HENRY STUBBE
AND THE BEGINNINGS OF ISLAM
HENRY STUBBE
AND THE
BEGINNINGS
OF ISLAM
The Originall & Progress of Mahometanism
EDITED AND INTRODUCED BY
NABIL MATAR
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW YORK
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright 2014 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-52736-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stubbe, Henry, 16321676.
[Account of the rise and progress of Mahometanism]
Henry Stubbe and the beginnings of Islam : the Originall & progress of Mahometanism / edited and introduced by Nabil Matar.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-15664-6 (cloth : alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-231-52736-1 (e-book)
1. IslamEarly works to 1800. 2. Stubbe, Henry, 16321676. I. Matar, N. I. (Nabil I.),
1949 II. Title.
BP160.S7 2014
297.09dc23
2013018042
A Columbia University Press E-book.
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Cover art: From Historia Orientalis (1660).
Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard University.
Cover design: Milenda Nan Ok Lee
References to Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
For Mohammad Asfour
Light upon light,
God guides to His light.
QURN 24:35 (KHALIDIS TRANSLATION)
CONTENTS
This project started as a result of incisive questions from two talented graduate students, both of whom have now completed their dissertations: Josh Mabie and Eric Carlson. In a course on Britain and the Islamic Mediterranean, we read the 1911 edition of Henry Stubbes treatise on Islam, but on a number of occasions I found myself unable to address adequately some of the issues they raised. When I visited England later that year, I decided to consult the manuscript versions of the treatise. I then realized the need for a new edition.
I was awarded a Grant-in-Aid from the University of Minnesota that allowed me to spend time at the British Library, the Senate Library of the University of London, and the Bodleian. To the staff at these libraries, I am deeply grateful. Closer to home, the staff of the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota have been most supportive: Dr. Marguerite Ragnow and Ms. Margaret Borg. So too were the ILL staff at Wilson Library. As always, the staff at the Houghton Library, Harvard University, some of whom I have known since my first visit in 1988, were most gracious.
I wish to thank Heather Krebs, a former graduate student, who typed the manuscripts. She faced a herculean task, which she completed with masterful accuracy. I also want to thank my tireless student assistant, Katie Sisneros, who helped in formatting and proofing as well as for preparing the index. I know it was not easy. I consulted many colleagues and friends to whom I am thankful: Professor Wadad Kadi (Arabic) who spent many hours with me; Professor Dominic Baker-Smith (Latin), Professor Philip Sellew (Greek), Professor Spencer Cole (Latin), Professor Marco Perale (Greek), and Mr. Gabriel Fuchs who focused on the longer Latin passages. To all: thank you. Any shortcomings that might remain are, of course, mine.
I am thankful to the Center for Early Modern History, director Sarah Chambers, at the University of Minnesota and the Center for Near Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago for giving me the opportunity to present a lecture on my initial findings on Stubbe. I was honored by the UK arm of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists, director Anas Hajj Ali, and the Alwalid bin Talal Centre for Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge, director Yasir Suleiman, with the Building Bridges Award, which afforded me another occasion to develop my thoughts in a lecture on Henry Stubbe.
On a personal note, I would like to thank the friends without whom I could not have completed this work: A. A. Baramki; Professor Muhammad Shaheen, University of Jordan, a deeply cherished friend, who met with me, in Amman and in Oxford, to offer suggestions and insights; Professor Jeanne Kilde, director of the Program of Religious Studies at the University of Minnesota, whose initiative and drive are ever an inspiration to me; and Professor Wadad Kadi, whose enduring friendship and vast scholarship have been my sustenance in the icy Minnesota Polite. And from the British side of the pond, I would like to thank the many friends I have in London: Dina Matar and John Taysom for their wonderful hospitality; David Brooks, my Cambridge friend of yore; Samira Kawar, my student during my first teaching job at the University of Jordan in Amman, and her husband Yacoub Douani; Patrick Spottiswoode of the Globe Theatre, a dear friend and always an inspiration; Basim Ziadeh, friend from childhood in Beirut, and Riad Nourallah of AUB days.
As always, I remember Selim Kemal and Rudy Stoeckel, friends of Beirut, Cambridge, and Melbourne, Floridatowns of memory. And so too, the doe-eyed girl of the green.
And forever in the pictures around me in my study: Abraham and Hady, may the Lord ever shine His face on you and forgive you the sarcasm you inflicted on me for wasting taxpayers money on editing a seventeenth-century document; my sister Inaam, resisting retirement in Amman; Suheil Farouqui, a fellow traveler on the road to Jerusalem; GH always, always cherished and thanked; and, of course, Galina, alabba.
* * *
This book is dedicated to Mohammad Asfour.
It was his from the moment I started working on it.
With Mohammad, I shared the first office in my first job at the University of Jordan in 1976. Poet, translator, and teacher, Mohammad is unforgettable. I have met many of his former students in various parts of the worldat the University of Wisconsin, on a flight to Rabat, in the Reading Room of the British Library: there was always wonder in their eyes as we talked about him. I too had fallen under his spell: a man for whom language is sacred, and literature, both Arabic and English, an Ariadnes thread in the labyrinth of exile.
From him I learned about beauty and holiness, about Islamic devotion and Arabic prosody, about Byron and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra. And he continues to be a mentor: every so often, I pester him with questions and queries, and he responds, with grace and learning and illumination. As he approaches retirement, and with Um Firs by his side, I hope he will record his last journey from Ayn Ghazl and the diaspora of Palestine.
UROPEAN MEDIEVAL representations of the Prophet Muammad and of the beginnings of Islam were uniformly negative, as Norman Daniel showed in his magisterial
