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exercise hall for Qorān reciters, and even as a passage for people going
from one part of the town to the other.
In order to complete your mediaeval dream with a scene from daily life, you
have only to leave the mosque by the Bāb Dereybah, one of its twenty-two
gates, where you may see human merchandise exhibited for sale by the
slave-brokers, and then to have a glance, outside the wall, at a camel
caravan, bringing firewood and vegetables into the town, led by Beduins
whose outward appearance has as little changed as their minds since the day
when Mohammed began here to preach the Word of Allah.
To the greater part of the world represented by this international
exhibition of Islām, as a modern Musulman writer calls it, our modern
world, with all its problems, its emotions, its learning and science,
hardly exists. On the other hand, the average modern man does not
understand much more of the mental life of the two hundred millions to whom
the barren Mecca has become the great centre. In former days, other centres
were much more important, although Mecca has always been the goal of
pilgrimage and the cherished abode of many learned men. Many capitals of
Islām offered the students an easier life and better accommodations for
their studies; while in Mecca four months of the year are devoted to the
foreign guests of Allah, by attending to whose various needs all Meccans
gain their livelihood. For centuries Cairo has stood unrivalled as a seat
of Mohammedan learning of every kind; and even now the Uaram of Mecca is
not to be compared to the Azhar-mosque as regards the number and the fame
of its professors and the variety of branches cultivated.
In the last half-century, however, the ancient repute of the Egyptian
metropolis has suffered a good deal from the enormous increase of European
influence in the land of the Pharaohs; the effects of which have made
themselves felt even in the Azhar. Modern programs and methods of
instruction have been adopted; and, what is still worse, modernism itself,
favoured by the late Muftī Muhammed Abduh, has made its entrance into the
sacred lecture-halls, which until a few years ago seemed inaccessible to
the slightest deviation from the decrees of the Infallible Agreement of the
Community. Strenuous efforts have been made by eminent scholars to liberate
Islām from the chains of the authority of the past ages on the basis of
independent interpretation of the Qorān; not in the way of the Wahhābī
reformers, who tried a century before to restore the institutions of
Mohammed's time in their original purity, but on the contrary with the
object of adapting Islām by all means in their power to the requirements of
modern life.
Official protection of the bold innovators prevented their conservative
opponents from casting them out of the Azhar, but the assent to their
doctrines was more enthusiastic outside its walls than inside. The ever
more numerous adherents of modern thought in Egypt do not generally proceed
from the ranks of the Azhar students, nor do they generally care very much
in their later life for reforming the methods prevailing there, although
they may be inclined to applaud the efforts of the modernists. To the
intellectuals of the higher classes the Azhar has ceased to offer great
attraction; if it were not for the important funds (_wagf_) for the
benefit of professors and students, the numbers of both classes would have
diminished much more than is already the case, and the faithful cultivators
of mediaeval Mohammedan science would prefer to live in Mecca, free from
Western influence and control. Even as it is, the predilection of foreign
students of law and theology is turning more and more towards Mecca.
As one of the numerous interesting specimens of the mental development
effected in Egypt in the last years, I may mention a book that appeared in
Cairo two years ago[1], containing a description of the present Khedive's
pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, performed two years before. The author
evidently possesses a good deal of the scholastic learning to be gathered
in the Azhar and no European erudition in the stricter sense of the word.
In an introductory chapter he gives a summary of the geography and history
of the Arabian peninsula, describes the Hijāz in a more detailed manner,
and in his very elaborate account of the journey, on which he accompanied
his princely master, the topography of the holy cities, the peculiarities
of their inhabitants and of the foreign visitors, the political
institutions, and the social conditions are treated almost as fully and
accurately as we could desire from the hand of the most accomplished
European scholar. The work is illustrated by good maps and plans and by a
great number of excellent photographs expressly taken for this purpose by
the Khedive's order. The author intersperses his account with many witty
remarks as well as serious reflections on religious and political topics,
thus making it very readable to those of us who are familiar with the
Arabic language. He adorns his description of the holy places and of the
pilgrimage-rites with the unctuous phrases used in handbooks for the hajji,
and he does not disturb the mind of the pious reader by any historical
criticism of the traditions connected with the House of Allah, the Black
Stone, and the other sanctuaries, but he loses no opportunity to show his
dislike of all superstition; sometimes, as if to prevent Western readers
from indulging in mockery, he compares Meccan rites or customs with
superstitious practices current amongst Jews or Christians of today.
[Footnote 1: _Ar-rihlah al-Hijaziyyah_, by Muhammed Labib al-Batanunf, 2d
edition, Cairo, 1329 Hijrah.]
This book, at whose contents many a Meccan scholar of the old style will
shake his head and exclaim: "We seek refuge near Allah from Satan, the
cursed!" has been adopted by the Egyptian Department of Public Instruction
as a reading-book for the schools.
What surprised me more than anything else was the author's quoting as his
predecessors in the description of Mecca and Medina, Burckhardt, Burton,
and myself, and his sending me, although personally unacquainted with him,
a presentation copy with a flattering dedication. This author and his book
would have been impossible in the Moslim world not more than thirty years
ago. In Egypt such a man is nowadays already considered as one of those
more conservative moderns, who prefer the rationalistic explanation of the
Azhar lore to putting it aside altogether. Within the Azhar, his book is
sure to meet with hearty approval from the followers of Muhammed Abduh, but
not less hearty disapproval from the opponents of modernism who make up the
majority of the professors as well as of the students.
In these very last years a new progress of modern thought has manifested
itself in Cairo in the foundation, under the auspices of Fu'ād Pasha, an
uncle of the present Khedive, of the Egyptian University. Cairo has had for
a long time its schools of medicine and law, which could be turned easily
into university faculties; therefore, the founders of the university
thought it urgent to establish a faculty of arts, and, if this proved a
success, to add a faculty of science. In the meantime, gifted young men
were granted subsidies to learn at European universities what they needed
to know to be the professors of a coming generation, and, for the present,
Christian as well as Mohammedan natives of Egypt and European scholars
living in the country were appointed as lecturers; professors being
borrowed from the universities of Europe to deliver lectures in Arabic on
different subjects chosen more or less at random before an audience little
prepared to digest the lessons offered to them.
The rather hasty start and the lack of a well-defined scheme have made
the Egyptian University a subject of severe criticism. Nevertheless, its
foundation is an unmistakable expression of the desire of intellectual
Egypt to translate modern thought into its own language, to adapt modern
higher instruction to its own needs. This same aim is pursued in a perhaps
more efficacious manner by the hundreds of Egyptian students of law,
science, and medicine at French, English, and some other European
universities. The Turks could not freely follow such examples before
the revolution of 1908; but they have shown since that time that their
abstention was not voluntary. England, France, Holland, and other countries
governing Mohammedan populations are all endeavouring to find the right way
to incorporate their Mohammedan subjects into their own civilization. Fully
recognizing that it was the material covetousness of past generations
that submitted those nations to their rule, the so-called colonial powers
consider it their duty now to secure for them in international intercourse
the place which their natural talent enables them to occupy. The question
whether it is better simply to leave the Moslims to Islām as it was for
centuries is no longer an object of serious discussion, the reforming
process being at work everywhere--in some parts with surprising rapidity.
We can only try to prognosticate the solution which the near future
reserves for the problem, how the Moslim world is to be associated with
modern thought.
In this problem the whole civilized world and the whole world of Islām are
concerned. The ethnic difference between Indians, North-Africans, Malays,
etc., may necessitate a difference of method in detail; the Islām problem
lies at the basis of the question for all of them. On the other hand,
the future development of Islām does not only interest countries with
Mohammedan dominions, it claims as well the attention of all the nations
partaking in the international exchange of material and spiritual goods.
This would be more generally recognized if some knowledge of Islām were
more widely spread amongst ourselves; if it were better realized that Islām
is next akin to Christianity.
It is the Christian mission that shows the deepest consciousness of this
state of things, and the greatest activity in promoting an association
of Mohammedan thought with that of Western nations. The solid mass of
experience due to the efforts of numerous missionaries is not of an
encouraging nature. There is no reasonable hope of the conversion
of important numbers of Mohammedans to any Christian denomination.
Broad-minded missionary societies have therefore given up the old fruitless
proselytizing methods and have turned to social improvement in the way of
education, medical treatment, and the like. It cannot be denied, that
what they want above all to bring to Mohammedans is just what these most
energetically decline to accept. On the other hand the advocates of a
purely civilizing mission are bound to acknowledge that, but for rare
exceptions, the desire of incorporating Mohammedan nations into our world
of thought does not rouse the devoted, self-denying enthusiasm inspired by
the vocation of propagating a religious belief. The ardour displayed by
some missionaries in establishing in the Dār al-Islām Christian centres
from which they distribute to the Mohammedans those elements of our
civilization which are acceptable to them deserves cordial praise; the more
so because they themselves entertain but little hope of attaining
their ultimate aim of conversion. Mohammedans who take any interest in
Christianity are taught by their own teachers that the revelation of Jesus,
after having suffered serious corruption by the Christians themselves, has
been purified and restored to its original simplicity by Mohammed, and are
therefore inaccessible to missionary arguments; nay, amongst uncivilized
pagans the lay mission of Islām is the most formidable competitor of
clerical propagation of the Christian faith.
People who take no active part in missionary work are not competent to
dissuade Christian missionaries from continuing their seemingly hopeless
labour among Mohammedans, nor to prescribe to them the methods they are
to adopt; their full autonomy is to be respected. But all agree that
Mohammedans, disinclined as they are to reject their own traditions of
thirteen centuries and to adopt a new religious faith, become ever better
disposed to associate their intellectual, social, and political life with
that of the modern world. Here lies the starting point for two divisions of
mankind which for centuries have lived their own lives separately in mutual
misunderstanding, from which to pursue their way arm in arm to the greater
advantage of both. We must leave it to the Mohammedans themselves to
reconcile the new ideas which they want with the old ones with which they
cannot dispense; but we can help them in adapting their educational system
to modern requirements and give them a good example by rejecting the
detestable identification of power and right in politics which lies at the
basis of their own canonical law on holy war as well as at the basis of the
political practice of modern Western states. This is a work in which we
all may collaborate, whatever our own religious conviction may be. The
principal condition for a fruitful friendly intercourse of this kind is
that we make the Moslim world an object of continual serious investigation
in our intellectual centres.
Having spent a good deal of my life in seeking for the right method of
associating with modern thought the thirty-five millions of Mohammedans
whom history has placed under the guardianship of my own country, I could
not help drawing some practical conclusions from the lessons of history
which I have tried to reduce to their most abridged form. There is no lack
of pessimists, whose wisdom has found its poetic form in the words of
Kipling:
East is East and West is West,
And never the twain shall meet.
To me, with regard to the Moslim world, these words seem almost a
blasphemy. The experience acquired by adapting myself to the peculiarities
of Mohammedans, and by daily conversation with them for about twenty years,
has impressed me with the firm conviction that between Islām and the modern
world an understanding _is_ to be attained, and that no period has offered
a better chance of furthering it than the time in which we are living. To
Kipling's poetical despair I think we have a right to prefer the words of
a broad-minded modern Hindu writer: "The pity is that men, led astray by
adventitious differences, miss the essential resemblances[1]."
[Footnote 1: S.M. Mitra, _Anglo-Indian Studies_, London, Longmans, Green &
Co., 1913, P. 232.]
It would be a great satisfaction to me if my lectures might cause some of
my hearers to consider the problem of Islām as one of the most important of
our time, and its solution worthy of their interest and of a claim on their
exertion.
INDEX
A
Abbas (Mohammed's uncle)
Abbasids
government
Khalifate
Abd-ul-Hamid, Sultan
Abduh, Muftī Muhammed
Abraham
Abu Bakr
Abyssinians
Africa
Africans
Agreement of the Community, _see_ 'Ijmā'
Ahl al-hadīth (men of tradition)
'Ajam
Al-Ash'arī
Alexander the Great
Alī, the fourth Khalīf
Ali, Mohammed, the first Khedive
Alids
'āmils (agents)
Anti-Christ
Arabia
Arabian, view in regard to the line of descent through a woman
tribes
prophet
heathens
migration
race
armies
Shi'ah
conquerors
origin of hajj
peninsula
Arabic, traditions
speech
arts
custom
grammar
language
Arabs
the nations conquered by the
of Christian origin
Arnold, Professor T.W.
Asia
Assassins
Augustin
Azhar-mosque
B
Bāb Dereybah
Bābīs
Bagdad
Barbarians
Basra
Beduins
Behā'īs
Bellarminius
Berber
Bible
_See_ Scriptures
Bibliander
Black Stone
Boulainvilliers, Count de
Breitinger
Buddhism
Burckhardt
Burton
Byzantine Empire
Byzantines
C
Caetani, Prince
Cairo
Casanova, Professor of Paris
Caussin de Perceval
China
Chinese
Christian
religion
influence
rituals
traditions
model of obligatory fasting
princes
states
natives of Egypt
missions
demonstrations
centres in Dar al-Islam
faith and missionaries
Christian Church
Roman Catholic
Protestant
Christianity
Christians
religious rites of
Circassians
Coderc
Commander of the Faithful
Committee of Union and Progress
Confucianism
Constantinople
Crypto-Mohammedanism
D
Dar al-Islām
Day of judgment
Doomsday
Dutch, Indies
E
Egypt
Egyptian, nation
students
Department of Public Instruction
university
Egyptians
England
English
university
F
Faqihs (canonists)
Faithful
Fātima
Fātimite, dynasty
Khalifate
Fatwa
French
university
Fu'ād Pasha
G
Ghazalķ
Gideon
Goldziher
Gospels
_See_ Scriptures
H
Hadith (legislative tradition)
Hadramaut
Hadramites
Hagar
Hajj (pilgrimage)
Hanafites
Hanbalites
Haram (mosque)
Hell
Hijāz
Hijrah,
Hinduism
Holy Cities
_See_ Mecca and Medina
Holy Family (Ali and Fatimah)
Hottinger
Hūd, the prophet
I
'Ijmā' (Agreement of the Community)
Imāms
of Yemen
India
Indians,
Indonesia
Isaac
Ishmael
Ishma'ilites
Islām
J
Jacob
Jāhiliyyah (Arabian paganism)
Jesus Christ
as Mehdi
Jewish, religion
influence
rituals
model of fasting
Jews
Jihād
Judaism
K
Ka'bah
Khalīf, the first
Khalifate
Khalīfs, the first four
Khārijites,
Khedive
Kipling
Kufa
L
Lammens, Father
M
Mahdī
Malays
Mālikites
Maracci, Abbé
Mary (mother of Jesus)
Maulid
Mecca
Meccans
Medina
Medinese
Messiah
Middle Ages
Misr, _see_ Cairo
Mohammedan, religion
masters
state
orthodox dogma
authorities
law books
countries
political life
church
princes
world
governors
subjects
masses
statesmen
protection
community
territories
dogmatics
Hell
authors
law
women
nations
slavery
principles
standard of tolerance
philosophers
mystics
thought
lunar year
learning
science
populations
dominions
Mohammedans
natives of Egypt
Mongols
Morocco
Moses
Moslim
princes
people
authority
church
canonists
world
chiefs of states
woman
society
heresiologists
Muftī
Muir
Mujtahids
Mutakallim
Mu'tazilites
N
Neo-Platonic origin of mysticism
Neo-Platonism
Nöldeke
Non-Alids
Non-Arabian converts
Non-Arabic Moslims
O
Omar
Omayyads
Othmān
authority
Ottoman princes
Ottomans
P
Paganism
Papacy
Paradise
Parsīs
Persia
Persian Empire
Porte, the
Prideaux, Dr.
Protestantism
Q
Qādhīs
Qārīs (Qoran scholars)
Qarmatians
Qoraish
Qorān
scolars
reciters
Qorānic, revelations
religion
R
Reland, H.
Resurrection
Roman Catholics
S
Salāt
Sale
Sālih, the prophet
Sasanids
Saul
Sayyids
Scriptures
people of the
Shāfi'ites
Shāhs of Persia
Sharī'ah (Divine Law)
Shaukah (actual influence)
Sheikhites
Sheikh-ul-Islām
Sherīfs
Sherīfs of Mecca
Sherīfs, rulers of Morocco
Shī'ah (the Party of the House)
Shī'ites
Sīrah (biography)
Spain
Sprenger
Stambul
Sultan
Sunnah
Sunnites
Syria
Syrians
T
Taif
Tatars
Testament, _see_ Scriptures
Tibet
Tradition, _see_ Hadith
Trinity
Turkey
Sultan of
Turkish, Empire
circles
conqueror
Sultan
arms
government
state officials
Turks
U
'Ulamā' (learned men)
V
Voltaire
W
Wahhābī reformers
Weil
Wellhausen
Wezīrs
Y
Yemen
Imāms of
Z
Zaidites
Zakāt (taxes)
Zanzibar
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