envisioned regional administrative and intellectual connections speak not only to the specific situation in Mandate-era Palestine but also to the international nature of Oriental studies in general. 54 CAHU, Oriental Studies 1938, folder 91 aleph. Letter, Billig to Magnes (December 3, 1928). 55 In 1941, Magnes was still in contact with the Egyptian Consul General about the Arabic dictionary project, as well as proposing an interlibrary loan of sorts between Hebrew University and the Egyptian National Library, and suggesting a lecture exchange between Jerusalem and Cairo. CAHU, Oriental Studies 1941, folder 226. Letter, Magnes to Mahmoud Bey Fawzy, Egyptian Consul General, Jerusalem (July 17, 1941). 56 CAHU, Oriental Studies 1925–1927, folder 91. Josef Horovitz, memorandum (June 14, 1925). Milson argues that Horovitz designed the Institute because he had in mind the British model as a research institute. Horovitz did spend some time in the U.K., but he may also have been applying a British model as refracted through M.A.O. Milson, “Beginnings of Arabic and Islamic Studies,” 73. 57 Ibid. 58 CAHU, Oriental Studies 1934, folder 226. L. A. Mayer, response to the Hartog Committee Report (1934). 59 Josef Horovitz, “Die Universität Jerusalem,” Franfurter Zeitung, August 16, 1925. 60 It is of course interesting that he designates Hebrew, as opposed to Arabic, as the national language of Palestine. 61 Ibid. 62 Judah L. Magnes, Dissenter in Zion: From the Writings of Judah L. Magnes, ed. Arthur A. Goren (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 231–232. 63 Arthur Ruppin, Briefe, Tagebücher, Erinnerungen, ed. Schlomo Krolik (Königstein/ Ts: Jüdischer Verlag, Athenäum, 1985), 367. Wolfgang von Weisl was an important

“Dieses wirklich westöstlichen Mannes”  183 figure in the Revisionist movement. For more on him see Tom Reiss, The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and a Dangerous Life (New York: Random House, 2005), 229, 299–302. 4 For a discussion of different perceptions of Horovitz’s role in inspiring Brit ­Shalom, 6 see Aharon Kedar, “Le-toldoteha shel ‘Brit Shalom’ ba-shanim 1925–1928,” in Pirkei mehkar be-toldot ha-tsiyonut mugashim le-Israel Goldstein be-hagio li-gevurot ­al-yedei talmidei ha-makhon le- yahadut zmanenu u-morav, ed. Yehuda Bauer, Moshe Davis, and Yisrael Kolatt (Jerusalem: The Zionist Library; Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1976), 281–285.

9 Scholarship on Islamic archaeology between Zionism and Arab nationalist movements Mostafa Hussein Introduction Much of the scholarship investigating the relationship between western archaeologists and nationalism in the Middle East has focused on archaeologists’ fascination with revealing the material world of ancient civilizations. This critical scholarship has overlooked both western engagement in Islamic archaeology and its relationship to the regional nationalisms. Previous studies have emphasized, for example, the ideological objectives of western archaeologists whose discovery of the ancient world buried in the Middle East focused primarily, as James F. Goode has argued, on revealing a culture related to the Bible and what was believed to be the root of western civilization.1 In his view, Mario Liverani has argued that western archaeologists stressed a Euro-centered view that “assumed that high culture originated in the Middle East (Egypt and Mesopotamia), then passed to Greece and Rome, the Christian Middle Ages, and up to the western European world of the industrial Revolution.”2 Through the advancement of this Eurocentric view, western archaeologists saw themselves as the heirs of great ancient civilizations. Another understudied issue in the study of ancient archaeology and nationalism in the Middle East is how the discovery of antiquities from the ancient world has advanced the national aspirations of local Arab societies. In the colonial era, Egyptian nationalists, for example, invoked pharaonic times to highlight the glorious past of ancient Egypt and called Egyptians to renew the successes of their ancestors.3 In Israel, the Jewish presence in ancient times, as embodied in Masada, was invoked as well so as to stress Jewish sovereignty over a disputed land.4 The question of how local nationalists in the Middle East interacted with Islamic archaeological artifacts in advancing national identity has been overlooked as well. The present study on nationalism and archaeology in the Middle East during the first half of the twentieth century examines the reception of western Orientalism by local nationalist elites from the perspective of Islamic archaeology. This fifty-year period witnessed major transformations in Islamic archaeology in the region, and such an approach provides us with a key to understanding political and cultural developments during these critical years. The analysis will

Scholarship on Islamic archaeology  185 revolve around the reception of Leo Mayer’s archaeological work by Jewish and Arab nationalist elites in Mandatory Palestine and in Egypt. This discussion will reveal how the field of Islamic archaeology was intertwined with the agenda of local nationalist elites, albeit for variegated ends. The analysis of Mayer’s work and his reception by local nationalist elites will serve as a prism through which we can learn about the ways in which Islamic archaeology was seized and tamed to support the advancement of nationalist objectives. This paper argues that Mayer’s scholarly corpus was received in a nationalist context in which the desire to build a connection with the past was coupled with a passion for science and professionalism in the Middle East. James F. Goode has highlighted the fact that nationalist elites were successful in exercising control over archaeological affairs in many parts of the Middle East despite the overwhelming agency ascribed to western powers and their institutions in the developing world before WWII.5 Given his identity as a Jewish nationalist and a scholar of archaeology, it is interesting to view Mayer’s work on Islamic material culture as a window to the growth of movements that appropriated aspects of the Islamic past in order to advance certain instrumental agendas within different nationalistic contexts in the region. Exploring the reception of Mayer’s archaeological scholarly corpus in Palestine/Israel and Egypt will elucidate how Mayer’s scholarship was useful in the quest of Middle Eastern nationalists to build a connection to the past through archaeological evidence from the Islamic era. Analysis of the reception of Mayer’s work will also provide insight into the development of local nationalism at the hands of elite nationalists whose activities have often been overlooked. On the one hand, this chapter will provide a microscopic analysis and an intensive study of Mayer’s scholarly activities and his intellectual formation. On the other, it will reveal the connection between local communities in the Middle East in accordance with the process by which intellectual elites selected events from the Islamic past for modern appropriation. It should be made clear at the outset that, although I am providing an analysis of Mayer’s engagement with Islamic art and archaeology, I do not wish to address his scholarly activities and the reception thereof by Arab intellectuals in Palestine and Egypt using a cause-and-effect framework. Rather, I wish to highlight the fact that different views coexisted and to provide an interpretive perspective for the circumstances that governed and motivated the appropriation of certain episodes from the Islamic past by emergent territorial-bound nationalist movements in Palestine/Israel and Egypt. Mayer’s hybrid identity is perhaps the underlying reason for choosing him to be the protagonist of this story. Various aspects of his identity facilitated the dissemination of his views on the Islamic past within intellectual circles in different nations. His Zionism played a crucial role in the acceptance of his work by members of the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine and later the state of Israel. However, his moderate Jewishness coupled with his political views on the question of Palestine and the future of Palestinians also enabled reception of his work among Palestinian intellectuals. Meanwhile, his western academic training and upbringing brought him closer to the attention of Egyptian intellectuals.

186  Mostafa Hussein Making his scholarship accessible to an English-reading audience pitted him against mainstream Zionism, which advocated for the use of Hebrew as the national language. Furthermore, his passion for rigorous scholarship allowed his views to travel without being confined to one region. In this regard, Mayer was among those who called for the construction of a “Jerusalem School” that, to borrow David Myer’s phrase, elevated “the wissenschafliche standards of Jewish scholarship,” at the nascent Hebrew University in Jerusalem.6

Respectful reception Mayer’s contribution to the study of Islamic art and architecture was received in the Arab world with respect. In his answer to Edward Said’s Orientalism, S. D. Goitein (1900–1985) points out that “a western Arabist is often slandered as subservient to imperialism and colonialism and as detracting from the glory of the Arabs and their unique place in history.”7 On the contrary, as Goitein further says, an Orientalist who made “a substantial contribution to Islamic and Arabic studies was received in the East as a friend, treated with respect, and, in some cases, even received in reverence.”8 In Goitein’s view, Mayer’s contribution to Islamic art and history was one of these examples: Mayer was a student of Islamic art in all its manifestations. He published annual bibliographies on Islamic art and archaeology, a bibliography of Islamic numismatics, and in 1933 a magnificent volume on Islamic heraldry, thus enriching Islamic studies with a new field of study. These activities brought Mayer into direct contact with practically each and every person and institution in the world related somehow to Islamic art and history… His Arabic, French, German, and, of course, English and Hebrew were impeccable – and so was his comportment.9 Goitein’s assessment of Mayer is worth noting because they both knew each other well since they had studied ancient Near Eastern and Islamic Studies under the mentorship of the German archaeologist and Iranologist Ernst Herzfeld (1879– 1948) and the German Orientalist Carl Heinrich Becker (1876–1933) in Berlin.10 By taking Goitein’s observation a step further, in what follows I will explain how Mayer’s work contributed to the nationalist narrative that raised the consciousness of Arabic-speaking audiences about the past. Putting the Arab encounter with Mayer’s work in the intellectual context of the period from 1924 to the 1950s, I argue that Mayer’s scholarly corpus was instrumental in the construction of nationalist culture in Mandatory Palestine and Egypt. In Palestinian intellectual circles, his theories on Arab arts contributed to the advancement of the Arabness of Palestinian identity. In the circles of the Egyptian intelligentsia, his scholarship on Mamluk arts contributed to the process of constructing an integrative Egyptian culture bound to the land of Egypt. First, we will explore the ways in which Palestinian nationalist intellectuals became interested in Mayer’s work on Islamic art and archaeology.

Scholarship on Islamic archaeology  187

Intellectual and academic formation Leo Ary Mayer (1895–1959)11 was born in the city of Stanisławów, Galicia, then in Austria-Hungary (now renamed Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine), to an eminent rabbinical Hasidic family. He studied Oriental art at the Universities of Lausanne and Berlin and earned his doctorate in 1917 at the University of Vienna where he focused on Muslim urban architecture. Mayer’s intellectual growth and engagement with Islamic art and archaeology took place under the Austria-Hungarian monarchy before his immigration to Mandatory Palestine, and therefore it is of relevance to highlight the monarchy’s interest in the Orient and how that may have influenced Mayer’s intellectual formation. According to Robert Lemon, the Austria-Hungarian monarchy’s objectives for Orientalism differed from those of its counterpart in Britain and France because they focused on self-critique and self-orientalization rather than domination of other non-western societies.12 First of all, the geographical location of the monarchy between East and West made the Österreich (the eastern empire) a gateway between Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, its unique location resulted in the absorption of a multiethnic population, the majority of whom originated in Eastern European and Asian countries. In addition, unlike other European powers such as France and Britain whose imperialism represented the expansion of their ideology in their colonies overseas, Austria-Hungary’s imperialism adopted by its authorities was considered to be a domestic matter that repressed the various nationalist ideologies of its diverse population. That population encompassed multiple ethnicities, including Slavs, Jews, and Muslims.13 The aforementioned factors lumped together, Lemon has concluded, influenced the work of Austrian Orientalists who tended “toward self-critique and thereby subvert[ed] the fundamental dichotomy between East and West found in controversial Orientalism.”14 Because, as a Jew, Mayer was himself an ethnic minority, we should evaluate his interest in the pursuit of Arabic and Islamic studies as a means of self-understanding that was linked with a sense of sympathy for other ethnic minorities in Habsburg, a perspective that would become clear when he settled in Mandatory Palestine. At the Oriental Institute of the University of Vienna, Mayer chose to integrate Jewish and Middle Eastern studies. From the very beginning of his studies, he concentrated on Islamic art. He studied at the University of Vienna under the mentorship of a substantial number of Orientalists whose scholarly interests were focused on archaeology and the Middle East. He studied art with the art historian Joseph Strzygowski (1862–1941), Akkadian with the Czech archaeologist and linguist Friedrich Hrozny (1879–1952), paleography with the leading personality in the field of Arabic papyrology Joseph Karabacek (1845–1918), Turkish and Persian with the scholar of oriental languages Maximillian Bittner (1869–1918), Arabic with Rudolf Eugen Geyer (1861–1929), Persian with the scholar of Persian and Indian philology Bernard Geiger (1881–1964), and Bible with Harry Torczyner (1886–1973) who later Hebraized his name to become Naphtali Herz Tur-Sinai.15 Dissatisfied with the knowledge he had accumulated

188  Mostafa Hussein in oriental languages, Mayer decided to join the Oriental Academy, a professional school that maintained very close ties with the University of Vienna and whose aim was to train young and promising students in the languages and culture of the Orient in an intense way.16 Following the war between Ukraine and Poland in eastern Galicia, Mayer moved to Berlin in 1920 and worked as an assistant in the Orientalist section of the State Library under the directorship of Gotthold Weil (1882–1960), who was originally German Jewish but later became an Israeli Orientalist. The economic situation, his illness, and his care for his mother motivated Mayer to explore opportunities in Palestine under the British government. His salary, which he received in devalued currency, however, did not allow him to pay for both his own and his mother’s trip to Palestine. After Mayer consulted with his mentor Naphtali Herz Tur-Sinai (1886–1973), who at the time was a lecturer at the High School for Jewish Studies in Berlin, Tur-Sinai decided to give Mayer “word-lists for a dictionary of Palestinian spoken Arabic” to complete, and they made a deal with Benjamin Harz, a Jewish publisher in Berlin. Harz, in turn, made an advance payment on that dictionary, an enterprise that never actually materialized, to finance not only Mayer’s journey but also his mother’s.17 Finally, he emigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1921. Thanks to recommendation letters to Herbert ­Samuel, the High Commissioner, he was appointed a supervisor in the Antiquities Department of the Mandate government. In 1933, Mayer was appointed a professor in the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.18

Work on Islamic art and archaeology Mayer’s interest in Islamic artistic and archaeological monuments was sparked as early as the beginning of his scholarly trajectory. Enrolled at the University of Vienna at the end of 1917, Mayer earned his doctorate for a dissertation entitled, Studien zum islamischen Stadtebau (Studies on Muslim Urban Architecture).19 His interests in the field of Islamic art and archaeology centered mainly on the investigation of the “creative” spirit of Islamicate civilization and, occasionally, on the manifestation of Jewish art within the Islamic orbit.20 In his pursuit of Islamic art and archaeology, Mayer developed a framework capable of revealing what he describes in Hebrew as the spirit of Islamic archaeology (ha-ruh shel ha-archaeologiah ha-muslimit). That ruah (spirit) of the material culture encompasses the aesthetic values that manifest themselves partially in the ornamentation and the paleography of the uncovered materials, but also often in the integration of paradoxical intellectual forces whose combined efforts led to the creation of a magnificent civilization.21 His desire to explore the spirit of Islamic archaeology emanates from his conceptualization of Islamic civilization and its development. From his point of view, Islam was not spread by force. In his words: The Islamic conquest during the righteous caliphs is usually disfigured as a great battle that brought only destruction to the civilized world and that

Scholarship on Islamic archaeology  189 suggested to the people of the conquered lands one of two options: either converting to Islam or death. That [history of] Islamic conquest, which has been distorted because of studies and new excavation, appears to be different.22 He considers the view that the spread of Islam came at the cost of the destruction of the material culture of the conquered territories to be a distortion caused by several studies and excavations.23 He further explains how Arab conquerors preserved the material culture of the local population: “In fact, Muslims maintained the order in the conquered territories, including administration, language, and coins, and they retained only high political and military positions.”24 Another reason for the slow process of mixing with the local population is that the “Arabs found pride in their noble lineage; therefore they abstained from intermingling with the indigenous population, for they were worried about the decline of their social status if they did so.”25 Islam as a religion or culture did not force itself on the native population who, in his perspective, “maintained their religion and culture and had not faced obstacles whatsoever.”26 The spread of Islam was through the spread of Arabic. In his words, “Over the course of time, nonetheless, Arabic penetrated the various social strata of the local population and triumphed over Greek and Coptic.”27 Seen in this light, unearthed monuments or objects from the Islamic era do not necessarily bear the stamp of a homogeneous culture. The aesthetics of Islamic art and archaeology itself seem, in the assessment of Mayer, to emanate from the participation of Muslim and non-Muslim subjects alike. Mayer’s aesthetic approach not only considers Islamic artistic and archaeological subjects from historical, sociological, and descriptive points of view, but also endeavors to understand the conceptualization and the forms of works of art. Mayer’s studies on Islamic art are laborious and painstaking. In his review of Mamluk Costumes, Eliyahu Ashtor (1914–1984) remarks that Mayer adheres in his work to the rule “imprimature nonum in annum” (to publish in the ninth year), referring to the long periods of time he would spend working on his research before publication.28 An example of his scholarly contribution is Saracenic Heraldry (1952). In this work, Mayer includes a list of all those in Egypt and Syria who were known for having had coats of arms and whose coats are known, from the beginning of the custom of bearing arms until the determination of the Mamluk rule in Egypt by the Ottomans in 1517. Saracenic Heraldry shows Mayer’s mastery of Arabic and Islamic sources by including vivid description of the armorial bearings, their bearers, and whenever possible a short historical account of their lives. As a contemporary reviewer of the work, Arthur Stanley Tritton (1881–1973), the British Orientalist and historian of Islam, attests that much labour has gone to the making of this record; manuscripts in many libraries and printed books have been ransacked to provide the history of everyone named in it, so that it can take its place worthily among the Tabakat.29 ˙

190  Mostafa Hussein That monumental work also receives the praise of the same reviewer when he imagines that, if the great Muslim scholar al-Tabari could read such industrious work, he would cry out with joy because “the zeal for learning is not dead.”30

Zionism and Islamic archaeology In the introduction to the Hebrew version of Alf Laylah wa-Laylah (One Thousand and One Nights), Yosef Yo’el Rivlin acknowledges Leo Mayer’s advice to preserve the original work as much as possible and to make the translation correspond to the sources from which it is drawn. Prior to approaching Mayer, Rivlin had wanted to insert illustrations reminiscent of those that appeared in editions published in Arabic and western translations of the Arabian Nights. However, Mayer’s perspective changed Rivlin’s plans. Such illustrations, according to Mayer, “do not develop from the sources in which the work originates, and therefore they should not be inserted.”31 That is to say, the illustrations do not reflect the cultural and artistic contexts of the Arabic text. Rivlin’s decision to seek advice from Mayer attests to Mayer’s authoritative position as a scholar of Islamic art and also indicates the extent to which Mayer was influential within the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine – a position he continued to occupy even in the statehood era. This anecdote also shows Mayer’s passion for introducing a translation that accurately represented the culture of the Orient as imbued in One Thousand and One Nights. Therefore, in his view, the ornaments and illustrations that decorated the book’s cover should also reflect the characteristics of Oriental art. This story also demonstrates how Mayer and his archaeological scholarly corpus were perceived in the context of Jewish nationalism. Mayer was a Zionist who combined his love of learning about Islamic culture with his nationalist aspirations.32 Contrary to contemporary Jewish scholars of Islam, who attempted to reconstruct Islamic history based on literary sources,33 Mayer made use of material objects from Mandatory Palestine and adjacent areas to reconstruct Islamic history with an emphasis on the aesthetic aspects of Islamicate civilization. His scholarly approach in Islamic art and archaeology brought him to the fore of Jewish archaeologists, particularly those in Palestine/Israel, whose work focused on Jewish material culture. Mayer’s contemporaries dedicated their efforts to the excavation of the Jewish past as it is depicted in biblical and rabbinic accounts as well as in secular Jewish literary texts.34 He, however, looked for the Islamic past buried under the land of Palestine and its neighboring countries. To thoroughly understand that Islamic past, he conducted surveys of the Land that relied on historical texts available either as printed books or as manuscripts of Islamic chronicles. Mayer’s passion for the pursuit of Islamic archaeology and his emphasis on wissenschaftliche standards in his scholarship drew him closer to Arabs and concomitantly attracted the attention of Zionist leaders. Hoping to gain respect and appreciation among Arabs in the region, Judah Leon Magnes (1877–1948), the first chancellor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, recruited Jewish scholars

Scholarship on Islamic archaeology  191 educated in western universities in Arabic and Islamic studies. According to Goitein, Magnes was fortunate to find a mind of the highest qualities, and entirely to his taste, in Leo Ary Mayer, who came to Palestine in 1921 and served in the Archaeological Department of the Government during the first eleven years of his stay in the country.35 Mayer’s affiliation with the Zionist enterprise in Palestine raises questions regarding the connection between his intellectual pursuits and the construction of the history of Palestine under Islamic rule. It is common knowledge that Zionism and archaeology have been close allies since the early years of the twentieth century.36 Archaeology of the Holy Land was crucial to constructing Jewish identity throughout the pre-statehood era, and it continued to fill this role following the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948. Yet, despite the great importance given to Jewish archaeology, Jewish nationalists showed limited interest in Islamic archaeology during Mandatory times. Arab intelligentsia, however, were suspicious of Mayer’s interest in Islamic archaeology because they feared any attempt to Judaize the Land by Jewish scholars studying the archaeology of Palestine and highlighting the Jewish presence within the Islamic past. In fact, Mayer devoted a number of articles to discussing the efflorescence of Jewish art in Islamic lands.37 Also, he contributed several articles arguing for the Jewish identity of individual craftsmen whose names do not appear on the artifacts themselves. Nevertheless, this kind of research can be seen as evidence of the construction of a multiethnic shared past in Islamic civilization. This interpretation is more reasonable in view of Mayer’s explicit binationalist sentiments that supported the Arab and the Jewish cause in establishing a binational home in Mandatory Palestine. In addition to his role in the advancement of Islamicate knowledge in Mandatory Palestine, Mayer also held several administrative posts at the Hebrew University, including his posts as Director of the Institute for Oriental Studies, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and later Rector of the University (1943–1945).38 However, on some occasions Mayer demonstrated reluctance to occupy administrative positions, preferring to devote his time and energy to his scientific archaeological research. For instance, he turned down an offer to direct the Institute for Oriental Studies after the sudden death of Josef Horowitz, the first director of the Institute. After correspondence between Mayer and Max Schloessinger, then a member of the university’s board of governors, Mayer accepted the job.39 Mayer’s expertise in Arabic and Islamic studies made him a perfect candidate for the post – someone who could mobilize support for the young institution due to his ties with Jews and non-Jews abroad. In a letter from Max Schloessinger, the deputy chancellor of the Hebrew University, to Mr. Justice Louis D. Brandeis in February 1935, Mayer was introduced as a “professor [who] is a very interesting and delightful man. He knows the Arab world thoroughly and is highly respected amongst learned Arabs.”40

192  Mostafa Hussein Mayer’s acquaintance with Arab individuals gave him precedence over other Jewish Islamicists and Arabists at the Hebrew University who lacked such connections with their Arab counterparts. For many, Mayer’s friendly relationship with learned Arabs gave expression to the view that the Jewish community in Palestine appreciated the Arab population and their cultural heritage. That appreciation advanced as Jewish scholars learned and cultivated Arab culture through instruction in Islamic art and archaeology at the Hebrew University. Due to his connection with Arabs, the university’s administration considered Mayer their best representative in international academic circles where Arabs were expected to participate. For instance, in a letter addressed to the rector and president of the Hebrew University regarding the participation of a delegation from the university in the twenty-­second International Congress of Orientalists held in Turkey in 1951, Mayer’s inclusion in the delegation was considered essential. The urgency of appointing him as a delegate to speak and act on behalf of the Hebrew University was due to three critical factors related to the broader goal of creating a rapprochement between Jews and Arabs through the university and other institutions in the region. First, Mayer was a respected Orientalist and including him among the delegates would indicate the extent to which the Hebrew University appreciated the study of the Orient and various aspects of its culture. Second, Mayer’s expertise in Islam would underline the openness of the Jewish institution to other perspectives. Third, Mayer’s presence would facilitate the acceptance of a group of Jewish scholars by learned Arabs from the Middle East who were expected to participate.41 Everyone knew that the participation of an Israeli delegation in such a conference in the wake of the 1948 war might stir controversy among participating Arab delegates, and it was therefore hoped that the presence of Mayer would lessen the tension.

Jewish participation in Islamic art In line with his approach to revealing the aesthetics of Islamic art and archaeology, Mayer explored Jewish participation in Islamicate civilization. Two main issues guided Mayer in his scholarly investigation of the Jewish artistic past: (1) exploration of the place of Jewish art in the Islamic orbit and (2) discussion of Jewish contributions to Islamic art. Mayer admitted the challenge of finding evidence for Jewish participation in the field of Islamic art in contrast to the fields of Islamic philosophy and medicine. He thus laments the difficulties of attaining such goals by saying: First, we should determine the scope of Jewish art under Islamic rule. Unfortunately, this goal cannot be achieved at the moment given the modest means we have at our disposal. Though it will not be hard to determine the date and the region in which a certain Jewish artistic object was created in one of the Islamic countries, the unfortunate fact is that, if the object does not have Hebrew inscriptions or if it was not of holy Jewish uses, it will not be known for certain whether [this fragment] was a product of a Jew’s hands.42

Scholarship on Islamic archaeology  193 Mayer’s words indicate that cultural exchange did occur between Jews and Muslims. However, proving the transmission of artistic elements from Jewish culture to ­Islamic arts is far from an easy task. In clarifying this point, Mayer adopts a rigorous method that dictates the necessity of detecting Jewish origins either through a Hebrew inscription or the affiliation of the unearthed object with Jewish rituals. Otherwise, determining the Jewishness of a certain object is not conceivable. The integration of Jewish elements in Islamic art without an explicit Jewish fingerprint on specific objects, nonetheless, indicates Jewish adaptation to the majority’s culture, which might have entailed relinquishing the artist’s Jewishness. In this regard, Mayer explains that “[the Jewish artist’s] secular [artistic] production resembled the art of his surroundings.”43 Still, the question remains: under what conditions would a Jewish artist have felt the need to express his Jewishness? In one of his studies, Mayer sees an intercultural engagement in specific aspects of an artifact that incorporates elements from both Jewish and Islamic cultures. In contrast to some previous studies that attest to Jewish contributions to the production of Islamic coinage, Mayer draws attention to the scarcity of research, and sometimes even misleading findings, while highlighting particular forms of participation and possible influences such individuals might have had on Islamic coinage.44 Giving the example of the rule of Muhammad ben ­Tughlaq/Tughluq, a Muslim sultan of Tukic origin who governed Delhi in medieval India from 725 to 752 a.h. (1325–1351 c.e.), Mayer notices the custom of engraving parables and poetic verses on locally circulated coins that were crafted out of brass.45 He identifies a Jewish inscription indicating an expression that originated in Jewish tradition. To explain his opinion, Mayer argues that since the coins in question were locally circulated, a coiner enjoyed greater freedom in stamping them. And given the fact that the expression under discussion is from a Jewish source, the coiner might have been a Jew who incorporated literary elements rooted in ­Jewish rabbinic literature.46 On one side of the coin, as Mayer notices, is a Qur’anic verse (4:59) that exhorts Muslims to obey God, his messenger, and their rulers. The Arabic inscription on the coin’s other side reads: “Laola al-Sultan la-’Akala al-Nasu ba-‘duhum ba‘da”47 (Had it not been for the government [lit. the Sultan of Delhi as the local ruler], people would have fought [lit. eaten] each other). In the second phrase, Mayer detects an Arabized form of a phrase from the rabbinic tractate Avot that reads: “Pray for the welfare of the ruling power, since but for the fear thereof men would engulf one another alive.”48 Without providing a compelling argument about the phrase’s origins in rabbinic Jewish literature, Mayer concludes his article with a rhetorical question regarding the detection of Jewish literary contributions to Islamic numismatics without providing the historical means of such cultural exchange. In Mayer’s words, “How could such an expression from Perkey Avot metamorphose into a phrase engraved in numismatics of a Muslim sultan in Delhi?”49 To Mayer, there are two possibilities: either the saying from the Mishnah was transformed by a Jewish official authorized to do so, or it was borrowed from the Jewish tradition by non-Jewish figures.

194  Mostafa Hussein Mayer and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine If Mayer’s contributions to the study of Islamic art were instrumental for Jewish nationalist intellectuals in constructing the history of the Land of Palestine from a Jewish perspective, his scholarship was no less useful for the advancement of nationalist sentiments by Arab intellectual elites in Palestine who favored his theories on Arab art and Islam. In fact, a limited number of Mayer’s archaeological studies and observations were appropriated, mainly through translation, and contributed to the nationalistic discourse among Palestinian elite by illuminating the creative abilities of Arabs apparent in their production of their own architectural styles long before they came into contact with styles prevalent in other ancient oriental civilizations. Regardless of questions of cause and effect here, there is no doubt that Mayer’s view bolstered the Palestinian ethos, which took pride in its Arab past by highlighting perspectives on Arab creativity. In addition, Mayer’s moderate political views and his collaboration with the British Mandate facilitated the acceptance of his scholarly views among Palestinian intellectuals who were preoccupied with the future of Palestine. After starting his post in 1921 as a senior staff member at the Department of Antiquities of the Government of Palestine, Mayer made friendships with members of the Arab political and cultural elite within and outside Mandatory Palestine.50 Mayer’s binationalistic views and the wissenschaftlich training he had received in Arabic and Islamic studies at western European universities, as well as his own scholarship, gave him credibility not only among Jewish leaders, primarily in the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine), but also in Arab circles. Notwithstanding his Zionist commitments, Mayer from the beginning supported “all moves for an entente with the Arabs, and counted many of them among his friends.”51 Based on the assumption that what was being created in Palestine would determine the character of the Zionist idea, Mayer responded to the critical Arab question with an emphasis on creating a peaceful life for Arabs and Jews alike in Palestine. Mayer was a sympathizer and a supporter of Brith Shalom (the Peace Covenant), a movement of intellectuals that was active in Mandatory Palestine from 1925 to 1931,52 almost all of whose members were born in Germany or within the central European zone of German influence.53 The aim of Brith Shalom, as indicated in its program, was to pave the way for an understanding between Jews and Arabs and the establishment of a binational state.54 On their end, Palestinians did not ignore the activities of Brit Shalom. On the contrary, they supported their efforts to reach peaceful agreement between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, and a number of Palestinians were members of the branch of the association that had opened in Nablus in 1930.55 Mayer’s political contentions regarding the significance of achieving understanding between Arabs and Jews in Palestine is refracted in his scholarly methodology on the study of Islamic art and archaeology. Unlike other archaeological approaches that paid close attention to the information and the data

Scholarship on Islamic archaeology  195 without taking into account the aesthetic aspects of the surveyed or excavated fragments, Mayer viewed these artifacts as the product of a creative spirit and examined them through a humanistic and aestheticizing study. Despite the widespread belief in the early nineteenth century that art and architecture embodied the spirit of past historical epochs and also reflected differences between races and cultures, western archaeologists did hold this belief in accordance with Arab people and their artistic past. In this context, historical knowledge of Islamic art, as Stephen Vernoit has argued, was rudimentary and much Orientalist scholarship believed that “in Arabia, where the Islamic faith originated, artistic traditions were negligible, but after three centuries of expansion, during which Hellenic, Persian and other traditions intermingled, Islamic architecture emerged as a distinct style.”56 This debate within the field of Islamic art and archaeology in the West over whether Arabs developed their own art or did so only after they came into contact with conquered communities had implications within Arab intellectual circles for nationalist aspirations in the Orient. This view, noticeably, is echoed in the work of Egyptian archaeologists. In an article on Coptic influence on Islamic art, Zaki Muhammad Hasan, an Egyptian historian, admits that Arabs before Islam had their own civilization and arts.57 He suggests, however, that the Arab art was outdated to a great extent.58 And, thus, Zaki Hasan argues further, Arab art could not be compared to the flourishing arts of Persians, Byzantines and Egyptians because such nations were living in stability and prosperity, and because the nature of these places did not oblige their inhabitants to live a life of isolation and standstill.59 Only after Arabs had come into contact with the nations of “the civilized world,” such as Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, Hasan further argues, did they develop a rich and astonishing art. In his own words, Had they been left to themselves and remained isolated in the Arabian Peninsula, there never would have appeared to the world the kind of arts the Arabs stamped with their own religion after they took their foundations from the nations with whom they came into contact.60 It is apparent here how the interactions of Arab conquerors with the natives of the “civilized world” – referring to the local population of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq who came under the rule of the Romans and Persians – enabled them to enhance their own culture and art, which was outdated and simple. In contrast to the view that the local populations of conquered countries such as Coptic Egypt had a remarkable effect on Arab culture and art, Mayer advanced a different theory that attested to the presence of a unique kind of art created by Arabs. Mayer battled against views that dispossessed Arabs of their ability to develop their

196  Mostafa Hussein own art, despite the prevalence of such perspectives among western scholars and even the adoption of these view by local Arab intellectuals in Egypt, for example. It is also interesting to see how Palestinian nationalists received Mayer’s theory in the context of shaping the Palestinian identity by stressing the connection between contemporary Palestinians and their Arab past. In Mandatory ­Palestine, noticeably, Mayer’s views were influential in buttressing Arab nationalist sensibilities among Palestinian intellectual elites. Mayer, it should be stressed, adopted a thesis supporting the originality of Arab art that manifested itself in the architecture of Arabs, including both their houses and other buildings. In one of the lectures he gave to the audience of al-Kuklliyah al-’Arabiyyah in Jerusalem, he advanced this view: He who reads what has recently been published finds acceptance of the idea that Arabs did not possess from the beginning [i.e., before the Arab conquest and engagement with the local population in the civilized world]61 a unique kind of art, that Islamic or Arab art, rather, is a mixture of different arts belonging to the local population, that the oldest Islamic buildings were not constructed according to Arab architectural principles and that Arab art did not see the light until later … with the rapid development of Islam and Arab culture.62 Here, Mayer engages with scholarly controversies regarding the place of Arab art in the history of Arabo-Islamic civilization. In contrast to the view Hasan adopted, Mayer supports the existence of Arab art and its uniqueness before the expansion of Islam as well as the view that it continued for some time after encountering indigenous populations. This lecture along with others was translated into Arabic and became available to Arabic-reading audiences in M ­ andatory Palestine.

Palestinian nationalist elite Despite his own nationalistic interests in establishing a national home for ­Jewish newcomers in the Holy Land, Mayer did not deny the connection of the ­Palestinian Arab population to Palestine, nor did he consider that view a contradiction of his nationalistic aspirations in that very Land. Because he believed in a binational state, Mayer’s work aided the consolidation of the Palestinian Arab identity during the British Mandate by advocating a reconciliatory nationalistic enterprise in which both Jews and Arabs would live in and rule over the Land together. The first decade of the Mandate period was as crucial for the emerging Jewish nationalist enterprise as it was for the Palestinian Arab nationalist movement, even though these nationalist interests overlapped in some aspects and differed in others. For Palestinian Arabs, according to Rashid Khalidi, those early years of the British Mandate were crucial for the construction of Palestinian self-consciousness.63 Therefore, understanding the encounter between the Arab intelligentsia and Mayer’s engagement with Arabo-Islamic materials can provide

Scholarship on Islamic archaeology  197 an example of how relations between Arabs and Jews in Palestine were not necessarily contentious. Rather, Mayer’s work is significant as a cultural encounter in which both sides evince an interest in each other. The reception of Mayer’s work, in fact, serves as a testimony to various components of Palestinian nationalist consciousness, such as patriotism, Arabism, religious sentiments (specifically Islamic or Christian), and a high level of literacy among the Palestinian elite. His long list of publications includes a few Arabic articles that he published in cultural journals and newspapers – most likely translations of manuscripts he wrote in English. It is worth mentioning here that nearly all the journals that published his articles played a pivotal role in shaping the Palestinian Arab consciousness. Often, the Arab contributors to these journals were well-versed in western culture, and they incorporated significant aspects of western culture into their Arabic translations. In al-Kulliyah al-‘Arabiyya (The Arab College), Mayer published two articles on Arab architecture. Previously known as Majallat Da ˉr al-Mu’alimıˉn (The Journal of the Male Teachers’ Training School), the journal was the first Palestinian Arab journal published after WWI (October 1, 1920). It was the mouthpiece of the governmental male teachers’ training school established by the British authorities with the aim of preparing elementary school teachers. Notwithstanding the fact that the school was established by the British authorities, its Palestinian Arab administration demonstrated several times against the controversial policies of the British Mandate.64 The topics of the journal were generally pedagogical and cultural in flavor and aimed at illuminating the state of illiteracy among the ranks of Arab youth in Palestine. The journal also included sections aimed at strengthening the link between the school and its alumni. The journal’s contributors were mostly educators of the school who supported the rise of Palestinian Arab nationalism.65 Mayer’s articles were published during the period when the Arab College and its mouthpiece came under the directorship of Ahmad Samih al-Khalidi (1896–1951), a chemist and graduate of the American University of Beirut who belonged to the prominent Jerusalemite family al-Khalidi. Under his administration, the Arab College had developed significantly, and it was one of the few outstanding landmarks of the Palestinian Arab renaissance in Palestine. Samih al-Khalidi believed that the most efficient way to serve the Arab ’ummah (nation) in his time was by spreading “science and peace” in the Arabic language. For him, Arabic ought to be the nationalist language of Palestinian youth.66 The school’s curricula covered a wide range of subjects, with an emphasis on practical and theoretical educational materials such as the history of education, psychology, pedagogy, and teaching methodology, in addition to Arabic, English, and history. These subjects were reflected in the articles published in the Arab College’s journal. Due to a lack of professional Palestinian Arabs in the aforementioned areas of interest, the editorial body took on the translation of western articles into Arabic, the aim of which was twofold: to enrich the intellectual life of the emerging youth and simultaneously to instill in the emerging youth the sense of belonging to Palestine. Samih al-Khalidi himself took a major role in contributing to the journal as well as in translation efforts.67

198  Mostafa Hussein Mayer’s two articles appeared in the Arab College’s journal in 1928 and 1935. They were originally lectures that Mayer had given at the Arab College on two different occasions. Both articles dealt with the subject of handasat al-binaa ˉ’ ­al-‘arabıˉ (Arab architecture),68 and both were initially composed in English ˉ rıˉ, an Arabic language and then translated by the Christian Arab Habıˉb al-Khu ˙ teacher at the Arab College at the time. Aside from their richness, Mayer’s articles echoed his views on a reconciliatory approach that would lead to coexistence between Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land. The lectures survey a variety of major monuments, highlighting their aesthetic value, the importance of their sites, and their role in Islamic history. Also, they analyze the developments of Islamic architecture by underscoring how each ruling Islamic government left its mark on a number of sites. What is worth discussing here are the ways in which Mayer’s articles were appropriated to stress the connection between contemporary members of the Palestinian Arab intelligentsia and the archaeological monuments. First, the titles chosen for the lectures stress the Arabness of the highlighted material remains, irrespective of their historical origins. This view served a few ends: first, it indicated the recognition of a glorious Arab past by a Jewish scholar, whose affiliation with the Jewish nationalistic enterprise in Palestine was beyond doubt, as opposed to views that denied humanistic values in the Arab past in the Holy Land and its environs. Second, it underlined the continuity of that glorious past by stressing the association between previous generations and contemporary Arab populations. Third, it illuminated the secular nature of an emerging Arab identity that incorporated both Muslim and Christian Arabs. Despite Mayer’s emphasis on the Arabness of the architecture of Palestine, most of the monuments discussed in both articles were constructed during eras of non-Arab rulers such as the Mamluks, Kurds, and Ottomans. It seems that it would have been more accurate to title the articles “Islamic architecture” rather than “Arab architecture.”

Islamic archaeology and Egyptian identity Previous studies on the role of archaeology in the construction of modern Egyptian nationalist identity mostly highlight the strong influence of the so-called Pharaonist movement in early twentieth-century Egypt. After reaching its peak in the 1920s, interest in the pharaonic past continued in subsequent decades, though at a reduced tempo.69 Most responses to and engagement with Mayer’s work came from Egyptian scholars whose interest in Islamic art was infused with nationalist views of Egyptianism and the relationship between Arabs and Islam. Mayer was aware of the intellectual activities of archaeologists in Egypt, be they Egyptian or foreign, and about this material he writes as early as 1924: Egypt is the only country whose archaeological memories from the period of the Arabs were recorded and published in the best fashion. [Those became available to us thanks to] the great works of Prisse d’Avennes (1807– 1879) [a French archaeologist and Egyptologist], the volumes published

Scholarship on Islamic archaeology  199 by the Committee for the Conservation of the Monuments of Arab Art, and the writings of Franz Pasha as well as Max Herz Pasha. These efforts brought the Islamic archaeology of this country closer to us than in any other ­Muslim country.70 Mayer’s scholarship on Mamluks was of particular interest among Egyptian scholars. The reason for this interest had to do with the representation of the Mamluk sultanate in modern Egypt’s mind at precisely the time Mayer was active in his scholarly life.71 Kwang Sung notes that “Egyptian nationalist historians endeavored to reinterpret Egyptian history through Egypt’s own perspective rather than Arab-Islamic historiography, or the western historiography of ­Egyptian Orientalists.”72 The Mamluks constituted a mixture of enslaved skillful Turkish and Circassian warriors whose language and culture were markedly different from those of Egypt. In light of such differences, one might ask how Egyptian intellectuals managed to draw a line between the Mamluks and modern Egyptian society. It seems that two things mattered to historians in this endeavor: (1) displaying the glorious past of Egypt and (2) stressing their Islamic identity. Mamluks were taught to be good Muslims, and their military successes in defending the realm of Islam against Crusaders and the Mongols had given them an aura of legitimacy. For modern Egyptian intellectuals, evoking the Mamluk sultanate was meant to show modern people how glorious their past was and that they too could achieve what their predecessors had already accomplished in the past. Of Egyptian scholars who drew on Mayer’s scholarly corpus, one should mention Mohamed Mostafa (1903–1987), a historian who specialized in Islamic art.73 He attained his doctorate in the late 1930s from the Institute for Oriental Studies at Bonn University in Germany under the supervision of Paul Ernst Kahle (1875–1964). After receiving his degree, Mostafa joined the newly established Department of Islamic Archaeology at Cairo University. In addition, he became the first Egyptian director for the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo after the longtime French Orientalist Gaston Wiet (1887–1971) who ran the museum from 1926 until 1951.74 Egyptian intellectuals identified Mayer’s connection with Orientalism, and yet their perception of his work differed remarkably from that of Orientalists of the nineteenth century. Therefore, it should be of interest to discuss Mostafa’s nuanced view of western Orientalists. In an article published in the Cairene magazine al-Hilal (The Crescent) in 1955, Mostafa summarizes the factors underlying western interest in Islamic civilization. In his nuanced view of Orientalism, ­Mostafa divides western involvement in the study of Islam into three historical periods. With the march of Napoléon Bonaparte to Cairo, a new era began in the relations between the West and Islamic culture. The western engagement with the study of Islam, in Mostafa’s perspective, was politically motivated, with the aim of taking the place of the Ottoman Empire – the sick old man.75 However, he praises the effort made by the French scholars who accompanied Napoléon for they preserved vivid accounts about Egypt at a turning point in the history

200  Mostafa Hussein of the country when they “composed voluminous works describing Egypt, its geography, its archaeology, and the traditions of its people and whatever is connected to the social life there.”76 Mostafa then turns to deal with the nineteenth-century Orientalists whom he describes as “Orientalists who had made great efforts studying what Muslim scholars had left of treasures [sic. i.e., invaluable literary texts] and works in literature, jurisprudence, history, geography, arts, and sciences.” 77 Nonetheless, he points out the prejudices of some Orientalists, about whom he says, Despite the fact that a few [members of this generation of Orientalists] were blinded by their fanaticism and went on turning truth upside down, we do not deny that they urged us to care for studying the history of our civilization in a scientifically accurate way.78 In contrast to the nineteenth-century Orientalists, Mostafa saw a different motivation in the succeeding generation’s pursuit of Islamic culture. If nineteenth-century Orientalists’ engagement with Islamic culture was motivated by political aspirations of western power in the Orient on the one hand and fanaticism on the other hand, twentieth-century Orientalists, in the evaluation of Mostafa, were far different. Mostafa’s learning experience in Germany influenced his evaluation of the Orientalists of his time. While pursuing his doctoral studies in Germany during the late 1930s, he encountered a number of ­Orientalists whom he found respectful of Islamic culture, objective in their studies, and cooperative.79 In his words, “Twentieth-century Orientalists pursued the study of Islamic civilization in a scientifically accurate way, encouraged by their [own] desire, their admiration, and the spirit of cooperation.”80 Fascinated with their contribution, he adds, “Suffice it to mention, for instance, how rich their work on Islamic arts was.”81 There is no doubt that here Mostafa means scholars such as Mayer. In constructing the history of Egypt under the Mamluk rule, Egyptian intellectuals consulted Arabic sources at their disposal. However, Mostafa laments, for example, the absence of historical accounts about the phenomenon of blazons. The work of Mayer filled this gap and assisted Egyptian intellectuals such as Mostafa in making connections between modern Egyptian society and the Mamluks. In an article on Mamluk blazons published in al-Risalah (The ­Message) in 1941, the Egyptian scholar discusses the western scholarly interest in Islamic blazons. There, he cites Mayer’s Saracenic Heraldry, which was published in 1933. Discussing Mamluk blazons in Egypt and Syria, Mostafa criticizes Arab historians who were contemporary with the Mamluks, such as Abu al-Fida’ (1273–1331), Al-Maqrizi (1364–1442), Al-Qalqashandi (1355 or 1356–1418), Abu al-Mahasin Ibn Taghridbirdi (1409 or 1410–1470), and Muhammad Ibn Iyas (1448–1524) for the absence of a vivid description of the Mamluks’ emblematic system of rank in their work.82 The reason for not listing the ranks of Mamluks, however, as the writer notices, is the fact that they were so familiar with these ranks from their everyday lives that they did not find them

Scholarship on Islamic archaeology  201 important enough to list. In this regard, Mostafa gives credit to European scholars studying Mamluk blazons, including Mayer.83 Here, we see how useful Mayer’s work was for studying a social and political phenomenon in Egypt under the Mamluk rule. Perhaps a word about Saracenic Heraldry is in place here. In the preface, Mayer defines his authorial intention as the advancement of scholarship through the interpretation of armorial objects. In his words, the objectives of Saracenic Heraldry are to provide students of Islamic archaeology with “a fully documented armorial roll of Saracenic sultans, princes, and knights,” based on a comprehensive and complete list of holders of Ayyubid and Mamluk blazons, precise readings of the inscriptions, and finally the identification of the armorial objects with their bearers.84 Another scholar whom we should mention is Zaki Muhammad Hasan (1908– 1957), an Egyptian archaeologist specializing in Islamic art. He received his doctorate from Paris University in 1934. Upon his return to Egypt, he was appointed the general director of the Egyptian Architecture House (Bait al-Athar al-Misriyyah). Hasan authored works on various subjects in Islamic art and photography, the relationship between Egypt and Islamic civilization, the Islamic point of view on the arts, and also Muslim travelers in the Middle Ages.85 Furthermore, he was engaged with European Orientalists whose view of Islam he believed to be filled with prejudices and religious fanaticism, including, for example, his criticism of Henry Lammens (1862–1937).86 Before discussing how Hasan draws on Mayer’s work in his scholarship on Islamic art, we should mention his view of the relationship between the East and the West through his valuation of Orientalist’ efforts to represent the Orient. An analysis of Hasan’s perspective will reveal to us the ways he and other Egyptian intellectuals of his day formulated their views on contemporary Orientalists, including Leo Mayer – the protagonist of our story. In the perspective of Hasan, modern European art was, to a great extent, influenced by Islamic art. In an article published in al-Risalah (The Message) in 1935, Hasan argues that Islamic art emerged when “the civilized world” abandoned traditional Greek artistic styles. The civilized world, in his words, “disliked ancient Greek arts and longed for renewal to save it from the production of Greek art that lacked variety and creativity.”87 Hasan explains further that the civilized world “longed for more liberated artistic creations with respect to ornaments and subjects… These artistic styles the civilized world found first in the Sassanids and then in the Arab Empire.”88 How did the West receive such Islamic art? He remarks that “Islamic arts penetrated the West through the connection between the two worlds in Muslim Spain (al-Andalus) and during the Crusades.”89 In his work on Kunuz al-Fatimiyyin (Fatimid’s Treasures), a book that was authored to celebrate the millennial anniversary of the foundation of Cairo by the Fatimids and whose subject came to stimulate the nationalist spirit in Egypt, as Gaston Wiet notices in the preface to this volume,90 Hassan illuminates the influence of Islamic art on the West. In his discussion of Hedwig glasses – a type of glass beaker – found in several German museums, Hasan argues that this form originated in Fatimid Egypt.91 The glasses, he explains further, likely reached

202  Mostafa Hussein Germany with Saint Hedwig (1174–1245) who may have brought them with her when she made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. To reach this conclusion, he analyzes the decorations found on the glasses and makes reference to Mayer’s Saracenic Heraldry.

Mamluk Costumes in Arabic Another aspect of the utilization of Mayer’s scholarly corpus for nationalist ends is the translation of his book Mamluk Costumes (1952) into Arabic in 1972 under the sponsorship of the Egyptian General Authority for Books, one of the entities of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture. The book informs readers in detail about the dress of the caliph, the sultan, the military aristocracy, the ecclesiastics, Christians, Jews and Samaritans, and women. The comments of Abdulrahman Fahmi, the editor of the Arabic version and the author of its preface, illustrate the significance of the work, highlighting a mixture of nationalist aspirations and scientific achievement. In his introduction to Mamluk Costumes, Fahmi calls the subject matter of the work significant because it deals with the Mamluk era, “one of the most flourishing historical periods in our nationalist history.” 92 A manifestation of the efflorescence of the Mamluks, in the eyes of Fahmi, is the number of artistic achievements and crafts from the era, filling “international museums, including the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo.” 93 In addition to its relevance for nationalist histories of modern Egypt, the work is also important because of Mayer’s comprehensiveness and rigorous treatment of the subject matter. As opposed to studies done by other Orientalists in the past that proved to be insufficient, Mamluk Costumes was received, as Fahmi points out, as an “unprecedented work,” 94 at least since Reinhart Dozy (1820– 1883) published his Dictionnaire détaillé des noms des vêtements chez les Arabes, which was printed in Amsterdam in 1845 as a collection of notices found in literary works. Since then, little progress had been made in the study of costumes in Islamic art. Furthermore, Fahmi refers to the reception of Mamluk Costumes in reviews by a number of prominent scholars in the field of Islamic art, such as Gaston Wiet (1887–1971), Eliyahu Ashtor (1914–1984), and Paul Kahle (1875– 1964) to name but a few. Fahmi expresses his deepest gratitude to Mayer, the well-known specialist in the history of Mamluk art and culture, for publishing his survey of the different kinds of clothes, headgears, and amours mentioned in Mamluk chronicles. By rendering such a scientific reference work, Abdulrahman hopes to “fill a gap in the Arabic library” about Arab civilization and its legacy.95

Conclusion Western archaeologists’ interests – religiously and politically driven – have brought the pre-Islamic ancient world to the center of their scholarly discussion at the cost of marginalizing Arab and Islamic archaeologies. Their involvement in the archaeology of the Middle East has gravitated toward revealing the origins

Scholarship on Islamic archaeology  203 of its ancient civilizations in order to achieve a better understanding of the biblical world on the one hand and to advance a glorious view of the modern European world as its heir on the other. Although western by origin, Leo Mayer’s scholarship differed from that of other western archaeologists by concentrating on the study of artistic and architectural artifacts dated to the Islamic era. Perceived by Arab nationalist intellectuals as a disciple of the Austrian school of Orientalism whose objectives were not in compliance with imperialist powers such as France and Britain,96 Mayer’s involvement in the Islamic past was instrumental in the construction of national identity that took place during the first half of the twentieth century in Mandatory Palestine – by both Jews and Arabs – and in Egypt. Notably, Mayer sought to make that history an object of pride, not just for Arabs who viewed themselves as the legitimate heirs of the Islamic past, but rather for all nationalities in the Middle East. The universal nature of Islamicate civilization led to the cultivation of aesthetic values fixed in material remains from the Islamic era. That unique feature originated in the diversity of the contributors to Islamic civilization, as reflected in monuments and artifacts that incorporated characteristics originally found in a number of other cultures. This chapter has looked at the development of the discourse on the growing interest within the local communities in the Middle East in the Islamic past and its appropriation at the hands of nationalist elite who were exposed to orientalistic discourse on the subject, including Mayer’s archaeological scholarship. Mayer’s work on Islamic archaeology saw light during the first half of the twentieth century, a significant historical period that witnessed a marriage between scholarship and archaeology. This tangled relationship helped advance nationalist aspirations in the Middle East, and the development of Mayer’s archaeological scholarly corpus paralleled internal processes within various nationalist movements in Mandatory Palestine and Israel and in Egypt. As opposed to the reception of his work by the Yishuv in Israel, Mayer’s studies were met with great interest by Egyptian intellectuals such as Zaki Muhammad Hasan, Mohammad Mostafa, and others who viewed his work as a means of filling the gap in Arabic scholarship. Furthermore, his scholarship was in conformity with their own nationalist narrative, which attempted to strengthen the connection between modern populations and their past. From the 1920s onward in Egypt, Mayer’s scholarship on the Mamluks was met with great interest by Egyptian nationalist intellectuals. His painstaking studies on the history of the Mamluks in Egypt and its neighbors helped advance the nationalist consciousness in Egypt during one of the most flourishing periods of its history. The development of scientific archaeology corresponded with a specific stage of social development that took place in the Holy Land, particularly under the thirty years of the British Mandate. In view of the genesis of two rival nationalist movements that were seeking to prove their link to the contested Land, each overwriting the history of the other, the material remains of the Land’s past were not only a source of information about human history independent from written records, but also physical evidence for the presence of two ethnic groups who were striving to prove their right to the Land. Nevertheless, Mayer’s engagement

204  Mostafa Hussein with Islamic archaeology did not seek to tip the balance of nationalistic belonging to one side over the other in the pre-statehood era. The nationalistic model retrieved from Mayer’s activities served both Jews and Arabs, while promoting the Land’s past as rich and inclusive.

Notes 1 James F. Goode, Negotiating for the Past: Archaeology, Nationalism, and Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1919-1941 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), 208. 2 Mario Liverani, “Imperialism,” in Archaeologies of the Middle East: Critical Perspectives, ed. Susan Pollock and Reinhard Bernbeck (United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 224. 3 For a discussion on the development of the pharaonic movement in Egypt, including reclaiming the pharaonic past from western archaeologists, see: Donald M. Reid, “Nationalizing the Pharaonic Past: Egyptology, Imperialism, and Egyptian Nationalism, 1922–1952,” in Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East, ed. James P. Jankowski and Israel Gershoni (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 127–49. 4 Neil Asher Silberman, Between Past and Present: Archaeology, Ideology, and Nationalism in the Modern Middle East (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1989), 87. 5 Goode, xi. 6 David N. Myers, “Was There a ‘Jerusalem School’? An Inquiry into the First Generation of Historical Researchers at the Hebrew University,” Studies in Contemporary Jewry 10 (1994): 68. 7 Shelomo Dov Goitein, “The School of Oriental Studies: A Memoir,” in Like All the Nations?: The Life and Legacy of Judah L. Magnes, ed. William M. Brinner and Moses Rischin (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), 169. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 This connection is indicated by Goitein in: ibid., 170. 11 I have found two different spellings for Mayer’s first name. The first is “Leo,” as found in his biography in: Goode, xi. The other pronunciation is “Leon,” as found in his biography in: Yosef Yo’el Rivlin, Elef Laylah Va-Laylah [One Thousand and One Nights], vol. I (Yerushalayim: Keryat Sefer, 1947), 2. However, he is widely known by his last name “Mayer,” which he preferred in writing his biography for the Hebrew University while abbreviating his first and middle names (“L. A. Mayer”). See the biographical notes in his file at the Hebrew University Archives. I am committed to using “Leo” as his first name given the popularity of this spelling among his biographers. 12 Robert Lemon, Imperial Messages: Orientalism as Self-Critique in the Habsburg Fin De Siècle, Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011), 2. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Most of the details regarding these scholars are gleaned from: Wolfdieter Bihl, Orientalistik an Der Universität Wien: Forschungen Zwischen Maghreb Und Ost- Und Südasien: Die Professoren Und Dozenten (Wien: Böhlau, 2009). 16 For more details on the Oriental Academy and its development over the course of two hundred years, see: Heinrich Pfusterschmid-Hardtenstein, A Short History of the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna: Training for International Careers since 1754 (Vienna: Diplomatic Academy, 2009), 12. 17 I found details about the economic situation of Mayer and the story behind affording ­ retz-Israel: his journey to Palestine in: N. H. Tur-Sinai, “Remembering a Fine Man,” E Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies 7 (1964).

Scholarship on Islamic archaeology  205 18 For further biographical details on Mayer, see: Assaf Selzer, “Leon Ary Mayer,” trans. Jenni Tsafrir in The History of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Who’s Who Prior to Statehood: Founders, Designers, Pioneers, ed. Assaf Selzer (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2015); ibid.; H. Z. Hirschberg, “In Memoriam: Professor Leon A. Mayer,” Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies 7 (1964); D. S. Rice and H. Z. Hirschberg, “Leo A. Mayer,” Ars Orientalis 4 (1961). 19 H. Z. Hirschberg, “Professor Leon A. Mayer – in Memoriam,” in L. A. Mayer: Memorial Volume, ed. H. Z. Hirschberg M. Avi-Yonah, B. Mazar, and Y. Yadin (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1964). XI–XV. 20 I find it rather compelling to adopt the adjectival phrase “Islamicate,” which was coined by Marshall Hodgson, an Islamic studies academic and world historian. Hodgson invented the adjectival phrase in order to fulfill dual purposes. First of all, the use of “Islamicate” as an adjective applies to religious and secular components of the civilization of Islam. Also, the adjectival phrase is proper in terms of referring to non-Muslim subjects living in the midst of Islamdom. Similar to the term “Italinate,” which informed Hodgson’s invention of “Islamicate,” “‘Islamicate’ would refer not directly to the religion itself, but to the social and cultural complex historically associated with Islam and Muslims, both among Muslims themselves and even when found among non-Muslims.” For more details on Hodgson’s justification of the coinage of “Islamicate” and other terms, see: Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of ­Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, the Classical Age of Islam, vol. I (­Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 58–9. 21 For a reference to this view, see Mayer’s lecture in 1928 at the Arab College to a mainly Arab audience: L. A. Mayer, “Handasat Al-Binaa’ Al-’Arabi,” [Arab Architecture.] Al-Kulliyah al-’Arabiyyah VIII, no. III (1928): 172. 22 “Shay’ Fi Handasat Al-Binaa’ Al-’Arabi,” [On Islamic Architecture.] Majallat al-Kulliyyah al-’Arabiyyah 16, no. 1 (1935): 36. 23 Mayer does not mention other studies that adopt this view. Perhaps he meant a trend within western scholarship. 24 Mayer, “Shay’ Fi Handasat Al-Binaa’ Al-’Arabi,” 36. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Eliyahu Ashtor, “Review of Mamluk Costumes,” Israel Exploration Journal 4, no. 1 (1954). 29 A. S. Tritton, “Review of Saracenic Heraldry: A Survey,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 2 (1934): 411. 30 Ibid., 413. 31 Rivlin, I, Introduction. 32 As early as 1915, Mayer joined the Zionist youth movement Ha-Shomer (The Guard) in East Galicia. Ha-Shomer had emerged in western Galicia (then under Austrian rule) before WWI. Named after the watchmen’s organization in Palestine, the movement was a full-fledged scouting movement (based on the British model) that combined training with study. During the Great War, when many thousands of Jews from the eastern part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire took refuge in Vienna, Ha-Shomer and another Jewish youth movement called Ze’irei Zion (The Youth of Zion) merged and took on the name Ha-Shomer Ha-Za’ir (The Young Guard) in 1916. The immigration of members of Ha-Shomer Ha-Za’ir to Palestine began during the third wave of immigration (1919–1923) with the settlement of some six hundred members of the movement in Mandatory Palestine. For more details on the origins and the development of Ha-Shomer, see: David Canani, “Ha-Shomer Ha-Za’ir,” in Encyclopedia Hebraica, ed. Joshua Prawer (Yerushalayim and Tel Aviv: Encylopedia Publishing Company, 1979). For a discussion on the development of Ha-Shomer Ha-Za‘ir and its aim, see: P. Merhav and J. Israeli, “Ha-Shomer Ha-Z a’ir,” in Encyclopaedia ˙

206  Mostafa Hussein

33

34

35 36

37 38 39

40 41 4 2 43 4 4 45

Judaica, ed. M. Berenbaum and F. Skolnik (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007). For general background on Ha-Shomer and Ha-Shomer Ha-Za’ir, see: Shelomoh Rekhav, Ha-Shomer Ha-Tsa‘ir : Mi-Tenu‘at-Ha-No‘ar La-K Ibuts Ha-Artsi ˙ ([Tel Aviv]: ha-Hanhagah ha-‘elyonit shel Histadrut ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir ha-‘olamit ­veha-Hanhagah ha-Rashit shel ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir be-Yis´ra’el, 1953). And also: ˙ alter Lacquer, A History of Zionism (New York, Chicago, and San Francisco: Holt, ­W Rinehart, and Winston, 1972), 297–301. Among contemporary Jewish scholars, one should point out S. D. Goitein and his studies on Islamic history and the history of Jewish communities in the Islamic world during medieval times. For further details about Goitein’s scholarship, see: Gidon Libson, “Hidden Worlds and Open Shutters: S. D. Goitein between Judaism and Islam,” in The Jewish Past Revisited: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians, ed. D. N. Myers and D. B. Ruderman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998). Perhaps the most famous Jewish archaeologist whose work concentrated on revealing Jewish objects in the Holy Land is Eleazar Lipa Sukenik, who was born in Białystok in 1889 but died in Jerusalem in 1953. Sukenik was a central figure in the formative generation of Jewish archaeologists, and his work prepared the way for the emergence of Israel and its culture in the Holy Land through the excavation of Jewish objects buried under the land of Palestine. For more details on Sukenik’s life and work, see: N. Avigad, “E. L. Sukenik: The Man and His Work,” Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies 8 (1967). It should be mentioned that both Sukenik and Mayer collaborated on one of the most significant archaeological excavations in Jerusalem during the Mandate period. Based on an account by Josephus in Wars of the Jews that describes Jerusalem as a city fortified by three walls, both scholars were able to identify the location of the third wall of Jerusalem and to excavate the remains of it. For more details about their work, see: Eliazar Lipa Sukenik and Leo Ary Mayer, The Third Wall of Jerusalem: An Account of Excavations (Jerusalem and London: the University Press and Oxford University Press, 1930). Goitein, 170. For a discussion on the relationship between Zionism and the archaeology of the Holy Land, see: Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948, trans. Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta (Berkeley, Los Angles, and ­L ondon: ­University of California Press, 2000). And also: Nur Masalha, The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Palestine-Israel (London and New York: Zed Books, 2007). See, for instance: L. A. Mayer, “Amanut Yehudit Be-Artsot Ha-Islam,” in ­Ha-Amanut Ha-Yehudit, ed. Zalmon Efron (Tel Aviv: Masadah, 1957). Selzer. For a reference to this incident, see Magnes’ words in the commemoration of the memory of Max Schloessinger in: Ha-Universitah ha-’Ivrit, Dr. Max Schloessenger: Devarim She-Ni’maru Be-Azkarah Ba-Universitah Ha-’Ivrit (Yerushalayim: Ha-­ Sefer, 1944). Max Schloessinger, “Max Schloessinger to Justice Louis D. Brandeis,” ed. The ­Hebrew University (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Archives, February 18, 1935). Messler, “A Letter to the Rector and the President of the Hebrew University,” ed. The Hebrew University (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Archives, April 28, 1950). Mayer, “Amanut Yehudit Be-Artsot Ha-Islam,” 416. Ibid. For details on these studies, see: ibid. Mayer excludes the legal tender, which was crafted out of gold or silver, from undergoing such an engraving process. See: “Perek Katan Me-Ba’yat Hashpa’atam Shel Ha-Yehudim ‘Al Matbe’ot Ha-Muslemim,” [A Minor Detail Concerning Jewish Influence on Muslim Coinage.], Bulletin of the Israel Exploration Society 18, no. 3/4 (1954): 230.

Scholarship on Islamic archaeology  207 46 Ibid. 47 In al-Lata’if wa-azzara’if, Abu Mansur al-Tha’labi (d. 429 a.h./c.e.) attributes this very saying to al-Jahiz. 48 For the Hebrew quotation, I relied on Philip Blackman’s translation of the Hebrew text. See: Philip Blackman, “Mishnayoth: Order Nezikin” (London Mishna Press, 1954), 506. 49 Mayer, “Perek Katan Me-Ba’yat Hashpa’atam Shel Ha-Yehudim ‘Al Matbe’ot Ha-­ Muslemim,” 232. 50 For a discussion of the role of Arab archaeologists in archaeological excavation in Mandatory Palestine, see: Albert Glock, “Archaeology as Cultural Survival: The Future of the Palestinian Past,” Journal of Palestine Studies 23, no. 3 (1994): 74–6. Dimitri Baramki, a Palestinian archaeologist who conducted a number of excavations in the Holy Land, was a contemporary of Mayer, and they might have come in contact since both worked under the auspices of the Department of Antiquities of Mandatory Palestine. For a study on Dimitri Baramki and his role in the advancement of ­Palestinian archaeology, see: Donald Whitcomb, “Dimitri Baramki: Discovering Qasr Hisham1,” Jerusalem Quarterly 55. 51 Hirschberg, 454. 52 Mayer’s name appears in the list of the members of Brith Shalom. See a complete list of Jewish intellectuals who took part in Brith Shalom in: Aharon Kedar, “­L e-Toldeoteha Shel Brith Shalom Ba-Shanim 1925–1928,” in Perkai Mehqar Betoldot ­Ha-Zionot [Research Chapters in the History of Zionism], ed. Yehudah Bauer Moshe Divis and Yesral Kolat (Jerusalem: Ha-Sifriyya Ha-Zionit ‘Al yed Hanhalat Ha-Histadrot Ha-Zionit, 1977), 282. 53 Ibid., 225–6. 54 See the statutes of the association in three languages: Hebrew, Arabic, and English in: “Brith Shalom: Documents and Introduction,” The Jerusalem Quarterly 18 (Winter 1981): 55. 55 For more details on the launch of a new branch of Brith Shalom in Nablus in 1930 and for a list of the Palestinian members, see: “Jam’iyyat ‘Ahd Al-Salam,” Yarmuk December 7, 1930. 56 Stephen Vernoit, “The Rise of Islamic Archaeology,” Muqarnas 14 (1997): 1. 57 Zaki Muhammad Hasan, “Ba’d Al-Ta’thirat Al-Qibtiyyah Fi Al-Funun ­A l-Islamiyyah,” [On Coptic Influence on Islamic Arts.], Al-Majallah al-Jadidah 3 (1938): 23. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 The addition is mine for clarification. 62 Mayer, “Shay’ Fi Handasat Al-Binaa’ Al-’Arabi,” 32. 63 Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 149–50. 6 4 The first two directors, who happened to be Arab Christians, resigned from their post in opposition to the behavior of the British authorities, which they viewed as more favorable to Jews than to Arab interests in Palestine. For instance, Khalil al-Sakakini, the first director, resigned because he disagreed with the appointment of Herbert Samuel as the high commissioner in Palestine. Khalil Tutah, who then became the headmaster of the school, relinquished his office in response to Lord Belfour’s visit to the school in 1925 to attend the inauguration ceremony of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. For more details about these two events, see: Sadiq Ibrahim Odeh, “The Arab College in Jerusalem, 1918–1949: Recollections,” Jerusalem Quarterly File 9 (2000): 49–51. 65 For more details on the journal, see: Jacob Yehushua, Tarikh Al-Sihafah A ­ l-’Arabiyyah Fi Filastin Fi Bidayat ‘Ahd Al-Intidab Al-Biritani, 1919–1929, III vols., vol. II (Haifa: Sharikat al-Abhath al-’Ilmiyyah, 1981), 233–4.

208  Mostafa Hussein 66 See Samih al-Khalidi’s speech on the occasion of the graduation ceremony of 1927. The speech was published in its entirety in the mouthpiece of the Arab College. For more details, see: Ahmad Samih al-Khalidi, “Khitab Hadrit Mudir Al-Kulliyah Al-’Arabiyyah,” [School’s Director Speech.] Al-Kulliyah al-Arabiyyah 1 (1927): 11. 67 For more information on Samih al-Khalidi’s role in the development of the Arab College, see: Odeh. Marco Demichelis, “From Nahda to Nakba: The Governmental Arab College of Jerusalem and Its Palestinian Historical Heritage in the First Half of the Twentieth Century,” Arab Studies Quarterly 37, no. 3 (2015): 270. 68 For a reference to these two articles, see the article on Mayer’s publication list in: Hirschberg, “The Works of Professor L. A. Mayer,” xxi–xxii. 69 Goode, 82–3. 70 L. A. Mayer, “Review of Muhammedan Architecture in Egypt and Palestine,” Kiryat Sefer 2 (1924): 190. 71 For a brief explanation of the institution of “Mamluks” in Islamic civilization, see: Timothy May, “Mamluks,” in The Encyclopedia of War ed. Gordon Martel, (­Chichester, West Sussex, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2011). 72 Il Kwang Sung, Mamluks in the Modern Egyptian Mind: Changing the Memory of the Mamluks, 1919–1952 (New York: Springer, 2016), 7. 73 I would have preferred to transliterate the first name of Mohamed Mostafa differently to be consistent with the way I write “Muhammad” in English. However, I have maintained this spelling because it is written this way in his scholarly articles, and only this spelling of his name was known to western scholars during his time. 74 For more details on Mohamed Mostafa’s biography and his intellectual activities, see: Muhammad Khayr Ramadan, Al-Mostadrak ‘Ala Tatimmat Al-’Alam Li-Zirikli (Beirut: Dar Ibn Hazm, 2002), 104–5. 75 Mohamed Mostafa, “‘Ihtimam Al-Gharb Bi-Al-Hadarah Al-’Islamiyyah,” Al-Hilal January 1, 1955, 76. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid. 79 Ramadan, 104–5. 80 Mostafa, 76. 81 Ibid. 82 “Al-Renuk Fi ‘Asr Al-Mamalik,” Al-Risalah 1941, 269. 83 Ibid. 84 Leo Ary Mayer, Saracenic Heraldry: A Survey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), v. 85 Zaki Muhammad Hasan, Kunuz Al-Fatimiyyin [Fatimid’s Treasures] (Al-Qaˉhirah: Matbaʻat Daˉr al-Kutub al-Misrıˉyah, 1937), 1. ˙ 86 For˙ further details on his evaluation of Lammens’ view of Islamic history and Islam, see: Zaki Muhammad Hasan, “Henry Lammens,” Al-Moqtataf December 1, 1937. 87 “Athar Al-Fan Al-Islami Fi Fonun Al-Gharb,” Al-Risalah April 15, 1935, 615. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid. 90 See the introduction by Gaston Wiet to: Kunuz Al-Fatimiyyin [Fatimid’s Treasures] (Al-Qaˉhirah: Matbaʻat Daˉr al-Kutub al-Misrıˉyah, 1937). ˙ ˙ 91 Ibid., 186. 92 L. A. Mayer, Al-Malabis Al-Mamlukiyah, ed. Abd Al-Rahman Fahmi Muhammad, trans. Saleh al-Shiti (Al-Qahirah: Al-Hay’ah Al-Misriyah Al-’Ammah lil-Kitab, 1972), 3. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid., 5. 96 For details on his representation as an Austrian Orientalist, see: Najib al-’Aqiqi, Al-Mostashriqun [The Orientalists], 5th ed., III vols., vol. II (Cairo: Dar al-Ma’arif, 2006), 286–7.

10 A Muslim convert to Christianity as an Orientalist in Europe – the case of the Moroccan Franciscan Jean-Mohammed Abdeljalil (1904–1979) Mehdi Sajid Introduction In 1928, a young Moroccan student of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Sorbonne in Paris decided to convert to Christianity, changing his name from Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Jalıˉl to Jean-Mohammed Abdeljalil, and dedicating his ˙ life to the service of the Catholic Church and the Franciscan fraternity.1 After being ordained in 1935, Abdeljalil followed his vocation to become a scholar and teacher of Islamic Studies as well as one of the most celebrated experts on Islam within the Catholic Church. Unlike other converts who sometimes engage in violent attacks against their former faith, Abdeljalil avoided any type of polemics that could lead to more hostility and divide between Christians and ­Muslims. This does not mean, though, that his views on Islam were exempt from criticism. He was in fact very critical of numerous aspects of Islam and its modern developments, but he always endeavored to strike the right note when he expressed his disagreements. During his long academic career, Abdeljalil collaborated closely with many renowned Orientalists. He addressed a wide range of topics including, but not limited to, Islamic spirituality, jurisprudence, Christian–­Muslim apologetics, the history of Arabic literature, and Muslim religious everyday life. His work deserves our attention, because it is very likely the only known case in modern history of a Moroccan Muslim convert to Christianity who joined the Franciscan order and became a renowned orientalist as well as one of the main architects of the modern Christian–Muslim dialogue. Furthermore, Abdeljalil’s career as an Orientalist in Europe in the twentieth century is deeply connected to a much broader phenomenon in Western academia that became more and more visible in the postcolonial period, namely the passage of Muslims from objects to subjects in the Western study of Islam. While the presence of scholars with a “Muslim”/ “Oriental” background in the departments of Islamic Studies might seem self-evident for many of us today, this was not necessarily the case a century ago. The Western knowledge production about Islam was long dominated by scholars who did not identify

210  Mehdi Sajid with the religion of Islam and its cultures, and whose expertise was often put – sometimes willfully, sometimes not – at the service of colonial interests. It is only in the postcolonial era and as a result of numerous sociopolitical changes in Western and Muslim-majority societies that the presence of scholars with a “Muslim”/ “Oriental” background became more and more “normal.” It is in this context that someone like Abdeljalil, who had to surmount many colonial barriers imposed on him as a French colonial subject of North African Muslim descent, represents a very interesting early example of the increasing involvement of scholars with a “Muslim” / “Oriental” background in the various fields of Islamic Studies in the West.2 In this study, through a rich set of both published and unpublished sources, I would like to discuss Jean Abdeljalil’s life and work in the context of Arabic and Islamic Studies in Europe. I first start with some biographical data on Abdeljalil. In order to get a better grasp of his intellectual and spiritual evolution, both as a religious person and an Orientalist, the first part will be dedicated to his life and studies. It will attempt to shed light on his most pivotal encounters with French personalities in and outside Morocco that not only changed his religious views, leading to his later conversion, but also – and most importantly – shaped his academic profile as an Orientalist. In the second part, I will discuss both his work and the way he studied Islam as a religion. As a deeply committed Franciscan clergyman who dedicated his scholarly life to the study of Islam, there is no doubt that Abdeljalil was an atypical Orientalist – to say the least. His Muslim past and his Catholic present have both continuously shaped his activities and interests as a scholar of Islam. The third part, finally, explores the reception and the legacy of ­A bdeljalil’s work.

Itinerary of an uncommon Orientalist Abdeljalil was born Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Jalıˉl in 1904 to a noble family of ˙ Andalusian descent in Fez, a city that enjoys the reputation of being an important center of traditional Islamic scholarship and spirituality in the Muslim world. He was brought up in a very religious environment under the strict guidance of his parents.3 Abdeljalil’s educational path prior to his arrival in France in 1925 was a combination of two oppositely different school and epistemological systems, i.e. the traditional Arabic Islamic and the modern secular French.4 This double experience equipped him at a young age with an insider–outsider perspective that made him comfortable in both cultures and languages and that later became his trademark as a scholar of Islam. Thus, his first school experience was in a Quranic school in Algiers, where his father enrolled him in 1909 after moving the family to the French-ruled Algeria for business reasons. The young Abdeljalil spent five years in an “exclusively Islamic” school, where he received his first lessons in Islam and Arabic language.5 Before returning definitely to their home city in 1914, the Abdeljalils traveled to Mecca to perform

A Muslim convert to Christianity  211 the pilgrimage and spent many months in the city of Medina. This firsthand encounter with the two holiest places of Islam left a significant mark on the ten-year-old Abdeljalil. In 1939, for instance, it was with the authority of a former Muslim pilgrim that he wrote his article Les pèlerins de la Mecke (the Pilgrims of Mecca) to sensitize his Christian readership about the sacrifices, the encountered hardships, and the deep spiritual commitment that characterize the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.6 He insisted on signing the article with his name and the appellation un pélerin (a pilgrim), a reminder to himself and others that his description was a firsthand account, not just the result of his readings (Figure 10.1). When they returned to Fez, the Abdeljalils had to acknowledge that their country had lost its sovereignty and was now a French protectorate, with the administration system in the hands of the French colonial authorities. In order to increase the chances of a better future for his children, Haˉj ben ‘Abd al-Jalıˉl, the father, put his sons Muhammad and ‘Umar in the newly founded Arabic–French ˙ schools. Muhammad was able to finish the primary school in less than two years ˙ and enrolled in the prestigious Collège Moulay Idris in Fez. Founded by the French in 1914, the high school was designed to produce Moroccan “gentlemen” of a “double culture” who could find a balance between the traditional values of the makhzan and modern bureaucratic practices.7 Muhammad spent four years ˙ there, during which he was one day “noticed” by Hubert Lyautey (1854–1934), the French General-Resident of Morocco himself.8 The latter took him under his

Figure 10.1   Abdeljalil as a teenager wearing the traditional Moroccan Jellaba (date unknown).

212  Mehdi Sajid wing and gave him opportunities that would change his life forever. In 1922, after a first job as auxiliary official at the registration office in Fez, Lyautey offered him a position as the secretary of the Makhzen and trainee attaché (attaché stagiaire) of the French Résidence Générale in Rabat.9 Abdeljalil took advantage of his presence in the Moroccan capital to continue his education. With the help of one of the teachers at the French Lycée Gouraud, he prepared for the exams of the baccalauréat, the French high school diploma, which he obtained successfully in 1925. It was also during this time that Muhammad was accepted as a boarder ˙ at the Charles de Foucauld School in Rabat – a Franciscan-run boarding school whose director, Brother Clèment Ètienne, became one of his closest friends and his spiritual adviser.10 Through the personal intervention of Lyautey, Abdeljalil was granted a scholarship to continue his higher education in Paris. Thus, in September 1925, he started his studies of Arabic language and literature at the Sorbonne. Before his arrival in the French capital, his Franciscan friends from Morocco had already arranged a place for him to stay, i.e. a room in the Franciscan convent situated in the fourteenth arrondissement. What is remarkable about Abdeljalil’s studies in France is his thirst for knowledge. In terms of education and intellectual development, the young Moroccan student was very determined to get the best out of his stay in Paris. Many of his personal letters from this time suggest the idea that he felt under-challenged studying “only” Arabic language and literature. Thus, he started learning Persian and Turkish at the École Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes and began attending numerous courses of philosophy, French literature, psychology, and Christian theology at the Sorbonne, the École Pratiques des Hautes Études (EPHH), and the Collège de France. He went even so far to ask for permission to attend some courses of the Institut Catholique de Paris, an exclusively Catholic institution. Alfred Baudrillart, a renowned Catholic intellectual and director of the Institut at that time, allowed him to join the classes of the Institut Catholique – making him the first Muslim student to enroll in this institution.11 Besides his degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies, which he received in 1929, Abdeljalil wanted initially to obtain two more degrees: one in philosophy at the Sorbonne, and one in scholastic philosophy at the Institut Catholique. But the Moroccan office of education did not grant him permission to do so, because a position as a high school teacher was already awaiting him in his home country.

Conversion In 1927, Abdeljalil’s doubts about his Islamic faith started to emerge. A closer look at his private correspondences from that time reveals the depth of the emotional and religious crisis he was going through. Although he was keen to present himself as a fervent “defender of Islam” when he first arrived to Paris, Abdeljalil confessed later that he was struggling to reconcile the tons of information, experiences, and insights he was exposed to in his new French environment with his traditional Islamic upbringing. Unlike other students from Muslim-­majority

A Muslim convert to Christianity  213 countries who discovered and/or adopted secular political or philosophical ideologies during their studies in Europe during that time, Abdeljalil was deeply fascinated by the “old” Catholic France. His brother Umar as well as many other French-educated Moroccans of his generation were, for instance, exposed to both Arab nationalist and leftist ideas during their studies in France in the 1920s. These young men constituted later the nationalist elite which led Morocco to independence in 1956. Abdeljalil was neither interested in political gatherings, nor in the nightlife of the French capital. Disappointed by what he described as “the sad spectacle of the Moroccan students in Paris, who compromise themselves by hanging out with the dirtiest of women in the most disgusting places,” he preferred to turn all his attention to his intellectual and spiritual growth.12 From the beginning, Abdeljalil was immersed in a deeply committed French Catholic milieu, both academically and privately. On a private level, his stay in the Franciscan convent of the fourteenth arrondissement offered him the opportunity to observe the daily spiritual discipline of the men and women who had dedicated their lives to the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi. Furthermore, he was offered the possibility to live with a “deeply Catholic” family during his first years in France. According to his own account, it was through this family that he came to experience what he described as the “moral and social fertility of Christianity.”13 On an academic level, Abdeljalil studied under some of the most influent French Catholic scholars of their time, who happened to teach at the prestigious institutions of higher education at which he was enrolled. At the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), for instance, he followed the courses on medieval philosophy of the French philosopher Ètienne Gilson (1884–1978), one of the renowned experts on Thomistic theology and medieval philosophy of his time.14 At the Institut Catholique, his years of study coincided with the presence of a group of intellectuals who introduced him to Catholic theology and philosophy. This included, for instance, the Jesuit Philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), known for his works on faith and evolution15; the already-mentioned Alfred Henri Baudrillart (1859–1942), one of the most influent Churchmen in France during the interwar years; the theologian and scholar of French literature Jean Calvet (1874–1965); and, last but not least, the Catholic philosopher Jacques ­Maritain (1882–1972), a French convert to Catholicism himself who is considered to be one of the revivalists of Thomistic philosophy and a pioneer of Catholic human rights.16 All these encounters have – to some degree – i­nfluenced ­A bdeljalil’s conversion to Christianity. Yet, the most significant impact on his final decision was made by two very committed Catholic intellectuals and Orientalists who both shared a very strong connection with the Muslim world. The first was the French Orientalist Louis Massignon (1882–1973), under whom he studied at the Collège de France; the second was a Catholic clergyman by the name of Mgr. Paul Mulla (1882–1959), originally Mehmet-Ali Mullah Zadeh, an Ottoman Cretan Muslim, who, like him, came to study in France a generation earlier, converted to Christianity, and decided to dedicate

214  Mehdi Sajid himself fully to the service of the Church after studying with the renowned Christian philosopher Maurice Blondel (1861–1949).17 Both Massignon and Mulla had not only the necessary intercultural skills to guide Abdeljalil, but most importantly the theological and philosophical knowledge required in both religious traditions to answer many of his burning existential questions. Because of their significance as spiritual and academic role models in Abdeljalil’s new life as a Christian and an Orientalist, their influence will be discussed later in more detail. After long hours of discussions, doubts, reflections, and – most of all – prayers, the twenty-three-year-old Abdeljalil decided to embrace Christianity. Encouraged by his mentor Paul Mulla, the Moroccan-born Muhammad was baptized ˙ on the 7th of April 1928 in the Franciscan chapel in Fontenay-sous-Bois, near Paris, and took the name Jean-Mohammed Abdeljalil. Mulla and Massignon were present during the ceremony as his godfathers. In the following summer, the new convert undertook a trip to Italy where he was accorded a private meeting with Pope Pius XI. In addition, he insisted to visit the birthplace of St. ­Francis of Assisi, a man whose spiritual teachings had a significant impact on his life. By the end of 1928, Abdeljalil did not only make his conversion to Catholicism public, but also joined the Secular Franciscan Order. A year later, after graduating from the Sorbonne, he entered the Franciscan novitiate and started a period of training of nearly seven years after which he became an ordained priest and a full monastic member of the order through which he first came in contact with Christianity.18 The convent where he spent his first days as a student in France became now his permanent home. By the end of 1935, the Institut Catholique offered him a chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies – a job that he enjoyed having for nearly three decades before he retired due to his critical health condition.

Massignon and Mulla As mentioned earlier, Paul Mulla and Louis Massignon were, in addition to Clément Ètienne, the most significant persons in the religious and spiritual transformations of Abdeljalil. The latter was introduced to Massignon for the first time by Lyautey during one of his visits to Morocco in the early 1920s.19 When the Moroccan later came to Paris, he started following the courses of Massignon at the Collège de France. Abdeljalil’s correspondence with the French Orientalist shows the development of a relationship that went through different stages. It began first as a warm teacher–student relationship, and ended up becoming a long-term friendship and a colleagueship that lasted until the death of ­Massignon in 1962. According to Abdeljalil, one of the main factors that led to his conversion to Christianity was his personal research and study of the Orientalist deconstruction of Muslim apologetics against Christianity.20 The Catholic milieu in which Abdeljalil found himself in the French capital raised in him the need to understand how Christian scholars responded to Muslim views about

A Muslim convert to Christianity  215 Jesus and Christianity. He became, therefore, determined to develop a deep intellectual understanding, in order to grasp Muslim and Christian arguments presented by the theologians of both traditions in defense of their respective faiths. In this regard, Massignon’s influence was pivotal in his religious and intellectual transformation. In the night of the latter’s death (on October 31, 1962), Abdeljalil told Massignon’s son, Daniel, the following story: The most staggering memory that I have of your father is his course on Muslim apologetics at the Collège de France. He knew about my project of baptism, and in order to discourage me, he presented numerous fascinating Muslim rebuttals against Christianity. Never have I, neither before, nor afterward, heard such an insightful and destructive analysis. The more he insisted, the more he tried to dissuade me, the opposite effect it had on me. I told myself: ‘This honest man has understood the critique of Muslim theologians so good, yet he stayed Christian’. There was therefore something additional for a Christian in his path to God. Thus, the courses of anti-Christian apologetics of my godfather erased the last hesitations that I had.21 By sharing his vast knowledge of Islamic and Catholic sources with his Moroccan student, and concretely addressing many of his questions about Islamic Christology and Muhammad’s social role and interior spiritual life, the French Oriental˙ ist seemed to have increased Abdeljalil’s doubts about Islam.

Figure 10.2  Abdeljalil and Louis Massignon during the baptism ceremony of the former in 1928.

In 1928, Massignon was made publicly responsible for his young student’s disaffiliation from Islam. He was attacked vehemently by both Lyautey’s successor

216  Mehdi Sajid in Morocco, Théodore Steeg (1968–1950), and by Moroccan nationalists, who encouraged the Moroccan students in France to stop following his courses as a sign of protest.22 Such attacks did not affect Abdeljalil’s relationship with Massignon. On the contrary, their friendship grew stronger and developed a spiritual and personal dimension marked by a shared interest in the Muslim world and a brotherhood in Christ and St. Francis.23 Both men shared a particular interest in the salvation of Muslim souls around the world. Abdeljalil started his Friday League in 1930, a community of prayer dedicated to the conversion of Muslims to Christianity that gathered on Fridays in Paris. Massignon was asked for help to compose a “litany of saints and blessed people who showed interest, of any possible kind, in the Muslim world.”24 In 1932 on the occasion of the 1300 anniversary of Prophet Muhammad, Abdeljalil also organized a novena, i.e. a ˙ devotional form of praying which is constituted by the repetition of a private or public prayer for nine successive days, in the Franciscan sanctuary in La Verna, where St. Francis received his stigmata. Furthermore, Abdeljalil helped Massignon write the Arabic text of his badaliyya, a movement co-founded in Cairo in 1934 with Franciscan Tertiary Mary Kahil (1889–1979) and rooted in his beliefs of spiritual substitution by Christians for Muslims. He also led occasionally its mass in Paris.25 During his visit to Egypt in that same year, Louis Massignon wrote to Abdeljalil: Now I understand why I became a Franciscan Tertiary. I adhere fully to the teachings of La Verna [where St. Francis received his stigmata] and I ask God to make me a martyr in Muslim lands. Please pray for me to obtain it! You who are in front of God together with al-Hallaj my Arabic consolation.26 The Friday League and the badaliyya are two different movements, but they reflect Massignon’s and Abdeljalil’s growing concern for the salvation of Muslims. The Moroccan Franciscan and his French teacher were among the first Catholic intellectuals in the twentieth century who attempted to bring a nuance – not dogmatically, but spiritually – to the famous Catholic teaching extra ecclesiam nulla salus, i.e. outside the Church there is no salvation.27 As for Paul Mulla, his role in Abdeljalil’s conversion was different from that of Massignon. In his search for spiritual guidance, Abdeljalil turned to C ­ lément Étienne in Rabat who brought him in touch with Mulla.28 The Ottoman–­ Cretan clergyman seemed indeed to be the most qualified person in the eyes of Étienne to assist Abdeljalil. Thus, and from the beginning of their correspondence, Mulla knew how to gain the trust of the young Moroccan by sharing his own conversion story. In his first letter to Abdeljalil, he wrote: Like you, I was a young Muslim who came to Europe in search of science and diplomas, but found God [instead]. I discovered the other France, that of the believing academics, of the Catholic youth, of the saints. I was thrilled by St. Paul and by reading the gospel. Like you, I also felt the need for moral reform and [spiritual] guidance; and while my Muslim beliefs were

A Muslim convert to Christianity  217 being shattered, I walked, like you, on a sharply [dangerous] apex, between two worlds, or rather between two abysses. [It took me] long months of waiting and many moments of anguish, before I entered the Church.29 Mulla’s assistance went well beyond answering the theological and spiritual questions that disturbed Abdeljalil. The fact that he himself came from a Muslim background, went on the same spiritual path, and experienced all the troubles related to conversion (the spiritual crisis, the emotional distress, the separation from his homeland and his family, etc.), gave his words a greater credibility than those of any of Abdeljalil’s other Catholic contacts. The Moroccan young man had finally found someone with whom he could personally identify – someone who, unlike Étienne or Massignon did not grew up Catholic, but rather decided to become one and had to endure the consequences of his decision. He also realized that there were other Muslim students before him who also felt in love with the “older” traditional France. It should be noted that in the modern era, and despite the great attraction of the French secular model and its modern ideas, the Catholic French identity was still able to fascinate many non-Europeans who came initially in search of modern knowledge. The parallels between Mulla’s and Abdeljalil’s paths, before and after conversion, are striking. Like Abdeljalil, but a generation earlier, Mulla also came to study in France. During his studies of philosophy in Aix-en-Provence, he came under the influence of the French Philosopher Maurice Blondel (1861–1949). The Ottoman–Cretan student was so impressed by his teacher’s personality and intellectual depth that he decided to convert to Christianity. At first, Blondel was uncomfortable with this decision. But after witnessing the dedication of his student, he accepted it and agreed to become his godfather.30 The baptism ceremony was celebrated on the 25th of January 1905. Mehmet-Ali Mullah ­Zadeh took the Christian name Paul Mulla and went to study for priesthood at the theological seminary of St. Sulpice in Paris. He received his ordination in 1911 and dedicated himself to his parish ministry and to his courses on philosophy in a Catholic high school.31 In 1922, when Pius XI was reorganizing the Pontifical Oriental Institute to foster better relations with the Eastern Churches, Maurice Blondel suggested the name of his student in a discussion with the newly appointed director Mgr. d´Herbigny.32 There was no doubt that Mulla seemed to be the perfect candidate for the chair of Islamic Studies, not only because of his impressive language skills of Turkish, Arabic, French, Latin, and Greek, but also because of his Muslim past. D´Herbigny ordered his transfer to Rome where he was immediately named a Monsignor and started his teaching activities. The French Catholic journal La Croix celebrated the newly founded chair of Islamic Studies at the Pontifical Institute as an expression of the new philosophy of the Holy See regarding the “convertibility” of Muslims. It warmheartedly welcomed the initiative of the Pope to trust a Muslim convert with the job of preparing “future missionaries” to the encounter with the Muslim world.33 In his autobiography, Mulla explained that his teaching philosophy was to make his Christian students not only learn more about Islam, but also “love the soul of our

218  Mehdi Sajid brothers of Islam, in order to prepare the ground for the unity of the minds in the truth and the unity of the hearts in charity.”34 His nomination to the chair of Islamic Studies at the Pontifical Institute in Rome gained momentum in 1928 in the famous encyclical Rerum Orientalium, in which the head of the Catholic Church praised him, a man “born a Turk,” for his ability to teach the future ministers and scholars.35 Until his death in 1959, Mulla occupied his chair of Islamic Studies in Rome. He taught a variety of courses, including comparative religion, the history of Islamic beliefs and institutions, and Turkish language.36 Furthermore, he represented the Pontifical Institute at various international Orientalist events, such as, for instance, the International Congress of Orientalists in Oxford in 1928.37 After Mulla’s death in 1959, Louis Massignon tried unsuccessfully to convince Mgr. Achille Glorieux (1910–1999), a high-ranking French member of the Catholic clergy, to nominate Abdeljalil as a successor to Mulla at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome. But by this time, Abdeljalil was already struggling with a deterioration of his health condition which obliged him to resign his job at the Institut Catholique.38

Works and approach as an Orientalist Besides giving public talks in various European countries in different languages, Abdeljalil authored and edited a great number of publications.39 His writings can be grouped under two categories: (1) academic works and (2) works destined to nonspecialized Catholic readers. For the scope of this chapter, I will only give a brief overview of his most important writings, with special emphasis on his contributions to the academic study of Islam as a religion.

Academic works Abdeljalil’s academic writings include contributions to both Arabic and Islamic studies. With regard to the study of Islam as a religion, he has always shown a big interest in mystical and theological thoughts. Encouraged by his mentor Louis Massignon, his first academic work was dedicated to the Persian mystical and philosophical author ‘Ayn al-Qodˉat al-Hamadhaˉnıˉ (1098–1131). Consid˙ ered as an influential Sufi thinker, ‘Ayn al-Qodˉat is also remembered as one of ˙ the famous Sufi martyrs of Islam. During the tense religious–political climate of the Seljuk state, charges of heresy brought against him by the ‘ulamaˉ’ on the basis of one of his previous works on mystical theology, the Arabic Zubdat al-H aqa ˉ’iq (The Essence of Truths), led to his imprisonment in Baghdad. It is ˙ during his time in prison that ‘Ayn al-Qodˉat wrote his Arabic apologia, S­ hakwa ˉ ˙ l-gharıˉb ‘an al-awtˉ an ’ila ˉ ‘ulama ˉ’ al-bulda ˉn (The Complaints of a Stranger Ex˙ iled from Home to the Scholars of the Lands), as a defense against the accusations of his detractors. At the age of thirty-three, and after some months in detention, he was sent to his native Hamadhaˉn, where he was tortured and brutally put to death on the night of the arrival of the Seljuk Sultan Mahmu ˉ d.40 ˙ The parallels between Mansu ˉ r al-Hallaˉj and ‘Ayn al-Qodˉat al-Hamadhaˉnıˉ are ˙ ˙ ˙

A Muslim convert to Christianity  219 striking. In fact, both are Persian Sufis who were accused of heresy and sentenced to death by the religious establishment of their time. Described as ‘ıˉsawıˉ al-mashrab wa mans u ˉrıˉ al-maslak (Christian by inspiration and Hallajian by ˙ orientation),41 the case of al-Hamadhaˉnıˉ appears to be nothing but a logical choice for Louis Massignon, who indeed was the first European scholar to draw the scholarly attention to him in his magnum opus on al-Hallaˉj.42 Firoozeh ˙ Papan-Matin argues in this regard that Massignon’s work on al-Hallaˉj and his ˙ interest in al-Hamadhaˉnıˉ must be seen as part of a more complex project “aimed at retrieving and canonizing the mystical heritage of Islam.”43 This rediscovery of Persian authors who conveyed a different image of Islam and challenged the boundaries of knowledge and rational thought far beyond the legalist discourse of ‘ulamaˉ’ was appealing to Massignon and his students, including Abdeljalil. In 1926, the French Orientalist introduced his Moroccan student to the apologia of al-Hamadhaˉnıˉ, the Shakwa ˉ, and convinced him to dedicate his final thesis to it. Abdeljalil prepared the first critical edition of the text of the Shakwa ˉ and published it in 1930 with a French translation and an introduction in the Journal Asiatique.44 Nearly four decades later, A. J. Arberry published his English translation under the title A Sufi Martyr in 1969.45 Together with the Lebanese scholar ‘Affˉf ı ‘Usayraˉn (1919–1988), a Shi‘i-Muslim convert to Catholicism, Abdeljalil was among the first scholars of Islamic Studies of his generation to make a significant contribution to the scholarship on ‘Ayn al-Qodˉat. By doing ˙ so, he continued the legacy of his teacher Louis Massignon and fostered his attempts to gain recognition for the Sufi martyrs in the West, and this, not only among the Western scholars of Islam, but also among the members of the Catholic Church. In fact, it might be surprising to learn that Massignon tried very hard to make the Catholic Church recognize al-Hallaˉj as “one of its ˙ children.”46 The other two important Muslim medieval thinkers who caught Abdeljalil’s attention were Abu ˉ Hˉamid al-Ghazaˉlıˉ (d. 1111), the celebrated Muslim theolo˙ gian, and his brother Ahmad (d. 1123). Both had a significant influence on ‘Ayn ˙ al-Qodˉat’s spiritual development, the latter being his direct spiritual teacher.47 ˙ In the mid-1930s, Abdeljalil started showing a particular interest in the works of the two Ghazalıˉs. In 1937, he traveled to Berlin to view the manuscript of Abu ˉ Hˉamid’s magnum opus, Ihya ˉ’ ‘Ulu ˉm al-Dıˉn (The Revival of the Religious ˙ ˙ Sciences) at the oriental section of the former Preußische Staatsbibliothek.48 During this time, he also gave a series of public lectures on al-Ghazaˉlıˉ at the Institut Catholique. The first, under the title Gazali moraliste (al-Ghazaˉlıˉ as a moralist), was given between 1936 and 1937, and was designed as a general introduction to his life and work, with a special attention to his spiritual crisis. Under the title La pensée religieuse de Gazali (The religious thought of al-­Ghazaˉlıˉ), the second series of lectures was given between 1944 and 1945, and was much more focused on his influence on theology, jurisprudence, and mysticism. During his years as a teacher of Islamic Studies in Paris, Abdeljalil pursued a continuous interest in the formative period of Islam and the developments of legal and theological schools.49

220  Mehdi Sajid Daniel Massignon indicated that Abdeljalil was preparing a doctoral dissertation on Ahmad al-Ghazaˉlıˉ, and that the manuscript of his work went lost in June ˙ 1940 in the context of the German occupation of France.50 Yet, according to the personal documents of Abdeljalil, the latter mentioned that he was preparing a doctoral dissertation on both Ghazaˉlıˉ brothers.51 What exactly the focus of his doctoral research was remained, unfortunately, unspecified. From other sources, we know that Abdeljalil was preparing critical editions and translations of two works authored by Abu ˉ Hˉamid al-Ghazaˉlıˉ, namely Ayyuha ˉ l-walad (­L etter to a ˙ Disciple) and al-Munqidh min al-dala ˉl (The Deliverer from Error). In 1938, for ˙ instance, Louis Massignon expressed his interest in Abdeljalil’s French translation of Ayyuha ˉ l-walad to be published in his journal Revue des études islamiques.52 But, for unknown reasons, this translation was never published. It was Toufic Sabbagh who in 1951 published the first French translation of the work with an introduction under the title Ô jeune homme.53 The translation of al-Ghazaˉlıˉ’s autobiography al-Munqidh had the same fate. Abdeljalil started working on a critical edition and a commented translation of al-Ghazaˉlıˉ’s autobiographical work around 1937. His manuscript was among the documents that were lost in 1940. A decade later, the Moroccan Orientalist resumed his work on the translation of al-Munqidh and had even reached an agreement with a French publishing house to publish the work. According to his private correspondences, it was Régis Blachère (1900–1973), another influent French Orientalist, who convinced the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works, a translation project dedicated to the masterpieces of world literature, to support the work of his Moroccan colleague. In 1955, a contract was signed by both parties and Abdeljalil was promised the amount of 250,000 French francs, if he delivered the manuscript until the 1st of April 1956. Yet, due to his bad health condition, Abdeljalil was not able to honor his part of the contract and suggested his colleague, the Lebanese Catholic Orientalist Farid Jabre, as a co-editor to help him finish the work. The correspondence between the Moroccan and the Lebanese Orientalist shows that, at a certain point, the latter requested that both the contract with the UNESCO and the manuscripts should be handed over to him. He promised, though, that Abdeljalil would get “credit for the revision of the text” and insisted that the translation and the notes will be mentioned as his own.54 In 1959, Jabre’s translation was published under the title Erreur et déliverance and did – surprisingly – not contain the name of Abdeljalil neither as a co-translator, nor as a co-editor.55 Abdeljalil’s scholarly interest in al-Ghazaˉlıˉ was also expressed in his assessments of the contemporary Arabic scholarship of his time on the Muslim polymath. In 1956, he published a harsh review of an Arabic book authored by a certain ‘Abd al-Daˉ’im al-Baqarıˉ which appeared in 1943 under the title I‘tira ˉfa ˉt al-Ghaza ˉlıˉ (Confessions of al-Ghazaˉlıˉ). In this book, al-Baqarıˉ argues that al-Munqidh was neither an autobiographical work, nor an Apologia pro vita sua (a defense of one’s own life), but rather a novel whose hero is al-Ghazaˉlıˉ himself. The goal of this autobiographical work, always according to al-Baqarıˉ’s argument, was nothing but “to leave a fictive image of his personality behind and to give his life a meaning that sets him apart in all fields of thought […], especially in the knowledge

A Muslim convert to Christianity  221 and practice of Sufism.”56 Abdeljalil rejected such an argument and explained that al-Baqarıˉ’s attacks against al-Ghazaˉlıˉ were superficial and not accurate at all. For him, the author of I‘tira ˉfa ˉt al-Ghaza ˉlıˉ was very biased and selective in his approach, choosing to highlight only the elements in al-Ghazaˉlıˉ’s writings that support his argument, and omitting to take into consideration the personal and didactic dimension of al-Munqidh. Louis Massignon supported the view of his Moroccan student. In one of his letters, he wrote: “I was very interested in your ‘critique’ of al-Baqarıˉ’s critique, a sort of Taha ˉfut al-taha ˉfut [incoherence of the incoherence] of a very compact argument. Thank you for dedicating it to me; I fully agree with your Ghazalian position.”57 As part of his research interest in Muslim theology, Abdeljalil published in 1949 a critical review of a book authored by his friends and co-students of Louis Massignon, the Egyptian Dominican Orientalist Georges Anawati (1905–1994) and the French Catholic Priest and Orientalist Louis Gardet (1905–1986) entitled, Introduction à la théologie musulmane. Essai de théologie comparée (­I ntroduction to Muslim theology. An Essay of Comparative Theology).58 He vehemently criticized the approach of the authors, who, in his opinion, reduced Muslim theology to the Sunni-orthodox tradition of kala ˉm (speculative theology), and the theological diversity in Christianity to Thomistic theology. Furthermore, Abdeljalil expressed his disappointment with the inaccuracy of the translation of some Arabic words into French, the lack of consideration given to new published studies, and, last but not least, the partiality of the authors, especially with regard to the “fair” assessment of other theological currents outside the Thomistic school.59 Jürgen Neitzert, himself a Franciscan and author of a German biography of Abdeljalil, indicated that following the publication of the review, the friendship between the Moroccan and his Catholic Orientalist colleagues was much affected. According to him, Anawati stopped even mentioning Abdeljalil’s works in all his publications afterward.60 Although Abdeljalil’s focus was mainly directed toward the study of Islam as a religion, he also left two interesting contributions to the study of Arabic language and literature. In 1938, he published an anthology of Arabic literature under the title al-Wajıˉz fıˉ l-adab al-‘arabıˉ (Handbook of Arabic Literature), which contained a selection of Arabic texts from the pre-Islamic to the modern period. Five years later, he published a book on the history of Arabic literature under the title Brève histoire de la littérature arabe (A Brief History of Arabic Literature), in which he offered a concise overview of the developments of Arabic litera­ rabic ture from the pre-Islamic period to the nineteenth-/twentieth-century A renaissance movement, the so-called al-Nahda.61 This publication was very well received in the circles of Western Arabic Studies, earning him the Lyautey price for young North African authors,62 as well as a positive review written by the renowned German Arabist Carl Brockelmann.63

Works for nonspecialized Catholic readers Although Abdeljalil had a productive career as an Orientalist, he was – first and foremost – a Catholic priest and a Franciscan with numerous religious obligations

222  Mehdi Sajid in different Catholic institutions. With regard to his contributions as a Catholic intellectual, he dedicated most of his time to writing and especially lecturing on Islam in front of Catholic audiences throughout Europe. He indicated very often that he preferred public speaking and engaging new audiences to writing academic articles. His language skills in French, German, English, and Spanish made him a popular lecturer on Islam in European Catholic seminaries. Against this background, it seems important to stress the fact that the big majority of Abdeljalil’s writings were not produced from a strictly academic point of view, i.e. not destined to make a contribution to the Western scholarship on Arabic and Islam, but were rather the expressions of his religious opinions on several issues related to the future of Christian–Muslim relations in his official function as a representative of the Catholic clergy and the Franciscan order. Thus, most of his writings and lectures for Catholic audiences in Europe were aiming at answering three main questions, i.e. “what do we know about Islam? What did we do for Islam? And, in which way is this part of our preoccupations as witnesses of the love of Christ?”64 These questions were closely linked to three important objectives: first, to explain the core principles of the Islamic religion and spirituality; second, to inform about the sociopolitical situation in Muslim-majority societies and the modern trends of Islam; and third, to renew both the Catholic understanding of and the missionary approach toward the religion of Islam and its followers. Abdeljalil believed strongly that the Europeans in general were misinformed about the beliefs and practices of Muslims. Influenced by the anti-colonial reformist discourse that shaped his youth, he continued to see Europe as a place of prejudice against Islam for a long time.65 Thus, he was keen on informing his Catholic readers on the tenets of Islam, as a religion and spirituality, by highlighting not only its common grounds with Christianity, but also its core differences. The various answers he gave to the question “what do we know about Islam?” were published in numerous articles and monographs that dealt, on the one hand, with theoretical knowledge about Islam, and, on the other hand, with updated information on contemporary Muslim-majority societies and Muslim psychology in the colonial context. Some examples of the topics in question here are, for instance, the basic rituals of Islam66; the importance of the Qur’an and Muhammad in the lives of Muslims, and the differences between the Islamic and ˙ the Christian conceptions of God67; the role of Jesus and Maria in Muslim eschatological and spiritual thoughts68; the Muslim view on the Gospel69; war and peace in Islam70; the relationship between Islam and modernity71; and, last but not least, the modern trends and the sociopolitical situation in Muslim-majority societies.72 Abdeljalil’s interest in the ideas and the dynamics of the Egyptian reformist movement influenced heavily his assessments of the developments of Middle Eastern and North African societies of his time.73 He always displayed strong nationalist feelings and a great sympathy for the anti-colonial struggle of Arab and Muslim nations in public.74 And, unlike his role model Paul Mulla, who became a French citizen, Abdeljalil refused categorically to renounce his Moroccan citizenship and insisted to remain the voice of the “Arabs” in the

A Muslim convert to Christianity  223 Catholic Church, making it his mission to invite his European coreligionists to question their assumptions about Islam and to be critical toward some of their religious attitudes that were, in his view, not embedded in Christian spirituality, but rather in their cultural and historical experiences as Europeans. The answers to the other two remaining questions, “What did we do for ­Islam?” and “In which way is it part of our preoccupations as witnesses of the love of Christ?” represent the core of Abdeljalil’s vision of a renewal of the Catholic understanding of Islam as well as his roadmap for a better understanding between the Catholic Church and the Muslim world. What is important to keep in mind here is that Abdeljalil saw himself as a reformer of the Christian approach toward Islam in the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi. Relying on his expertise as an Orientalist and his authority as a former Muslim, Abdeljalil encouraged European Catholics to live up to the expectations of their spirituality; that is, to embody the teachings of Christ during each of their encounters and interactions with Muslims. This involved, first and foremost, the recognition of the positive aspects of Islam that should be acknowledged as a common ground, i.e. its monotheism, its respect for Maria and Christ, and the exemplary devotion and spiritual discipline of a great number of Muslim believers. One of his favorite maxims in this context was a sentence that was used to describe St. Francis’ missionary approach, namely “to never touch Others, but with the hands of the crucified.”75 In his eyes, the foundation of the Christian contact with Muslims must be nothing else but the wish to bear witness of Christ and to give a truthful representation of his compassionate message. In a global context that still bore the scars of the colonial past, Abdeljalil tried to bring a certain intercultural and interreligious sensitivity based on a deep spiritual humility to the modern ­Christian mission. To achieve his goals, he was engaged not only as a writer and public speaker, but also as an active adviser for interreligious dialogue with the Muslim world. In the last part of his life, Abdeljalil actively participated in the Secretariat for Non-Christians, later renamed in Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, which was the office in charge of promoting the interreligious dialogue in accordance with the famous declaration Nostra aetate which revolutionized the Catholic teachings on non-Christians, including Muslims and Jews.76

Academic profile and approach in the study of Islam As an Orientalist, Abdeljalil was much inspired by Louis Massignon. The latter’s influence on him was not only palpable in his religious and spiritual orientation, but also on his academic choices. Along with other converts and reconverts to Christianity (such as Louis Gardet or Georges Anawati), Abdeljalil became one of the most famous Catholic Orientalist students of Massignon. Like his mentor, Abdeljalil’s approach to the study of Islam was anchored in a rigorous spiritual and religious life and a deep sense of gratitude for the spiritual insights that he gained through meditating on Islamic mystical texts. In fact, one of the main features of Massignon that separated him from most of his European Orientalist colleagues was his constant insistence that a scholar has to “experience”

224  Mehdi Sajid the deeper spiritual meaning of mystical texts, what he called the “anagogical” meaning (sens anagogique). According to him, mystical texts have the particularity of being inspired texts; their insights should be therefore mentally applied by scholars, in order to understand them in depth.77 By urging Western scholars to experience the spiritual depth of mystical texts, Louis Massignon raised some fundamental questions in regard to the epistemology of Islamic Studies as pursued in the Western academic context. The French Orientalist Henri Corbin, a renowned expert of Iranian and Shi’i Studies, summed up Massignon’s approach in his obituary as follows: If the quality of the engineer is based on his knowledge of how to use the machine, how can we suppose that a scholar of religious sciences can really, in other words, experimentally comprehend something, if he is unable to participate in the secret of his soul to the prayer of those whose religion he studies?78 It is specifically in this context that the case of Abdeljalil as a Catholic Orientalist is interesting. Unlike Massignon or any other European and/or Christian scholar of Islam, he did not have to overcome the same kind of historico-cultural obstacles to, in Corbin’s words, “experimentally comprehend” the religion and spirituality of Islam. The fact of growing up Muslim in a conservative religious family in one of the oldest centers of learning in the Muslim world gave him many spiritual, cultural, and societal insights that many of his European Orientalist colleagues did not had. Furthermore, and because of his Arab–Muslim past, Abdeljalil did not had to detach himself from preconceived European categories to experience the Muslims’ own model or be open to their own understanding of their religion and culture. He often repeated his teacher’s fundamental maxim: “pour comprendre l´autre, il ne faut pas se l’annexer, il faut se faire son hôte” (to understand the Other, one should not annex him, but become his guest) . Like Louis Massignon, Jean Abdeljalil came under the fascination of influent Sufi thinkers, al-Hamadhaˉnıˉ first and then the al-Ghazaˉlıˉ brothers afterward. Abu ˉ Hˉamid’s spiritual crisis and rocky roads toward Islamic mysticism, ˙ in which he is said to have found his inner peace, seem to have touched him very deeply. As a spiritual seeker himself, Abdeljalil was moved by the story of al-Ghazaˉlıˉ because he was able to see parallels between his own path and that of the Muslim polymath. Especially the question of sincerity in the autobiography of al-Ghazaˉlıˉ, al-Munqidh, seemed to have reminded him of his own personal struggle and the emotional distress he endured when he went public with his conversion. Abdeljalil dedicated much of his time and effort to collecting and studying al-Ghazaˉlıˉ’s work. He carefully worked on translating and editing two of his texts, Ayyuha ˉ l-walad and al-Munqidh, but unlike his mentor with ­a l-Hallaˉj, our protagonist’s name was not destined to become closely associated ˙ with the scholarship on the famous Muslim theologian and Sufi he dedicated his scholarship to. With the exception of his translation of al-Hamadhaˉnıˉ’s shakwa, Abdeljalil did not make important contributions to the Western academic study

A Muslim convert to Christianity  225 of Sufism. The very few passages in his work, in which he expressed his views on the subject, show clearly the influence of Louis Massignon and his concept of badaliyya on his thought. Sufism, for Abdeljalil, was a mystical movement of internal meditation and one of the very few historical attempts to “liberate” the Islamic faith from the influence of the legalist mindset.79 Thus, the ­Moroccan Orientalist was convinced that, in contrast to Christianity, Sufism as a whole had failed to produce “schools of sanctity,” like the Franciscan order, that teach self-sacrifice and deep spirituality.80 The main reason for this failure, in his view, lies in the recurrent attempts of Muslim jurists, in Shahab Ahmed’s words, to “domesticate unbounded Sufi experience of the Unseen within the parameters of legal regulation of the Seen.” It is, in fact, this “legally-subordinate ­Sufism,” which became the dominant form of Islamic mysticism over the course of ­Islamic history and which is characterized by the subordination of its epistemological claims to Real-Truth to the authority of the Islamic legal discourse, that Abdeljalil was very critical of.81 What fascinated him about Sufism were rather the very few individuals in Sufi history who transcended Islam as a doctrinal and religious system, and who lived their lives as witnesses of the direct encounter with the divine truth. These “rare” individuals, he explained, represent extraordinary cases and fascinating questions with which Catholic researchers should study in depth, in order to contribute to the development of modern Catholic theology. In this context, it is no surprise to learn that Abdeljalil saw al-Hallaˉj ˙ as the most important figure in the history of Sufism. For him, the famous mystic was, first and foremost, a witness who accepted to be executed and did not renounce or deny “the plenitude of his faith and the divine liberality of his experience of the grants of God.”82 In Christian terms, al-Hallaˉj was a witness ˙ who gave his life as a ransom for his Muslim coreligionists. Thus, for Abdeljalil, it was exactly the martyr aspect of both al-Hallaˉj and al-Hamadhaˉnıˉ, who were ˙ executed for their transgression of Islamic law, that brought these Sufis closer to the Christian spiritual realm. Al-Ghazaˉlıˉ is the only one in Abdeljalil’s “rare cases” in Sufi history who combined mysticism with deep doctrinal and legal knowledge. What made him an exception in the eyes of the Moroccan Orientalist are mainly “his efforts of moderation and synthesis” to defend Sufism on juridical and doctrinal grounds.83

Impact and legacy Abdeljalil’s impact in the fields of Arabic and Islamic studies cannot be compared to that of Louis Massignon. The Moroccan Orientalist might have had a relative success with his publications, but the reception of his work was very limited outside his religious Catholic circles. As an orientalist, Abdeljalil modeled his career after the example of his French mentor Louis Massignon and adopted many of his views.84 Jacques Waardenburg described the latter as an exceptional scholar not only in terms of his intellectual capacities and his erudition, but also in terms of his academic profile, which was deeply entangled with his own religious and spiritual

226  Mehdi Sajid

Figure 10.3  Abdeljalil in his Franciscan robe (1964).

convictions. He insisted that the French scholar represented a type of scholarship that was sometimes looked down on in the secular academic culture of his home country, which was since the mid-nineteenth century very much dominated by positivist ideas.85 It is probably for this reason that a religiously committed scholar like Seyyed Hossein Nasr, one the most renowned Muslim philosophers in the contemporary West, considered Massignon to be “the greatest scholar that the West has ever produced in the field of Islamic studies.”86 Waardenburg’s remark concerning Massignon applies to a certain degree also to Abdeljalil. Because of his public conversion and his Franciscan vocation, the Moroccan Orientalist was, intentionally or not, pushed outside the “laic” French academic establishment and encouraged to focus on producing a “religious” scholarship on Islam and Muslims that was primarily destined for Catholic groups and individuals. On the other hand, and since his conversion to Christianity, Abdeljalil knew that, as a scholar and writer, his voice would not be easily heard in Muslim circles. In the colonial and postcolonial contexts of the twentieth century, in which polemics against Christian missionaries dominated many North African and Middle Eastern nationalist discourses, Abdeljalil was aware that his sphere of influence – if he had any – was reduced to Catholic circles in Europe and Christian missionaries in the Muslim context, who acknowledged his expertise and considered him a great source of inspiration. Maurice Borrmans, professor at the Pontifical Orientale Institute in Rome as well as an engaged Catholic intellectual in the interreligious dialogue with Islam, pointed out that some of Abdeljalil’s writings were very well received, especially by the Catholics who were in direct contact with the Muslim world.87

A Muslim convert to Christianity  227 The last part of Abdeljalil’s life was marked by a long battle against depression and tongue cancer, which reduced considerably his public appearances. Furthermore, and since his one and only visit to Morocco in 1961, after nearly four decades of exile, many rumors about his alleged reconversion to Islam have been following him in the last years of his life. Abdeljalil died in 1979 after long years of poor physical and mental health. A great number of friends gave talks and wrote numerous obituaries to honor his life and work. The Franciscan convent, where he first arrived as a student and where he spent most of his adult life, became posthumously the repository of his private papers. His Franciscan brothers and sisters took care of a total of 29 boxes containing his correspondences, published works, manuscripts, and hundreds of photographs that show the life of man who, because of his multiple and complex identities, felt very often out of place: Arab, Moroccan, North African, Muslim convert to Christianity, Franciscan monk, Orientalist, Catholic priest – one needs a multitude of labels to describe a man like Abdeljalil. This hybridity was always alluded to when he signed his works with Jean-Mohammed, instead of Jean alone – as a constant reminder for himself and others that he was a Christian Jean with the Muslim past of a Mohammed. In his home country, Abdeljalil’s name was for a long time synonymous with the missionary “scandals” in Morocco, and because of the important political position of his family, his story was pushed into oblivion. Today, the name of Jean-Mohammed Abdeljalil has been reappropriated by a small group of Moroccan converts to Christianity who consider him as a symbol of courage, because he stood for his Christian faith and accepted to pay the price of his conversion by spending the rest of his life in exile.88 As already mentioned, there is no doubt that Abdeljalil contributed through his own example and scholarship to some degree to the major leap made by the Catholic Church in its understanding and attitudes toward Islam. In few decades, the official position of the Holy See moved from considering Islam as a “corrupt religion” into opening theoretically the possibility of salvation for Muslims. This process was crowned in the 1960s by the promulgation of the groundbreaking teachings of the Second Vatican Council. It is probably the famous Nostra Aetate of 1965, a.k.a. the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, that represents best the legacy, the spirit, and the hopes of Abdeljalil. For a man who dedicated his life to the rapprochement between Islam and Christianity, there is probably no better reward than to witness, during one’s lifetime, this major change of attitude and the new openings that accompanied it. Within the Catholic scholarship of Islam, Abdeljalil is remembered as one of the “prophets” of modern Christian–Muslim dialogue.89

Conclusion This study has attempted to shed light on the life story and the scholarly impact of Muslim convert to Christianity Jean-Mohammed Abdeljalil. The latter’s life and work as a Catholic Orientalist in Europe are situated at the confluence of four important streams of research in modern history that have attracted a great deal of

228  Mehdi Sajid scholarly attention among the scholars of Islamic Studies. The first shows the impact of European colonialism on Middle Eastern and North African societies and the paradigm shift that was caused by the colonial presence in Muslim-­majority societies. The second investigates the history of Muslim groups and individuals in Western Europe before the arrival of Muslim workers and their families after WWII. In this regard, Abdeljalil’s conversion shows the diversity of this “­Muslim” presence which did not always define itself by an affiliation to the religion of Islam or an adherence to secular nationalist ideologies. The third highlights the history of Christian–Muslim relations in modern times and the role played by Muslim converts to Christianity in the transformation of Catholic attitudes and teachings toward Islam. The fourth, lastly, focuses on the agency of “Muslim”/ “Oriental” individuals in Europe who were actively weighing in on the European Orientalist discourse on Islam from within the very structures that produced it. Abdeljalil’s work as an Orientalist cannot be separated from his spiritual and religious journey. For him, the study of Islam was the opportunity both to reflect on his former religion and to process his old spiritual and religious beliefs in the light of his new ones. Furthermore, it also offered him the possibility to use his intercultural and interreligious skills in a productive manner, in order to make a difference in his new socioreligious environment. His academic legacy in the fields of Islamic and Arabic Studies might not be comparable to that of his mentor Louis Massignon, under whose shadow he spent most of his scholarly career. Nevertheless, Abdeljalil was able to achieve a respectable degree of recognition in European Catholic circles interested in the study of Islam.

Notes 1 I am grateful to the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program “(FP7/2007-2013)/ERC – Grant agreement Neither Nor n. 336608” for supporting my postdoctoral research as part of the project Muslims in Interwar Europe at Utrecht University (2014–2017). I would like also to express my gratitude to Brother Benoît Dubigeon and Mr. Sylvain Champion for granting me access to the papers of Abdeljalil in the franciscain archives in Paris. 2 Some scholars have argued that the increasing participation of “Muslims” in Islamic Studies was accompanied with the emergence of new approaches that challenged the very epistemology of Western Oriental Studies. See: Jacques Waardenburg, Muslims as Actors: Islamic Meanings and Interpretations in the Perspective of the Study of Religions (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007), 129–131. 3 Jean-Mohammed Abdeljalil, “Témoignage d´un tard-venu à l´Église,” Evangile Aujourd’hui 54 (1967): 64. 4 For more information on the French education system in Morocco during the colonial period, see, for instance: Spencer D. Segalla, The Moroccan Soul: French Education, Colonial Ethnology, and Muslim Resistance, 1912–1956 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009). For the Spanish education system, see: Irene Gonzàlez Gonzàlez, Spanish Education in Morocco, 1912–1956: Cultural Interactions in a Colonial Context (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2015). 5 PP-AeJ. 1, Élements de CV. Later, Abdeljalil took some courses of traditional Islamic sciences at al-Qarawiyyıˉn. Maurice Borrmans, Jean-Mohammed Abd-El-Jalil: Témoin du Coran et de l´Évangile (Paris: Cerf, 2004), 47.

A Muslim convert to Christianity  229 6 Jean-Mohammed Abd El Jalil, “Les Pélerins de La Mecque,” Lycéennes 81 (1939): 9. 7 Cf. Susan Gilson Miller, A History of Modern Morocco (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 100. 8 Cf. PP-AeJ 1, Profession solennelle, September 18, 1933. 9 Some sources have suggested that Abdeljalil was the attaché of the French Générale Résidence. This information is inaccurate. In his private papers, he kept the identity card given to him by the French authorities, which states very clearly that he was a trainee attaché. See PP-AeJ 1bis. 10 The correspondence between Abdeljalil and Clément Ètienne is still in manuscript form among Abdeljalil’s other numerous private papers in the Franciscan archives in Paris. Unlike his correspondences with Louis Massignon and Paul Mulla, which will be discussed later, his letters to and from Ètienne have not yet been published and so far not been taken into consideration in the few studies dedicated to Abdeljalil. They are, without any doubt, the best autobiographical source on his first years in France, in that they offer good insights into his spiritual and religious struggles as a Muslim in a Catholic French environment. In this regard, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Beloit Dubigeon (a.k.a Frère Beloit) and all those in charge of the Franciscan archives in Paris for their hospitality and generosity. 11 Jürgen Neitzert OFM, Jean-Mohammed Ben Abd-el Jalil OFM: Wegbereiter des christlich-islamischen Dialogs (Mönchengladbach: B. Kühnen Verlag, 2009), 33. 12 PP-AeJ 1, Son milieu social: 3. 13 Ibid., Élements de Curriculum Vitae: 1–2. 14 First published in 1919, Gilson’s book Le Thomisme: Introduction à la philosophie de Saint Thomas d´Aquin, 6th ed. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1997), has been edited several times and is considered to be one of the most important works on the philosophical thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). 15 Chardin was a Jesuit paleontologist and geologist. One of his most important works is his posthumously published book: Le phénomène humain (publ. 1955). For an ­English translation, see: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man: With an Introduction by Sir Julian Huxley (New York: Harper and Row, 1959). 16 Jacques Maritain was a prolific writer who authored several books dealing with a variety of philosophical and theological subjects. One of his most important works is: Integral Humanism: Temporal and Spiritual Problems of a New Christendom (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968). 17 For more information on Blondel and his thought, see: Oliva Blanchette, Maurice Blondel: A Philosophical Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010). For an English translation of his most notable work L´Action, see: Maurice Blondel, Action (1893): Essay on a Critique of Life and a Science of Practice, trans. Olivia Blanchette (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984). 18 PP-AeJ 1, Élements de curriculum vitae, 3 19 Louis Massignon and Jean Abd-el-Jalil, Massignon – Abd-El-Jalil: Parrain et filleul 1926–1962, ed. Françoise Jacquin (Paris: CERF, 2007), 56. 20 Cf. Oissila Saaïdia, “De Mohamed à Jean-Mohamed: Abd el-Jalil ou l’itinéraire d’une conversion au catholicisme,” Histoire, monde et cultures religieuses 28 (2013): 19. 21 Translation is mine. Daniel Massignon, “Louis Massignon, Mgr. Mulla et la conversion d’Abdeljalil,” Bulletin de l´Association des Amis de Louis Massignon 5 (1996): 44. 22 For the report of Steeg on the Abdeljalil affair, see: Massignon and Abd-el-Jalil, ­Massignon - Abd-El-Jalil, 285–286. 23 Many elements in their correspondence suggest the idea that Massignon’s decision to join the Secular Franciscan Order in 1932 was partly influenced or rather inspired by Abdeljalil who during that time was absolving his novitiate. It was Abdeljalil whom Massignon turned to when he needed more information about this community of men and women who aspire to pattern their lives in the spirit of St. Francis. See Massignon and Abd-el-Jalil, Massignon - Abd-El-Jalil, 44–46; 63–64; 93.

230  Mehdi Sajid 24 Ibid., 56 25 Ibid., 273. For more information on the badaliyya, see, for instance: Guy Harpigny, Islam et Christianisme selon Louis Massignon (Louvain: Université Catholique de Louvain, 1981), chapter V; see also Jean-Francois Six, “De la prière et de la substitution mystique à la compassion et à l´action,” in Presence de Louis Massignon: Hommages et témoignages, ed. Daniel Massignon (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 1987), 155–166. 26 Massignon and Abd-el-Jalil, Massignon - Abd-El-Jalil, 104. 27 Cf. Neitzert, Jean-Mohammed Ben Abd-El Jalil, 53. For more information on ­Massignon and Abdeljalil’s role as pioneers of Christian–Muslim dialogue, see, for instance: Andreas Renz, Die Katholische Kirche und der interreligiöse Dialog, 50 Jahre Nostra aetate: Vorgeschichte, Kommentar, Rezeption (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2014), 76–84; Maurice Borrmans, Prophètes du dialogue Islamo-Chrétien: Louis Massignon, Jean-Mohammed Abd-El-Jalil, Louis Gardet, Georges C. Anawati (Paris: CERF, 2009); Neal Robinson, “Massignon, Vatican II and Islam as an Abrahamic Religion,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 2 (1991): 182–205. 28 Paul-Mehmet Mulla-Zadé and Jean Mohammed Abd-el-Jalil, Deux frères en conversion: Du Coran à Jésus. Correspondance, 1927–1957, ed. Maurice Borrmans (Paris: Cerf, 2009), 259–270. For more information on Paul Mulla, see, for instance, ­V icenzo Poggi, Paul Ali Mehmet Mulla Zade: Islamologo di tre Papi & Lettres de Mulla-Zadé à Louis Massignon, ed. Mgr. Charles Molette (Roma: Pontifico Instituto Orientale, 2012). 29 Mulla-Zadé and Abd-el-Jalil, Deux frères en conversion, 19. Text in […] is mine. 30 Blanchette, Maurice Blondel, 283. 31 Charles Molette, La vérité où je la trouve: Mulla, une conscience d´ homme dans la ­lumière de Maurice Blondel (Paris: Téqui, 1988), 58. 32 For more information on the Pontifical Orientale Institute, see, for instance, Vicenzo Poggi, Per la storia del Pontifico Istituto Orientale: Saggi sull’istituzione, I suoi uomini e l´Oriente Cristiano (Roma: Pontifico Istituto Orientale, 2000). 33 B. Sinne, “Pour l´apostolat parmi les musulmans,” La Croix, July 22, 1924, 4. 34 Molette, La vérité où je la trouve, 59. 35 Pius XI, Rerum Orientalium, 1928. 36 Molette, La vérité où je la trouve, 59. 37 Mulla was supposed to give a paper in Oxford with the title “L´apologie contre Renan de Namig Kémal.” The paper was not read owing to a misunderstanding about the room number. Cf. Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Congress of Orientalists Oxford (Nendeln: Kraus Reprint, 1928), 84. 38 Massignon and Abd-el-Jalil, Massignon - Abd-El-Jalil, 266. 39 For a complete bibliographical list of Abdeljalil’s works, see Borrmans, Jean-­ Mohammed Abd-El-Jalil, 163–172. 40 For more information on al-Hamadhaˉnıˉ’s life and work, see, for instance, Landolt 2008; Hamid Dabashi, Truth and Narrative: The Untimely Thoughts of ‘Ayn ­Al-Qudˉ at Al-Hamadha ˉnıˉ (Richmond: Curzon, 1999); Firoozeh Papan-Matin, Be˙ yond Death: The Mystical Teachings of ‘Ayn Al-Qudˉ at Al-Hamadha ˉnıˉ (Leiden: Brill, 2010); A. J. Arberry, A Sufi Martyr: The Apologia˙ of ‘Ain Al-Qudˉ at Al-Hamadha ˉnıˉ ˙ (New York: Routledge, 2008); Omid Safi, “‘Ayn Al-Qudˉat Al-Hamadha ˉnıˉ: Intellectual Legacy,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, three (2008), online˙ edition, accessed on March 15, 2017. 41 G. Böwering, “‘Ayn al-Qoz˙ˉat Hamadaˉnıˉ,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. III (1987): 140–143, accessed on May 10, 2017. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ ayn-al-qozat-hamadani-abul-maali-abdallah-b. 4 2 Cf. Louis Massignon, Hallaj: Mystic and Martyr of Islam, ed. Herbert Mason, 3 vols (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982). 43 Papan-Matin, Beyond Death, 163.

A Muslim convert to Christianity  231 4 4 See, Mohammed Ben Abd El-Jalil, “Šakwa-L-g˙ arıˉb ‘ani-L-Awtˉan ’ilaˉ ‘ulamaˉ’-L˙ Buldaˉn de ‘Ayn Al-Qudˉat Al-Hamadˉanıˉ (d. 525–1131): Éditée et traduite, avec intro˙ du Journal ˉ Asiatique (January–March 1930): 1–297. duction et notes,” Extrait 45 Arberry, A Sufi Martyr. 46 Massignon and Abd-el-Jalil, Massignon - Abd-El-Jalil, 59. 47 Because of his significant influence on philosophy, theology, and jurisprudence, Abu ˉ Hamıˉd al-Ghazaˉlıˉ has received most of the scholarly attention and seems to have ˙ overshadowed the legacy of his brother Ahmad, who was also a very important mysti˙ cal thinker. For more information on Ahmad, see, for instance, the recent published ˙ study by Joseph Lumbard, Ahmad Al-Ghazali, Remembrance, and the Metaphysics of Love (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2016). 48 Neitzert, Jean-Mohammed Ben Abd-El Jalil, 47–48. 49 for more information, see PP-AeJ 5, Cours à l´Institut Catholique 50 Massignon, “Louis Massignon, Mgr. Mulla et la conversion d´Abdeljalil,” 42. 51 Cf. PP-AeJ 1, Élements de curriculum vitae, 3 52 Massignon and Abd-el-Jalil, Massignon - Abd-El-Jalil, 144. 53 Toufic Sabbagh, O Jeune Homme (Beyrouth: Imprimerie catholique, 1951). 54 For the correspondence regarding the publication of al-Munqidh, see PP-AeJ 10. 55 Cf. Farid Jabre, Al-Munqid Min Adala ˉl (Erreur et Délivrance): Traduction française ˙ Commission internationale pour la traduction avec introduction et notes ˉ(Beyrouth: des chefs-d’oeuvres, 1959). 56 Jean-Mohammed Abd El Jalil, “Autour de La Sincérité D´al-G˙ azzaˉlıˉ,” in Extrait Des Mélanges Louis Massignon (Paris: Institut Français de Damas, 1956), 58. 57 Massignon and Abd-el-Jalil, Massignon - Abd-El-Jalil, 260. 58 Louis Gardet and M.-M. Anawati, Introduction à la théologie musulmane: Essai de théologie comparée (Paris: J. Vrin, 1948). 59 See Jean-Mohammed Abd El Jalil, “Une introduction à la théologie musulmane,” Verdad Y Vida (1949): 371–393. 60 Neitzert, Jean-Mohammed Ben Abd-El Jalil, 85. 61 Jean-Mohammed Abd El Jalil, Brève histoire de la littérature arabe (Paris: G. P. Maisonneuve, 1943). 62 Neitzert, Jean-Mohammed Ben Abd-El Jalil, 50. 63 See C. Brockelmann, “J. M. Abd-El.jalil, Professeur à l´Institut Catholique de Paris. Brève histoire de la littérature arabe. Illustrée de 3 Cartes. 308 S. Paris: G.P. Maisonneuve. 1943.” ZDMG 98 (1944): 408–410. 6 4 Jean-Mohammed Abd El Jalil, L´Islam et nous: Aperçus et suggéstions (Paris: CERF, 1947), 9. 65 When he left his home country for France in 1925, Clément Ètienne described him at that time as “quite a disciple of Muhammad ‘Abduh.” Cf. Mulla-Zadé and Abdel-Jalil, Deux frères en conversion, 260. ˙ Abdeljalil’s correspondence with Massignon also confirms that he was a reader of Rashıˉd Ridˉa’s al-Mana ˉr, the mouthpiece of the ˙ ˉıb’s al-Fath, arguably the second reformist movement, and Muhibb al-Dıˉn al-Khat ˙ ˙ ˙ most important Egyptian Muslim journal in the interwar years. Cf. Massignon and Abd-el-Jalil, Massignon - Abd-El-Jalil, 69–70. This might probably explain why he saw the movement initiated by ‘Abduh in Egypt as the best alternative for Muslims caught between Atatürk’s radical secularism, on the one hand, and Ibn Sa‘u ˉ d’s “excessive” puritanism, on the other. See chapters 3 and 4 in Jean-Mohammed Abd El Jalil, Aspects Intérieurs de l´Islam (Paris: Seuil, 1949). 66 Abd El Jalil, “Les Pélerins de La Mecque,” and ibid., “Le jeûne du Ramadan,” in Redécouverte du jeûne, ed. Collectif (Paris: CERF, 1959), 185–193. 67 Ibid., L´Islam et nous. 68 Ibid., “L´attente du Christ en Islam,” Eleona (July 1956): 6–8 and ibid., Marie et l´Islam (Paris: Beauchesne,1950).

232  Mehdi Sajid 69 Ibid., “L´Évangile d´aprés les musulmans,” Cahiers de Vie Franciscaine 22 (1959): 106–116. 70 Ibid., “L´Islam et La Paix,” Axes (January–February, 1972): 3–12. 71 See, for instance, ibid., “L´Islam moderne et la coopération internationale,” ­Recherches et Débats 28 (1959): 95–104; ibid., “L´Islam devant la civilization d´aujourd´hui,” Èchanges 41 (1959): 34–39; and ibid., “L´Islam et La téchnique,” Studia Missionalia XI (1961): 7–27. 72 Mohammed Ben Abd El-Jalil, “Le Proche Orient, Carrefour Entre Islam, Israel et Le Christianisme,” Unpublished conference paper for La ligue missionaire des étudiants de France, 1949, 1–43. 73 See, for instance, Abd El Jalil, Aspects Intérieurs; ibid., L´Islam et nous. 74 For more information on Abdeljalil’s nationalist and anti-colonial positions, see: Neitzert, Jean-Mohammed Ben Abd-El Jalil, 68–83. 75 The text that explains best his missionary vision and interreligious approach is: Jean-Mohammed Abd El Jalil, “À la rencontre de L´âme musulmane,” Approche Du Non-Chrétien: Rapports et Compte Rendu de La XXXIV Semaine de Missiologie (1964): 84–100. 76 On the impact of Nostra Aetate on the Catholic teachings on the Jews, see, for instance, John Connelly, From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution on Catholic Teachings on the Jews, 1933–1965 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). For its impact on the Muslims, see: Renz, Die Katholische Kirche und der interreligiöse; Robinson, “Massignon, Vatican II and Islam.” The documents related to Abdeljalil’s role in the Secretariat for non-Christians are still unpublished. They can be found in PP-AeJ 20. 77 Jacques Waardenburg, “Louis Massignon (1883–1962) as a Student of Islam,” Die Welt Des Islams 45 (2005): 320–321. 78 Henri Corbin, “Discours de M. le professeur H. Corbin à l´occasion de la mort de L. Massignon,” Hommage à Louis Massignon – Revue de la faculté des lettres de Téhéran 10 (1962): 4. 79 Abd El Jalil, L´Islam et nous, 34. 80 Ibid., 35. 81 Shahab Ahmed, What Is Islam?: The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 30. 82 Abd El Jalil, L´Islam et nous, 34. 83 Ibid., 35. 84 Borrmans, Jean-Mohammed Abd-El-Jalil, 38. 85 Waardenburg, “Louis Massignon,” 325. 86 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “In Commemoration of Louis Massignon: Catholic, Scholar, Islamicist and Mystic,” in Presence de Louis Massignon: Hommages et témoignages, ed. Daniel Massignon (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 1987), 50. 87 Borrmans, Jean-Mohammed Abd-El-Jalil, 42. 88 A group of Moroccan Muslim converts to Christianity under the name of “­Moroccan and Christian” have dedicated one of their videos on YouTube to the biography of Abdeljalil. See: Last access March 30, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=qGkY8PAeV8Q. 89 See Borrmans, Prophètes du dialogue Islamo-Chrétien.

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Index

Abbasid Golden Age 32 Abdeljalil, Jean-Mohammed 11–12, 209, 210, 213–18, 220–7, 229n10 Abduh, Muhammad 8, 103, 107, 170 Abdülmecid I, Ottoman Sultan 17, 23 Abu Nuwas 44, 83 academic orientalism 39 An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (Lane) 151 achievement gap 172 adab 17 Afghani, Jamal al-Din, al 8, 14, 103, 109 Ahmad, Sayyid 103, 108–11, 119, 125n45, 172 Ahmad, Ziauddin 111–12 Ahmed, Shahab 7, 162, 225 Aix-en-Provence 217 Akbari, Suzanne Conklin 2 al-Aʿlam 41 Aligarh 171–6 Aligarh Muslim University 158 Aligarh’s model 113–14 ‘Ali Jauhar, Muhammad 158 Ali, Muhammad Kurd 129, 170, 172, 175, 178, 180n14 Allam, Muhammad Mahdy 70, 78n75 All-India Muslim League 158, 172 American University of Beirut 197 Amin, Ahmad 70, 71 Amsterdam 39, 40, 42, 43, 52, 202 Amzi-Erdogdular, Leyla 90 Anawati, Georges 221 Anidjar, Gil 147 Arab Christians 161, 207n64 Arab culture 129, 192, 195, 196 Arabian Nights (Lane) 21 Arabic edition 63–4 Arabic Literary History (Brockelmann) 87

Arabic literature: Bosnia and recognition 94–5; Bosnian Muslim reception 90–1; history of 82–7; Hungary, developing Oriental scholarship and communicating 93–4; scholarship and politics 91–3; textbook and Goldziher’s contribution 87–90 Arabic, Mamluk costumes in 202 Arabic music 50 Arabic poetry 82 Arabic sciences 49–50 Arabic translation 63 Arab intellectuals, and Orientalism 3 Arab intelligentsia 191, 196, 198 Arab-Islamic model 32 Arab renaissance 4 Arabs 84–8, 96, 99n31, 129; in Mandatory Palestine 194–6 Arnold, Thomas Walker 116 Arouet, François-Marie 142n5 ar-Risa ˉla 6 Ash-Shintinawi, Ahmad 63 Ashtor, Eliyahu 189, 202 Austria-Hungarian monarchy 187 Austrian Orientalists 187 Austro-Hungarian empire 6, 7, 80, 96 Ayyuha ˉ l-walad (al-Ghazaˉlıˉ’s) 220, 224 Azami, Muhammad Mustafa 170, 179 Azhar, al 92, 101n66, 107, 177 Azhari, Sayyid ‘Abd al-Haq Haqi al-A’zami al-Baghdadi, al 114–17, 126n59 Azhar Mosque, Al-42 Bagdadi, Nadia, al 19, 26, 36n63 Bahy, Muhammad, al 67–8 Bakr, Abu 66, 67 Baqarıˉ, ‘Abd al-Daˉ’im, al 220 Bar Sadeh, Roy 7

252 Index Barton, John 21 Battuta, Ibn 173 Baudrillart, Alfred Henri 213 Bearman, P. J. 62 Becker, Carl Heinrich 160, 166n44, 181n37, 186 Biblische Legenden der Muselmänner (Weil) 152 Bilgrami, Ali Azad 54 Billig, Levi 176 Blachere, Régis 220 Blondel, Maurice 214, 217 Blunt, Anne 157 Bonomi, Joseph 151 Bosnia: acquisition of 7; and recognition 94–5 Bosnian Muslims 90–1, 95 Bosworth, C. E. 62 Brandeis, Louis D. 191 Bretschneider, Emil 143n17 Brith Shalom 194 British administration 16 British Orientalists 19 Brit Shalom 169, 177, 178 Brockelmann, Carl 80, 82, 87, 97n2 Brown, Gardner 173 al-Burhan 39, 44–6, 49, 53 Burián, István 92 Burton, James 151 Burton, Richard 157 Bayyumi, Rajab, al 77n36 Caetani, Leone 169 Catholic Church 209, 222, 227 Central Archives of the Hebrew University (CAHU) 181n42 Central Asian 93–4 Central European scholarship 164 Chardin, Pierre Teilhard, de 213, 229n15 Chen, Keli 140 China 2, 7–9, 12, 47, 129–42 China Islamic Guild 137 China Islamic Learning Society 137 Chinese Muslim 9, 129, 130, 137, 140, 141, 143n12; organizations claiming leadership of 136; Wells and history of 131–5 Christianity 6, 11, 12, 127, 136, 138, 139, 141, 154, 156, 160, 163, 214–17, 221–8 Christianization 9, 135 civilization 19, 20, 28, 29, 32, 50, 184, 188 Colet, Louise 157 Coller, Ian 1

Colonialism and the Jews 168 Commercial Press 135–7 Conrad, Lawrence I. 170, 171 Coptic Egypt 195 corporate institution 130, 140–2 counter-Orientalism 149 Crescent China 132, 133, 135–7 Culp, Robert 144n34 cultural exclusions 24 Dabashi, Hamid 7, 81 Da, Pusheng 135, 137, 138 d’Arc, Jeanne 19 Das Gebet im Qoran (Goitein) 155 Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammad, nach bisher grösstentheils unbenutzten Quellen bearbeitet (Sprenger) 165n20 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Islamkunde 66 Dévényi, Kinga 97n7, 99n43, 100n57 Diary 92–5 Dictionary Persian, Arabic, and English (Richardson) 21 Dictionnaire philosophique (Voltaire) 19, 36n63 Die biblischen Erzählungen im Qoran (Speyer) 155, 160 Die haggadischen Elemente im erzählenden Teil des Korans (Schapiro) 155 Donia, Robert 88, 90 Dozy, Reinhart 202 Dumont, C. 62 Dutch Orientalism 6 The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet and their Authors (Horovitz) 170 Eastern European 187 École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) 212, 213 educational models 103, 104, 111–14, 121, 125n47 Efron, John 7, 81, 148 Egyetemes irodalomtörténet (Heinrich) 82 Egypt 70–2; EI in 6; pharaonic movement in 204n3 Egyptian identity, Islamic archaeology and 198–202 Egyptian intellectual(s) 203 Egyptian intellectual landscape, EI in 64–5 Egyptian Ministry of Culture 202 El-Ariss, Tarek 3 Encyclopedia of Islam (EI) 5–6, 61; Arabic edition 63–4; in Egyptian intellectual landscape 64–5; history 62–3; opponents of 65–9; production of 61

Index  253 Essai sur les moeurs et l’esprit des nations (Voltaire) 19, 25, 37n72 Etienne, Clément 229n10, 231n65 Europe 1–4, 8, 11, 12, 15–17, 20, 29, 44, 48, 112, 115, 147–63, 173, 178, 187, 209–28 European orientalism 2, 114, 116, 121, 149, 161, 173 European Research Council 228n1 European scholarship 2, 5, 94, 121, 164, 179; fascination with and contestation 14; on Islam 12 Fahmi, Abdulrahman 202 Farahi, Hamid al-Din, al 158 Farahi, Mulana Hamiduddin 114 Federal Supreme Council of the United Arab Emirates 64 Fida’, Abu, al 200 Fiqh 87, 88, 90 Findi, Muhammad Thabit, al 63, 75n17 Flaubert, Gustav 157 Fleischer, Heinrich Lebrecht 155 Frankfurter Zeitung 177, 178 Freytag, Georg 154 Friday League 216 fundamental errors 62 Gabirol, Solomon Ibn 84 Gardet, Louis 221 Garrett, Robert 44 Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Maurice 143n18 Geiger, Abraham 14, 150, 155, 158, 159, 162 Geiger, Bernard 187 Geyer, Eugen 187 Ghazaˉlıˉ, al 29–31, 225 Gibb, H. A. R. 62 Gilson, Etienne 213 Girardet, Raoul 123n10 Glasserman, Aaron 7–9 Glorieux, Achille 218 Goeje, Michael Jan, de 48, 49, 52 Goitein, Fritz 155 Goitein, Shlomo Dov 161, 163, 169, 176, 182n50, 191, 206n33 Golden Age 105, 148 Goldziher, Ignaz 2, 6, 7, 10, 15, 50, 80–96, 101n68, 148, 150, 153–7, 161, 170 Goode, James F. 184, 185 Green, Nile 1 Gymnasium 88, 90

Ha, Decheng 135, 137, 138 Hadith 6, 10, 87, 148, 170, 179 Hallaˉj, Mansu ˉ r, al 218–19 ˙ Hamadha ˉnıˉ,˙ ‘Ayn al-Qodˉat, al ˙ 218–19, 224 Harawi, Hussein, al 69, 78n55 Harz, Benjamin 188 Hasan, Zaki Muhammad 11, 195, 201, 203 Ha-Shomer 205n32 Hassan, Said F. 5 Hay, Robert 151 Hebrew University 169, 172, 176–7, 192 Heinrich, Gusztáv 82 Heinrichs, W. P. 62 Herz, Max 156, 158 Heschel, Susannah 4, 15, 170 Himyartic language 51 al-Hilal 125n41, 199 Hirschfeld, Hartwig 155, 158, 159 Hodgson, Marshall 205n20 Holy Land 191, 203, 206n34 Horovitz, Josef 2, 10, 11, 116, 156–8, 160, 161, 168, 173, 174, 191 Horovitz, Markus 169–72, 179n6 Hrozny, Friedrich 187 Hui Culture 138 Hume, David 30 Hungarian Academy of Sciences 80–2 Hungarian Ministry of Education 6 Hungary 6, 7, 81, 82, 91–6, 148; developing Oriental scholarship and communicating 93–4; eastern politics 87–90 Hussein, Mostafa 10, 11, 184–208 Hussein, Taha 75n16, 177 hybrid identity 185 imperialism 54, 61, 81, 82, 86, 87, 96, 161, 172, 178, 186, 187 Indian Muslim(s) 107, 108, 117 Indian Muslim philanthropy 106 Indian subcontinent 106–8 India under British Rule (Horovitz) 176 Inspired Knowledge in Islamic Thought: Al-Ghaza ˉlıˉ’s Theory of Mystical Cognition and Its Avicennian Foundation (Treiger) 30 Institut Catholique 212–14, 218, 219 Institute for Oriental Languages 155, 159 Institute for Oriental Studies 191, 199 Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies 177 International Orientalist Congresses 4–5, 62

254 Index Iqbal, Sir Muhammad 114 islah 105 Islahi, Amin Ahsan 158 Islam 1, 2, 158, 159, 162, 163; British Orientalist and historian of 189; defense of 9; European scholarship on 12; Jewish fascination with 148; rise of 84; study, academic profile and approach 223–5 Islam and Arab Civilization (Ali) 129 Islamic archaeology: and Egyptian identity 198–202; intellectual and academic formation 187–8; Islamic art and 188–9; Zionism and 190–8 Islamic art 187; and Islamic archaeology 188–9; Jewish participation in 192–3 Islamicate civilization 188, 190, 203, 205n20 Islamic civilization 70, 179, 188, 191, 196, 199, 200 Islamic despotism 157 Islamic law 41, 53, 78n71, 105, 112, 225 Islamic modernism: al-Manar 105–8, 119–21; Arabic 114–19; educational model, M.A.O. College into 111–14; Indian subcontinent 106–8; M.A.O. College, legitimizing 108–11 Islamic modernist model 125n47 Islamic Studies 147, 154 Islamophobe, Wells 130, 133, 135–41 isnads 148, 180n11 Israel 11, 97n7, 158, 168, 176, 184, 185, 203 Issa, Rana 36n42 al-istishra ˉq 40 Italianate architecture 205n20 Iyas, Muhammad Ibn 200

Johnston-Bloom, Ruchama 10, 156 Jomard, Edmé-François 14 Jonston-Bloom, Ruchama 127n77 Journal Asiatique 14, 21 Judaism 147, 158, 159, 163; identification of 147 Jüdische Elemente im Koran (Hirschfeld) 155 Jundi, Anwar, al 64, 68–9 Jung, Dietrich 6

Jabre, Farid 220 Jalıˉl, Muhammad bin ‘Abd, al 209, 210 jalwa 21 ˙ Jerusalem 10, 168, 175–8, 186, 196, 206n34 Jewish-Arab cooperation 169 Jewish–Muslim relationship 10, 11, 175 Jewish Orientalist scholarship 14, 168, 171, 179 Jewish participation, in Islamic art 192–3 Jewish scholarship, era of 160 Jews 1, 2, 4, 10, 11, 13, 147–51, 154, 157–9, 161, 163, 164, 164n13, 168, 178, 194 Jin, Jitang 138, 146n60

Lammens, Henry 201 Landberg, Carlo 42 Lane, Edward 21, 68–9, 151 La Pucelle d’Orleans (d’Arc) 19 Lecomte, G. 62 Lee, Samuel 18, 21, 23–4 Leg over Leg (Shidyaq) 3 Leitner, Gottlieb 156 Lelyveld, David 125n36 Lemon, Robert 187 Lettres philosophiques (Voltaire) 19 Lewis, B. 62 Life of Mohammad: From the Original Sources (Sprenger) 157 Lingua franca 83, 105, 107

Kahil, Mary 216 Kahle, Paul Ernst 199, 202 Kahn, Syed Ahmad 158 kala ˉm 221 Karabacek, Joseph 187 kashf 19, 20, 28, 34n12; appropriation and recoding of 32; context, Bible translation polemics 36n42; genre of 19 Keddie, Nikki R. 109–10 Khalidi, Ahmad Samih, al 197 Khalidi, Rashid 196 Khan, Sayyid Ahmad 4, 103, 108, 109, 172 Khuen-Héderváry, Károly 93 Khuli, Sheikh Amin, al 69, 70, 78n73 Khurshid, Ibrahim Zaki 63, 75n14 Khusraw, Nasir 50 Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (Smith) 84 Kramers, J. H. 62 Kratka Povijest Arapske Književnosti (Goldziher) 80 Krcsmárik, János 80, 81, 88–90, 95, 97n2, 100n55, 101n68 Kunuz al-Fatimiyyin 201 Kuun, Géza 94

Index  255 Littmann, Enno 54 Liverani, Mario 184 Lord Cromer 121 Lyautey, Hubert 211, 212, 214, 215, 221 Maʿarri, Abu al-ʿAlaʾ, al 54 MacDonnell, Antony 113 Madani, Amin ibn Hasan al-Halawani, al 5, 39, 41; Arabic music 50; Arabic sciences 49–50; books, scholarly and vocational interest in 48; congress, orientalism at 46–7; European customs, observations on 48; European practices and scholarly norms 51; Netherlands, trading in manuscripts from 42–3; orientalism, engagement of 53–4; as scholar, search of knowledge 40–2; Sixth Oriental Congress and featuring in al-Burhan 44–6; sourcing orientalism 43–4 Madkur, Ibrahim 70, 78n74 Magnes, Judah Leon 158, 175–6, 190–1 Maimonides 84 Majallat Da ˉr al-Mu’alimıˉn 197 Makdisi, Saree 1 Makdisi, Usama 161 Making England Western: Orientalism, Race, and Imperial Culture (Makdisi) 1–2 Ma, Liang 137 Malihabadi, Abdur Razzaq 120 Malta 16–18, 26 Mamluk Costumes 189, 202 Mamluks 11, 198–200, 203 Mandatory Palestine 178, 179, 185, 187, 190, 194–6, 207n50 al-Manar 7, 8, 78n55, 103–5, 123n8; Arabic pedagogy, M.A.O. College in 114–19; and Indian subcontinent 106–8; legitimizing M.A.O. College in 108–11; and M.A.O. College 119–21; M.A.O. College, educational model in 111–14; transregional Islamic modernism, lighthouse of 105–6 The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (Lane) 68 Maqrizi, al 48, 200 Marchand, Suzanne 1, 2, 81, 154 Margoliouth, David Samuel 121 Maritain, Jacques 213, 229n16 Marr, Wilhelm 147 Massignon, Louis 11, 213–19, 223–5, 229n23

Matba’-i Ahmadi (Aligarh) 107 materialism 103, 109, 111, 124n31 Mayer, Leo Ary 11, 185, 187, 188, 203–4, 206n45; Islamic archaeology and Egyptian identity 198–202; Islamic art, Jewish participation in 192–6; Palestinian nationalist elite 196–8 Mazhar, Isma`il 71, 79n81 Medina 42, 158, 159 Mernissi, Fatima 22, 36n56 Hˉamid, Abu ˉ 224 ˙ Middle East 3, 10, 11, 34, 42, 56, 92–4, 162, 169, 172, 177, 184–5, 187, 192, 202, 203, 228 Middle Eastern and North African 228 Mishnah 10, 159, 193 missionarism 68; by-product of 68; dangerous means of 69; proponents of 69–72 Mittwoch, Eugen 155, 159, 160 Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College (M.A.O.) 8, 103, 110, 111, 168, 172, 173, 175; al-Manar and 119–21; in Arabic pedagogy 114–19; educational model in 111–14; reimagination of 104 Mohammed nach Talmud und Midrasch (Gastfreund) 155 Mols, Luitgard 57n30 Moroccan Muslim 11, 209, 232n88 Moroccan Orientalist 220, 225, 226 Morrison, Theodor 117 Mostafa, Mohamed 199, 200, 203, 208n73 Mubarak, Zaki 71 Muhammad (Prophet) 7, 41, 42, 69, 82, 83, 85, 89, 129, 135–7, 148, 150, 151, 153, 157, 159, 170, 222 Muhammedanische Studien (Goldziher) 84 Muir, William 156 mujaz 64 Mulk, Muhsin, al 104 Mulla, Paul 213–18, 222, 230n37 Müller, Friedrich Max 147 al-Munqidh 220, 221, 224 muqallid 26, 27 Musawi, Muhsin, al 32 The Muslim Creed (Wensinck) 27 Muslim intellectuals 7–9, 86, 89, 90, 92, 107, 118, 122, 129–36, 140, 141 Muslim scholarship 2, 5, 6, 10, 11, 50, 61, 66, 74, 85, 88, 89, 93, 103, 104, 133, 157, 170, 200 Muslim theology, research interest in 221

256 Index Muslim, to Christianity 209–12; conversion 212–14; impact and legacy 225–7; in Islamic studies 228n2; Massignon and Mulla 214–18 Muslim University 174–6 Mythology among the Hebrews and its Historical Development (Goldziher) 148 Nahd a 16, 32, 221; framework for 32 ˙ Napoleon III 47 Nassˉar, Husayn 170–1 ˙ ˙ Seyyed ˙ Nasr, Hossein 226 naturalism 109, 124n34 Na, Zhong 129, 138, 139 Neitzert, Jürgen 221 Nerval, Gérard, de 157 Netherlands 39, 40, 42–3, 45, 52–4, 81, 91 Newman, Daniel 34n2 New Testament 148, 156 Newton, Isaac 19, 25 Ninth Orientalists Conference 62 Nissimbaum, Lev 156 Noeldeke, Theodor 152 North African Muslim 210 Northbrook 109 Nu‘mani, Shibli 116, 127n75 objective criticism 140 occidentalism 20, 56 Okey, Robin 88 Old Testament 155–7 Omran, Abdallah 5 One Thousand and One Nights (Rivlin) 190 Oriental academy 91, 92, 188, 204n16 Oriental art 187, 190 Oriental Commercial Academy 92 Oriental expertise 91 orientalism 1, 12, 40, 73; academic discipline of 15; Arab discovery of 14; Arab intellectuals and 3; Arab-Islamic critique of 14; Austria-Hungarian monarchy 187; Austrian school of 203; by-product of 67; at congress 46–7; critique of 2, 15, 29, 33; disciplinary politics of 24; engagement of 53–4; fashioning of 45; Hungarian 93–4; kind of 33; Muslim engagement with 140–2; Muslim intellectuals 9; perception of 64; sourcing 43–4 Orientalism (Said) 6, 149, 186

Orientalist: academic works 218; economy 23, 25; nonspecialized Catholic readers 221–3 Orientalist knowledge production 3, 15, 22, 105 Orientalist scholarship 15, 16, 20, 22, 28, 44, 45, 130, 131, 171, 176, 195 Oriental languages 155, 159, 169, 187, 188 Oriental scholarship 93–4, 101n79 Oriental Studies 1, 10, 61, 93–5, 154, 155, 176, 178 Ottoman Caliphate 72, 105 Ottoman Cretan Muslim 213 Ottoman Egypt 39 Ottoman Empire 4, 8, 20, 23, 29, 41, 107, 111, 119, 154, 162 Outline of History (Wells) 130, 135, 136, 138 Paisa Akhbar 107, 124n22 Palestine 161, 176, 186, 188, 190, 196–8 Pan-Islamism 107 Pasto, James 149 Patai, Raphael 101n71 Penroze, Stephen 64 Perceval, Armand-Pierre Caussin, de 21 Perkey Avot 193 Pharaonic movement 198, 204n3 Pickthall, Marmaduke 170 Pius XI 217 polemics 14, 16, 17, 19–20, 29, 32, 33, 61, 104, 110, 111, 226 Pontifical Oriental Institute 217 The Preaching of Islam (Arnold) 116 Preston, Theodore 21, 23 primitivism 157 Prince Fuad 93, 101n75 Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) 65–6 Protestant New Testament 156 Qadir, Ali Hassan Abd, al 157 Qalqashandi, al 200 Qasimi, Sheikh Muhammad, al 63–4 Quatremere, Etienne-Marc 21 Qur’an 4, 10, 53, 83, 89, 158, 162, 164, 169–71, 174, 222; distinguished scholar of 10; scholarship on 162; studies 163; translation of 23 Rac, Katalin 6 Ramic´ , Jusuf 97n6 Rashid, Harun, al 83

Index  257 Raz, Ronen 2–3 Razzaq, Mustafa Abd, al 70 Rector of the University 191 Reid, Donald Malcolm 104, 122n6 Reinaud, Joseph Toussaint 21 Renan, Ernest 51, 142n6, 147, 161 Rerum Orientalium 218 revivalism 173 Richardson, John 21 Rida, Muhammad Rashid 7, 8, 66, 103, 104, 108, 109, 112, 119–21, 124n22, 134n37 al-Risalah 200, 201 Rivlin, Yosef Yo’el 176, 190, 204n11 Royal Academy of Arab Language 6, 66 ruah 188 Rushd, Ibn 29, 87 Ryad, Umar 4, 107, 116, 118 Sachau, Eduard 159, 169 Sacy, Sylvestre, de 155 Said, Edward 1, 2, 6, 14, 26, 33, 81, 130, 149 Sajid, Mehdi 11 Sakakini, Khalil, al 207n64 Salaf 105 Salam Mubarak, Zaki `Abd, al 78n76 Samuel, Herbert 188 al-Sa ˉq 15, 17, 19–23 Saracenic Heraldry (Mayer) 189, 200, 201 Savory, R. M. 62 Schacht, Joseph 62, 79n88, 170 Scheherazade Goes West (Mernissi) 22 Schloessinger, Max 191 Schmidtke, Sabine 57n31 School of Oriental Studies 177, 178 Schwartz, Kathryn 5 scientific archaeology 203 Second Vatican Council 227 Seeing Islam from Muhammad (Keli) 140 Semitic monotheism 147 Sharia 89 Shaykhu ˉ , Lu ˉ wıˉs 35n22 Shidyaq, Ahmad Faris, al 2, 3, 15, 17–19, 21, 24, 29, 35n20, 35n22, 37n22, 156 Shintinawi, Ahmad, al 75n15 A Short History of the World (Wells) 130, 136, 138, 140 Sixth Oriental Congress 39, 40; excursions of 51; and featuring

in al-Burhan 44–6; orientalism at 46–7; simultaneous convening of 43; sourcing orientalism 43–4 Smith, William Robertson 84 Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) 16–18 Southern Slavic languages 92 Speyer, Heinrich 155 Spitta, Wilhelm 51 Sprenger, Alois 157, 160, 165n20, 166n45 Steeg, Théodore 216 Stern, B. S. 62 Strzygowski, Joseph 187 Subhat al-Marjan fi Athar Hindustan (Bilgrami) 54 Sukenik, Eleazar Lipa 206n34 Sulejmanpaši, Dževad Beg 89 Sung, Kwang 199 Sura 158, 159 Synagogues 147, 149 Tabarıˉ, Muhammad b. Garıˉr, al 87 Tabbakh, Ahmad Amin, al 78n72 Tahtˉawıˉ, al 14, 34n2 ˙ ˉr ˙ 87 Tafsı Taghridbirdi, Abu al-Mahasin Ibn 200 taha ˉfut: in Arab-Islamic tradition 29–33; economy of 26–9 Taha ˉfut al-taha ˉfut (Rushd) 29 Takhlıˉs 34 ˙ ˉ, Muhammad Ayyaˉd, al 151 Tantawı ˙taqlid 16, 105; ˙ in Arab-Islamic tradition 29–33; economy of 26–9 taraqqi 108 theological supersessionism 11 Theresa, Maria 92 Thiersant, Claude-Philibert Dabry, de 144n32 Thousand and One Nights (Rivlin) 21, 151, 190 Tolan, John 2 Torczyner, Harry 187 transparent mirror 4 transregional Islamic modernism, lighthouse of 105–6 treaty of al-Hudaybiyyah 77n40 Treaty of Berlin 97n1 Treiger, Alexander 30 Tritton, Arthur Stanley 189 Tslota 160 Tughlaq, Muhammad ben 193 Tur-Sinai, Naphtali Herz 188 Tutah, Khalil 207n64

258 Index Ullmann, Ludwig 155 Ummah 68, 69 Universal Colonial and Export Exposition 42, 43, 45, 52 University Constitution Committee 174 University of Frankfurt 169, 171 Urdu-i Mualla 119 al-‘Urwa al-Wuthqa 109 Usaibia, Ibn Abi 50 ‘Usayraˉn, Affıˉf 219 Vambery, Arminius 156 Van Donzel, E. 62 Voltaire 14, 15, 19, 23, 25, 129 von Treitschke, Heinrich 147 Vrolijk, Arnoud 57n21, 57n30 Waardenburg, Jacques 225, 226 Wahhab, Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al 44 Wajdi, Muhammad Farid 66, 67 Walker, Thomas 116 Warner, Levinus 48 Was hat Muhammad aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? (Geiger) 150 Watan 123n14 Weil, Gotthold 171, 188 Weil, Gustav 14, 150–6, 158, 161, 162 Wellhausen, Julius 155, 157

Wells, H. G. 8, 129; Islamophobe 135–40; Muslim engagement with orientalism 140–2 Wensinck, Arent Jan 6, 27, 66, 76n27, 79n86 Western Orientalism 7, 11, 116, 184 Western scholarship 7, 10, 15, 40, 74, 80, 82, 85, 91, 129, 131, 222 Wiet, Gaston 199–202 Wilkinson, Gardner 151 Williams, H. G. 21 Yaziji, Ibrahim, al 45 Yishuv 11, 176, 178, 194, 203 Yu Gong 129, 131 Yunus, Abdul Hamid 63, 75n16 Yusuf Ali, Abdullah 74n2 Zadeh, Mehmet-Ali Mullah 213, 217 Paˉshaˉ, Ahmad Zakıˉ 4 ˙ Zaman, Muhammad Qasim 104, 122n7 Zaydan, Jurji 54 Ze’irei Zion 205n32 Zionism 161, 168, 172, 175, 185, 190–2, 206n36 Zionist youth movement 205n32 Zirikli, Khayr al-Din, al 41, 60n85 Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des islamischen Gebets und Kultus (Mittwoch) 155