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I.ANGHAM

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No.5

o'The Study of Islam"BERNAND LEWIS

Reprinted from EncounterVol. ,38" No. 1, Iarurary,1972

ME]V A]VD IDEAS Reprinted from ENcouNrnn, January 1972

The Studv of fslam./

By Bernard Lewis

URING THB NINETEENTH CEN-t-, tury the forms, languagg and to someextent even the structures of public life in theMuslim countriee were given a Western andtherefore a secular appearance. In thosecountries which were under European domina-tion, the process was slow, cautious, andincomplete; in those where Muslim rulersretained political independence, they were ableto impose Westernising reforms with greaterruthlessness and fewer fears or inhibitions. Bynationalising the waqf revenues and introduc-ing modern-i.e. Western-style-law and edu-cation, they simultaneously deprived theulema both of their financial independenceand of a large part of their functions andinfluence, and reduced them in effect to abranch of the bureaucracy. The men of thefaith now became servants and spokesmen ofthe state, who successively justified reform,reaction, liberalism and socialism, fiom thesame texts and by the same methods ofexegesis.

The state itself, struggling for survival in aworld dominated by the European powers,adopted Ewopean forms and procedures, anddrew increasingly, in the recruitment and pro-motion of its personnel, on those whose educa-tion and aptitudes enabled them to meet theneeds of this situation-that is to say, on theminority who knew a Western language, hadat least a tincture of Western education, andhad therefore acquired some Western habits ofbehaviour and perhaps of thought. From thistime onwards, identity is defined and loyaltyclaimed on national rather than communallines; criticism and aspiration are formulated insecular, not religious terms. New books replacethe sacred and classical texts as the pabulumof the literate and governing 6lite; journalists,lawyers and professors take over from theulema; not theology, but politics provides thebasis of argument and the form of expression.

The exponeuts of Islam have always beenof two very different kinds, sometimes inconflict usually interacting. On the one hand

3l

there were ttLe ulema, the upholders of ortho-doxy and authority, of dogma and of law; onthe other the dervishes and their equivalents,preserving a tradition-or rather many localtraditions-of popular religion and religiosity.Both groups have a habit of submission iopolitical authority: the ulema of active support,the dervishes of passive if critical acquieJcince

-though the latter were often treated with mis-trust by governments, because of the powerfulpent-up emotions and energies which theycould control or release.

The Westernising reforms affected both groupsadversely. The ulema, already to some extdntassociated with political power, now becamecompletely subservient to it, and lost touchwith the people. The dervishes, together withthe masses to whom they belonged, wereseparated by a widening gulf from the Western-ised political and intellectual 6lites, who nolonger shared the same universe of discourse oreven wore the same clothes as the un-Westernised majority. (Jlema and dervishesalike were out of touch with the modern world,against which the new dlites were struggling,and which at the same time they were sirivingto join.

In this new world, theology was seen asold-fashioned and irrelevant; dervish mysti-cism as a shameful and dangerous superstition.The only hope of salvation was -onomic,social, and above all political reform, con-ceived and, as it were, applied in accordancewith a succession of imported European ideolo-gres.

TN THE LAST HUNDRED YEARSr Europe and, later, North America haveseen the Islamic world through a distortingglass of Europe_an and, later, North Americancategories and terminologies. Muslims, forreasons of fashion, prestige, or perhaps evenconviction, frequently describe the aftairs oftheir countries in these Western terms. Wes0ernobservers-journalists, politicians, scholars-

'32gratefully accept these terms, for their ownconvenience and that of their readers. This hasled to the curious but widespread belief thatthe authentic and significant forces in theMuslim world can be adequately denoted andclassified by such parochial Western terms asnationalist and socialist, progressive and revo-lutionary-even, the ultimate absurdity, right-wing and left-wing. The results are about as

informative as an account of a cricket matchwritten by a baseball correspondent.

From time to time some incident, perhapstrivial in itself, allows a glimpse of the hardrealities under the verbiage. On 25 April 1967the Syrian army magazine Jaysh al-Sha'b (Thepeople's army) published an article by oneSecond Lieutenant Ibrahim Khalas, entitled"THe Me,rNs or CneelrNc e New ARAB MAN".The only way to build Arab society and civili-sation, the author argued, was to create

a new Arab sociallist man, who believes thartGod, roligions, feudalism, capital, and all thevalues which prevailed in the pre-existing oocietywere no more tban stuffed puppets in trhemuseurns of history. , . There is only onevalue: absolute faith in the new man of destiny. . . who relies only on himself and on his ownoontribution to humani8 . . . because he knowsthajt his inescapable end is death and no,thingbeyond death . . . oo heaven and no hell . . .

We have no need of men who kneel and begfor graoe and pity. , . .

This was the first time that such sentimentshad appeared in print in any of the revolution-ary Arab states.

The result was electrifying. The Syrian popu-lation seemed thoroughly cowed, and hadalready passively acquiesced in a whole seriesof radical political and economic changes. Thesuppression of free speech, the control ofmovement, the confiscation of property allpassed without incident-but an attack onGod and religion in an officially sponsoredpublication revealed the limits of acquiescence,rhe final values for which a Muslim peoplewas willing to stand up and resist.

In the face of mounting tension and hos-tility, the government beat a retreat. On 5 Maythe author of the article and the editor of thejournal were arrested. The following day thesemi-official newspaper al-Thawra (the Revo-lution) proclaimed its respect for religion, andshortly afterwards it was announced that thearticle was planted by the C.I.A., and theresistance concerted with "the Americans, theEnglish, the Jordanians, the Saudis, the Zion-ists, and Selim Hatum." The troubles continued,and on 11 May the author and editor wereboth sentenced by a military court to hardlabour for life. Thereafter the problem wasappositely overshadowed by a new crisisbetween Syria and Israel, which in due courseled to the Six Day War.

There have been other occasions too-thepassionate outburst of prayer and anathemaafter the Mosul massacres of March 1959,r theimmediate response to the fire in the al.Aqsamosque in August 1969, the recurrent clashes inIndia and Indonesia-which suggest that Islamis still the most powerful rallying-cry, and thatit is for Islam, more than for any other cause,that men are still willing to kill and be killed-provided of course they are convinced thatIslam, as they understand it, is really underattack, and not merely exploited, as so often,for political ends.

TnIs rs rHB cRUx. The response to the al-Aqsaaffair illustrates perfectly both the power andthe limitations of Islam as a political factor.The anger of the Muslim masses at what theyat first sbw as a threat to the faith was strongand real-but tle attempt to use that anger forfolitical ends failed utterly. One reason forfhis failure was the patent insincerity of theattempt. The revolutionary'Arab leaders madeno secret of 'theii desire to subordinate Islamicto Arab purposes; the conservative potentateswere visibly mord coneeroed about'the oil in'

Men & Ideas

I See for example the prayer recited in Egyptianmosques and published on the front pages of theEgyptian papers on t7 March 1959:-"God

iC great! God is great! There is no mightand no power save in Godl May He strengthenthe martyrs with His gra-ce and ordain them ever-lastins lilie in His mercv and abase their enemiesin shime and ignominy! God is great! God issrcat! There is no vic'torv save in God! Whoever6ffends, God will crush liim; whoever exalts him-sclf by wrongdoing, God will humble him! Con-sider not those who are killed in the cause of Godas dead, but as living, with their Lord who sustainsthom.

"O God Almighty, All-powerful! Conqucr Thinecocmy with Thine omnipotence so that he rsturnsto thee! O God, Almighty, All-powerful,strcngthcn 1[e 6smmrrnity of Thy Prophet withThy favour, and ordaia defeat fpr their enemy!O bod, O Lord of the Qur'an, give victory toThy Qur'an as Thou gavost victory to 'Abdal-Muttalib on the Day of tbe Elephant, whenThou didst send against thcm flights of birds whopoltod them with clay stooes. so that they becameIikc consumod chaff [Qur'an 105]! In faith weworship Thec, in sincerity we call upoo Thee, theblood of our madyrs we entrust to Thee, Omerciful and compassionate ODe, Who answersthc prayers of him who prays---our innocentmartyrs and purc vietims for the sakc of Thyrcligion. For thc glqry of Thy rcligion they shedtheir blood and died as martyrs; believing inThce, they Erootoil tlc day. of sac,rificc blissfully;Thcrcfore ptace tbern, O God, as companionswitb thc upright and thc martym and therighteous*how good thosc arc as companiong![Qur'an, 4, 691."

Men & Ideas 33

Alaska than about the fire in al-Aqsa'Another reason no doubt was the gradualrealisation of the basic triviality of the inci-dent-especially when contrasted with theunambiguous communal carnage in India atthe same time;

TSLAM cAN No LoNGER be harnessed,I yet it remains a force--even wben itceases to command belief. As W. CantwellSmith remarked of modernist Muslim intellec-tuals-they revere "Islam in history along with,or even instead of, God. . . ."2

It is curious that only two Muslim states'Turkey and Tunisian have legally abolishedpolygamy. Neither would rank as "progressive'oby the currently fashionable definition of theterm-though both would qualify in an earlier,more conventionally liberal meaning of pro-gress, The same cannot be said of the revolu-tionary states, which are intellectually andsocially far more conservative, and have inre€ent years become more, not less, self-con-sciously Islamic, both in their deference to theirown religion, and in their treatment of others.The lesson of April 1967 was well learnt.During the last three years, more mosques havebeen built in Syria than in the previous thirty,while a Christian Arab writer describes thefeelings of the growing number of Christiauemigrants in these terms:

Christians [they say] have no , future in acountrv which ls becoming all the time moresocialiit and totalitarian. Their children areindoctrinated in the schools, where the syllabusis devoted more and more to Islam and theirfaith is in danger. Debarred increasingly fromoublic office ind from nationalised societies[sic]. robbed of the property- of-their.parentsind unable to engage in profitable business -ina society where almost everything^ is unclerstate control, how can they survivc?3

Even when Muslims cease to believe inIslam, they may retain Islamic habits and atti-tudes. Thus, among Muslim Marxists, thereare both ulema and dervishes, defending thecreed and proclaiming the (revolutionary) holywar against the (imperialist) infidel. At themotttent, the ulenn of Marxism incline towardsMoscow, the dervishes towards Peking orHavana, "There is no God and Mao is HisProphet!" Even when the faith dies, loya'lty

survives. Even when loyalty fades, the oldidentity, and with it a complex of old attitudes

2 W. Cantwell Smith, lslam in Modern Historv(1957), P. l5l.'--itn' helipion in the Middle Ecst (ed' A' J'Arberry, 1969), l. P. 415.

and desires, remain, as the only reality underthe superficial, artificial covering of new valuesand ideologies. For those who would under-stand the ways of Muslim peoples, some study

of Islam, both formal and popular, is a neces-

sity. It is important to observe Islam; and

indeed Christendom, the closest neighbour andgreatest rival of Islam, has been observing itfor a long time.

TT HAS NOT GENERALLY BEEN thEI nuoit, in the past, for civilisations andreligions to attempt a sympathetic study oftheir neighbours and rivals' Civilisation meantour civilisation, and the rest were barbarians'Religion meant our religion, and the rest wereinfidils. Occasionally an author like Herodotusin ancient Greece or Rashfd al-Din inmediaeval Persia was moved by curiosity orother causes to attempt the study of remotepeoples and alien cultures. They remainedexciptions and found few if any imitators' Th-e

first civilisation known to history whichseriously undertook the study of others not inorder to conquer or convert them but merely

in order to know about them, is that ofWestern Europe. Its example has now spread

to other parts of the world.The observation of Islam from Christendom

has been going on for many centuries' Thogshoften marired by prejudice and interest, it has

nevertheless produced an understanding whichis far deeper, knowledge far more extensive and

-o." u"io."te, than the corresponding and

simultaneous observation of Christendomfrom trslam.

To mediaeval Europe, Islam was the great

adversary, and its study was required for good

iractical- reasons. One was polemic-to under-

istand the rival faith in order to refute and

destroy it. Another was to learn. There were

men in Europe who, though good Christians'iecognised that the Muslims in Spain and the

East- knew more than they did of science,

medicine, and philosophy. They were anxious

to learn from them, and some even learntArabic for this Purpose'

Religious pol-emic against Islam was fre-quent in thJ Middle Ages, especially duringthe struggles in Spain and in the Levant, and

many tracts were written, either to protect

Christians from Muslim blandishments, or toconvert Muslims to Christianity' This literaturedied out when the one task was seen as

unnecessary, the other as impossible. There

was a brief revival during the period of thegreat Ottoman conquests, but broadly speak-

ing, after the end of the Middle Ages, Islam

34 Men & Iileaswas n-o longer regarded in Christian Europe asa serious intellectual rival. This is the morenotable, in that this attitude continued even atthe time when the great challenge of Ottomanmilitary power constituted a major threat toEurope, and Ottoman social poliiies offered adangerous attraction to European p";;;;. -

Anti-Islamic polemic continued in a desul-tory sort of way in missionary arid theologicalcircles, but is of no great impbrtance "r."ii inso far as it affects and distorts the growth ofscholarship in the West. To a remarkJble exienttheology has remained the starting point ofthose who undertake the academii ,t.rOV oforiental civilisations and religions. Thoughmost-not all-are free from the prejudices andpurposes of earlier days, these studies have notyet been entirely emancipated from their theo-logical origins. The prejudices of the meaiaevatschoolmen may still at times be detected lurk-ing behind the serrated footnotes of the aca_demic apparatus.

Bnoeuy spEAKINc, HoWEVER, Western theo-Ioglans, even missjonaries, working on Islamno longer have it as their po.poJ"_ut

-i"urt

1: their direct purpose-to convert Muslims toChristianity. Their approach to Islam n"rl"in.,oe€n rn the spirit of the Dutch poet andscholar Willem Bilderdijk (fZSO_fS3fl, wiloargued that "Mohammedans must Oe tiougntto Christ through the Koran", bv snowin"them that "Mohammed *u, u Cf,ri.ti"""iiheart. . . a tool in the hands of u U"n.uot.ntPrwidence, and pioneer of salvation to pae;;sand Manicheans."a Simiiar views *.r"

""p"."r_t"-d bv the English missionary Charles f,oisteiwho in his Mahometanism U"""il;i d8;;isaw Islam as a "half w4y house"_a ,.middleterm" between Christianity and paganir-. litis only by fairly acknowledgin! "*fr"i in"vhave" says Forster, ..that we

"un dop" to mat"

them sensible of what they have "ot.;; Wiiil

the direct attack now generally abanOoned-asimpracticable if not unnecessary, missionaryinterest takes other forms-sometimes in theguise of oecumenism, sometimes cfotn"a

-in

the desire to join forces against a commonenemy, vatiously defined.

Tho earlier Epe of study of Islam for our-poses of polemic and refutatioo ,""pp""ri iothe twentieth,century onty in one-;i;;;"the Sovier Union. In the 6-fv auvr lri"i tn"_Revolution, Russian scholarshij oo

- ,fr.

Isl-amic lands was dominated bv in, nleO torefute and undermine Islamic "oO-nuii.n"fi.tmovements in the Muslim territories of theformer Russian Empire, unA to O"riror"Ltu*

rn-o.rder to prepare and facilitate the conversionof the Muslim peoples of the Union i;;;;"-nrsm. 'Ihe anti_Islamic literature produced inMoscow in the 1920s and early :iO, io-r*rvways closely resembles that emanatine ir;_tle monasteries of mediae""l W;;;;'Er;;;..Their interpretation of Islam, b;*d-;; i-iiirttheoretical principles and diiected-t"- pr#i."fpurposes, belongs to the literarur. oi ;;li;i;r,polemic rather than of scholarship.

--ift*nM.urtrt

-writing on Istam i, ,ilit";i; ;;;._mined, though that which i, p.oO"."j o;ri;.the,Soviet Union usually shows g.""i". i"t"ii""_tual sophistication and tess obiious-p"i'J_i"^faims. fn Muslim countries, n" O""ft -f.. ,acti_cal reasons, Marxists often aOapi,--*ri'r,,mutandis, a sort of Bilderdijk upp.ouih, p."."ot-ing_Muharnmad as a ro"iitiri'ui lr""itl""i""rin the hands of the inexoraUte taws oi Lfrt"ii,3ld u potential pioneer of "o*-uJ*"'iuMustims. This appioach nu. ," r-- *o]i'j'ittlsupport, except among the ofrcial ideologuesof the r6gimes.

Apart from the work_ of a few scholarlybroad-church Western Marxists, tn" fii"r#."of polemic, whether

- Marxist'r; d;;H;,shows little sign of intellectual ;*i;ty';detachm_ent-a quality which rvu,

-l-.rO.JO

regarded, by the one as a sin, by tU" otL-._o-u.an ideological error.

TN T"!,wESr, the polemicist wasr succeeded by a new flgure, who came tobe {no1vn by the odd term :.orientalist.,i ihisword designates, with extreme u*grr.o..r,

-th.object of the scholar'slstudies, dt ;tr; ;;indication of his method o, purpos". -Urr"fiv,his disciplines were theology ind^philold;;i;motive scientific curiosity-16ergi, tn. Jpir.r_tunities to indulge his curiosity were oftei'Gresult of political and economic needs.

The new phase began with tbe Renaissance,amrd a uniquely favourable combination ofcircumstances. The classical revival unJ tn"voyages of exploration both contributed sreatlvto the growth of orientalist scholarshi;. Th;old authors, and especially Herodotus, piouiA.Athe model for the study of remote

,aiJ

"il;peoples; the new scholarship furnished ihe

aletter to lsaac da Costa. ll Februarv 1g23.! ri ".X12,

v an M r. !/ it! e m si M i ra i i k,' ti ^in.jttii_ru rs44u qa uosla. r r reoruarv 1923.in Brieuen van Mr. willem siliirdii;;lv^(h;tt.;:dam, 1837), pp. 75-6; cite.d bv--d.'F'.-bii;J- )",i;;92\, .18^37), ,pp,. ,7 s-g; ;rt9q ry- .C, n'"b,ip"i, 'r"'1,-ii,'lij|' i,i;,E!r li,;:' (i::5"y 3;i: iij'A

i"g,hull,"'For.sjer,'-_\4;h_.;;;;1;i"tin,ewag!2?)r II,,pp. 3.6s,' )is -bi:' " N.

" il;; ;"i " i{rlf,,l.\t6zv), u, pp. 365, 379. Cf. N. Daniel, /s/arnF ::fy q : a n d. E m p i r e. .( ! p 66),i. I I i' eT#i'iii#,iiii','!'Fr ;ft -

t #" pdii;;';,f.;' ;i" "fi i;, JH{"'ilMiddle Eastern Studies 05at1,- uI,' oi.'iiils' '"Islam and ttr'e pditoso'ri#;-;i^'ffi;;;;:1;tiddle Eastern Studies 05at1,- UI,' p;:';;;:5.' '"

Men & Iileas 35

philological. method that was required for suchstudies; the expanslon of Europe provided atonce the scope, the.need, and the material.

While Europe was expanding at both ends,across the steppes and the oceans, Islam, nowrepresented by the Ottoman Empire, wasadvancing through the Balkans towards Vienna.For a while, Turkey seemed to offer a majorthreat to the survival of Christian civilisation-but at the same time her vast territories offereda great opportunity for European commercialenterprise. Both as enemy and as market, shewas an important field of study.

Finally, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation injected a new religious concerninto European affairs. Protestants and especiallyUnitarians showed for a while an interest inIslam-in this faith which, by its hostility topolytheism and images, seemed to offer sorneaffinities with the Protestant challenge toCatholicism. Added to this was the temptingpossibility of a Turkish alliance against theCatholic powers. Though all this came tonothing, it nevertheless'left sorne effects onthe growth of European scholarship.

European writing on Islam from the l6thcentury onwards is of two main kinds, with twovery different approaches..1. The first of these is what one might call

the scholarly, dominated by theology andphilology, concerned primarily with the scrip-tures and with the classics of fshm. The Koranand the ancient Arabian literature were studiedin the same way and by the same techniques asthe Bible and the classics of Greece andRome had been studied in Europe. The great-est attention was devoted to Arabic, some-what less to Persian. Characteristically, hardlyany attention at all was given to Turkishwhich, though it was the major language ofthe Muslim world at that time, had the dis-advantage of'being a living language, andtherefore, like English, French and German,unworthy of serious scholarly attention.

2. A second group of writings was practical,concerned with the news from Turkey and, toa lesser extent, other Muslim countries. Manybooks were produced on the subject of theTurkish Empire, its resources, its population,its military strength, and of course, amongother things; its religion, including the differentforms of worship, of organisation, and of beliefwhich existed among the peoples of thatEmpire. This literature is based in the rnain ondirect observation, and is intended to satisfythe . need : for accurate practical informationabout this dangerous yet interesting neighbourof Christendom. It may be noted,.that thisneighbour was still .seen primarily in religious

rather than national terms, and that even suehethnic names as "Turk" and, "Moor" were com-monly used in a religious sense, as synonymsfor Muslirn. Eastern Christians were not norm-ally called by either name, while a Europeanwho adopted Islam was said to have "turnedTurk."

Dunrnc rHE NINETEBNTH cENTURv Europeanscholarship on Islam received a tremendousnew impetus. Several new developrnents con-tributed to this great growth. One of these wasthe application to Islamic studies of the critisalhistorical method which was being developedby European and especially German scholarsfor the study of Greek, Roman, and Europeanhistory. The use of these. methods for the studyof the early history of Islam, the life of theProphet, the foundation of the Caliphate, thegreat Arab conquests and the like, carried thesestudies a major step forward and formed thebasis for most subsequent writing, in theIslamic world as well as in Europe.

A second important development was theemancipation of the European Jews, and theconsequent entry of Jewish scholars into theEuropean Universities. From the first, Jewishscholars. made a .major contribution to thedevelopment of Arabic and Islamic studies*a contribution which still continues to thepresent day, as far. as politically-mindedadministrators and benefactors permit. I-iketheir Christian colleagues, most of them hada theological background, transferring from therabbinical schools and seminaries where theyhad studied Hebrew and Talmud, to the studyof Arabic and of Islam. They differed how-ever in several important respects frorn theirChristian colleagues. .The Jewish scholar, un-like many of his Christian colleagueq had nomissionary ambitions, no nostalgia for thcCrusades, no concern with the Eastern ques-tion. He was free from the inherited fears,prejudices, and inhibitions that had often mar-red Christian scholarship. .i

On the contrary, in two important respects hewas favourably inclined to the object of hisstudies. One of these was practical and real,Hebrew and Arabic are cognate languages;Judaism and Islam are sister religions, withmany important resemblances between them.A Hebraist could learn Arabic, a Talmudistunderstand the holy law of Islam, with greaterease and also with greater.sympathy than couldhis Protestant or Catholic colleagues; i

'There was in ,addition a furtler. reason forJewish sympathy with Islam, This was theperiod when. old-fashioned religioug anti.Iudaism in Christendom.was.giving way lo the

36 Mbn & Id,eas

new racially expressed anti-semitism, andthe Jew was being attacked no longer as anunbeliever (a charge unworthy of the enlight-ened nineteenth century) but as a racialinferior, an Asian alien in Europe. Told thathe was a Semite or an Oriental, he looked toother Semites and other Orientals for comfort-rather as the American black looks to Africaand even Asia at the present time, with aboutas much justification in either case. Thoughthis affinity was largely imaginary and entirelyunreciprocated, it was nevertheless an impor-tant factor in arousing Jewish sympathy forIslam and interest in Islamic studies. Jewishscholars were among the first who attempted topresent fslam to European readers as the Mus-lims themselves see it, and to stress, to recog-nise and indeed sometimes romanticise themerits and achievements of Muslim civilisationin its great days.

rFHE MAJoR DEVELopMENT of theI lgth century which afTected the growth ofOriental studies was of course the rise ofImperialism and the consolidation of Europeanpower over the greater part of the Muslimworld. The main countries concerned wereBritain, ruling India and, later, parts of theMiddle East and of Africa; France, in Northand, later, Western and Central Africa; Hol-land, which came to dominate the greater partof Muslim South East Asia; and Russia, whichconquered the Muslim peoples of the Volga,the Crimea, the Caucasus, and the old MuslimKingdoms of Central Asia. These were the fourmajor imperial powers which divided the worldof Islam between them. In addition, Germanyand Austria developed a semi-colonial relation-ship with the Ottoman Empire; and later Italy,for a brief but important interval, ruled overparts of North and East Africa.

The charge is often brought, by orientalsagainst orientalists, that they are the servantsof imperialism, and that their work is designedto serve . the needs of the administrator, thetrader, the diplomat, the agent and the mis-sionary. The charge is not entirely withoutfoundation, and finds added support in theoccasional appearances of the orientalist inperson in one or other of these roles. In theonly surviving European empire ruling overIslamic lands, that of Russia, scholarship isunmistakably-indeed avowedly-harnessed tothe policies and purposes of the state.

Yet, as an assessment of the motives thatimpelled Western man, even till now almostalone among mankind, to undertake the studyof alien'civilisations, this charge is ludicrously

inadequate. Empire and commerce may haveprovided the stimulus, and also the opportu.nity to undertake such studies; they did not,ii free societies, direct them. The missionaryand the colonial expert have, on the whole,played only a minor part in the develop-ment of Islamic scholarship in the West, andtheir work, with very few exceptions, has wonscant respect and enjoyed little influenceamong scholars. The major advances were thework of men whose driving force was thedesire to know and to understand, and whosemethods were those of critical scholarship.Most of them were university teachers,independent of, and sometimes opposed to, thegreat imoerial and commercial interests.

Tne rrnsr oF THE socrAl scrENcES to giveattention to Islam was history. Practical menwrote or sponsored histories of OttomanTurkey, the last surviving Muslim great power;scholars examined the origins and early historyof the Islamic faith and community. The for-mer produced work which is now of interestonly in so far as it is contemporary and first-hand; the latter laid the foundations of agreat-and continuing-scholarly tradition.

It has been said that the history of the Arabshas been written in the West chiefly by his-torians who know no Arabic and by Arabistswho know no history. If we add persian,Turkish, and some other languages to theformula, it may be extended to cover thehistory of Islam as a whole. Even now itmust be admitted, at whatever cost in profes-sional self-esteem, that the s.tandard of entryand performance in Middle Eastern studiesis recognisably lower than in other, morefrequented disciplines. Nevertheless there hasbeen progress; and during the past century-and-a-half a series of scholars who were bothhistorians and orientalists have added substan-tially to our understanding of the history ofIslam-and not only to our understanding, butalso to that of thc Muslims themselves.

F vEN WHEN WRTTINc OF THE PAST,rJ historians are the captives of their owntimes-in their materials and their metho<ls,their concepts and their concerns. Historians ofclassical Islam could not but be influenced bythe contemporary Islam which they saw, andparticularly therefore by that part of the Islamicworld to which circumstances, personal ornational, gave them access. British, French,Russian, or German Islamicists therefore ten-ded to see Islam in an Indian, North African,Central Asian, or late Ottoman guise. The

Men & Iileas 37

I

I

historian is also guidd, in the questions heasks and the answers he finds, Uy ihe preoccu-pations of his own time and milieu. EdwardPococke, the first great English Arabist, work-ing at Oxford during the Civil War, hinted atparallels, in the Caliphate of al-Ma,mtin, tothe clash of forces and doctrines that he sawaround him; Igth-century European scholarsdiscerned currents of liberalism and nationalismin the religious and sectarian struggles of earlyIslam; 2Oth-century scholars, tooiing in themirror of history, found economic chinge andsocial conflict-and turned to the new tech-niques and concepts of the social scientists forhelp in understanding them.

- The first European observers to make signi-ficant generalisations about Islamic soci"tywere-not surprisingly-travellers. Certainly themost influential of these was Frangois Bernier(1620-1688), a French physician and naturalhistorian who spent twelve years in India andshorter periods in Syria and Egypt. As well asdescribing Islamic society, Bernier tried toanalyse the causes of its relative poverty andbackwardness in the arts, scilnces,- andagriculture. He found the explanation in thelack of private landed property and theseizure of the land by the ruler, which led,directly or indirectly, to a stagnant societyand a despotic rdgime.6 Bernier,s ideas in-fluenced many later writers, notably Montes-quieu; they were also adopted by Karl Marx,and thurs place him, vdth Adam Smith andthe English Utilitarians, among the ancestorsof the Marxist doctrine of the ..Asiatic modeof production."

- Another philosophical Frenchman, thefamons Volney (1757-1820), spent three yearsin Egypt and Syria. Unlike so many travellers,he tells us nothing of his own journeys andadventures. fnstead, he describes, sysiemati-cally and in detail, the condition of the coun-tries which he visited, and examines thecauses of what he describes. It is a sombrepicture that he paints-of poverty and fear,ignorance and backwardness, tyranny, brigan-

6 Frangois- Bernier, Histoire de la dernibrerdvolution des itats du Grand Mrevolution des 6tats du Grand Mogol (4 vols,,Paris, 1670-71). There are numerous [ater'editionJ

dage and insecurity, and a general listlessnessbroken only by sudden fits of pointless violence.lolney rejects the theory, current in his day,that these evils are due to climate and its effecton character. The true cause, he argues, lies insocial institutions-in government and religion,the despotic misrule of the one sustained bythe- quietist teaching of the other. Volney,writing agairt after the French Revolution, wasoptimistic, believing that what despotism hadmarred, liberty could mend. Social backward-ness was a temporary setback on the marchof progress, which change and reform wouldovercome.T

H,cn ,l cENTuRy r,,lren Adolphus Slade 0g04-1877), a British naval officer who was inTurkey during the great reforms of SultanMahmud II and his successors, took a dif-ferent view. His books have not received theattention they deserve-partly no doubtbecause of their form as old-fashioned personalnarratives, perhaps more because their findingsclashed with the liberal orthodoxy of the timi.Unlike most European observers, Slade wasconvinced neither of the iniquities of the oldr€gime, nor of the advantages of thenew. A critical but sympathetic observer, hewas aware of the defects of the old order,yet found much in it to admire; while seeingthe need for some change he condemns theindiscriminate haste with which it was enforced,and shows how liberal reform, by disrupting atraditional society, may lead to a loss ofliberty. The old nobility, however ineffectual,had generosity, honour, and a certain grace;the new nobility, thrown up by the ref-orms,was greedy, violent and corrupt. ..The oldnobility, profuse and open-handed, lived ontheir estates: their ovens were never cool; theirpilaf cauldrons never empty. The State wasthe estate of the new nobility."s These judg-ments, with others ,of similar prescience, rangeSlade with Burke and Tocqueville a* a con-servative prophet of radical doom.

These-two French pbilosophers and anEnglish sailor-are but three, among the best,of the many travellers who returned from theEast to enlighten their compatriots aboutIslam. Their writings helped, even more thanthose of the historians, to form and shape theimage of Islam and Islamic civilisation, asreflected in Western thought and scholarship.

ErROM THE l8rn cENTURY ON-I' wards most of the great political andsocial thinkers have something to .ai aU"ut OeDoarst neighbour of Christendom. In France,

rans. to/u--/tr. tnsre are numerous Iater editionsand translations of Bernier's travels. corre._pondence, and other writines. A revised enoiishpondence, and other writings. Apunuence. ano orner wnungs. A revised Enslishtranslation.of. tlrg_ travels was edite.d bv-Vl-A.Smi_th (Oxford, l9t4).t Yglo.y, Voyage en Egypte et en Svrie ,17g7:

rglrsh tr. 1787); ed, Jean Gaulmier. paris jt tt.p3ulistr tt. _t781\; 4. Jeai- bauhiei, & the4"egu,- te5e: Lis Ruines,

"n uiaiiitiiii-rir-f"lrduolutions des Empires (paris- lZsii---.

6 A. Slade. Tuikey and the iri^ean ll/ar

!*ffi"t4';l"#fi ,i:*, 'l "':n:;;iiiiStudies (1968). lV, pp.303 fi. -'-'--- --"'-:"

3B Men & IdeasMontesquieu'and Voltaire spoke of ideas andinstitutions; in Germany,. Herder and Hegeldiscussed the deeper philosophical implica-tions; in England,' Burke considered: the legiland political character of Muslim governmentas it aftected the case of Warren Hastings,while Adam Smith, Richard Jones, and tlheelder and younger Mill commented on theeconomic and social structures of the MuslimEmpires. At some distance after these cameSpengler, Toynbee, and other exponents ofmetahistory, as it is now called, though cata-history might be a better designation for theirendeavours.

In this connection one other group ofwritings may be mentioned in passing, tloughit has only minor relevance to the subject underdiscussion. In the literature of self-doubt andself-chastisemente which has become an essen-tial part of the Western tradition, the Muslim

-like other non-Westerners-is.often used asa sort of lay figure, or rather a ventriloquistsdumrny, with an assigned part to speak in apurely Westejn dialogue. All this has nothingto do with either Islam or scholarship; andcontributes about as much to our uhderstand-ing of Islam as Gulliver's Travels or the LettresPersanes to our knowledge. of cartography orPersia-and far less to our edification;

qEvERAL oF TnB FouN,Dgns'of\) modern social science had something tosay about Islam. For Auguste Comte, Islam,Iike Christianity, was medieval and superseded,and was' doomed' to make way for the newreligion of scientific positivism; he followedthe Ottoman reforms with sympathetic interest,and had some impact on the Young Turks ofthe next generation, whose slogan "Union andProgress" was an adaptation bf Comte's ..Order

ahd Progress." Max Weber died before .he

could add Islam to the other religions whicbhe examined in detail, but his works containnumerous indications of his thinking on Islam,much influenced by the writings of Julius Well-hauseh."Karl Marx, like other Victorians, sawthe Ottoman Empire chiefly in terrhs of theEastern Question, and the Arabs not at all. Hedid. however, devote some attention to Indiaand South East Asia, and sketched the theory

of the Asiatic mode of production,,which wassubsequently developed by others.

Not surprisingly, given the inadequate andinaccurate info.rmation ava.ilable to them, thecontribution of the sociological foundingfathers to the understanding of Islam was oflimited value-though some of them, notablyComte, Durkheim, and the otherwise unremark-able Gustave Le Bon and Edmond Demo-lins, had a considerable influence on Muslimwriters. Of greater significance was the stimu-lus which they gave to the orientalists, to'elaborate, or, more often, to refute their speci-fic assertions, and-more important-to usetheir concepts and methods in new lines ofenquiry. Since ,the beginning of this centurya number of Islamicists have 'followed thispath. Prince Caetani, a disciple of Comte,brought a positivistic analysis to bear on thecareer of the Prophet and the beginnings ofIslam; Carl Heinrich Becker, a friend of Weberand'Troeltsch, tried to prove that Islam was,not by nature hostile to economic progress, andthat Islamic civilisation, Hellenistic in origin,belonged with Chdstendom and not with thetrue Asia. Other social theo,rists-such asPareto, Le Play, Breysig, Durkheim-have hadtheir disciples among the oridntafists, as havealso more recent scholars, notably RobertRedfield of Chicago.

ONs cesr ls of special interest-that of KarlMarx. Marxist analysis of Islam has been,broadly, of three types. One of these is thedoctrine of the Asiatic mode of production.Briefly sketched by Marx and Engels, in modestrecognition that their system of categories,derived from European history, might iot beof universal validity, it was taken up by .omelaterr Marxist scholastics who, by combiningpassages or even single sentences, written aidifferent :times; some of them in letters, drafts,hnd newspaper articles, were able to constructa coherent system of revealed thought. Mostdiscussion of the Asiatic mode of productionhas' been conoerned with China, iome withIndia; the Islamic world has received littleattention. Recently,. however; the current revivalof interest in this brairch of Marxism hasspread to Turkey, where a few young econo-mists ihave tried to detect the Asiatic mode ofproduction,in,the Ottoman Empire.lo

The Asiatic mode of production, in whichthere is no private owiership oi'lanO anJconsequently no class war, only a simpleopposition betrtyeen the terrorised mass of thepopulatioa 'and the all-encompassing statebureaucracy,..is' one .of Marx's .most a'ccurateinsights-not as history, but as prophecy. For

c The eftects of this lVestern: mood' on' thedialogue between Islamicists and Muslims isdiscussed by G, E. von Grunebaum. "Aooroach-ing Islam: a Digression'l, in Middte' basternStudies (1970), VI, pp. 127-149.

t0 On these'contr<iversies, see the exceltent sfudvby Gianni Sofri, lI modo di pfoduziotne asiatico:sbria di u:na' iortftbversia marxi*ta,'(furin,' f969I

Men & Iilns 39some reason Stalin disliked the theory of theAsiatic mode of production, and had vir,tuallybanned it by 1938. Since then, Soviet scholai-ship has had to fit the history of Islam into theauthorised sequence of the ancient (i.e. slave),feudal, and bourgeois modes of production.There has been much argument on howprecisely this is to be done. A good exampleof this [terature, by the late Professor E. A.Belyaev, has recently become available inEnglisb.rl

Covering the period from the fifth to thetenth centuries, it presents what one might calla moderate Soviet orthodox interpretation ofthe mission of Muhammad and the rise ofIslam, with a characteristic mixture of loyalties,concepts, and purposes. The Slavs make abrief appearance as those to whom "the work-ing masses" of the Byzantine Empire looked"as their allies and deliverers.'? The endless suf-ferings. untiring energy, and "productive acti-vity of the toiling masses" are duly contrastedwith the perfidy, cruelty, and general villainyof their royal, feudal and religious exploiters.Special stress is laid on the horrors of Arabconquest and rule in Central Asia, in much thesame way

.as French historians of an earliergeneration used to dwell on the devastationwhich the Arab raiders had wrought in NorthAfrica-and no doubt for the same reasons.

Not the least interesting parts of Belyaev'sbook are the surveys of previous scholarlywork at the beginning of each chapter. Thesedeal with both Western and Soviet scholarship(modern Arab and other Muslim scholarship iscontemptuously dismissed as worthless or atbest secondary). Only two Arab authors, Ban-dali Juzi and Emil Tuma, both Marxists, receivespecial mention, Among Western historians ofthe Arabs, he considers Cldment Huart andPhilip Hitti the best, and also speaks veryhighly of the Belgian Jesuit scholar HenriLarnmens. Among Soviet scholars, ' theprime concern Was how to fit Islamic his-tory into the given, predetermined framework.Belyaev rejects the "merchant-capitalistic"theory of Islamic origins, as "clearly at variancewith the fundamental tenets of Marxism-Lenin-ism", and also condemns the widely accepted"early feudal" interpretation, on the lessercharge that it does not accord with the evi-dence. The attempts by Morozov, Klimovitchand Tolstov to prove that Muhammad neverexisted are similarly rejected. In Belyaev's view;

the motive force of Islam came from the slave-owning mercantile bourgeoisie of Mecca andMedina, which arose within a decaying primi-tive-communal society. The eur'an, wtrlin neconsiders to have been concocted after thedeath of Muhammad, expresses the new ideol-ogy, justifying "inequality in property, slaveryand development of exchanges." ,.A slave-holding Allah is described as a typical rner-chant, reflecting all the features of ihe tradingcommunity of-Mecca." dit-"il;--in" -".r:quest, and under the Caliphate, did an earlyfeudal order replace slave production. Themain purpose of the early Caliphate was .,toensure by armed might the economic subser-vience. of--the labouring majority to the wealthyminority."

On the economic and social history of theearly Caliphate, Belyaev makes a number ofinteresting and sometimes stimulating sugges-tions-not of course offered as such,

- but

rather laid down with a certitude unknown toWestern scn-olarship since the Reformation.

Ttre punpose oF THrs and many other writingsof the same kind is basically polemical; t-orefute, rather than to explain, Islamic beliefs,and to discredit any view of the Islamicpast which might nurture Muqlim prideand encourage opposition to Soviet rulein Muslim lands. Similar purposes, at anearlier date, inspired some Brltish, French,and Dutch colonial historians-though thesenever enjoyed the right to silence thosewho disagreed with them. More recentlythere have been attempts at a less crudelypropagandist Marxist study of fslam, byscholars like I. P. Petrushevsky in Russia andMaxime Rodinson in France, notably in thelatter's Islom et capitalisme (1966). M. Rodin-son declares his unorthodoxy, and disclaimswhat he variously caUs vulgar Marxism, demi-Marxigm, pseudo-Marxism, pragmatist Marx-isrn, philosophic Marxism, and institutionalMarxism. He even complains of the impre-cision of Marx's use of "feudal", and Con-siders the term inappropriate to mediwalIslamic society. Nevertheless, he remains apractising Marxist, and devotes much effort tointra.Marxist disputation and to problems ofthe corect disposition of Islamic social andeconomic history in Marxist terms.

Many besides Marxists share the two under-lying assumptions-first, that there is someuniversal pattern or sequence of economicand social development, and second, that amodel or norm ,of this development can beconstructed. from Western experience, whichoombines.rthe advantages of being the best

1r E. A. Belyaev, Arabs, Islatn and the ArabCaliphate in the Early Middle Ages (tr. from theRussian by Adolphe Gourevitch; New York,London, Jerusalcrn, 1969).

40

studied, and ourquestionable.

own. Both assu,mptions are

Men & IileasA r.rBw pr{Ase BEGAN when social scientists,while remaining primarily concerned with theirdiscipline, acquired sufficient linguistic andhistorical knowledge to become acceptableregional specialists-acceptable, that is, tothose whose criteria were linguistic and his-torical. These are still very few, and usuallyowe their rare combination of skills to personalcircumstances-to the accidental opportunitiesof birth, war, and employment.

Professor Clifford Geertz's Islam Observed(1968)r'1 is thus a work of courage as well asdistinction. An anthropologist with field experi-ence in both Morocco and Java, he has hadthe interesting idea of studying and comparingthe development and condition of Islam inthese two countries, at opposite ends of theIslamic world. At first sight, this might seem astrange approach. What, one might ask, coulda Muslim observer learn of Christianity bycomparing the practice of the faith in, say,California and Ethiopia?

There are two answers to this question. Thefirst is that an informed, pe,rceptive, and rigor-ous Muslim observer might indeed learn agreat deal about the nature of the Christianreligion from such an enquiry, especially ifhe could speak and read both English andAmharic. The second, which is more imme-diately to the point, is that Islam has not yetundergone the differentiation which has over-taken Christianity in the last few centuries.Islam, not only chronologically, is in its four-teenth, not its twentieth century; it has still toexperience the processes of reform and seculari-sation which have transformed and divided theonce-united Christian world. In modern times,Islamic identity has been reinforced by a newshared experience-the penetration, dominationand (in most areas) the departure of Europeancolonialists.

It is obvious that there is much that thesocial scientist can contribute to tle study ofIslam, and that there are many things, in earlyas well as modern times, which he alone, withthe special skills of his profession, is able tostudy and explain. Social scientists, or his-torians using social science concepts, havealready made distinctive and important con-tributions to the study of Islam and it maywell be that these transplants will in time pro-duce a flowering comparable with those ofEuropean oriental scholarship following theRenaissance, the Reformation, and the philo-Iogical golden age in the nineteenth century.

BeroRB TrrAT cAN HAppEN, however, there arecertain difficulties that must be overcome. Itmay be noticed that among modern scholars

EoR soME rrME the contribution ofr social science to the study of Islam con-sisted of the obiter dicta-mostly ill-informed-of the great generalists, and the responses orreactions of orientalists-mostly philologistsand historians-who read their works. The nextstage came when scholars trained in a socialscience discipline began to deal directly and atfirst hand with Islamic problems, and undertakefield work in Islamic countries. This happenedin several stages.

Imperial administration naturally gave specialimportance to ethnography, the relevance ofwhich will be clear to all readers of RudyardKipling's Kim and of. Sovietskaya Etnografiya.In the British, Russian, French, and DutchEmpires useful ethnographic surveys and mono-graphs were produced, dealing with tribal andlocal customs, with local saint worship, withreligious brotherhoods and much else. Most ofthis was purely descriptivo-the only theoreti-cal consideration, if indeed such it may becalled, being the needs of the Imperialadminstration.

In time this kind of descriptive ethnographygave way to anthropological studies, of whicha considerable number have by now beenpublished. Usually, these are studies in detail

-a village in Turkey, a tribe in Arabia, a sectin North Africa, and the like. Until veryrecently they were carried out for the most pariby techniques evolved for use in the study ofprimitive and non-literate societies.

Anthropologists working in Islamic countrieshave usually fought shy of generalisationsabout Islam. At one time they refused, almostas a matter of principle, to take cognisance ofliterary evidence or even of scholarship basedon such evidence. Latterly, they have becomeaware of the rewards-and hazards-of literaryand historical studies, and have usually pre_ferred to renouDce the one and thus avoidthe other.

Sociologists found greater difficulty thananthropologists in persuading themselves thatthe literary evidence of a literate society wasirrelevant to their enquiries. For a long timethey warily left the sociology of Islam to theorientalist, who, trusting in his philologicalsword and buckler to strike true and guard himfrom error, tackled sociology and history,theology and literature with equal readineisand often, alas, with equal competence.

12 Ctfford Geertz, Islam Observed: RelipiousDevelopment in Morocco and Indonesia (lgdb).

Men &using the sociological approach, the most suc-cessful are those who have also served a

philological apprenticeship. For the others thereremains the problem of how to understand a

society for which the principal written sourcesof study are locked in a strange script, requir-ing the mastery of a different language to readthem, and the intimate study of a civilisationto interpret them. Most of the solutions pro-pounded to the problem rest on one or both ofiwo dubious assumptions: that it is possiblefor the social scientist to acquire within a shorttime a "working knowledge" of an orientallanguage which will be sufficient for hispurpose, and that the use of translators and

informants is an adequate substitute for directpersonal access to the evidence.

Some branches of Islamic civilisation, such

as art and architecture, can be studied withoutmuch reference to texts. But the greater part is

beset with pitfalls for the unwary student who

Ideas 4Iwould venture into the field without adequatestudy of the language in which his sources are

,written and in which the people whose livesand endeavours he is examining think, write,and speak. Most modern techniques of field re-."urch in the social sciences relate to one of twosituations: either the researcher is dealing witha sector of his own civilisation, whose historical and cultural pattern is known to him as

part of his own education and upbringing' orelse he is dealing with a primitive society,where historical and literary evidence can be

clisregarded because it does not exist. What has

not yet been adequately faced is the problemof field research in a literate' historical societyother than that of the field'researcher himself.This, it seems to me, is the basic problemwhich must be solved before western socialscience can make a really effective and auto-nomous contribution to the better understand-

ing of Islam.

"The Study of Islam" is based on the text of the third Marshall G' S'

Hodgson Memorial Lecture which Professor Lewis recmtly delivered at the

University of Chicago,