The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment

326 Pages·2018·6.75 MB·English

by  Alexander Bevilacqua

THE REPUBLIC OF ARABIC
LETTERS
Islam and the European Enlightenment
Alexander Bevilacqua
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
LONDON, ENGLAND
2018
Copyright © 2018 by Alexander Bevilacqua All rights reserved

Jacket design: Tim Jones Jacket art: Kātib Çelebi, “The Clearing of Doubts in the Names of Books and
Arts” (Kashf al-ẓunūn ʿan asāmī’l-kutub wa-l-funūn), title-page. This manuscript of Kātib Çelebi’s book
was produced in Istanbul in 1680 and acquired for the Royal Library in Paris. D’Herbelot had it copied for
his personal use. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. Arabe 4458, f. 1v.

978-0-674-97592-7 (alk. paper) 978-0-674-98567-4 (EPUB) 978-0-674-498568-1 (MOBI) 978-0-674-
98569-8 (PDF)
Interior design by Dean Bornstein
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Names: Bevilacqua, Alexander,
1984– author.
Title: The republic of Arabic letters : Islam and the European enlightenment / Alexander Bevilacqua.
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017031813
Subjects: LCSH: Islamic civilization—Study and teaching—Europe, Western. | Enlightenment—Europe. |
Europe—Civilization—Islamic influences. | Christian scholars—Europe—History.
Classification: LCC CB251 .B426 2018 | DDC 909 / .09767—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017031813
Abū’l-Fidāʾ (1321) Quod totum sciri non potest, ne omittatur totum, siquidem
Scientia partis melior est ignorantia totius.
Translation by Edward Pococke (1650) What cannot totally be known, ought not
to be totally neglected; for the Knowledge of a Part is better than the Ignorance
of the Whole.
Translation by Simon Ockley (1718)
Semper praestat partem rei tenere, quam totam ignorare.
Translation by Johann Jacob Reiske (1770)
Contents
Note on Terminology, Names, Transliteration, and Dates
List of Protagonists
List of Frequently Discussed Arabic and Islamic Authors
Introduction
1 . The Oriental Library
2 . The Qur’an in Translation
3 . A New View of Islam
4 . D’Herbelot’s Oriental Garden
5 . Islam in History
6 . Islam and the Enlightenment
Epilogue
Color Plates
Abbreviations
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
Note on Terminology, Names, Transliteration,
and Dates
In the era this book describes, Europeans lacked standardized terminology for
identifying Muslims and their religious, cultural, and linguistic communities.
The ancient but unspecific “Saracen,” a name whose origin is as obscure as its
use was widespread, was just one among many available designations.
“Oriental” did not refer solely to Muslims: it could encompass all peoples of the
Levant, including Jews and Christians, or even refer to all the peoples of Asia.
Likewise, “Arab” could mean several things: sometimes it designated the
nomadic desert Arabs, the Bedouin, sometimes the speakers of Arabic. (To call
those who spoke or wrote in Arabic Arabs, as many Europeans did, was
misleading, because Persians, Ottomans and many others used Arabic as well.)
“Turks,” too, could refer to Ottoman dynasts and subjects or else to speakers and
writers of Turkish, or even, by synecdoche, to all Muslims (as in the expression,
first attested in the sixteenth century, “to turn Turk”). This terminological
complexity led, perhaps inevitably, to some ambiguity and overlap between
terms. Thus, “the history of the Arabs” often meant the history of the Muslims—
those medieval Muslims who had participated in Umayyad and Abbasid society.
The non-Arab contribution was not properly acknowledged.
In this book I use “Islamic” rather than “Oriental,” because the latter term,
while probably the most frequently employed by its protagonists, seems far too
imprecise to be useful. Nevertheless, the pages that follow look beyond the study
of the religion of Islam. As a consequence, I use the term “Islamic” broadly, not
just for religion but also to indicate Muslim cultural and intellectual production.
Not all of this was religious in character; poetry, philosophy, and history all fall
under the term. Marshall Hodgson coined the useful term “Islamicate” to refer to
the cultural production of Muslim lands, including that of minorities, as opposed
to the properly religious aspects of life, which he called “Islamic” (Marshall G.
S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World
Civilization [Chicago, 1974], vol. 1). I have nonetheless avoided “Islamicate”
because it has not taken hold outside the specialized circles of contemporary
Islamic and Near Eastern studies (and perhaps not even there). As for the use of
“Europe” and “European”: the goal is to be as inclusive as possible, and to bring
together Italian, German, Dutch, French, and English sources. My aim is not to
dismiss national differences; the connections and parallels merely seemed more
significant. “Western Christian” would have served as well.
The term “civilization” was first used only in the 1760s, but in this book I
employ it to describe a notion that certainly emerged much earlier: the
assumption that the sum total of a society’s achievements in the arts and sciences
could be described and evaluated. The thinkers profiled here were interested in
assessing the relationship of Islam to what we might term cultural output, though
their notion of it seems more accurately captured by the phrase “civilizational
achievement.” As for “culture”: in my own usage, I have attempted, where
possible, to qualify the slippery term with more specific attributes such as
“intellectual” or “literary.”
I use the vernacular names of humanist scholars (Reland, not Relandus),
except when the Latin ones have gained currency in English (Golius, not van
Gool). While Lodovico Marracci is mostly called Ludovico in the secondary
literature, I have respected the way he spelled his name in autograph documents
and vernacular publications. See, for instance, the letters at the Biblioteca
Nazionale Centrale in Florence; and Lodovico Marracci, L’ebreo preso per le
buone (Rome, 1701).
Transliteration of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish follows the simplified system
of the International Journal of Middle East Studies. I have not included
diacritics for words commonly used in English, such as “Muhammad.”
Likewise, I have used the English equivalents of Arabic names where they exist,
rather than transliterations (Medina, not Madīna). The ʾ symbol stands for
hamza, the glottal stop. The ʿ symbol stands for ayn, a throated consonant with
no equivalent in English. In Arabic patronyms, “b.” stands for “ibn” (son), so
that the name ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib translates as ʿAlī, the son of Abū Ṭālib.
Calendar dates are Common Era unless otherwise indicated. The Islamic
calendar is a lunar twelve-month calendar and begins in 622 CE, the year of
Muhammad’s flight to Medina, known as the hijra or hegira. Years in the
Islamic calendar are referred to as AH for Anno Hegirae.
The Bible is quoted in the King James (Authorized) Version. Unless
otherwise indicated, quotations from the Qur’an use the version of A. J. Arberry,
The Koran Interpreted (London, 1955). All other translations are my own unless
otherwise indicated, though I have consulted published translations where
available.
List of Protagonists
(in chronological order by birth)
Edward Pococke (1604–1691). Chaplain to the English Levant Company at Aleppo and professor at
Oxford. His Specimen Historiæ Arabum (1650) put European Arabic studies on a new footing. (Chapters
3, 5)
Lodovico Marracci (1612–1700). Member of the Order of the Mother of God and confessor to Pope
Innocent XI (Odescalchi). He wrote a Latin translation of the Qur’an with critical notes drawn from five
Arabic commentaries. (Chapter 2)
Barthélemy d’Herbelot (1625–1695). Supported by the Medici and King Louis XIV, this French scholar
created the Bibliothèque Orientale (1697), a reference work about Islamic history and letters based on his
reading in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. (Chapter 4) Richard Simon (1638–1712). French biblical scholar
whose writings on Islam, which first appeared in the 1670s, drew analogies and connections with
Christianity and emphasized that Muslim writers deserved to be studied like the good pagans of antiquity.
(Chapter 3) Antoine Galland (1646–1715). French interpreter, scholar, and translator. His posthumous
fame derives from his translation of The Thousand and One Nights, the first into a Western language, but
he was active in many areas, including manuscript collecting and numismatics. (Chapters 1, 4) Eusèbe
Renaudot (1646–1720). French scholar and diplomat who was especially interested in the history of the
Eastern Churches and their liturgies. His work on Islamic history remained in manuscript. (Chapter 5)
Adriaan Reland (1676–1718). Dutch scholar of Oriental languages based in Utrecht. His short treatise De
Religione Mohammedica (1705) advanced a fair-minded treatment of Islam and served as a manifesto of
the new Arabic scholarship. (Chapter 3) Simon Ockley (ca. 1679–1720). English scholar of Arabic who
taught at Cambridge and wrote a two-volume History of the Saracens (1708 and 1718) that brought the
early Arab conquests to the attention of English and European readers. (Chapter 5) Charles-Louis de
Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689–1755). Political philosopher whose Persian
Letters (1721) and The Spirit of the Law (1748) both touched on Islamic topics, renewing the concept of
Oriental despotism. (Chapter 6) François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire (1694–1778). Voltaire’s
treatment of Islam in his Essai sur les mœurs (1756) drew heavily on the writings of the European
scholars of Arabic and turned their research into the knowledge of the French Enlightenment. (Chapter 6)
George Sale (ca. 1696–1736). The first translator of the Qur’an from Arabic into English. He lived in
London and was not university educated. His Koran appeared in 1734 and became the standard English
translation for both its scholarly and its literary accomplishment. (Chapters 2, 3) Johann Jacob Reiske
(1717–1774). German Arabist who attained an extraordinary mastery of Arabic sources, particularly
historical ones. He failed to gain professional recognition, and much of his Arabic scholarship remained
unpublished at his death. (Chapter 5) Edward Gibbon (1737–1794). Gibbon treated the rise of Islam in
volume 5 of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which appeared in 1788. In many
respects a student of the Republic of Arabic Letters, he nevertheless reproached Muslims for not having
sufficiently absorbed the classical heritage. (Chapter 6)