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265 In at least two major instances—the study of the classical world, and the study of Judaism—early modern scholars knew that, in order to understand a culture, it was necessary to consider how that culture understood itself, by studying its own hermeneutics and canons of interpretation . Thus early modern Hebraists explored the Talmud and studied the works of rabbinical exegetes and legal commentators; classical scholars investigated not only the literary texts of the ancient world, but also the works of classical grammarians, scholiasts, commentators, and mythographers . Yet when we turn to the early modern investigation of Islam, we find that this principle was not applied—or, at least, that its application was both inadequate and tardy. Islam’s self-understanding was, for a long time, poorly investigated and little understood. Indeed, even the study of the primary texts made only halting progress . Work on the central text of Islam, the Koran, lagged far behind the study of Arabic, even though all students of Arabic knew that knowledge of the Koran was of huge importance for any understanding of the literary language itself. After the first printing of the Koran in Arabic (in the late 1530s) had become entirely unavailable (having been either suppressed or, more probably, shipped off to the Levant and destroyed there because of the errors it contained), no such edition was produced until 1694 (by Abraham Hinckelmann, in Hamburg) and 1698 (by Lodovico Marracci, in Padua)—even though the first major printing programme in Arabic type had got under way as early as the 1580s.1 Of the many Arabic texts published in Europe—whether in Arabic or Eleven The Study of Islam in Early Modern Europe: Obstacles and Missed Opportunities Noel Malcolm 266 Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China in translation—up to the end of the seventeenth century, very few had any Islamic religious content. Individual scholars had access to some of the standard works of tafsir (Koranic exegesis); but they made only limited use of their knowledge of such material, and never published any systematic translations of such texts. The same goes for the collections of hadith (traditions about the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad); and for the great treatises on sharia (Islamic law); and, for that matter, for the major theological or ethical treatises of writers such as al-Ghazali. Very little work was done combining textual knowledge with observational knowledge of Islam as it was practiced, even though several of the most important textual scholars (Golius and Pococke, for example) had spent long periods in the Orient. It is true, on the other hand, that considerable energies were devoted to preparing editions of two historical texts dealing with the early Islamic period, the History of al-Makin (edited by Erpenius) and the History of the Dynasties of Abu ’lFaraj (edited by Pococke); but it is also noteworthy that both of those medieval Arab authors were Christians.2 Most European scholars during this period seem to have shied away from editing theological, philosophical, or ethical texts of a specifically Islamic nature. Instead, many turned to a genre that was more “safe,” theologically neutral, and appealing to a Western readership: collections of proverbs. The Adages of Erasmus had created a huge appetite for this sort of thing among European readers; and in some ways it was no doubt a canny move on the part of the scholars to use such material in order to awaken an interest in Oriental culture, since Arabic proverbs offered both an aura of exoticism (to draw in the readers) and a familiar sense of universal human experience (to reassure them, once drawn in). And, of course, for those learning Arabic, collections of proverbs offered interesting but simple texts in manageably small units. The vogue was begun by Johannes Drusius, whose collection of Hebrew and Arab proverbs (in Latin translation) was published in 1591 and reissued in 1612.3 Then a manuscript containing 200 Arab proverbs, obtained by Casaubon, worked on by Scaliger, and finally prepared for publication by the doyen of Arabic scholars in Europe, Thomas Erpenius, was published in 1614; Erpenius later added 100 more in his edition of the fables of Luqman (1615), and issued an improved edition of the original 200 in 1623.4 These were intended as reading materials for students of Arabic, as was the similar collection of proverbs, attributed to Muhammad ’s son-in-law Ali, which Jacob Golius published in 1629.5 But other scholars and...

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