Mohammedanism - C. Snouck Hurgronje
_AMERICAN LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS_
SERIES OF 1914-1915
Mohammedanism
Lectures on Its Origin, Its Religious and Political Growth, and Its Present
State
by
C. Snouck Hurgronje
Professor of the Arabic Language in the University of Leiden, Holland
1916
ANNOUNCEMENT.
The American Lectures on the History of Religions are delivered under
the auspices of the American Committee for Lectures on the History of
Religions. This Committee was organized in 1892, for the purpose of
instituting "popular courses in the History of Religions, somewhat after
the style of the Hibbert Lectures in England, to be delivered by the best
scholars of Europe and this country, in various cities, such as Baltimore,
Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia."
The terms of association under which the Committee exists are as follows:
1.--The object of this Committee shall be to provide courses of lectures on
the history of religions, to be delivered in various cities.
2.--The Committee shall be composed of delegates from the institutions
agreeing to co-operate, with such additional members as may be chosen by
these delegates.
3.--These delegates--one from each institution, with the additional members
selected--shall constitute themselves a council under the name of the
"American Committee for Lectures on the History of Religions."
4.--The Committee shall elect out of its number a Chairman, a Secretary,
and a Treasurer.
5.--All matters of local detail shall be left to the co-operating
institutions under whose auspices the lectures are to be delivered.
6.--A course of lectures on some religion, or phase of religion, from
an historical point of view, or on a subject germane to the study of
religions, shall be delivered annually, or at such intervals as may be
found practicable, in the different cities represented by this Committee.
7.--The Committee (a) shall be charged with the selection of the lectures,
(b) shall have charge of the funds, (c) shall assign the time for the
lectures in each city, and perform such other functions as may be
necessary.
8.--Polemical subjects, as well as polemics in the treatment of subjects,
shall be positively excluded.
9.--The lectures shall be delivered in the various cities between the
months of September and June.
10.--The copyright of the lectures shall be the property of the Committee.
11.--The compensation of the lecturer shall be fixed in each case by the
Committee.
12.--The lecturer shall be paid in installments after each course, until he
shall have received half of the entire compensation. Of the remaining half,
one half shall be paid to him upon delivery of the manuscript, properly
prepared for the press, and the second half on the publication of the
volume, less a deduction for corrections made by the author in the proofs.
The Committee as now constituted is as follows: Prof. Crawford H. Toy,
Chairman, 7 Lowell St., Cambridge, Mass.; Rev. Dr. John P. Peters,
Treasurer, 227 W. 99th St., New York City; Prof. Morris Jastrow, Jr.,
Secretary, 248 So. 23d St., Philadelphia, Pa.; President Francis Brown,
Union Theological Seminary, New York City; Prof. Richard Gottheil, Columbia
University, New York City; Prof. Harry Pratt Judson, University of Chicago,
Chicago, Ill.; Prof. Paul Haupt, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.;
Mr. Charles D. Atkins, Director, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences;
Prof. E.W. Hopkins, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.; Prof. Edward Knox
Mitchell, Hartford Theological Seminary, Hartford, Conn.; President F.K.
Sanders, Washburn College, Topeka, Kan.; Prof. H.P. Smith, Meadville
Theological Seminary, Meadville, Pa.; Prof. W.J. Hinke, Auburn Theological
Seminary, Auburn, N.Y.; Prof. Kemper Fullerton, Oberlin Theological
Seminary, Oberlin, N.Y.
The lecturers in the course of American Lectures on the History of
Religions and the titles of their volumes are as follows:
1894-1895--Prof. T.W. Rhys-Davids, Ph.D.,--_Buddhism_.
1896-1897--Prof. Daniel G. Brinton, M.D., LL.D.--_Religions of Primitive
Peoples_.
1897-1898--Rev. Prof. T.K. Cheyne, D.D.--_Jewish Religious Life after the
Exile_.
1898-1899--Prof. Karl Budde, D.D.--_Religion of Israel to the Exile_.
1904-1905--Prof. George Steindorff, Ph.D.--_The Religion of the Ancient
Egyptians_.
1905-1906--Prof. George W. Knox, D.D., LL.D.--_The Development of Religion
in Japan_.
1906-1907--Prof. Maurice Bloomfield, Ph.D., LL.D.--_The Religion of the
Veda_.
1907-1908--Prof. A.V.W. Jackson, Ph.D., LL.D.--_The Religion of Persia_.[1]
1909-1910--Prof. Morris Jastrow, Jr., Ph.D.--_Aspects of Religious Belief
and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria_.
1910-1911--Prof. J.J.M. DeGroot--_The Development of Religion in China_.
1911-1912--Prof. Franz Cumont.[2]--_Astrology and Religion among the Greeks
and Romans_.
[Footnote 1: This course was not published by the Committee, but will form
part of Prof. Jackson's volume on the Religion of Persia in the series of
_Handbooks on the History of Religions_, edited by Prof. Morris Jastrow,
Jr., and published by Messrs. Ginn & Company of Boston. Prof. Jastrow's
volume is, therefore, the eighth in the series.]
[Footnote 2: Owing to special circumstances, Prof. Cumont's volume was
published before that of Prof. DeGroot. It is, therefore, the ninth in the
series and that of Prof. DeGroot the tenth.]
The lecturer for 1914 was Professor C. Snouck Hurgronje. Born in
Oosterhout, Holland, in 1857, he studied Theology and Oriental Languages
at the University of Leiden and continued his studies at the University of
Strassburg. In 1880 he published his first important work _Het Mekkaansch
Feest_, having resolved to devote himself entirely to the study of
Mohammedanism in its widest aspects. After a few years' activity as
Lecturer on Mohammedan Law at the Seminary for Netherlands-India in Leiden,
he spent eight months (1884-5) in Mecca and Jidda. In 1888, he became
lecturer at the University of Leiden and in the same year was sent out
as Professor to Batavia in Netherlands-India, where he spent the years
1889-1906. Upon his return he was appointed Professor of Arabic at the
University of Leiden. Among his principal published works may be mentioned:
_Mekka_, The Hague, 1888-9; _De Beteekenis van den Islam voor zijne
Belijders in Oost Indie_, Leiden, 1883; _Mekkanische Sprichwoerter_, The
Hague, 1886; _De Atjehers_, Leiden, 1903-4, England tr. London, 1906; _Het
Gajoland en zijne Bezvoners_, Batavia, 1903, and _Nederland en de Islam_,
Leiden, 1915.
The lectures to be found in the present volume were delivered before
the following Institutions: Columbia University, Yale University, The
University of Pennsylvania, Meadville Theological Seminary, The University
of Chicago, The Lowell Institute, and the Johns Hopkins University.
The Committee owes a debt of deep gratitude to Mr. Charles R. Crane for
having made possible the course of lectures for the year 1914.
RICHARD GOTTHEIL
CRAWFORD H. TOY
_Committee on Publication_.
April, 1916.
* * * * *
CONTENTS
SOME POINTS CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF ISLAM.
THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF ISLAM.
THE POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ISLAM.
ISLAM AND MODERN THOUGHT.
INDEX.
Mohammedanism
I
SOME POINTS CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF ISLAM
There are more than two hundred million people who call themselves after
the name of Mohammed, would not relinquish that name at any price, and
cannot imagine a greater blessing for the remainder of humanity than to be
incorporated into their communion. Their ideal is no less than that the
whole earth should join in the faith that there is no god but Allah and
that Mohammed is Allah's last and most perfect messenger, who brought the
latest and final revelation of Allah to humanity in Allah's own words. This
alone is enough to claim our special interest for the Prophet, who in the
seventh century stirred all Arabia into agitation and whose followers soon
after his death founded an empire extending from Morocco to China.
Even those who--to my mind, not without gross exaggeration--would seek the
explanation of the mighty stream of humanity poured out by the Arabian
peninsula since 630 over Western and Middle Asia, Northern Africa, and
Southern Europe principally in geographic and economic causes, do not
ignore the fact that it was Mohammed who opened the sluice gates. It would
indeed be difficult to maintain that without his preaching the Arabs of the
seventh century would have been induced by circumstances to swallow up
the empire of the Sasanids and to rob the Byzantine Empire of some of its
richest provinces. However great a weight one may give to political and
economic factors, it was religion, Islam, which in a certain sense united
the hitherto hopelessly divided Arabs, Islam which enabled them to found
an enormous international community; it was Islam which bound the speedily
converted nations together even after the shattering of its political
power, and which still binds them today when only a miserable remnant of
that power remains.
The aggressive manner in which young Islam immediately put itself in
opposition to the rest of the world had the natural consequence of
awakening an interest which was far from being of a friendly nature.
Moreover men were still very far from such a striving towards universal
peace as would have induced a patient study of the means of bringing the
different peoples into close spiritual relationship, and therefore from an
endeavour to understand the spiritual life of races different to their own.
The Christianity of that time was itself by no means averse to the
forcible extension of its faith, and in the community of Mohammedans which
systematically attempted to reduce the world to its authority by force of
arms, it saw only an enemy whose annihilation was, to its regret, beyond
its power. Such an enemy it could no more observe impartially than one
modern nation can another upon which it considers it necessary to make war.
Everything maintained or invented to the disadvantage of Islam was greedily
absorbed by Europe; the picture which our forefathers in the Middle Ages
formed of Mohammed's religion appears to us a malignant caricature. The
rare theologians[1] who, before attacking the false faith, tried to form a
clear notion of it, were not listened to, and their merits have only become
appreciated in our own time. A vigorous combating of the prevalent fictions
concerning Islam would have exposed a scholar to a similar treatment to
that which, fifteen years ago, fell to the lot of any Englishman who
maintained the cause of the Boers; he would have been as much of an outcast
as a modern inhabitant of Mecca who tried to convince his compatriots of
the virtues of European policy and social order.
[Footnote 1: See for instance the reference to the exposition of the
Paderborn bishop Olivers (1227) in the Paderborn review _Theologie und
Glaube_, Jahrg. iv., p. 535, etc. (_Islam_, iv., p. 186); also some of the
accounts mentioned in Gueterbock, _Der Islam im Lichte der byzantinischen
Polemik_, etc.]
Two and a half centuries ago, a prominent Orientalist,[2] who wrote
an exposition of Mohammed's teaching, felt himself obliged to give an
elaborate justification of his undertaking in his "Dedicatio." He appeals
to one or two celebrated predecessors and to learned colleagues, who have
expressly instigated him to this work. Amongst other things he quotes
a letter from the Leiden professor, L'Empereur, in which he conjures
Breitinger by the bowels of Jesus Christ ("per viscera Jesu Christi") to
give the young man every opportunity to complete his study of the religion
of Mohammed, "which so far has only been treated in a senseless way." As a
fruit of this study L'Empereur thinks it necessary to mention in the first
place the better understanding of the (Christian) Holy Scriptures by the
extension of our knowledge of Oriental manners and customs. Besides such
promotion of Christian exegesis and apologetics and the improvement of the
works on general history, Hottinger himself contemplated a double
purpose in his _Historia Orientalis_. The Roman Catholics often vilified
Protestantism by comparing the Reformed doctrine to that of Mohammedanism;
this reproach of Crypto-mohammedanism Hottinger wished "talionis lege" to
fling back at the Catholics; and he devotes a whole chapter (Cap. 6) of his
book to the demonstration that Bellarminius' proofs of the truth of the
Church doctrine might have been copied from the Moslim dogma. In the second
place, conforming to the spirit of the times, he wished, just as Bibliander
had done in his refutation of the Qoran, to combine the combat against
Mohammedan unbelief with that against the Turkish Empire ("in oppugnationem
Mahometanae perfidiae et Turcici regni").
[Footnote 2: J.H. Hottinger, _Historia Orientalis_, Zuerich, 1651 (2d.
edition 1660).]
The Turks were feared by the Europe of that time, and the significance of
their religion for their worldly power was well known; thus the
political side of the question gave Hottinger's work a special claim to
consideration. Yet, in spite of all this, Hottinger feared that his labour
would be regarded as useless, or even wicked. Especially when he is obliged
to say anything favourable of Mohammed and his followers, he thinks it
necessary to protect himself against misconstruction by the addition of
some selected terms of abuse. When mentioning Mohammed's name, he says:
"at the mention of whom the mind shudders" ("ad cujus profecto mentionem
inhorrescere nobis debet animus"). The learned Abbe Maracci, who in 1698
produced a Latin translation of the Qoran accompanied by an elaborate
refutation, was no less than Hottinger imbued with the necessity of
shuddering at every mention of the "false" Prophet, and Dr. Prideaux,
whose _Vie de Mahomet_ appeared in the same year in Amsterdam, abused and
shuddered with them, and held up his biography of Mohammed as a mirror to
"unbelievers, atheists, deists, and libertines."
It was a Dutch scholar, H. Reland, the Utrecht professor of theology, who
in the beginning of the eighteenth century frankly and warmly recommended
the application of historical justice even towards the Mohammedan religion;
in his short Latin sketch of Islam[1] he allowed the Mohammedan authorities
to speak for themselves. In his "Dedicatio" to his brother and in his
extensive preface he explains his then new method. Is it to be supposed,
he asks, that a religion as ridiculous as the Islam described by Christian
authors should have found millions of devotees? Let the Moslims themselves
describe their own religion for us; just as the Jewish and Christian
religions are falsely represented by the heathen and Protestantism by
Catholics, so every religion is misrepresented by its antagonists. "We
are mortals, subject to error; especially where religious matters are
concerned, we often allow ourselves to be grossly misled by passion."
Although it may cause evil-minded readers to doubt the writer's orthodoxy
he continues to maintain that truth can only be served by combating her
opponents in an honourable way.
[Footnote 1: _H. Relandi de religione Mohammedica libri duo_, Utrecht, 1704
(2d ed. 1717).]
"No religion," says Reland, "has been more calumniated than Islam,"
although the Abbe Maracci himself could give no better explanation of the
turning of many Jews and Christians to this religion than the fact that
it contains many elements of natural truth, evidently borrowed from the
Christian religion, "which seem to be in accordance with the law and the
light of nature" ("quae naturae legi ac lumini consentanea videntur").
"More will be gained for Christianity by friendly intercourse with
Mohammedans than by slander; above all Christians who live in the East must
not, as is too often the case, give cause to one Turk to say to another
who suspects him of lying or deceit: 'Do you take me for a Christian?'
("putasne me Christianum esse"). In truth, the Mohammedans often put us to
shame by their virtues; and a better knowledge of Islam can only help to
make our irrational pride give place to gratitude to God for the undeserved
mercy which He bestowed upon us in Christianity." Reland has no illusions
that his scientific justice will find acceptance in a wide circle "as he
becomes daily more and more convinced that the world wishes to be deceived
and is governed by prejudice" ("qui quotidie magis magisque experior mundum
decipi velle et praeconceptis opinionibus regi").
It was not long before the scale was turned in the opposite direction,
and Islam was made by some people the object of panegyrics as devoid of
scientific foundation as the former calumnies. In 1730 appeared in London
the incomplete posthumous work of Count de Boulainvilliers, _Vie de
Mahomet,_ in which, amongst other things, he says of the Arabian Prophet
that "all that he has said concerning the essential religious dogmas is
true, but he has not said all that is true, and it is only therein that his
religion differs from ours." De Boulainvilliers tells us with particular
satisfaction that Mohammed, who respected the devotion of hermits and
monks, proceeded with the utmost severity against the official clergy,
condemning its members either to death or to the abjuration of their faith.
This _Vie de Mahomet_ was as a matter of fact an anti-clerical romance, the
material of which was supplied by a superficial knowledge of Islam drawn
from secondary sources. That a work with such a tendency was sure to arouse
interest at that time, is shown by a letter from the publisher, Coderc, to
Professor Gagnier at Oxford, in which he writes: "He [de Boulainvilliers]
mixes up his history with many political reflections, which by their
newness and boldness are sure to be well received" ("Il mele son Histoire
de plusieurs reflexions politiques, et qui par leur hardiesse ne manqueront
pas d'etre tres bien recues").
Jean Gagnier however considered these bold novelties very dangerous and
endeavoured to combat them in another _Vie de Mahomet_, which appeared from
his hand in 1748 at Amsterdam. He strives after a "juste milieu" between
the too violent partisanship of Maracci and Prideaux and the ridiculous
acclamations of de Boulainvilliers. Yet this does not prevent him in his
preface from calling Mohammed the greatest villain of mankind and the most
mortal enemy of God ("le plus scelerat de tous les hommes et le plus mortel
ennemi de Dieu"). His desire to make his contemporaries proof against the
poison of de Boulainvilliers' dangerous book gains the mastery over the
pure love of truth for which Reland had so bravely striven.
Although Sale in his "Preliminary Discourse" to his translation of the
Qoran endeavours to contribute to a fair estimation of Mohammed and his
work, of which his motto borrowed from Augustine, "There is no false
doctrine that does not contain some truth" ("nulla falsa doctrina est
quae non aliquid veri permisceat"), is proof, still the prejudicial view
remained for a considerable time the prevalent one. Mohammed was branded
as _imposteur_ even in circles where Christian fanaticism was out of the
question. Voltaire did not write his tragedy _Mahomet ou le fanatisme_ as
a historical study; he was aware that his fiction was in many respects at
variance with history. In writing his work he was, as he himself expresses
it, inspired by "l'amour du genre humain et l'horreur du fanatisme." He
wanted to put before the public an armed Tartufe and thought he might
lay the part upon Mohammed, for, says he, "is not the man, who makes war
against his own country and dares to do it in the name of God, capable of
any ill?" The dislike that Voltaire had conceived for the Qoran from a
superficial acquaintance with it, "ce livre inintelligible qui fait fremir
le sens commun a chaque page," probably increased his unfavourable opinion,
but the principal motive of his choice of a representative must have been
that the general public still regarded Mohammed as the incarnation of
fanaticism and priestcraft.
Almost a century lies between Gagnier's biography of Mohammed and that of
the Heidelberg professor Weil (_Mohammed der Prophet, sein Leben and seine
Lehre_, Stuttgart, 1843); and yet Weil did well to call Gagnier his last
independent predecessor. Weil's great merit is, that he is the first in his
field who instituted an extensive historico-critical investigation without
any preconceived opinion. His final opinion of Mohammed is, with the
necessary reservations: "In so far as he brought the most beautiful
teachings of the Old and the New Testament to a people which was not
illuminated by one ray of faith, he may be regarded, even by those who
are not Mohammedans, as a messenger of God." Four years later Caussin
de Perceval in his _Essai sur l'histoire des Arabes_, written quite
independently of Weil, expresses the same idea in these words: "It would be
an injustice to Mohammed to consider him as no more than a clever impostor,
an ambitious man of genius; he was in the first place a man convinced of
his vocation to deliver his nation from error and to regenerate it."
About twenty years later the biography of Mohammed made an enormous advance
through the works of Muir, Sprenger, and Noldeke. On the ground of much
wider and at the same time deeper study of the sources than had been
possible for Weil and Caussin de Perceval, each of these three scholars
gave in his own way an account of the origin of Islam. Noldeke was
much sharper and more cautious in his historical criticism than Muir or
Sprenger. While the biographies written by these two men have now
only historical value, Noldeke's _History of the Qoran_ is still an
indispensable instrument of study more than half a century after its first
appearance.
Numbers of more or less successful efforts to make Mohammed's life
understood by the nineteenth century intellect have followed these without
much permanent gain. Mohammed, who was represented to the public in turn as
deceiver, as a genius mislead by the Devil, as epileptic, as hysteric, and
as prophet, was obliged later on even to submit to playing on the one
hand the part of socialist and, on the other hand, that of a defender of
capitalism. These points of view were principally characteristic of the
temperament of the scholars who held them; they did not really advance our
understanding of the events that took place at Mecca and Medina between 610
and 632 A.D., that prologue to a perplexing historical drama.
The principal source from which all biographers started and to which they
always returned, was the Qoran, the collection of words of Allah spoken by
Mohammed in those twenty-two years. Hardly anyone, amongst the "faithful"
and the "unfaithful," doubts the generally authentic character of its
contents except the Parisian professor Casanova.[1] He tried to prove a
little while ago that Mohammed's revelations originally contained the
announcement that the HOUR, the final catastrophe, the Last judgment would
come during his life. When his death had therefore falsified this prophecy,
according to Casanova, the leaders of the young community found themselves
obliged to submit the revelations preserved in writing or memory to a
thorough revision, to add some which announced the mortality even of the
last prophet, and, finally to console the disappointed faithful with the
hope of Mohammed's return before the end of the world. This doctrine of the
return, mentioned neither in the Qoran nor in the eschatological tradition
of later times, according to Casanova was afterwards changed again into the
expectation of the Mahdi, the last of Mohammed's deputies, "a Guided of
God," who shall be descended from Mohammed, bear his name, resemble him
in appearance, and who shall fill the world once more before its end with
justice, as it is now filled with injustice and tyranny.
[Footnote 1: Paul Casanova, _Mohammed et la fin du monde,_ Paris, 1911.
His hypotheses are founded upon Weil's doubts of the authenticity of a few
verses of the _Qoran_ (iii., 138; xxxix., 31, etc.), which doubts were
sufficiently refuted half a century ago by Noldeke in his _Geschichte des
Qorans_, 1st edition, p. 197, etc.]
In our sceptical times there is very little that is above criticism, and
one day or other we may expect to hear that Mohammed never existed. The
arguments for this can hardly be weaker than those of Casanova against the
authenticity of the Qoran. Here we may acknowledge the great power of what
has been believed in all times, in all places, by all the members of the
community ("quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est"). For,
after the death of Mohammed there immediately arose a division which none
of the leading personalities were able to escape, and the opponents spared
each other no possible kind of insult, scorn, or calumny. The enemies of
the first leaders of the community could have wished for no more powerful
weapon for their attack than a well-founded accusation of falsifying the
word of God. Yet this accusation was never brought against the first
collectors of the scattered revelations; the only reproach that was made
against them in connexion with this labour being that verses in which
the Holy Family (Ali and Fatimah) were mentioned with honour, and which,
therefore, would have served to support the claims of the Alids to the
succession of Mohammed, were suppressed by them. This was maintained by the
Shi'ites, who are unsurpassed in Islam as falsifiers of history; and the
passages which, according to them, are omitted from the official Qoran
would involve precisely on account of their reference to the succession,
the mortality of Mohammed.