The Persian Studies of Adriaan Reland (1676–1718)

Summary

Although it has been proven in recent years that a book about Orientalism can become an international best-seller, books written by Orientalists usually sell badly. In the history of Oriental studies, one of the rare exceptions to this rule is De religione Mohammedica, a scholarly work on Islam by the Dutch scholar Adriaan Reland, which was published for the first time in 1705. Not only was a second edition published during the author's life-time (1717), within the first two decades after its appearance the Latin original was translated into several modern European languages including English (1712), Dutch (1718) and French (1721). The book also appeared to be dangerous enough to draw the attention of Papal censorship: in 1725 it was put on the Index librorum prohibitorum.

This remarkable success could be explained by referring to the mood of the times. The attitude towards Islam, which for centuries had been dominated by apologetic intentions, changed very much during the seventeenth century. Scholars who took an interest in the languages of the Orient became less and less guided by religious preconceptions. The possibilities of laying a foundation of unprejudiced knowledge had improved because original texts from which the point of view of the Muslims themselves could be learned became available in increasing numbers. Towards the end of the century, the Bibliothèque orientale, assembled by Barthélemy d’Herbelot (1625–1695) and published by Antoine Galland in 1691, provided the community of scholars in Europe with an encyclopaedia of factual information, largely drawn from the rich collection of Muslim manuscripts in the Paris Bibliothèque Royale. About the same time, the general public had become secularised to such an extent that a market existed for books providing a more open approach to a subject which hitherto had been wrapped up in clouds of ignorance and misconception.

Reland provided just that approach. His presentation of Islam was deliberately designed to dispel the common acceptance that Islam was an absurd religion and its Prophet an impostor. The first part of the book consists of an annotated Latin translation of an Arabic treatise on Islamic theology, the second part is devoted to the examination of the ideas falsely attributed to Muḥammad and is based on Muslim sources as they were accessible to Reland.