Snouck hurgronje biography pdf

Chapter 2 Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives Jan Just Witkam 1 Introduction ‘A complete scholarly life’ is how Snouck Hurgronje’s life has been characterized in a recent biography.1 It deals with the great man’s eventful life and his almost equally fascinating afterlife, and it does so with scholarly distance and with an eye for the interesting detail. Snouck Hurgronje’s was a special life indeed. In his travels from Europe to Mecca, to Java, to Aceh, and back to Europe again, with a short return trip to North America, he wrote profusely about what he had seen and experienced, and about his ideals in the world at large, all the time developing his linguistic skills and ethnographic talents, and not only giving expression to his political impulses, but also leading a private life in pursuit of happiness. It was a life lived by an artist of chiaroscuro, by someone who wanted to be in the limelight but who at the same time sought darkness as a refuge; someone who wished to speak out, but often did so in an encoded way. He would reveal himself to his readers, both in his publications and in his unpublished correspondence, but would simultaneously hide his deepest feelings behind encrypted reminders. Some of these clues can still be read between the lines of his literary and scholarly legacy, though most of them must now be considered lost for ever. Was it a game that Snouck Hurgronje was playing with his readership, or did these things exist only in his innermost thoughts, a few of which are accessible to us now as accidental spectators? We shall never know precisely, as we have no idea how many of these details are beyond retrieval. 1 Acknowledgment. I am grateful to William Facey, London, for giving me numerous suggestions for English usage in this text. Wim van den Doel, Snouck. Het volkomen geleerdenleven van Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2021. The Dutch word ‘volkomen’ can mean ‘complete’ and also ‘perfect’. Only on p. 551, at the very end of his story of Snouck Hurgronje’s life, does van den Doel tell his readers what such a complete or perfect life entails. 74 2 Witkam Lives The basic events of Snouck Hurgronje’s life are far from unknown. I summarize: Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (* Oosterhout, 8 February 1857 – † Leiden, 26 June 1936) was a Dutch Arabist, islamologist, colonial adviser and scholar.2 He was a son of Jacob Julianus Snouck Hurgronje (1812–1870), a minister in the Dutch Protestant Church, and Anna Maria de Visser (1819–1892). While living in Mecca he owned an Ethiopian slave woman as a concubine, but he did not take her with him when he left Arabia.3 In Batavia (Jakarta) in 1890 he married a woman named Sangkana (d. 1895), and then again in Batavia in 1898 another named Sitti Sadijah (‘Buah’, d. 1974). He married for a third time in Zutphen (Netherlands) on July 8, 1910, his new wife being Ida Maria Oort (d. 1958). All these marriages produced offspring.4 His secondary education took place in Breda (Netherlands). In 1874, he had enrolled as a student of theology and humanities in the University of Leiden (Netherlands). He graduated in theology and continued his studies in Semitic languages, specializing in Arabic with Michael Jan de Goeje (1836–1909). In 1880 he defended his PhD thesis on the origins of the Islamic pilgrimage. In 1881 he studied for some time with Theodor Nöldeke (1836–1930) in Strasbourg (then part of Germany), and on 1 October 1881 he was appointed teacher in the Municipal Institute for the education of colonial civil servants in Leiden. He also taught at the Higher War School in The Hague, Netherlands. In 1887 he was nominated senior lecturer in Leiden University for ‘Institutions of Islam’. In 1884–1885 he spent a year in Jeddah and Mecca.5 From 1889 to 1906 he lived in Batavia as an adviser to the Dutch colonial government for Arab, Islam2 The first half of this essay is mostly based on my summary biography ‘Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje’, in: Coeli Fitzpatrick & Dwayne A. Tunstall (eds), Orientalist Writers (= Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 366), Detroit, MI, etc.: Gale, 2012, pp. 148–154. 3 We do not know her name, although there are indications that she was called, at least by Snouck Hurgronje, Saʿīda. She probably ended her pregnancy on Snouck Hurgronje’s departure from Mecca in August 1885 or shortly after. Her existence was unknown until I wrote about her in my translation of Mekka of 2007. See my guess at her name in my ‘Meccan voices. Proverbs and Sayings from Mecca Collected and Explained by Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje’ in the present volume, under Proverb No. 51 (pp. 762, 833). 4 C.E.G. ten Houte de Lange, Familiefonds Hurgronje 1767–1992. De nakomelingen van Isaac Hurgronje (1652–1706) en Josina Phoenix (1663–1711) en de geschiedenis van 225 jaren Familiefonds Hurgronje. Middelburg: Familiefonds Hurgronje, 1992, pp. 328–329. 5 My annotated translations of the ‘diary’ that he kept in Jeddah, and of the proverbs that he collected in Mecca, are both published in the present volume. I have tried my hand at a reconstruction of Snouck Hurgronje’s life in Mecca in my ‘Inleiding’ to Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka in de tweede helft van de negentiende eeuw. Schetsen uit het dagelijks leven. Amsterdam/Antwerp: Atlas, 2007, pp. 7–184. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 75 Figure 2.1 Portrait of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, made between 1889 and 1902 in the studio of Charls & van Es & Co, Batavia. Reproduced from the frontispiece of Th.W. Juynboll’s biographical essay (Haarlem 1901). Source: Delpher ic and indigenous affairs. For that period, he is best known for his advisory role which led to the end of the Aceh war. From 1906 to 1927 he held the chair of ‘Islamology and the Arabic and Acehnese languages’ at Leiden University, and until 1933 he remained adviser to the Dutch Minister of Colonial Affairs. During his long, varied and productive life, Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje left behind an extensive trail of documents and publications: learned studies, political advice, reports, literary essays, poetry, newspaper articles, personal documents, letters, diaries, and travel accounts, many of them published but many also unpublished. Much of what has been preserved is now kept in the collections of Leiden University Library. However, reading the letters and other unpublished documents makes one realize immediately that much of what was once available must be regarded as lost. Although the general outline of Snouck Hurgronje’s life can be fairly well reconstructed, the search for specific details may cause the historian considerable difficulties. On starting to read his multi-faceted works one is rapidly impressed by the inevitable logic of his argument and by the often sharp and always very personal tone that characterizes his discourse. He had a mesmerizing effect on some of his contemporaries, and he inspired such awe that he had already become a legendary figure halfway through his life. Much later, a younger contemporary described C. van Arendonk (1881–1946) as a Snouck Hurgronje epigone: 76 Witkam In Leiden, van Arendonk turned into a serious scholar, who completely adapted himself to the achievements of 19th-century Semitic studies. Here he enjoyed, or rather submitted to, the friendship of Snouck Hurgronje, as did several other younger Orientalists. Snouck Hurgronje had a great respect for the personality of his students, but this did not prevent some of them from falling under the spell of the compelling personal character of his social relations. They started to copy the master’s expressions in word and gesture as they remembered them. In this respect too, van Arendonk had become a disciple of Snouck Hurgronje.6 The choice of Mecca as a subject for his PhD dissertation seems to have been due to his teacher, Michael Jan de Goeje, who may have hoped that his favourite student would produce a good edition with learned commentaries of Arabic texts on the history of Mecca. The Leiden library possessed enough important manuscripts on the subject. De Goeje ran a sort of text edition production line and he and his pupils were constantly engaged in preparing manuscripts for publication, usually in co-operation with the publishing house of Brill in Leiden. Snouck Hurgronje must soon have realized that this line of work was not what he wanted in the long run. His thesis, Het Mekkaansche feest, ‘the Mecca festival’, which he defended on 24 November 1880, earned him his doctoral degree with honours. Its primary sources were still mainly the venerable codexes of classical texts on Meccan history preserved in the Leiden library. But in addition to the scholarly digestion of these sources, Snouck Hurgronje came up with various provocative ideas and compelling interpretations about the origin of the Islamic pilgrimage and the role assigned to the Prophet Ibrāhīm (Abraham). These revolutionary ideas can be summarized as follows: the pagan pilgrimage ritual of pre-Islamic Mecca was incorporated by the Prophet Muhammad into the new religion for reasons of expediency alone, not as a result of revelation from on high, and the Prophet Ibrāhīm was chosen by him as the founding patriarch of Islam since, in the Old Testament, there is no text attributable to 6 My translation from the Dutch of J.H. Kramers, ‘Levensbericht C. van Arendonk’, in Jaarboek [of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences], Amsterdam 1946–1947, pp. 145–149, especially p. 146. See also Van den Doel, Snouck, p. 397. In this connection, Van den Doel constructs an elaborate case against G.W.J. Drewes (1899–1992) as one such epigone (Snouck, pp. 447–448, 456, 463, 529, 533–534). On Snouck Hurgronje’s harsh method of teaching, see van den Doel, Snouck, pp. 459–460. Louis Graf (1908–1992) once confirmed this to me, and from that I understood that, in his own courses (which I attended between 1964 and 1970), Drewes imitated the revered master in this respect too. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 77 Abraham which could contradict the Prophet Muhammad’s claims to be the final recipient of the divine word. From this it follows that the Abrahamic legend was invented for reasons of pragmatism. This dates from the period in the Prophet’s mission when he was still having to assert himself against the criticism and hostility of the followers of the two other, and earlier, monotheistic faiths, especially the Jews of western Arabia. Snouck Hurgronje’s propositions stripped the sanctity from important episodes in the sacred history of Islam, reducing them to instances of strategy and power politics. There is no place for a divine revelation in this line of reasoning, and Snouck Hurgronje would maintain this thesis for the rest of his life.7 He would never suffer for it himself, but his successor A.J. Wensinck (1882–1939) inadvertently repeated it in a publication, and in 1933 became the target of a hate campaign in Egypt which cost him his proposed membership of the Royal Academy of the Arabic Language.8 Having stepped well beyond the boundaries of philology proper with the ideas propounded in his thesis, Snouck Hurgronje would soon formulate ambitions far higher than his professor de Goeje, whose intimate knowledge of the Orient was derived from the armchair in his study and his mediaeval sources, could ever have envisaged. Snouck Hurgronje intimated to him that he had in mind a visit to Arabia, possibly even to Mecca itself. The quiet philologist must have been horrified by the plans of his impetuous pupil. Snouck Hurgronje’s subsequent visit to Mecca, and more especially the book on Meccan history and society that he published in 1888 and 1889, after his safe return to Leiden, brought him instant celebrity. He became a legend before he had even reached middle age.9 Snouck Hurgronje was familiar with the intimate description of Cairene society that Edward William Lane (1801–1876) had published on the basis of his notes made during a sojourn in Cairo between 1833 and 1835. He may have felt more inspired by that very genre of ethnographic description, than by meticulous textual criticism and assiduous manuscript collation. Lane’s illustrated 7 Much later Snouck Hurgronje summarized this idea in his Mohammedanism. Lectures on Its Origin, Its Religious and Political Growth, and Its Present State. New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1916, p. 41. For a better understanding of this matter I owe much to discussions with my late friend Frank Schröder (1945-2013). 8 Snouck Hurgronje’s thesis of 1880 is now also available in English: Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, The Mecca Festival. Translated and edited by Wolfgang H. Behn. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2012; see my review of this translation in Bibliotheca Orientalis 73/1–2 (January– April 2016), col. 268–272, which has a few details on Wensinck’s misadventure. 9 A romanticized and largely fantastical biography was published by Philip Dröge, Pelgrim. Leven en reizen van Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Houten/Antwerpen: Unieboek/Spectrum, 2017. The dust jacket of this book adds an extra sub-title: ‘wetenschapper, spion, avonturier’, scholar, spy, adventurer. See on this ‘biography’ my ‘Before Mecca’ (pp. 594-597, below). 78 Witkam Description of Egypt remained unpublished for a long time - the first edition appeared in Cairo in 2000. His classic, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, appeared in 1836 and has remained in print to this day. Apart from being a gifted ethnographer and a sound philologist, Lane was also an accomplished artist, and the engraved images accompanying his description of the Egyptians added an impressive visual dimension to his text. Snouck Hurgronje may have felt inspired by that combination of words and images in Lane’s description of the manners and customs of the Egyptians of his time, and he went to Mecca with the intention of exploiting the then still novel invention of photography. There are also differences between the journeys of Snouck Hurgronje and Lane. Snouck Hurgronje stayed in Arabia just over a full year (and less than half of that in Mecca proper), whereas, during his two journeys of about three years each, Lane had had ample opportunity to organize his research and complete his work. There were not too many complications for Lane while he was living as a Muslim under the adopted name of Manṣūr, in the traditional Muslim part of Cairo. To make life easier and to avoid too many questions, he had fully integrated himself. He purchased and later married a young slave girl, Nafeesah, who would accompany him to England and remain his lifelong companion. Mecca was a different cup of tea. Precisely because the sacred territory was forbidden to non-Muslims it had, in the course of time, attracted numerous adventurers. The authorities, and the population in general, were keen on unmasking such intruders – who might pay with their lives if detected. Snouck Hurgronje was not one of these adventurers since he did not come in disguise, but he always had to be wary in a town where the hatred of unbelievers was the prevailing state of mind. He was not too afraid of this, and he had taken various precautions. After five and a half months, his life was suddenly endangered by the indiscretions concerning his presence in Mecca and his alleged activites as an archaeologist or antiquities dealer put about by the French vice-consul in Jeddah, Félix Jacques de Lostalot de Bachoué (1842–1894). At that point his time was up, and he had to leave Mecca immediately, and, shortly after, Arabia too. Like Lane in Cairo, he had lived in Mecca as a Muslim among the Muslims, under his adopted name ʿAbd al-Ghaffār, the ‘Servant of the All-Forgiving One’, but unlike Lane he did not return home with the female companion whom he had purchased in Mecca and who had become pregnant by him, but whose name we do not know for sure. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje was not a religious man. From almost every page of his monumental study on Mecca it is evident that he had but few personal religious feelings, if any. However, religion as a social phenomenon fascinated him. His interest lay in finding answers to the question of how and to Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 79 what extent people were willing to shape their private lives and social organization according to their perception of God’s ordinances. In such a context, the existence of God was an absolute reality. Ever since Snouck Hurgronje published his illustrated monograph on Mecca,10 the book has amazed its readers. Mecca was, and is, the Holy City to some, the Forbidden City to others. How had a young Western scholar succeeded, and in such a short time, in being accepted by the Meccans as one of them and in writing such a detailed and intimate description of Meccan society? On that aspect Snouck Hurgronje has largely kept his silence, and for this very reason stories were bound to circulate and take on legendary proportions. For the present-day reader Snouck Hurgronje’s Mekka is a classic, but in many ways it is also a modern book. The second volume describes Meccan society in the 1880s, and as such it is an important historical and anthropological source. Amazingly enough, it has remained the only comprehensive monograph on the subject, for modern Muslim sociologists or historians have never dared to describe life in the holy city of Mecca in secular terms.11 The lively and at times humorous style in which Snouck Hurgronje describes the motives and feelings of some of the inhabitants of Mecca keeps his narrative fresh and compelling. The modernity of it lies in his ideas of how to have dealings with people of different cultures and religions, and how to describe them. The first volume of the original German edition (1888) is a historical study of the city of Mecca and its rulers. It reads as an account of more than a millennium of ruthless power play and unrestrained greed in the city which is the heart of Islam. Snouck Hurgronje’s realistic approach to Mecca’s history can hardly be regarded as disturbingly anti-Islamic, although a healthy scepticism towards Islam, and any other religion for that matter, is also part of his discourse. Muslim historians themselves are quite open-minded on the subject, very much in the same way as Roman Catholics think and speak about the secrets of the Vatican: the most sacred and the most profane often go hand in hand. The final chapter of the first volume, and the entire second volume of Mekka, contain Snouck Hurgronje’s account of the public and private life of the Meccans, of the traditional educational system in the Great Mosque, and, last but not least, of the life of the Djawa colony in Mecca, the South-East Asians who had chosen to live for a while in the Holy City as God’s neighbours. The 10 11 C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka, vol. 1. Die Stadt und ihre Herren (1888); vol. 2. Aus dem heutigen Leben (1889); Bilder-Atlas zu Mekka (1888). Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1888–1889. May Yamani, in her Cradle of Islam. The Hijaz and the Quest for Identity in Saudi Arabia (London: I.B. Taurus 2009) is possibly one of the rare insiders who have dared to venture into that domain. 80 Witkam second volume is written for a wider public and its reception was at once enthusiastic and awestruck. It was given a visual dimension by the publication of a portfolio of photographic images, a number of which were made by Snouck Hurgronje himself. He thereby became Mecca’s first European photographer, and its second photographer ever, after the Egyptian officer and engineer Muhammad Ṣādiq Bey (1822–1902). He was also the teacher of Mecca’s third photographer, his namesake by coincidence, the Meccan doctor, technician and naturalist ʿAbd al-Ghaffār b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Baghdādī, Ṭabīb Makka.12 The latter thus became the first Meccan photographer of his home town. Photography contributed the visual dimension to Snouck Hurgronje’s description of Mecca and its inhabitants in the same way as Lane’s drawings had done for the Egyptians among whom he had lived fifty years earlier. Snouck Hurgronje had come to Jeddah and Mecca for more than one reason. The most important one was, of course, to study every aspect of Islam at its very core, in an environment where it was least influenced by non-Islamic elements and where it was not under foreign rule. The pilgrimage, the re-enactment of various dramatic episodes in the Prophet Ibrāhīm’s life and the circumstances of his divine mission (e.g. Hagar’s despair, the sacrifice of Ismāʿīl/ Ishmael), being what it was, irrespective of whether it was true or false, needed to be studied as a social, and therefore political, phenomenon. But Snouck Hurgronje had not come to Mecca in order to study the pilgrimage alone. In the end he did not even participate in the pilgrimage, since he was forced to leave Mecca just before the season. Yet he had wished to be a pilgrim, since he had rented a house in Mecca until the end of that lunar year.13 In his book he mentions the pilgrimage, albeit rather summarily, while going through the ritual year, and he downplayed its importance by characterizing it as a ceremony of local relevance only, especially in comparison to that other main event in the ritual calendar of Islam, the fast of the month of Ramaḍān, which is experienced by the entire community of Islam. The Feast of Sacrifice is celebrated in the entire Muslim world, but for Mecca the pilgrimage, with its massive attendance by the believers, is the main annual event. Many Meccans had, and still have, to earn most of their yearly income in the short period of a few weeks 12 13 I have been in correspondence with his great-grandson, Dr. Hashim Abdulghafar in Mecca, who has been the Saudi vice-minister of Public Health, in the hope that documents of or about Snouck Hurgronje could be found in his family papers. That proved not to be the case. His contract of tenancy was edited and translated into Dutch in my ‘Van huurcontract tot boekenlegger. Mekkaanse documenten van Snouck Hurgronje’, in: Wim van Anrooij e.a. (eds.), Om het boek. Cultuurhistorische bespiegelingen over boeken en mensen. Hilversum: Verloren, 2020, pp. 311–315. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 81 during it, and in that season, they obviously cannot devote their attention to anything else. For the rest of the year, it was as if they had different personalities. Meccan society outside the hectic and profitable season was Snouck Hurgronje’s main field of study. In this respect his viewpoint differed from that of most Western explorers of Mecca. In Europe Mecca was, and remains, synonymous with pilgrimage. Even if many of the European travellers focused on the pilgrimage, Snouck Hurgronje believed that if one really wanted to know something about that ritual, one would be better off studying pilgrimage manuals rather than mixing with the chaotic and confusing gatherings of the pilgrimage itself. His dismissive attitude toward the actual pilgrimage must have been a matter of sour grapes. The episode immediately preceding Snouck Hurgronje’s journey to Mecca must be treated here in some detail. He had landed in Jeddah on 29 August 1884, and soon proved to be a keen, sometimes cynical, observer of human nature. He had little belief in human idealism, and was prone to detecting ulterior, usually materialistic, motives behind religious acts. The study of living Islam in an undiluted environment was his prime objective, but he had also come to Jeddah, and Mecca, with a mission of a more practical nature. In the eyes of European colonial powers with Muslim subjects, Mecca had become a safe haven for fundamentalist activities, ‘Muslim fanatics’ as they were called in late-19th-century discourse. The city was seen as a hub from which pan-Islamic ideas could radiate unhindered all over the Muslim world, a large part of which was by then governed by European nations, the much-hated unbelievers. These nations felt threatened by pan-Islamism, an ideology that promoted the Turkish Sultan and Caliph as not only the master of his own subjects, but also as the ruler of the hearts and minds of all other Muslims in the world, as if he were a sort of Islamic pope. The whole idea was a clever ploy by the Ottomans, and they eagerly exploited this wholly un-Islamic concept. To gain up-to-date and accurate information about the pan-Islamic ideas within the South-East Asian community in Mecca was therefore deemed of prime importance by the Dutch government, and Snouck Hurgronje had taken upon himself the task of acquiring more intimate knowledge of the Djawa, as the people of the Malayan world are called in western Arabia. In this connection there was yet another, more practical, reason for political fact-finding in Mecca. From 1873 onwards, the Netherlands had found itself in what would prove to be a war of attrition against the Sultanate of Aceh, a semi-independent state on the northern part of the island of Sumatra, and it was a war with strong Islamic overtones. Snouck Hurgronje’s funds for his Meccan expedition had been partly allotted for the specific purpose of finding out to what extent the Aceh war was ideologically supported by segments of the Djawa community in Mecca. 82 Witkam Being a pupil of de Goeje, that grandmaster of the Leiden school of Oriental philology, Snouck Hurgronje had also come to Mecca imbued with his academic background and his scholarly interests. It is therefore hardly surprising that he should have devoted a long chapter of his book on Mecca to intellectual life, to what he called ‘the University of Mecca’, the rather loosely organized educational system operating within the precincts of Mecca’s Great Mosque. Here too, he had a keen eye for human behaviour, and he gave his readers their full share of his observations, not only on the curriculum but also on academic competition and university intrigue, and on the profitable symbiosis of scholars and rulers. Once in Arabia, Snouck Hurgronje made his preparations for his visit to Mecca in several stages. First, he acquired as much local information about Mecca as possible, and created a circle of Muslim friends for himself. He spoke with many pilgrims on their way back from Mecca (the feast had been on 30 September 1884), he got acquainted with people involved in the pilgrimage business, and he met with many inhabitants of Mecca and Jeddah. To them he must have seemed a Christian scholar with a remarkable knowledge of Arabic literature and Islamic law. He spoke the Arabic vernacular more fluently with each passing day, and he was soon able to converse in Malay with the East Indian Muslims. The fact that he had brought with him some photographic equipment gave him added appeal as a potential creator of portraits. Especially at a time when photography was still a rare and miraculous art, photographic portraits were much sought after. Snouck Hurgronje exploited the advantages of the new technique, and his photography may have proved to be a catalyst for establishing relationships and breaking down social barriers, although its impact should, perhaps, not be exaggerated. He was not in need of photography as his sole means of gaining entry to the houses of rulers, notables and officials, since his compelling personality was capable enough of achieving that on its own. Already on his first day in Mecca, invitations came flooding in. Photography was to become a valuable adjunct to his presence there. His next step in Jeddah was the selection of a travelling companion to Mecca, whose social network would provide him sufficient safety. He had the choice of several individuals, but in the end he choose Raden Aboe Bakar Djajadinginrat (1859–c. 1914), the son of a noble family from Banten, a staunchly Islamic region in the far west of Java. Raden Aboe Bakar had been living and studying in Mecca for years, and he had many acquaintances among the Djawa. All that made him highly valuable. At the time when Snouck Hurgronje and he met he had already succeeded in ingratiating himself with the Dutch consul in Jeddah by providing the Dutch with ‘useful knowledge’ from Mecca, to which they as non-Muslims had no physical access. It was he who would, Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 83 eventually, accompany Snouck Hurgronje on his momentous journey from Jeddah to Mecca, where he was also Snouck Hurgronje’s first host. A few years later, this and other services earned him his reward from the Dutch government, a permanent post at the Dutch consulate in Jeddah. After Snouck Hurgronje’s departure from the Ḥiǧāz he would remain his confidential informant on Meccan and Ḥiǧāzi affairs. In that second phase of his stay in Jeddah, Snouck Hurgronje must have made it known to a select group of Muslim friends – and probably to a few of his Dutch intimi in Jeddah as well – that he intended to convert to Islam and to study the sacred sciences in Mecca. In order to do so, he first had to change his living quarters in Jeddah. On 1 January 1885, he moved to a house of his own where he would live together with Raden Aboe Bakar, independently of the Dutch consulate where he had been staying up until then. The move was also a symbolic one: it marked the moment of his transition from his Christian religion to Islam. Snouck Hurgronje took on the Islamic name of ʿAbd al-Ghaffār, ‘Servant of the All-Forgiving One’. During January 1885, he gradually started to make his conversion public – that is, among Muslims. On 5 January 1885, he wrote in his ‘diary’: Important visit of Sayyid Muḥammad Muzayyin. In the evening the mail arrived with letters from Mother, Romburgh, Goedeljee, Bavinck, a postcard from Nöldeke, a piece about qāt and the Students Almanac. For circumcision, which is performed at very diverse ages (between about forty days and ten years) they use, as I learned from the muzayyin [barber, surgeon], a little iron pincer in the shape of ⸧ called ʿudda [utensil] in order to squeeze the prepuce, and a razor blade. For the treatment of the wound, a marham [salve, ointment] is used (here they say: ‘aldarāhim kal-marāhim taǧburu alam al-kasīr’ [= ‘dirhams are like ointment, they heal the pain of the fractured bone.’]), which is a substance that staunches the loss of blood and heals the wound. Our friend even told us that he used ṭalyun, which in European pharmacies is called cantarion (or something like that). It is applied to a piece of textile and that is used for covering the wounded area. After that a dharūr [application] is used for drying the wound. There are several different varieties of mixtures for this, pounded into powder. Varieties of ḥārra [hot] and bārida [cold] are distinguished.’14 14 Translated from the Dutch text of the Jeddah ‘diary’, MS Leiden Or. 7112, pp. 44–45 (below, p. 596). My annotated translation of the entire ‘diary’, ‘Before Mecca’, is in the present volume. See also Proverb no. 68 in my ‘Meccan Voices’ in the present volume (below, pp. 84 Witkam It is a crucial passage, and at the same time a hermetic one.15 The superficial reader of Snouck Hurgronje’s Jeddah diary can see it merely as one of his many anthropological observations, in this case on details of the custom of circumcision and the art of wound healing. However, why would this visit of the barber be so significant unless the circumcision was to be performed on Snouck Hurgronje himself? The passage on wound healing, which immediately follows the passage on circumcision, makes clear to anyone able to read between the lines that the muzayyin, the barber, had not come just to give him a haircut. Undergoing circumcision was a vital part of Snouck Hurgronje’s preparations to go to Mecca. He simply could not risk a careless detail such as his foreskin causing him difficulties, and it was indeed checked when he entered the sacred territory a few weeks later. His true motive for undergoing the operation was that, while he was in Mecca, he intended to live with a Muslim woman. Being uncircumcised would immediately have provoked a dangerous situation. On 16 January 1885, Snouck Hurgronje records a visit to Ismāʿīl Efendi, the qāḍī of Jeddah, and others, apparently in preparation for his imminent meeting with ʿUthmān Nūrī Pasha, the Ottoman governor of the Ḥiǧāz, who was in Jeddah at the time. One may assume that this visit to the qāḍī was also done in order to confirm his conversion to Islam before the necessary witnesses. The governor was, of course, also aware of the visit to Mecca on which this young Westerner was about to embark, and there was no secrecy about it. He even ordered two askaris, soldiers, to escort Snouck Hurgronje on the road from Jeddah to Mecca, which was not always safe. In such social gatherings, photography and portraiture were also discussed. It has been argued that Snouck Hurgronje’s conversion to Islam may not have been genuine and that, by pretending to have become a Muslim, he had acted in an insincere way towards all those in Jeddah and Mecca, and later in Indonesia as well, who had given him their unreserved trust and their brotherly love. Snouck Hurgronje always avoided speaking out publicly about this. In his letters to his mother, to his teacher de Goeje in Leiden, to his academic friends Theodor Nöldeke (1836–1930) in Strasbourg and Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921) in Budapest, to his friend Pieter Nicolaas van der Chijs (1855–1889) in Jeddah, and a few others besides, he was more straightforward on this point, but never beyond a certain point. For the agnostic expert in Islamic Law that Snouck Hurgronje was, Islam consisted of a series of outward acts, to be per- 15 853). Dröge has squeezed out of this a horrid anecdote full of bloody details, that he used as the appetizing prologue of his ‘biography’. In my annotation to the Jeddah diary, ‘Before Mecca’ in the present volume, I come back to this (below, pp. 594-597). Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 85 formed without rational questioning, under certain conditions by which they became legally valid. In this sense he had certainly become a Muslim, someone who practises submission. Snouck Hurgronje thought that whether he was also a believer, a muʾmin, someone with the inner conviction that Islam was the true and only possible religion, was of no relevance to outsiders, since that was something between man and his Creator. God alone looked into the hearts of man and judged accordingly. For our appreciation of Snouck Hurgronje’s study of daily life in Jeddah and Mecca as he participated in it in 1884–1885, the question of the truth of his conversion is irrelevant, but for Muslims it is still a serious matter. Having made these careful preparations, he took the decision to leave Jeddah. In the evening of Sunday 22 February 1885, after a full day’s journey, he entered Mecca and performed the greeting ritual by circumambulating the Kaʿba. He kissed the black stone and he drank the holy water of Zemzem. These were moments heavily freighted with emotion, moments that he would never forget for the whole of the rest of his life.16 I have treated Snouck Hurgronje’s preparations to come to Mecca in some detail, but a comparable discussion about his actual stay in Mecca cannot be given here and now, if only for brevity’s sake. His description of daily life in Mecca is not a day-to-day account of the period of slightly more than five months that he spent in the Holy City. In his scholarly notes no such account of Mecca is preserved. Yet the surviving sources and the second volume of Mekka itself give us the impression that this volume can to a great extent be read as a sort of autobiographical report written in the third person. He perfected his knowledge of the sacred sciences and learnt how these were taught in Mecca’s Great Mosque from an impressive number of teachers. On several occasions he mentions Mecca’s most important scholar, Sayyid Aḥmad Zaynī Daḥlān (1817–1886), who had already come to visit him on the day of his arrival in Mecca, like so many others who had heard of the presence of the foreign scholar. Daḥlān was the grand-mufti of the Shāfiʿite school of law in Mecca and the dean of the other Meccan grand-muftis. Snouck Hurgronje styled him the ‘rector of Mecca’s University’.17 Evidently Snouck Hurgronje participated in many private functions and public festivities, and mixed extensively with the Djawa. He set up house with 16 17 C. Snouck Hurgronje, ‘Über eine Reise nach Mekka’, Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde 14/3 (Berlin 1887), pp. 138–153; also in Verspreide Geschriften, vol. 3 (1923), pp. 45–64. Snouck Hurgronje wrote a long account of his life and work: ‘Een rector der Mekkaansche Universiteit’ in: BKI 1887, pp. 344–404, esp. pp. 381–389 = Verspreide Geschriften III, pp. 65–122. 86 Witkam his concubine and started to collect information from all sides. After a while, when he had made the acquaintance of the versatile doctor al-Sayyid ʿAbd alGhaffār b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Baghdādī, who since 1300/1883 had been attached to the Sharīʿa Court in Mecca as its chief medical officer, he spotted the possibilities for photography and only then ordered his equipment and chemicals to be brought from Jeddah to Mecca. Together with his namesake he started to practise photography in a studio which he set up in the doctor’s house. Opportunities for this were few, however, especially for outdoor photography, which was problematic both for technical reasons and because of religious considerations. In 1885 photography was still an art about which few people in Mecca had heard, and for this alone made it suspect. A few photographs were taken, however, if only to earn some money.18 When, early in August 1885, ʿAbd al-Ghaffār Efendi, as Snouck Hurgronje was called by his Muslim friends, received the order from the Turkish governor to leave Mecca and Arabia, all his expectations of a prolonged stay were abruptly curtailed, and he had to devise multiple strategies of damage control. How bitterly he felt the truth of the words of the Prophet Muhammad! ‘Oh, Mecca, you are to me the most beloved city in the world. If I had not been driven out of you, I would never have departed from you.’19 It was the great catastrophe and he would never see Mecca again. Although he must have constantly realized that his stay in Mecca was on borrowed time, not a single letter had yet been written of his book on Mecca, the outline of which he may already have had in his head. First, he had to save his notes and collections, and to see to it that his photographic equipment was preserved. The Zawāwī family, Raden Aboe Bakar, the Meccan doctor ʿAbd al-Ghaffār, and other friends, all did their best to help him. In Jeddah he received the best assistance he could expect from the Dutch honorary vice-consul and shipping agent Van der Chijs, a wise man with whom he had already formed a close friendship before his move from Jeddah to Mecca, and who would become Snouck Hurgronje’s closest confidant in the few years to come. Between 1885 and 1889, Vice-Consul Van der Chijs arranged for a steady flow of all sorts of information, photographs and objects of an ethnographic nature from Mecca, via Jeddah, to Leiden. It was also Van der Chijs who made sure that the many questions that arose during the writing of the two volumes of Mekka received appropriate answers. A 18 19 See on photography my ‘Meccan Voices’ in the present volume, under proverb No. 27, where it is mentioned in connection with sorcery (below, pp. 801-803). Letter from C. Snouck Hurgronje to P.N. van der Chijs in Jeddah, dated Leiden, Monday 10 January 1887, quoted after the Dutch original in the Snouck Hurgronje archive, in MS Leiden Or. 8952 L 26–30. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 87 series of learned articles on Meccan and Arabian subjects issued from Snouck Hurgronje’s pen immediately after his return to Leiden, written no doubt on the basis of his field notes and fresh memories. The liveliest of these were contained in his annotated collection of seventy-seven Meccan proverbs and sayings.20 To the reader of the proverbs, it is at once evident that the collection contains numerous elements of autobiographical relevance. The two volumes on Mekka, which would make him one of the most famous explorers of the Holy City, were written in Leiden, not in Mecca. The Jeddah and Mecca episodes are highly significant moments, if not the most important ones, in Snouck Hurgronje’s life. In these months of intense living and experience, he struck up enduring friendships. I have given a detailed account of his life in Arabia and the years immediately following in the introduction to my Dutch translation of volume 2 of Mekka published in 2007.21 The final pages of the last chapter of Mekka were rightly interpreted by the Dutch Minister of Colonial Affairs, L.W.C. Keuchenius (1822–1893), as an open job application. In 1889 Snouck Hurgronje was appointed to the Dutch East Indies as a governmental advisor. He did not visit Jeddah on the way, nor did the coast of western Arabia even come into sight. But lying in his cabin on the Massilia of the P&O line, he must have mused with some nostalgia about his eventful days in Jeddah and Mecca and about the friends he had left behind. In no other of his later works were the personal and the factual so closely interwoven as in his Meccan writings – the collection of proverbs and volume 2 of Mekka. During his seventeen years of intensive and continuous work in the Dutch East Indies, mostly in Batavia, Snouck Hurgronje would play an important role as governmental advisor on indigenous, Arab and Islamic affairs. His Meccan connections had given him an insight into Muslim life and continued to do so. Both his colonial masters and many of his indigenous and Arab friends were to profit from this. In 1906, however, he may have sensed that he had outstayed his welcome in the colony or that his colonial career had reached a cul-de-sac. He grasped the opportunity to repatriate, again without his (now Sundanese) family. He succeeded his teacher M.J. de Goeje in the chair of Arabic at Leiden University, and from 1906 till 1927 he revelled in the professorship with great gusto. On 29 March 1906, he had embarked on the Koningin Regentes for the voy20 21 My annotated translation of that collection of Meccan proverbs is in the present volume. An English version of large parts of my introduction to my Dutch translation of the second volume of Mekka, as published in 2007, is in preparation, but that will not grace the pages of the present volume. 88 Witkam Figure 2.2 Snouck Hurgronje’s wax cylinders in their original boxes, after their return from the Phonogrammarchiv in Vienna in 1996. They are now registered in Leiden University Library as Or. MS Leiden Or. 27.131. © 1997. Photo by Jan Just Witkam age back to Holland.22 Once again, as on his way to the East Indies in 1889, he did not disembark in Jeddah, and the ship may not even have stopped there. Already before his return journey he had formulated ambitious ideas for an anthropological and ethnomusicological study of the Ḥiǧāz. Mecca had evidently never been far from his mind or his heart. In 1909 he had sound recordings made with his phonograph, which at the time was as much of a novelty as photography had been in the 1880s.23 He had informants write down all sorts of texts, from geographical surveys to fatwas on early sound recording of the Qurʾān, from texts of popular songs to lists of manuscripts in Ḥiǧāzī libraries, etc.24 In the end, however, nothing much came of all this. University life (later combined with old age) made demands of its own, and he may have underestimated these just as he had underestimated the hardship of Ramaḍān in Mecca in 1885. His assistance to J.H. Monahan that led to the appearance of the English translation in 1931 of his second volume of Mekka was a last and final expression of interest in that period which had meant so much to him in his late twenties.25 22 23 24 25 Earlier I had assumed this to be the Dutch marine armoured frigate of that name, not being aware of the fact that there was also a civilian steamer called Koningin Regentes belonging to the Stoomvaart Maatschappij Nederland, as van den Doel has it (p. 300). On 29 March 1906 she departed homebound from Batavia, on one of the three complete journeys that she would make that year. See on Snouck Hurgronje’s sound recordings my ‘Written in Wax: Quranic Recitational Phonography’, in Journal of the American Oriental Society 138/4 (2018), pp. 807–820; Wim van Zanten, ‘Recordings of Indonesian Music and Speech in the Snouck Hurgronje Collection (1905–1909) in Leiden. Preliminary Remarks’, in the present volume. The phonograph is now registered in the Leiden library as MS Leiden Or. 27.130, the collection of wax cylinders as MS Leiden Or. 27.131. See my ‘Lists of books in Arabic manuscripts’, in Manuscripts of the Middle East 5 (1990– 1991), pp. 123–136, esp. pp. 130–133. C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th Century. Daily Life, Customs and Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 89 With all the plans for future work in his head, Snouck Hurgronje had reason to be proud of what he had achieved in his seventeen years of uninterrupted service in the East Indies. His arrival there in 1889 and his work as a governmental adviser on indigenous, Islamic and Arab affairs had contributed to a concerted and better-informed colonial policy towards Islam. This was, of course, far from being an academic affair. Snouck Hurgronje’s mission was to support and perpetuate the colonial project of the Dutch in South-East Asia. His stay in Mecca had conferred on him an almost mythical stature, and his successful collaboration with General J.B. van Heutsz (1851–1924) in the subjugation of Aceh, to name but the most conspicuous example, may have further contributed to this.26 Anyone who nowadays browses through the still very readable edition of Snouck Hurgronje’s official advices, many of which were written during his stay in Batavia, and who, in addition to that, reads the scholarly spin-off of his official work in his many articles on a wide range of subjects, cannot fail to be impressed by the author’s energy and genius, his enormous knowledge, his practical insight and his great common sense. His official advices were often (though not always) heeded by the colonial rulers in the East Indies and, later on, by the politicians in The Hague. Parts of the thematically arranged scholarly edition of Snouck Hurgronje’s official advices can be read as a history of Indonesian Islam around the turn of the century, seen, of course, from the point of view of the colonial ruler. Nevertheless, for the historian of the development of modern Islam they remain an important source. A special place in the official advice is occupied by the pilgrimage and the pilgrims’ affairs, and the vicissitudes of the Dutch consulate in Jeddah.27 These had never been far from his mind, and Jeddah and the annual pilgrimage connected the Dutch East Indies and Arabia. Most of the space in the official advices was taken up by Aceh, however. The ending of the costly Aceh war, which had lasted for two decades, had become a matter of the highest priority and it is clear that Snouck Hurgronje’s advice was as harsh as it was effective. A drastic change of war tactics was imperative. The defensive confinement within the concentrated line, which had been the rather impotent strategy of the Dutch, should be brought to an end. Active counterinsurgency warfare should 26 27 Learning. The Moslims of the East-Indian Archipelago. Translated by J.H. Monahan. Leyden: E.J. Brill / London: Luzac & Co., 1931, now reprinted by Brill in 2007. Vilan van de Loo, Uit naam van de Majesteit. Het leven van J.B. van Heutsz 1851–1924. Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2020, pp. 137–168. Ambtelijke Adviezen, vol. 2 (1959), pp. 1307–1465 and 1466–1509, respectively. See now also my ‘Snouck Hurgronje’s Consular Ambitions’, in Jan Loop & Jill Kraye (eds.), Scholarship between Europe and the Levant. Essays in Honour of Alastair Hamilton. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020, pp. 349–373. 90 Witkam be waged against the enemy. The real enemy should be singled out first, and that was neither the powerless Sultan nor the Acehnese aristocracy.28 The real adversaries of the Dutch proved to be the ʿulamāʾ, the Islamic scholars. An attempt should be made to appease those who wished to co-operate with the Dutch (the Sultan and the elite), but those who were not open to appeasement should be hit hard, because only thus could their respect be gained. Atrocities should be avoided, since they did more harm than good. Finally, policies had to be set in place for the economic and social reconstruction of Aceh. In addition, the Dutch military establishment in the knil, the Dutch East Indian army, had a vested interested in the current military strategy, and so proved to be another adversary that could not be ignored. With the wisdom of hindsight, however, one can also detect a certain naiveté in these ideas of Snouck Hurgronje. The second volume of De Atjèhers was published in 1894 and its final chapter was entitled ‘The future of Islam’,29 a title he had borrowed from The Future of Islam by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt,30 which, incidentally, was also one of the books which he had brought with him to Mecca in 1885. His argument runs more or less as follows: The most important element of Acehnese Islam is jihad, Holy War. In the past, jihad had brought Islam a great realm and an impressive empire. Now, however, the forces of jihad have become counter-productive. Islam can no longer impose its law on other peoples. Europe now rules the world. Progressive secularization of the Islamic world makes jihad no longer a viable option. To elucidate his argument, Snouck Hurgronje compared Islam with Judaism, which had gone through a similar development. The rules of Jewish Law are now also impossible to follow, he wrote. The role of the Qurʾān provides another example. Originally three genres could be distinguished in the Qur’an: texts on lawgiving, answering burning questions in the early Muslim community; narrative parts providing the new religion with a sacred history; exhortations and reflections providing a source 28 29 30 The Dutch counter insurgency effort in Aceh generated the capture of cultural material as well, including manuscripts. See on this my ‘Teuku Panglima Polem’s Purse. Manuscripts as War Booty in Colonial Times’, in Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 10 (2019), pp. 84–104, especially pp. 96–97. See now also for a comparison between the Dutch handling of the Aceh war and the Dutch involvement in Uruzgan, Afghanistan, a century later, Martijn Kitzen, The Course of Co-option. Co-option of local power-holders as a tool for obtaining control over the population in counterinsurgency campaigns in weblike societies. With case studies on Dutch experiences during the Aceh War (1873-c. 1912) and the Uruzgan campaign (2006-2010). Amsterdam (?), 2016. ‘De toekomst van den Islam’. The English version in C. Snouck Hurgronje, The Achehnese. Translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1906, vol. 2, pp. 338–351. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, The Future of Islam. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1882. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 91 of theology and a code of morals. From a powerful inspirational textbook, writes Snouck Hurgronje, the Qurʾān has evolved into a sacred songbook. Its content is no longer followed, but only recited and studied. The other laws and institutions of Islam will share this fate; their study will gradually take the place of their practice. At the same time, jihad cannot be abolished either. It can never be declared obsolete (even if it is not one of the five pillars of Islam). It will therefore remain a powerful instrument for any Islamic government. Snouck Hurgronje could not foresee that jihad would turn from a public, governmental attitude into a private duty of the believer.31 He saw jihad as the impediment to the secularization of public and international law and order. According to the same line of reasoning, one can maintain that the Qurʾān, with its status as the literal and unchangeable word of God, has become an impediment to progress. A long time ago, during the Muslim conquests, this status gave it a head start, but now it renders Islam in the eyes of both non-Muslims and many modern Muslims, a primitive and even barbaric religion. Yet, in modern times, Muslims will never be persuaded that Islamic Law should be allowed to sink into obsolescence. Rather they will view the Law as an unattainable ideal, accepted in principle, but neglected in practice. If they wish to study it in depth, they will be admired for their effort, but their example will not be widely followed. The Law will be less and less applicable and, with a few exceptions, will not remain in force. These final words in the book about the Acehnese, dating from 1894, already prefigured Snouck Hurgronje’s ideas about how that future of Islam should take shape in Dutch South-East Asia, namely by gradually granting the indigenous population of the colony the possibility of self-rule within a Dutch Commonwealth. This was called ‘association’. It is not the same as autonomy, and certainly not the same as independence. That may never have crossed Snouck Hurgronje’s mind as a serious option for the foreseeable future, even if his opinion on the sustainability of colonial rule had shifted. Snouck Hurgronje’s belief in progress, in secularism, in Westernization, is expressed here for the first time in full. He would repeat these ideas time and again and he saw Western education as the essential condition for Westernization. Yet this Westernization was far from implying a negation of Islam. Change in Islam would have to be effectuated from within. His ideas about colonial policies towards Islam can be summarized in a few main themes: Do not interfere with Islamic doctrines. Do not impose restrictions on the practice of Islam 31 And he was not the only one. Many years later, Rudolph Peters, in his Islam and Colonialism. The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History. The Hague: Mouton, 1979, had not foreseen this shift either. 92 Witkam (including the pilgrimage). Be constantly aware of ideas circulating within the Islamic community. Do not give Islam the opportunity to expand into areas that we consider secular. Oppose Pan-Islamism and work towards association and emancipation. This is what Snouck Hurgronje told his students at the Academy for Civil Governance in the East Indies in The Hague in 1911. Now, more than a century later, the advice is as sound as when it was given, albeit under entirely different circumstances, and then as now it had its opponents, both among Muslims and non-Muslims.32 The belief in the inevitability of secularism was beautiful, but was it realistic? Islamic and nationalistic movements were closely monitored and often dissolved by the colonial authorities. Their leaders were imprisoned and exiled. In the Dutch ideas about association there was little room for Indonesians who refused to associate. ‘Divide et impera’ had for long been the policy of the Dutch, in order to transform the colony first into a unity and an economically viable project, and later, with the progress of ethical awareness, into a territory that, by way of the moral education of the indigenous peoples, could become an equal and associated part of a Dutch Commonwealth. However, nobody before 1942, the year of the Japanese conquest of the Dutch East Indies, could tell what exactly such a commonwealth meant, and from that year onwards the question was no longer relevant. Indonesia’s independence, achieved according to many Indonesians and a few of the Dutch on 17 August 1945, but according to other Dutchmen on 27 December 1949, was then still beyond the wildest dreams of practically all the Dutch, and, for that matter, of many Indonesians too. Snouck Hurgronje’s homecoming from the Indies in 1906 was not the end of his career. A chair of Islamology, Arabic and Acehnese at Leiden University awaited him. It had been prepared for him by his teacher M.J. de Goeje who had preferred him to M.Th. Houtsma (1851–1943), who like de Goeje was a historian and philologist of the old school. The differences between the two men could hardly be greater. This already emerges clearly from Houtsma’s letter from Leiden to Snouck Hurgronje in Mecca, dated 24 March 1885,33 which illustrates the difference between the rarefied air of a Leiden scholar’s study and the colourful exuberance of life in Mecca. In 1890 Houtsma had become a professor of Hebrew and Israelite Antiquities in Utrecht, a post which he also used for conducting his historical studies on Islam. He is most renowned as one of the founders of the first edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, but even in that 32 33 C. Snouck Hurgronje, Nederland en de Islâm. Vier voordrachten gehouden in de Nederlandsch-Indische bestuursacademie. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1911, especially chapters 3 and 4. Letter M.Th. Houtsma to C. Snouck Hurgronje, in MS Leiden Or. 8952 A 457 (1). Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 93 project the worlds of Snouck Hurgronje and Houtsma would collide.34 Becoming de Goeje’s successor would have made perfect sense for Houtsma, but it was not to be, and in a long letter de Goeje explained to Houtsma why he endorsed Snouck Hurgronje and not him. I quote a large part of it:35 I had always hoped to retain Snouck for my sort of research, and that after he had completed his programme for the Indies in such a splendid way, he would return to his old love. I have long understood that my professorial post would be the only thing that might make that expectation come true. On the other hand, I considered that this professorship has changed over the years. When I accepted it, most of my pupils were students of theology. Since 1878 their number has decreased, whereas the number of those who were in the East Indian service, or aspired to it, has continually increased. That is how I became more and more involved in the education of civil servants for the Indies. In this respect too, Snouck can be considered to have special talents for this post. Already a long time ago I informally asked Snouck by letter whether he might wish to consider accepting such an appointment. He answered that he certainly would do so, and with that the subject rested for a while. Now, however, the moment has come when something has to be done. I wrote to him once more about it in a serious way and he answered that he first had to be back in the Netherlands for a while before he could take a decision. His return should already have taken place last year [1905], but, as you know, he only came back at the end of April of this year. On ‘Ascension Day’ [24 May 1906] I had a long visit from him and I insisted that he take a decision very soon, especially so that a possible appointment of yourself should not lose its freshness. That is why he was told that hora ruit, that time was running out, but he wrote to me that he needed a few more weeks in order to come to a decision. In view of this morning’s meeting of the Council of Directors of the University, the Faculty has submitted its proposal for the nomination. The question was asked whether, 34 35 Peri Bearman, A History of the Encyclopaedia of Islam. Atlanta, Georgia: Lockwood Press, 2018, pp. 37–50. My translation of the draft version of the letter in Dutch from M.J. de Goeje to M.Th. Houtsma, Leiden, 7 June 1906. The original, of course, went to Houtsma. When, some twenty years ago, I first found the document, it was kept in MS Leiden Or. 8952 under Van Romburgh. After the reorganization of the Snouck Hurgronje archive Or. 8952 in Leiden University Library it must have been placed elsewhere, but its present-day reference is unknown to me. 94 Witkam in case Snouck were to refuse, you might also refuse because you had not been initially chosen as the first candidate. I answered that you were above such a consideration. This is my absolute conviction, but in view of this I have requested from the Secretary of the Board of Directors that the nomination not be sent out before Snouck has taken a decision. These are the facts stated as clearly as possible. Personal motives have not played a role in this. For both of you I have warm feelings of friendship, and I would be equally delighted by your being appointed as by an appointment of Snouck. However, I believed that by bringing him back into my field of study, the interests of the Dutch School of Oriental Studies would be particularly well served by his deservedly high reputation. When I started my correspondence with him about this, your special motive for coming here, the Encyclopaedia of Islam, did not yet exist. Snouck has taken his deliberations very seriously. For that reason, he has even rejected the office of Director of Education, etc.,36 that was offered to him, but I nevertheless suspect that he will finally go back to the Indies, and then you will, I hope, accept the task. My present adjutor Juynboll37 has developed into a thorough scholar who might be considered for the professorship as well, but with the two of you available he cannot be granted a nomination. (…) The rest is history. Snouck Hurgronje was appointed to Leiden and his academic life lasted for over twenty years, until his statutory retirement in 1927 at the age of seventy. Once back in the Netherlands, he may have wished to pursue his Arabian studies, as de Goeje had hoped, but in the end nothing much came of it. One of the Arabian projects that he may have intended to pursue was the exploration of the fifteen hours or so of sound recordings from the Ḥiǧāz which he had ordered to be made in 1909. In the past half-century several attempts have been made to study the recorded texts and music, but all in vain. Only recently has it emerged that some of the Yemenite songs recorded with Snouck Hurgronje’s phonograph had in fact been transcribed during his lifetime. The work on this recently discovered material is now in an initial phase.38 36 37 38 In the Dutch East Indies the function of ‘Directeur van Onderwijs, Eeredienst en Nijverheid’ was the equivalent of a ministerial post. Th.W. Juynboll (1866–1948). The original cylinders were recently registered in the Leiden Library as Or. 27.131, after having been deposited there on 6 November 1996. I was present at that informal ceremony. There is no official deed of transfer of ownership between the Foundation Oosters Instituut, the present owner, and Leiden University Library, the depositary of the material. The transcripts by an Arab scholar have been preserved as MS Leiden Or. 6980: 21 pages of text, Magass or Maǧass. Voorhoeve mentions the texts (Handlist, 1957, p. 426) with- Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 95 Figure 2.3 Beginning of the anonymous Dutch translation of chapter 4 of the second volume of Snouck Hurgronje’s Mekka, as it appeared in De Locomotief (Semarang) in 1889 or 1890. Original in Ter Lugt Collection, Leiden. © 2021, Photo by Jan Just Witkam 96 Witkam But Arabia was far away and Snouck Hurgronje’s attention gradually turned to academic life in Europe and North America, the organization of conferences, and the pacification between academics of the warring parties in the First World War, to name but three conspicuous focal points in his intellectual life. He befriended the American philanthropist Charles Richard Crane (1858– 1939), who was spending large funds in search of world peace. In the course of time, Snouck Hurgronje’s functions became honorific as well, and in 1922 he took on the post of Leiden University’s rector magnificus, and was probably the only rector in that venerable university’s history ever to have owned a black slave woman in his younger years. From 1923 to 1927 his Verspreide Geschriften, ‘Collected Works’, appeared in seven volumes. The greatest surprise that it contained was his implicit acknowledgment of the authorship of ‘Brieven van een wedono-pensioen’.39 Shortly after his arrival in the Indies, the fourth chapter of the second volume of Mekka had been published in a rather free anonymous Dutch translation in De Locomotief, and it was also issued in book form with the same typographical material but in a different layout.40 It dealt with the South-East Asian colony in Mecca, and the publication of that chapter in De Locomotief was apparently such a success that the publisher of the newspaper, Mr. Hieronymus van Alphen (1851–1935), asked Snouck Hurgronje for more of the same. That inspired him to write the ‘Brieven van een wedono-pensioen’, the fictional autobiographical notes of a Javanese gentleman retired from the Dutch colonial service. It claimed to describe indigenous life as seen from the inside. It was another of his literary anthropological masterpieces, but it never became as famous as Mekka. In his later years, Snouck Hurgronje would write extensively in the Dutch press on Arabian affairs and Islamic matters, under both his own name and 39 40 out realizing that they were in fact the transcripts of the sound recordings. The transcripts must have already been made during Snouck Hurgronje’s lifetime. See on these transcripts now also Anne Regourd, ‘Le manuscrit Leyde Or. 6980. 1re partie. Premiers éléments de datation et de localisation du manuscrit : apport d’un papier Andrea Galvani inédit’, in Chroniques du manuscrit au Yémen / Ḥawliyyāt Makhṭūṭāt al-Yaman (CmY) 20 (July 2015), pp. 65–87, and more in particular Anne Regourd & Jean Lambert, ‘Le manuscrit Leyde Or. 6980. 2e partie. Poésies chantées dans le Ḥiǧāz au début du xxe siècle: la transcription par un lettré de documents sonores. Édition du texte’, in Chroniques du manuscrit au Yémen / Ḥawliyyāt Makhṭūṭāt al-Yaman (CmY) 24 (July 2017), pp. 112–216. Verspreide geschriften 4/1 (1924), pp. 111–248, after the anonymous publication in the Semarang-based newspaper De Locomotief between 7 January 1891 and 22 December 1892. De Djawa te Mekka. Bewerkt voor de Loc<omotief> naar Dr. Snouck Hurgronje’s “Mekka” door een Ambt. b/h Binn. Bestuur. Overgedrukt uit De Locomotief. Semarang n.d. [189o?], 126 cols. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 97 pseudonyms, but it also became his sad duty to write obituaries of fellow-Orientalists whom he had befriended during his long and eventful life. Since his demise in 1936, the stream of his publications has not yet run dry, nor have articles on his life and ideas ceased to appear, but the fully-fledged biography had to wait until Wim van den Doel published the first real one in 2021. 3 Afterlives Much could be said about the varied afterlives of Snouck Hurgronje, but I shall not attempt a comprehensive survey here. Suffice it to say that he has managed to claim the attention of a variety of scholars. He suffered little from the shift in perspectives resulting from Edward Said’s Orientalism of 1978. Said had hardly scrutinized Dutch Orientalism, if only because Dutch writings were not directly accessible to him, and also because Dutch colonialism never really touched upon the Arab world.41 Three decades later, Robert Irwin forced the almost universal worship of Said and his Orientalism back into proper proportions.42 In the early 1980s there arose in the Netherlands a bitter controvery about Snouck Hurgronje’s life and work. The positions pro and contra have now been summarized by Van den Doel in the last chapter of his biography.43 Snouck Hurgronje’s role in the ruthless subjugation of the Acehnese was inflated into accusations of complicity. He had ‘blood on his hands’. Another source of criticism was Snouck Hurgronje’s family life. His female companion in Mecca was not yet known to have existed at the time, but the fact that his second Indonesian wife was very young when he married her, and that in 1906 he had left his Indonesian family behind when he repatriated himself, became the focus of a number of moralistic innuendoes. Even the extra-marital affair of Snouck Hurgronje’s father was amply discussed. The most clamorous criticism came from the Dutch Islamologist P.Sj. van Koningsveld (1943-2021), which primarily concerned Snouck Hurgronje’s conversion to Islam. Was his a true or a false conversion? it was asked.44 41 42 43 44 Edward Said, Orientalism. New York: Pantheon books, 1978. Robert Irwin, ‘An Enquiry into the Nature of a Certain Twentieth-Century Polemic’, in his For Lust of Knowing. The Orientalists and their Enemies. London: Allan Lane, 2006, pp. 277–309. On pp. 199–201 of the same book, he treated Snouck Hurgronje in a short essay ‘An Imperialist Orientalist’, which is not free of factual inaccuracies. Van den Doel, Snouck, pp. 534–540. Van Koningsveld has for some thirty years persisted in his opinion that this was a conversion of convenience, see Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld, ‘Conversion of European Intellectuals to Islam. The Case of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje alias ʿAbd al-Ghaffār’, in: Bekim 98 Witkam Figure 2.4 Handwritten dedication by al-Batanūnī to Snouck Hurgronje on the title-page of his Ḥiǧāz travelogue (Cairo 1329/1911). Original in Leiden University Library [832 B 3]. © 2021, Photo by Jan Just Witkam Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 99 Already during his lifetime Snouck Hurgronje’s work on Mecca had not passed unnoticed in the Arab world, even though it was written in German, a language not widely known in the Middle East. He received from Muḥammad al-Batanūnī a copy of his own book, Al-Riḥla al-Ḥiǧāziyya, a description of the Ḥiǧāz and the Ḥaramayn, the two Holy Cities, written when he accompanied the Egyptian Khedive Abbas II on his pilgrimage in 1910. Al-Batanūnī wrote on the title-page: ‫هدية المؤلف الى المحقق المدقق العلامة الفهامة الدكتور سنوك هرجرنجيه محمد‬ ‫لبيب البتنونى‬, ‘A gift from the author to the most learned scholar Dr. Snouck Hurgronje, (signature:) Muḥammad Labīb al-Batanūnī’.45 A more recent appreciation of Snouck Hurgronje’s work on Mecca was given by the Saudi scholar Ḥamad al-Ǧāsir (1910–2000), whom I have known personally from 1991. In a travelogue of his own he mentions his visit to Leiden on 7 October 1960.46 He went there because ‘Leiden is one of the most important centres of Oriental studies in Europe, and also because of the publishing firm of Brill that is established in Leiden’. The first place he visited was the house of Snouck Hurgronje, ‘the well-known Dutch Orientalist, who 76 years ago visited Mecca in the disguise of a pilgrim under the name of ʿAbd al-Ghaffār, who stayed there five months and a half, and who wrote a book on the history, geography and inhabitants of Mecca that is famous among Orientalists.’ In Snouck Hurgronje’s house on Leiden’s main canal, the Rapenburg, Ḥamad al-Ǧāsir was welcomed by a small group of Dutch Orientalists, which included the professor of Arabic, Jan Brugman (1923–2004), who was able to converse in Arabic with the Saudi guest. A subject of conversation was the collection of Meccan proverbs by Snouck Hurgronje. Later, Ḥamad al-Ǧāsir would publish it in Arabic in the journal Al-Yamāma.47 Then the visit shifted to the bookshop of Brill. It gave him the chance to complain about, and to poke fun at, the firm’s loose financial morality. Years later, in his book about travellers in the Arabian Peninsula, Ḥamad al-Ǧāsir dedicated a long chapter to Snouck Hurgronje’s work on Mecca.48 In 1990, the Arabic translation of the second volume of Snouck Hurgronje’s Mek- 45 46 47 48 Agai, Umar Ryad, Mehdi Sajid (eds), Muslims in Interwar Europe. A Transcultural Historical Perspective. Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill, 2016, pp. 88–104, especially pp. 95–96. Muḥammad Labīb al-Batanūnī, Al-Riḥla al-Ḥiǧāziyya li-Walī al-Niʿam al-Ḥāǧǧ ʿAbbās Ḥilmī Bāshā al-Thānī Khedīw Miṣr (second enlarged edition) Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Ǧamāliyya, 1329 (1911). Snouck Hurgronje’s copy with the author’s dedication is now in Leiden University Library, class-mark 832 B 3. Ḥamad al-Ǧāsir, Riḥalāt. Al-Riyāḍ: Dār al-Yamāma, 1400 (1980), pp. 211–216. Not seen by me. Ḥamad al-Ǧāsir, Raḥḥāla Gharbiyyūn fī Bilādinā. ʿArḍ Mūǧaz li-Riḥalāt Baʿḍ al-Gharbiyyīn fī Qalb al-Ǧazīra wa-Shimālihā. Al-Riyāḍ: Dār al-Yamāma 1417 (1996–1997), pp. 101–192. 100 Witkam ka had been published in Riyadh and al-Ǧāsir now, for the first time, had the opportunity to read the book in Arabic from cover to cover. The Arabic translation is not complete, as several parts of Snouck Hurgronje’s text must have been deemed offensive for a Muslim reading public. It was thus given the title Ṣafaḥāt min Tārīkh Makka al-Mukarrama, ‘Pages from the History of Mecca the Venerable’. A few years later, volume 1 of the Ṣafaḥāt was also published.49 Ḥamad al-Ǧāsir was convinced that Snouck Hurgronje’s conversion to Islam was not genuine. He was also of the opinion that Snouck Hurgronje’s work in the Dutch East Indies was based on a similar deceit. Nevertheless, he writes that the book is a most enjoyable work.50 Al-Ǧāsir’s essay is not conceptual, but scholastic. He treats Snouck Hurgronje’s text on Mecca as a traditional commentator would do. He gives a quotation, which he sets between brackets, followed by his commentary. These quotations are given in their order of occurrence in Mekka, and so he works his way through the book, from beginning to end. His remarks are often to the effect that what Snouck Hurgronje writes about is not typically Meccan, but that it applies to the entire Muslim world. Sometimes he closes his argument with a Qurʾānic quotation, or a sentence from the Ḥadīth. It is his preferred way of having the last word and it absolves him from constructing a logical argument. When he comments on Snouck Hurgronje’s mention of polygamy in Mecca and the ease of divorce there, he just quotes the somewhat paradoxical, yet authentic, Ḥadīth: ‘With God, the most hateful of the permitted things is the repudiation of the wife.’51 Another topic on which al-Ǧāsir takes issue with Snouck Hurgronje is illustrative of the inherent misunderstandings that can only be expected to result from such exchanges. It concerns the visiting of graves, which is a controversial 49 50 51 C. Snouck Hurgronje, Ṣafaḥāt min Tārīkh Makka al-Mukarrama fī Nihāyat al-Qarn alThālith ʿAshar al-Hiǧrī [translated by Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd al-Suryānī, Miʿrāǧ b. Nawwāb Mirzā; supervised by Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Aḥmad ʿAlī]. vol. 2. al-Riyāḍ: Nādī Makka al-Thaqāfī al-Adabī, 1411/1990; C. Snouck Hurgronje, Ṣafaḥāt min Tārīkh Makka al-Mukarrama [translated by ʿAlī ʿAwda al-Shuyūkh; edited by Muḥammad Maḥmūd al-Suryānī, Miʿrāǧ Nawwāb Mirzā; supervised by Muḥammad Ibrāhīm ʿAlī]. vol. 1. Dirāsa lil-Awḍāʿ al-Siyāsiyya wal-Iqtiṣādiyya wal-Iǧtimāʿiyya min al-Baʿtha al-Nabawiyya al-Sharīfa wa-ḥattā Nihāyat al-Qarn al-Thālith ʿAshar al-Hiǧrī; [translated by Muḥammad Maḥmūd alSuryānī, Miʿrāǧ Nawwāb Mirzā; supervised by Muḥammad Ibrāhīm ʿAlī], vol. 2. Dirāsa Tafṣīliyya lil-Awḍāʿ al-Iǧtimāʿiyya fī Nihāyat al-Qarn al-Thālith ʿAshar al-Hiǧrī. al-Riyāḍ: Dārat al-Malik ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, 1419/1999. Al-Ǧāsir, Raḥḥāla, p. 102: ‘fa-ittaḍaḥa lī annahu min amtaʿ mā qaraʾtuhu mimmā nasharathu nawādīnā al-adabiyya min al-muʾallafāt, in lam yakun amtaʿahā’. Al-Ǧāsir, Raḥḥāla, p. 111: Abghaḍ al-ḥalāl ʿinda Allāh al-ṭalāq, attested in Abū Dāwud and Ibn Māǧa, see A.J. Wensinck, Concordance et Indices de la Tradition Musulmane, vol. 1 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1936), p. 202. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 101 issue in Islam in general and especially in the Wahhābī Arabia of which al-Ǧāsir was a citizen. Baqīʿ al-Gharqad, the famous graveyard of Muslim saints just outside Medina, once full of little structures and small mausoleums, was razed to the ground after the Saʿūdī conquest on 9 December 1925. It now looks as clean as a mediaeval cathedral after a make-over by Calvinist iconoclasts. The visiting of graves was a frequently observed feature in the Mecca that Snouck visited in 1885.52 Graves were suspect as places that could give occasion to shirk, polytheism, and worse: prostitution and substance abuse during festivals. The house and grave of the Prophet’s first wife Khadīǧa is also mentioned, both by Snouck Hurgronje and al-Ǧāsir. It is an interesting example of the extent to which two fundamentally different attitudes could have clashed, but did not do so. Al-Ǧāsir rejects the historicity of the location of that house,53 whereas Snouck Hurgronje describes only the Meccan people’s devotion to it, so the arguments do not even match.54 Comparative religion had taught him, of course, that little of sense can be said about the historical truth underlying holy localities and sacred relics, and that this goes for any religion. A good friend of al-Ǧāsir’s, Shaykh Aḥmad Zakī Yamānī (1930–2021), the former Saudi oil minister, himself a pious son of Mecca and, not being a historian, a staunch believer in the realities of the early history of Islam, even went so far as to organize an archaeological expedition to Khadīǧa’s house.55 At some point in the early 1980s, Shaykh Yamani’s interest had been aroused in Snouck Hurgronje’s work about Mecca. I think he was first approached by the American scholar and fund-raiser, Father Carney Gavin (1939–2014), then 52 53 54 55 Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka in the latter part (2007), pp. 29, 62, 242, 251. Quoting from a lecture about ‘Islamic Antiquities in Mecca’ that he held on 13 Ǧumādā II 1402 (8 April 1982), see on the subject al-Ǧāsir, Raḥḥāla, pp. 134–138. Here too, al-Ǧāsir closes the argument with a Qurʾānic quote: ‘It is not for the Prophet and the believers to ask pardon for the idolaters, even though they be near kinsmen, after that it has become clear to them that they will be the inhabitants of Hell.’ (Arberry’s translation of Qurʾān 9:113). Here again, the quotation cuts the dialogue short. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka in the latter part (2007), pp. 29, 62, 64, 110, 299. See also under ‘Festivals’ in the index. A photographic survey of the digging is given in an album entitled ‘Uncovering the home of the Prophet Mohammed in Makkah. Excavation work from November 26, 1989 till December 26, 1989’. A copy of the album was donated by Shaykh Yamani to the Leiden library on the occasion of his visit to Leiden on 14 November 1997, and is now registered there as Or. 23.990. Much later, Aḥmad Zakī Yamānī published his own studies on the subject, both in Arabic and English: Dār al-Sayyida Khadīǧa bint Khuwaylid raḍiya Allāh ʿanhā fī Makka al-Mukarrama. Dirāsa Tārīkhiyya lil-Dār wa-Mawqiʿihā wa-ʿImāratihā. London: al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, 1434/2013; The House of Khadeejah Bint Khuwaylid in Makkah al-Mukarramah. A historical study of its location, building and architecture. London: al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2014. 102 Witkam director of the Semitic Museum at Harvard University. Gavin was the first scholar, after a long interval, to realize the potential of the image and sound collection that Snouck Hurgronje had assembled in and from western Arabia between 1884 and 1909.56 Snouck Hurgronje’s collections in Leiden were his source, and the generous Shaykh Yamani, who was so impressionable in matters of religion, was his willing supporter. For Gavin it was a matter of matching supply and demand, and he did so with great enthusiasm. When he came to Leiden for the first time it was not for the sound collection, but for Snouck Hurgronje’s collection of photographs of western Arabia in general and Mecca in particular, and on one of his visits he may have discovered the wax cylinders. These were not well cared for in Leiden at the time. Gavin quickly observed that the Snouck Hurgronje archives, photos and wax cylinders were kept in an appalling state of negligence and that they no longer aroused the interest of the Leiden scholarly community. He promptly decided to take the wax cylinders to the Phonogrammarchiv of the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Vienna, directed at the time by Dietrich Schüller. That spontaneous action may have rescued what was left of Snouck Hurgronje’s sound archive. With his great expertise in the field of historical sound recording, Schüler was probably the best-placed person to be offered the cylinders for further research, and I still regret never having heeded his repeated requests to let him co-operate with Leiden University in the work on the sound material. In the Phonogrammarchiv, Snouck Hurgronje’s sound recordings were digitized by the sound engineer Franz Lechleitner who had constructed a special digital reader for wax cylinders. When, in the final days of October 1996, I visited Vienna in order to collect the original cylinders, I also received the raw digital copy on high-quality dat (digital audio tape) and all the sound in edited form on a number of CD-Roms. Shaykh Yamani told me later that this sound might enable him to reconstruct some of the early music and singing tradition of Mecca as it had existed before the Saudi conquest of Mecca on 5 December 1924. Immediately after the conquest, all musical instruments in Mecca had to be handed in to the new masters. They were piled up and then burnt. To Shaykh Yamani, the Snouck Hurgronje sound collection was a rare time capsule containing a few materials that had miraculously escaped destruction. In 1994, Carney Gavin founded the Archives for Historical Documentation 56 See C.E.S. Gavin, ‘The Earliest Voices from the East: Photo-Archaeological Explorations and Tomorrow’s Museums’ in Museum: Unesco, Paris, 158 (1988), pp. 67–80. See now also, for a somewhat wider perspective, my article ‘Written in wax’ of 2018. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 103 Figure 2.5 Shaykh Aḥmad Zakī Yamānī (left) and some of his guests (from left to right): Léon Buskens (Leiden), Muḥammad Benchérifa (Rabat), Jan Just Witkam (Leiden), Wimbledon, 4 December 1993. © 1993. Photo by Al-Furqān Foundation. (ahd) in Brighton, Massachussets.57 In 1995 that organization expressed its mission statement as ‘the presentation, publication and exhibition of historical documents and sound recordings of groups and traditions related to the Middle East and its religions’, but it seems to have left little or no trace on the internet since. During his directorship of the Semitic Museum, Gavin’s physical presence had been quite imposing. He was very well connected and his activities could hardly be ignored. His obituary in The Boston Pilot of 5 September 2014 mentions his close connections with the ruling family of the Principality of Liechtenstein, and with the royal family in Saudi Arabia.58 Later, Shaykh Yamani’s interest in the history and culture of the two Holy Cities went much further than a study of the Snouck Hurgronje collections in Leiden. He founded an Encyclopedia of Mecca and Medina, the first volume of 57 58 See Piney Kesting, “A Legacy of Light”, in Aramco Magazine 64/5 (September–October 2013) <https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/201305/a.legacy.of.light.htm> (accessed on 8 March 2021). <https://www.thebostonpilot.com/article.asp?ID=171900> accessed on 13 March 2021. 104 Witkam which, after years of preparation, appeared in 2007 in London.59 An Indonesian research group was brought together by Dr Pudentia MP SS on behalf of the Asosiasi Tradisi Lisan (atl)/Oral Literature Association in Jakarta, with the purpose of further exploring the Snouck Hurgronje sound materials. The Association was primarily interested in sound from Indonesia. At first, the Indonesian researchers were enthusiastic, and language experts were asked to determine the regional languages of the texts and songs. This proved to be more complicated than expected, and in the course of time enthusiasm for the project faded away.60 In the late 1990s, it occurred to me that Snouck Hurgronje’s voice could perhaps be heard on one of the recordings. I visited Christien Snouck Hurgronje (1914–2014) and her husband Erik Adolf Liefrinck (1914–2002) in order to establish this, but she was unable to make a positive identification. Snouck Hurgronje’s Mekka, the two volumes and the one portfolio, Bilder-Atlas, published in 1888–1889 by Nijhoff in The Hague, have in the course of time become valuable collectibles. The second portfolio, Bilder aus Mekka, published by Brill in 1889, has always been very rare, and I have seen it offered for sale only once.61 In the mid-1960s, I once asked Brill’s antiquarian bookshop in Leiden for a quotation for all Snouck Hurgronje’s works. They priced the two volumes of Mekka plus the portfolio Bilder-Atlas of 1889 at NLG 60, nominally slightly under €30. At the time, I decided I could not afford that sum from my monthly allowance and I let it go. In the early 1980s, I purchased my own copy of Mekka for a few hundred guilders. In the 1990s, Shaykh Yamani asked me to look out for a copy of Snouck Hurgronje’s Mekka, and I was able to procure him the one that had been officially removed from the library of the Dutch parliament. It 59 60 61 ʿAbbās Ṣāliḥ al-Ṭāshqandī (ed.), Mawsūʿat Makka al-Mukarrama wal-Madīna al-Munawwara. 6 volumes. London: al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2007 ff. See now also van Zanten, ‘Recordings of Indonesian Music’, in the present volume. By Sebastiaan (‘Bas’) Hesselink, owner of Hes & De Graaf in Houten, an up-market antiquarian bookseller in the Netherlands. He had realized the value of the portfolio during his visit to the international book fair in Dubai of 2011 and he decided to produce a facsimile-de-luxe of the portfolio in 1,000 copies. On 17 January 2012, together with his son Corstiaan, he came to visit me in my house in Leiden and asked me to write a commentary on the photographs in the portfolio Bilder aus Mekka. To this I consented, but in the end, because of a disagreement about the arrangements for my remuneration, nothing came of it, and the only souvenir of this episode is the prospectus that Mr. Hesselink had printed (‘Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, Early Photographs of Mecca. Facsimile after the edition of Leiden, 1888–1889. With commentary by Prof. Dr. Jan Just Witkam.’ ). Hesselink still offered it for sale on 16 September 2021 for a price of six digits, but it was apparently sold shortly afterwards. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 105 had come up for auction at Burgersdijk & Niermans, the Leiden auctioneers. There, it fetched a price equivalent to more than €5,000, an incredible record at the time. The following anecdote may serve as an example of its accelerating increase in value since then. On 8 September 2006, I had an unexpected visitor from Saudi Arabia. He was an engineer and at the time a vice-president of commercial operations of Rajhi Steel in Riyadh. He had invested a sizeable amount of money in the purchase of a copy of Snouck Hurgronje’s Mekka with the Bilder-Atlas. He had come to see me during a short stop-over in the Netherlands in order to have me authenticate his newly acquired treasure. I obliged out of curiosity and it added a new dimension to my Snouck Hurgronje studies. He did not plan to read the book, nor even to handle it very often, but intended to place it in a vault in his house, wait until it had appreciated, and then dispose of it at a profit. From me, he merely wished to know whether or not the article that he had acquired was genuine. Some years later, a complete set of Snouck Hurgronje’s works on Mecca really hit the jackpot. On 14 May 2019, Sotheby’s in London offered for sale by auction what they claimed to be Snouck Hurgronje’s own copies of the two Mekka text volumes, plus the two portfolios, both the Bilder-Atlas and Bilder aus Mekka.62 The four volumes were bound in what seemed to me to be brand new, almost scuff-free kitschy leather bindings with gilded text, which the auctioneer maintained were old and authentic. Before the sale, Sotheby’s estimate was between £80,000 – £120,00. Eventually, the lot was sold for £212,500. Sotheby’s gave as its provenance ‘C. Snouck Hurgronje (1857–1936); thence by family descent’. I only became aware of the Sotheby’s sale after the event. I had never seen, or even heard of, this ‘author’s set of Mekka’, and, notwithstanding the detailed description,63 I still have my doubts as to whether it really existed. 62 63 Auction Sotheby’s London ‘Travel, Atlases, Maps and Natural History’ # 165 ‘See <https:// www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2019/travel-atlases-maps-l19401/lot.165. html?locale=en> (last accessed on 14 March 2021). ‘FIRST EDITION, THE AUTHOR’S COPY, 4 volumes, comprising: 2 volumes text, 4to (244 x 167mm.), and 2 atlas volumes (Bilder-Atlas zu Mekka and Bilder aus Mekka), folio (364 x 270mm.), TEXT: SPECIAL ISSUE PRINTED ON THICK PAPER, half-titles, 3 double-page genealogies (manuscript additions in pencil to the third genealogy), 2 folding plans of Mecca, errata leaf at end of volume 1, single page of MANUSCRIPT NOTES IN DUTCH AND ARABIC BY THE AUTHOR loosely inserted in volume 1, CONTEMPORARY POLISHED CALF GILT, spines gilt, gilt edges, marbled endpapers, ATLAS VOLUMES: Bilder-Atlas zu Mekka with printed contents leaf and 40 numbered plates, comprising 65 photographs mounted on 30 leaves, 6 tinted lithographs (one folding) and 4 chromolithographs, Bilder aus Mekka with half title, title and 2 leaves of text, and 20 photographs mounted on 18 leaves, text and plates loose as issued, EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED with a loose folding plan 106 Witkam The family provenance and the four physical volumes could easily have been assembled by an unscrupulous antiquarian bookseller. One can only hope that the new owner of Snouck Hurgronje’s author’s copy of the Mekka volumes and portfolios, who has been so willing to spend a small fortune on them, will look after them well, and that some day they will be available for scholarly research. 4 By way of epilogue Since the biography of Snouck Hurgronje published in 1938 by Moereels,64 we have had to wait almost eight decades for more. Two biographies came out recently, one by Philip Dröge (2017), the other by Wim van den Doel (2021). Neither of the two was based on a truly extensive exploration of all the sources on Snouck Hurgronje’s life. Only van Koningsveld and Rohmana seem to have realized the importance of these materials and to have started to publish editions of them. Van Koningsveld’s work on the European correspondence has come to an untimely end, and the promised annotations were never published. Rohmana has worked on the documents in the Snouck Hurgronje archives in Leiden, especially in connection with the Aceh war and on Snouck Hurgronje and his informant Haji Hasan Mustapa. Dröge and Van den Doel, however, have drawn on many new and previously unknown documents. Dröge in particular exploited the Dutch newspapers of the time. The best sources on Snouck Hurgronje are, of course, his own works, both published and unpublished. His papers are mostly preserved in Leiden University Library.65 Michael Laffan has summarized the contents of the letters from Raden Aboe Bakar.66 64 65 66 of the mosque at Mecca (identical to that in text volume 1) and a printed (proof?) list of the first 17 plates issued in Bilder zu Mekka, atlas contents loose as issued, ATLAS VOLUMES UNIFORMLY BOUND IN ORIGINAL TAN CLOTH PORTFOLIOS, decorated in blind and gilt, upper covers titled in gilt, lined with patterned gilt paper, slight damp-stains to covers of text volumes, puncture marks to lower cover of text volume 1, text of Atlas <Bilder> aus Mekka spotted, minor wear to atlas spines.’ A.J.P. Moereels, Chr. Snouck Hurgronje (8-2-1857 – 26-6-1936). Rijswijk: Kramers, 1938. A first attempt was made in Arnoud Vrolijk & Silvia Compaan-Vermetten, Snouck Hurgronje Papers. Correspondence, Archives and Photos. Leiden 2016–2018: - Collection guide ubl165 <https://digitalcollections.universiteitleiden.nl/view/item/ 1716512>, - Collection guide ubl167 <https://digitalcollections.universiteitleiden.nl/view/item/ 1889149> and - Collection guide ubl215 <https://digitalcollections.universiteitleiden.nl/view/item/ 1912911>. Michael Laffan, ‘Writing from the colonial margin. The letters of Aboe Bakar Djajadiningrat to Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje’, in Indonesia and the Malay World 31, No. 91 (Novem- Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 107 The ideal scholarly life of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje is the subject of Wim van den Doel’s new biography. It is the first proper biography written by a professional historian, without the blind and numbing hero worship of his younger contemporaries, without the opportunistic moralising of the theologians, and without the deranged mythomania of sensationalists. After his demise in 1936, Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje had indeed gathered a picturesque crowd of aficionados around his person. Van den Doel, whom I do not regard as being part of this crowd, conveys a precise image of all the phases of Snouck Hurgronje’s official and private lives, and in his final chapter treats some aspects of the afterlife as well. It is a rich book, full of interesting details and all sorts of eye-openers. However, van den Doel has no eye for what I call the steganographic tendencies in Snouck Hurgronje’s writing.67 The collection of Meccan proverbs is much more than a source for Meccan folklore. Snouck Hurgronje concealed personal details in his discussion of the proverbs, and a few such details can still be retrieved. It was a game he played with himself and with his readership. Van den Doel has, of course, seen the collection of Meccan proverbs and tells his readers that, yes, the proverbs sketch daily life in Mecca.68 A close reading tells a more complex story, containing both hidden and open references to the circumcision, possibly to the name of Snouck Hurgronje’s Ethiopian concubine, to the first reactions of the Meccans to photography, and so forth. This, and maybe more, can all be read in and between the lines of the Meccan proverbs. The booklet is much more than just a study of Meccan proverbs. It is an encrypted source about Snouck Hurgronje’s life in Mecca. Notwithstanding van den Doel’s thoroughness and his use of an enormous number of sources, he is no Lytton Strachey. In his biography of Snouck Hurgronje there is no place for a homo ludens.69 An early example of Snouck Hurgronje’s playfulness can be seen in his Toost-epos, the little scatological masterpiece in 151 hexameters that he dedicated to his student friend B.A.P. van Dam (1856-1940), and that he recited during a celebratory dinner on Saturday 22 May 1880 after van Dam had successfully defended his thesis.70 Van den Doel 67 68 69 70 ber 2003), pp. 357–380. See my ‘Before Mecca. The Jeddah ‘Diary’ of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, 1884–1885’ in the present volume. Van den Doel, Snouck, pp. 82, 561. Nor was this how Johan Huizinga (1872–1945), the historian who coined the term in 1938, looked at Snouck Hurgronje; see Van den Doel, Snouck, p. 530. Van Dam had chosen as the subject of his doctoral thesis (De phosphorzuur-uitscheiding bij den mensch, Leiden: S.C. van Doesburgh, 1880) the chemical analysis of his own excrement which he collected every day. See also my ‘Inleiding’ to Mekka, pp. 18–19. 108 Witkam Figure 2.6 Title-page of Toost-epos, a facetious scatological poem in 151 Dutch hexameters, composed by C. Snouck Hurgronje, dated Leiden, Saturday 22 May 1880. Original in Leiden University Library, MS Or. 8952, the Snouck Hurgronje Archive. © 2021, Photo by Jan Just Witkam. passes this episode over in silence.71 There is another detail of the Jeddah and Mecca episode that could have received more attention from van den Doel: the personal history of the Algerian spy and intriguer Sī ʿAzīz b. al-Shaykh al-Ḥaddād and his connection with the French vice-consul in Jeddah, Félix de Lostalot de Bachoué, both of whom played such a fateful role in Snouck Hurgronje’s Meccan life and work.72 Van den Doel may not have wished, for valid reasons of his own, to include elements of playfulness in his description of Snouck Hurgronje’s personality, but to neglect the rich French archival sources, the existence of which was no secret, is a serious oversight for a professional historian. Before Snouck Hurgronje left the Netherlands in 1889 for his first real job in the Dutch East Indies, he had been involved in two major polemics, one against L.W.C. van den Berg (1845–1927), the other against Carlo Landberg (1848–1924). Van den Doel treats these episodes separately. He does not ask himself the obvious question of what, in the Snouckian universe, van den Berg and Landberg could have had in common and whether Snouck Hurgronje’s vitriolic attacks on either one of them were unavoidable, or maybe even justified. Nor does he really question the nature of these polemics. Did Snouck Hurgronje have a case against his two unhappy victims, or were his diatribes nothing more than the expression of his choleric or sanguine character? Yet one cannot dismiss van den Doel’s as just another failed attempt at Snouck Hurgronje’s 71 72 Van den Doel says not a word about this Toost-epos. He apparently did not wish to soil his pages with jokes about excrement, even if he repeatedly mentions Snouck Hurgronje’s haemorrhoids (van den Doel, Snouck, pp. 192, 418). More about this in my ‘Before Mecca’ in the present volume. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 109 life. With his impressive book, he has cleared the ground for other biographers to try their hand at constructing a more multi-dimensional character than the somewhat prosaic one that he has projected onto his protagonist. Sources Manuscripts, photographs, archival and other materials MS Leiden Or. 6980 (transcript Yemeni sound) MS Leiden Or. 7112 (Jeddah ‘diary’) MS Leiden Or. 8952 (Snouck Hurgronje archive) MS Leiden Or. 8952 A 457 (1) Letter Houtsma MS Leiden Or. 8952 L 26–30 Letter Snouck Hurgronje to Van der Chijs MS Leiden Or. 23.990 Excavation of Khadīǧa’s house MS Leiden Or. 27.130 (phonograph) MS Leiden Or. 27.131 (wax cylinders) Bibliography Arthur J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted. London: Oxford University Press, 1964 Muḥammad Labīb al-Batanūnī, al-Riḥla al-Ḥiǧāziyya li-Walī al-Niʿam al-Ḥāǧǧ ʿAbbās Ḥilmī Bāshā al-Thānī Khedīw Miṣr Cairo2: Maṭbaʿat al-Ǧamāliyya, 1329 (1911) Peri Bearman, A History of the Encyclopaedia of Islam. Atlanta, Georgia: Lockwood Press, 2018 Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, The Future of Islam. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1882 B.A.P. van Dam, De phosphorzuur-uitscheiding bij den mensch. Leiden: S.C. van Doesburgh, 1880 Wim van den Doel, Snouck. Het volkomen geleerdenleven van Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2021 Philip Dröge, Pelgrim. Leven en reizen van Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Houten/Antwerpen: Unieboek/Spectrum, 2017 Ḥamad al-Ǧāsir, Raḥḥāla Gharbiyyūn fī Bilādinā. ʿArḍ Mūǧaz li-Riḥalāt Baʿḍ al-Gharbiyyīn fī Qalb al-Ǧazīra wa-Shimālihā. Al-Riyāḍ: Dār al-Yamāma 1417 (1996–1997) Ḥamad al-Ǧāsir, Riḥalāt. Al-Riyāḍ: Dār al-Yamāma, 1400 (1980) C.E.S. Gavin, “The Earliest Voices from the East: Photo-Archaeological Explorations and Tomorrow’s Museums” in Museum: Unesco, Paris, 158 (1988), pp. 67–80 C.E.G. ten Houte de Lange, Familiefonds Hurgronje 1767–1992. De nakomelingen van Isaac Hurgronje (1652–1706) en Josina Phoenix (1663–1711) en de geschiedenis van 225 jaren Familiefonds Hurgronje. Middelburg: Familiefonds Hurgronje, 1992 110 Witkam Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing. The Orientalists and their Enemies. London: Allan Lane, 2006 Th.W. Juynboll, ‘Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje’, in: J. Kalff Jr. (ed.), Mannen en vrouwen van beteekenis in onze dagen. Levensschetsen en portretten. Haarlem: H.D. Tjeenk Willink & Zoon, 1902, pp. 45–86 Piney Kesting, “A Legacy of Light”, in Aramco Magazine 64/5 (September–October 2013) Martijn Kitzen, The Course of Co-option. Co-option of local power-holders as a tool for obtaining control over the population in counterinsurgency campaigns in weblike societies. With case studies on Dutch experiences during the Aceh War (1873-c. 1912) and the Uruzgan campaign (2006-2010). Amsterdam (?), 2016 Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld, ‘Conversion of European Intellectuals to Islam. The Case of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje alias ʿAbd al-Ghaffār’, in: Bekim Agai, Umar Ryad, Mehdi Sajid (eds), Muslims in Interwar Europe. A Transcultural Historical Perspective. Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill, 2016, pp. 88–104 Michael Laffan, ‘Writing from the Colonial Margin. The Letters of Aboe Bakar Djajadiningrat to Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje’, in Indonesia and the Malay World 31, No. 91 (November 2003), pp. 357–380 Edward William Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians Written in Egypt during the Years 1833, -34, and -35, Partly from Notes made During a Former Visit to that Country in the Years 1825, -26, -27, and -28. 5th edition (edited by Edward Stanley Poole). London: John Murray, 1860 Vilan van de Loo, Uit naam van de Majesteit. Het leven van J.B. van Heutsz 1851–1924. Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2020 A.J.P. Moereels, Chr. Snouck Hurgronje (8-2-1857 – 26-6-1936). Rijswijk: Kramers, 1938 Rudolph Peters, Islam and Colonialism. The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History. The Hague: Mouton, 1979 Anne Regourd & Jean Lambert, ‘Le manuscrit Leyde Or. 6980. 2e partie. Poésies chantées dans le Ḥiǧāz au début du xxe siècle: la transcription par un lettré de documents sonores. Édition du texte’, in Chroniques du manuscrit au Yémen / Ḥawliyyāt Makhṭūṭāt al-Yaman (CmY) 24 (July 2017), pp. 112–216 Anne Regourd, ‘Le manuscrit Leyde Or. 6980. 1re partie. Premiers éléments de datation et de localisation du manuscrit: apport d’un papier Andrea Galvani inédit’, in Chroniques du manuscrit au Yémen / Ḥawliyyāt Makhṭūṭāt al-Yaman (CmY) 20 (July 2015), pp. 65–87 Edward Said, Orientalism. New York: Pantheon books, 1978 Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, The Mecca Festival. Translated and edited by Wolfgang H. Behn. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2012 C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th Century. Daily Life, Customs and Learning. The Moslims of the East-Indian Archipelago. Translated by J.H. Mona- Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 111 han. With an introduction by Jan Just Witkam. Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill, 2007 C. Snouck Hurgronje, Ṣafaḥāt min Tārīkh Makka al-Mukarrama [translated by Muḥammad Maḥmūd al-Suryānī, Miʿrāǧ Nawwāb Mirzā; supervised by Muḥammad Ibrāhīm ʿAlī]. vol. 2. Dirāsa Tafṣīliyya lil-Awḍāʿ al-Iǧtimāʿiyya fī Nihāyat al-Qarn alThālith ʿAshar al-Hiǧrī. al-Riyāḍ: Dārat al-Malik ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, 1419/1999 C. Snouck Hurgronje, Ṣafaḥāt min Tārīkh Makka al-Mukarrama [translated by ʿAlī ʿAwda al-Shuyūkh; edited by Muḥammad Maḥmūd al-Suryānī, Miʿrāǧ Nawwāb Mirzā; supervised by Muḥammad Ibrāhīm ʿAlī]. vol. 1. Dirāsa lil-Awḍāʿ al-Siyāsiyya wal-Iqtiṣādiyya wal-Iǧtimāʿiyya min al-Baʿtha al-Nabawiyya al-Sharīfa wa-ḥattā Nihāyat al-Qarn al-Thālith ʿAshar al-Hiǧrī. al-Riyāḍ: Dārat al-Malik ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, 1419/1999 C. Snouck Hurgronje, Ṣafaḥāt min Tārīkh Makka al-Mukarrama fī Nihāyat al-Qarn alThālith ʿAshar al-Hiǧrī [translated by Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd al-Suryānī, Miʿrāǧ b. Nawwāb Mirzā; supervised by Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Aḥmad ʿAlī]. vol. 2. al-Riyāḍ: Nādī Makka al-Thaqāfī al-Adabī, 1411/1990 [C. Snouck Hurgronje] Ambtelijke Adviezen van C. Snouck Hurgronje 1889–1936. Uitgegeven door E. Gobée en C. Adriaanse. 3 vols. ’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1957– 1965 C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th Century. Daily Life, Customs and Learning. The Moslims of the East-Indian Archipelago. Translated by J.H. Monahan. Leyden: E.J. Brill / London: Luzac & Co., 1931 C. Snouck Hurgronje, Verspreide geschriften. Voorzien van een bibliografie en registers door A.J. Wensinck. 5 volumes in 6 bindings. Bonn/Leipzig: Kurt Schroeder, 1923– 1925; vol. 6. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1927. C. Snouck Hurgronje, ‘Mekkanische Sprichwörter und Redensarten. Gesammelt und erläutert’, in Verspreide Geschriften, vol. 5. Bonn/Leipzig: Kurt Schroeder, 1924, pp. 1–112 C. Snouck Hurgronje, ‘Brieven van een wedono-pensioen’, in Verspreide geschriften 4/1 (1924), pp. 111–248 C. Snouck Hurgronje, ‘Über eine Reise nach Mekka’, in Verspreide Geschriften, 3 (1923), pp. 45–64 C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mohammedanism. Lectures on Its Origin, Its Religious and Political Growth, and Its Present State. New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1916 C. Snouck Hurgronje, Nederland en de Islâm. Vier voordrachten gehouden in de Nederlandsch-Indische bestuursacademie. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1911 C. Snouck Hurgronje, The Achehnese. Translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan. 2 vols. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1906 C. Snouck Hurgronje, ‘Brieven van een wedono-pensioen’, in De Locomotief (between 7 January 1891 and 22 December 1892) 112 Witkam C. Snouck Hurgronje, De Djawa te Mekka. Bewerkt voor de Loc<omotief> naar Dr. Snouck Hurgronje’s “Mekka” door een Ambt. b/h Binn. Bestuur. Overgedrukt uit De Locomotief. Semarang n.d. [189o?], 126 cols. C. Snouck Hurgronje, Bilder aus Mekka. Mit kurzem erläuterndem Texte. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1889 C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka, vol. 1. Die Stadt und ihre Herren (1888); vol. 2. Aus dem heutigen Leben (1889); Bilder-Atlas zu Mekka (1888). Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1888– 1889. C. Snouck Hurgronje, ‘Über eine Reise nach Mekka’, Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde 14/3 (Berlin 1887), pp. 138–153 C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekkanische Sprichwörter und Redensarten. Gesammelt und erläutert. Herausgegeben als Festgabe zum VII ten Internat. Orientalistencongresse in Wien [...]. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1886, also BKI V/1 (1886), pp. 443–576 C. Snouck Hurgronje, Het Mekkaansche feest. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1880 C. Snouck Hurgronje, Toost-epos opgedragen aan Dr. B.A.P. van Dam. [Leiden] 22 May 1880 [Sotheby’s London] ‘Travel, Atlases, Maps and Natural History’, Auction on 14 May 2019, # 165 <https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2019/travel-atlases-maps-l19401/lot.165.html?locale=en> ʿAbbās Ṣāliḥ al-Ṭāshqandī (ed.), Mawsūʿat Makka al-Mukarrama wal-Madīna al-Munawwara. 6 volumes. London: al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2007 ff. P. Voorhoeve, Handlist of Arabic Manuscripts in the Library of the University of Leiden and Other Collections in the Netherlands. (2nd enlarged edition). The Hague/Boston/ London: Leiden University Press, 1980 Arnoud Vrolijk & Silvia Compaan-Vermetten, Snouck Hurgronje Papers. Correspondence, Archives and Photos. Leiden 2016–2018. Collection guides ubl165 <https://digitalcollections.universiteitleiden.nl/view/item/1716512>, ubl167 <https://digitalcollections.universiteitleiden.nl/view/item/1889149> and ubl215 <https://digitalcollections.universiteitleiden.nl/view/item/1912911> A.J. Wensinck (and others), Concordance et Indices de la Tradition Musulmane. 8 vols. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1936–1988 Jan Just Witkam, ‘Before Mecca. The Jeddah ‘Diary’ of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, 1884–1885’, in the present volume, pp. 573-754 Jan Just Witkam, ‘Meccan voices. Proverbs and Sayings from Mecca Collected and Explained by Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje’ in the present volume, pp. 755-872 Jan Just Witkam, ‘Van huurcontract tot boekenlegger. Mekkaanse documenten van Snouck Hurgronje’, in: Wim van Anrooij e.a. (eds.), Om het boek. Cultuurhistorische bespiegelingen over boeken en mensen. Hilversum: Verloren, 2020, pp. 311–315 Jan Just Witkam, ‘Snouck Hurgronje’s Consular Ambitions’, in Jan Loop & Jill Kraye (eds.), Scholarship between Europe and the Levant. Essays in Honour of Alastair Ham- Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and afterlives 113 ilton. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020, pp. 349–373 Jan Just Witkam, ‘Teuku Panglima Polem’s Purse. Manuscripts as War Booty in Colonial Times’, in Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 10 (2019), pp. 84–104 Jan Just Witkam, ‘Written in Wax: Quranic Recitational Phonography’, in Journal of the American Oriental Society 138/4 (2018), pp. 807–820 Jan Just Witkam, review of Snouck Hurgronje, The Mecca Festival, in Bibliotheca Orientalis 73/1–2 (January–April 2016), col. 268–272 Jan Just Witkam, ‘Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje’, in: Coeli Fitzpatrick & Dwayne A. Tunstall (eds), Orientalist Writers (= Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 366), Detroit, MI, etc.: Gale, 2012, pp. 148–154 Jan Just Witkam, ‘Inleiding’ to Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka in de tweede helft van de negentiende eeuw. Schetsen uit het dagelijks leven. Amsterdam/Antwerp: Atlas, 2007, pp. 7–184 Jan Just Witkam, ‘Lists of books in Arabic manuscripts’, in Manuscripts of the Middle East 5 (1990–1991), pp. 123–136 Aḥmad Zakī Yamānī, Dār al-Sayyida Khadīǧa bint Khuwaylid raḍiya Allāh ʿanhā fī Makka al-Mukarrama. Dirāsa Tārīkhiyya lil-Dār wa-Mawqiʿihā wa-ʿImāratihā. London: al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, 1434/2013 Aḥmad Zakī Yamānī, The House of Khadeejah Bint Khuwaylid in Makkah al-Mukarramah. A historical study of its location, building and architecture. London: al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2014 May Yamani, Cradle of Islam. The Hijaz and the Quest for Identity in Saudi Arabia. London: I.B. Taurus 2009 Wim van Zanten, ‘Recordings of Indonesian Music and Speech in the Snouck Hurgronje Collection (1905–1909) in Leiden. Preliminary Remarks’, in the present volume Scholarship in Action The History of Oriental Studies Editors Alastair Hamilton (University of London) Jan Loop (University of Copenhagen) Advisory Board Thomas Burman (Notre Dame) Charles Burnett (London) Bernard Heyberger (Paris) Noel Malcolm (Oxford) Francis Richard (Paris) Jan Schmidt (Leiden) Arnoud Vrolijk (Leiden) Joanna Weinberg (Oxford) VOLUME 12 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/hos Scholarship in Action Essays on the Life and Work of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936) Edited by Léon Buskens and Jan Just Witkam with Annemarie van Sandwijk Leiden | Boston Cover illustration: Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje as ʿAbd al-Ghaffar in Mekka, early 1885, photograph in all probability taken by Sayyid ʿAbd al-Ghaffar b. ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Baghdadi al-Tabib. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 8952 L 5: 18(4). Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISBN 978-90-04-51359-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-51361-7 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by Brill. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Contents List of Illustrations viii Notes on Contributors xvi Notes on Transliteration, Names of Persons and Places and Dates xxi PART 1 Introduction and Biography 1 Chris, Christiaan, Snouck, Snouck Hurgronje, ʿAbd al-Ghaffar, the Master. Images of a Scholar in Action 3 Léon Buskens and Annemarie van Sandwijk Appendix: Bibliography of Works by and on Snouck Hurgronje Léon Buskens and Jan Just Witkam 2 Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Lives and Afterlives Jan Just Witkam 51 73 PART 2 To Arabia 3 The Nöldeke – De Goeje Correspondence on Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje 117 Daniël van der Zande 4 Urban Life in Late Ottoman, Hashemite and Early Saudi Jeddah, as Documented in the Photographs in the Snouck Hurgronje Collection in Leiden 139 Ulrike Freitag 5 Mekka as an Ethnographic Text. How Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje Lived and Constructed Daily Life in Arabia 168 Léon Buskens and Jean Kommers 6 Snouck Hurgronje and Pan-Islamism Gerard van Krieken 260 VI Contents PART 3 In Indonesia 7 Snouck Hurgronje and the Colonial Administration of the Dutch East Indies 281 Wim van den Doel 8 Snouck Hurgronje, Shariʿa, and the Anthropology of Islam John Bowen 9 The Scholar and the War-Horse. The Aceh War, Snouck Hurgronje, and Van Heutsz 326 Kees van Dijk 10 From Wayfarer to Wedono. Snouck Hurgronje and the Sufi Threat on Java, 1884-1892 374 Michael Laffan 11 “My dear Professor ʿAbd al-Ghaffar.” The Letters of Sayyid ʿUthman to C. Snouck Hurgronje as a Reflection of Their Relationship 387 Nico Kaptein 12 Law School and Racial Prejudice Cees Fasseur 13 Recordings of Indonesian Music and Speech in the Snouck Hurgronje Collection (1905-1909) in Leiden. Preliminary Remarks 416 Wim van Zanten 312 405 PART 4 Professor in Leiden 14 Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje in Istanbul (1908). Letters and an Unknown Diary Preserved in the Leiden University Library 473 Jan Schmidt 15 Snouck Hurgronje and the Indonesian Students in Leiden Willem Otterspeer 503 VII Contents PART 5 Posthumous Appreciations 16 Snouck Hurgronje and the Study of Islam G.W.J. Drewes 519 17 The Scientific Work of Snouck Hurgronje Johannes Pedersen 535 18 Orientalist or Master Spy. The Career of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje 546 Peter Hamburger PART 6 Snouck Hurgronje Translated and Annotated 19 Before Mecca. The Jeddah ‘Diary’ of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, 1884-1885 573 Translated and annotated by Jan Just Witkam 20 Meccan Voices. Proverbs and Sayings from Mecca. Collected and Explained by Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje 753 Translated and annotated by Jan Just Witkam Index of Names 871 List of Illustrations1 1.1 Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje as an honorary member of the Oriental Society in the Netherlands and former chairman at its eighth congress in Leiden from 6 until 8 January 1936, a few months before his death on 26 June 1936. Source: The Library of Enno Littmann 1875-1958, Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Tübingen (Leiden: E.J. Brill 1959, illustration opposite p. XVIII). 1.2 1.3 1.4 1 Portrait of Amin b. Hasan al-Halawani al-Madani al-Hanafi (d. 1898), photograph taken during his visit to Leiden at the occasion of the sixth International Orientalists’ Congress in September 1883 by Jan Goedeljee, Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 18.097 S 48.10. Snouck Hurgronje at home in his study on Witte Singel 84a in Leiden in circa 1910, photograph taken by Jan Goedeljee Jr., Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 8952 L 5: 18(6). Indonesian cartoon of Snouck Hurgronje as a Godfather puppeteer popping up in internet searches. Souce: http://2.bp. blogspot.com/-cn_DPNVZVg4/ UFxc2jIOz7I/AAAAAAAAAKk/ 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 cgxSvGH6JdI/s1600/snouck_ hourgronje_the_godfather.jpg A portrait of Snouck Hurgronje next to Johan Rudolph Thorbecke and Cornelis van Vollenhoven, underneath Prince William of Orange, in the stained-glass window in the main hall of the Leiden Academy building. Photograph by Roy Bernabela. Portrait of Hoesein Djajadiningrat, with his two “paranymphs,” at the occasion of his doctorate at Leiden University, 3 May 1913, conferred on him by his promotor Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Source: internet. Professor Hoesein Djajadiningrat and colleagues at the opening of the Law School in Batavia, 1924. Source: Tropenmuseum, (https://commons.wikimedia. org/wiki/File:COLLECTIE_TROPENMUSEUM_Professoren_ der_Rechts_Hogeschool_in_Batav i a _ T M n r _ 6 0 0 1 2 567 . j p g ) , https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode Photograph of Snouck Hurgronje’s second spouse Siti Sadijah and their son Raden Yusuf, circa 1907, from the legacy of Snouck Léon Buskens and Annemarie van Sandwijk are grateful to Roy Bernabela and Peter Groen of Woordvorm, as well as to Arnoud Vrolijk of the Leiden University Library for their help in locating, providing and editing some of the illustrations included in this volume. IX List of Illustrations 1.9 1.10 1.11 2.1 2.2 Hurgronje, Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 26.399: 5. “The mountain of ʿArafat during the yearly gathering of the pilgrims (seen from the South).” Photograph taken by Sayyid ʿAbd al-Ghaffar b. ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Baghdadi al-Tabib, circa 1888. Source: Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, Bilder aus Mekka (1889), plate 13. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje and his successor Arent Jan Wensinck accompanying crown prince Saʿud b. ʿAbd al-ʿAziz and his retinue on their visit to the Leiden University Library on 13 June 1935, Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 8952 L 5:14. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (standing at the extreme left) during the expedition to Pidië, a mountainous area in Northeastern Greater Aceh, commanded by Governor J.B. van Heutsz (sitting to the left) in June 1898. Leiden University Library KITLV 31910. Portrait of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, made between 1889 and 1902 in the studio of Charls & van Es & Co, Batavia. Reproduced from the frontispiece of Th.W. Juynboll’s biographical essay (Haarlem 1902). Retrieved from Delpher on 03-12-2021, https://resolver.kb.nl/resolve? urn=MMUBVU02:000003935: 00001 Snouck Hurgronje’s wax cylin- 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 4.1 ders in their original boxes, after their return from the Phonogrammarchiv in Vienna in 1996. They are now registered in Leiden University Library as MS Leiden Or. 27.131 (© 1997. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Beginning of the anonymous Dutch translation of chapter 4 of the second volume of Snouck Hurgronje’s Mekka, as it appeared in De Locomotief (Semarang) in 1889 or 1890. Original in Ter Lugt Collection, Leiden (© 2021, Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Handwritten dedication by alBatanūnī to Snouck Hurgronje on the title page of his Ḥiǧāz travelogue (Cairo 1329/1911). Original in Leiden University Library [832 B 3] (© 2021, Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Shaykh Aḥmad Zakī Yamānī (left) and some of his guests (from left to right): Léon Buskens (Leiden), Muḥammad Benchérifa (Rabat), Jan Just Witkam (Leiden), Wimbledon, 4 December 1993 (© 1993. Photo by Al-Furqān Foundation). Title-page of Toost-epos, a facetious scatological poem in 151 Dutch hexameters, composed by C. Snouck Hurgronje, dated Leiden, Saturday 22 May 1880. Original in Leiden University Library, MS Or. 8952, the Snouck Hurgronje Archive (© 2021, Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Early motorised pilgrims’ trans- X 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12 List of Illustrations port (1926). Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 12.288 B 28. Imposing buildings in the Ḥārat al-Shām quarter. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 12.288 J 28. Market street in Jeddah, 1926. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 12.288 B 18. The new seawater desalination plant in Jeddah (left) and an old prison building (right). Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 12.288 B 31. A water seller of African origin. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 12.288 N 12. The French, British, and Austrian consulate as seen from the Dutch consulate in Ḥārat alShām. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 26.363 02. Coffee-house next to the Dutch consulate. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 12.288 B 26. Official parade of the maḥmal through the streets of Jeddah. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 26.363 09. Children during Eid al-Fitr. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 12.288 M 35. Children during Eid al-Fitr. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 12.288 M 36. A dancing boy during Eid al-Fitr. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 12.288 M 39. Slaves with musical instruments. 4.13 4.14 4.15 4.16 4.17 4.18 4.19 5.1 Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 12.288 N 17. Bagpipe-like instrument played by a (slave?) “musician from Jeddah.” Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 12.288 O 7. Young man in traditional Hijazi garb in the courtyard of the Dutch consulate. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 12.288 O 3. Pilgrim agents (wukalāʾ) in front of the consulate. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 18.097 S 16.1. Policeman. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 26.368 G 25. Chairman of the commercial council (majlis al-tijāra). Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 26.368 G 44. Front, from left to right: Dutch consul Scheltema, Ahmed Ratip Paşa, governor-general of the Hijaz, Dr. Yusuf Bey (physician in the sanitary installations). Second row, from left to right: dragoman of the Dutch consulate, an Arab retainer of the governor-general. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 18.097 S 16.2. Sultan ʿAbd al-ʿAziz b. Saʿud of Najd and the qāʾimmaqām of Jeddah, ʿAbdallah ʿAli Rida, December 1925. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 12.288 J 04. “Utensils common in Mecca.” Ethnographic objects collected XI List of Illustrations 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 by Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje in Mecca in 1884-1885, or sent afterwards at his request by P.N. van der Chijs, lithograph plate first published in 1888 in Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie 1 (1888) as plate XII. Also published in: Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, Bilder-Atlas zu Mekka (1889) as plate XXXVIII. “Pedlar of sweets (Djiddah).” Photograph taken by Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje in the courtyard of the Dutch consulate in Jeddah in 1884. Source: Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, BilderAtlas zu Mekka (1889), plate XXIV. “Town crier and middleman (Djiddah).” Photograph taken by Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje in the courtyard of the Dutch consulate in Jeddah in 1884. Source: Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, Bilder-Atlas zu Mekka (1889), plate XXIV. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje as ʿAbd al-Ghaffar in Mekka, early 1885, photograph in all probability taken by Sayyid ʿAbd al-Ghaffar b. ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Baghdadi al-Tabib. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 8952 L 5: 18(4). Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (standing in the back), consul J.A. Kruyt (sitting in the middle), vice-consul P.N. van der Chijs (sitting to the right of the consul, second from right), and Europe- 5.6 5.7 5.8 11.1 an employees of the consulate and of Van der Chijs’ trading company, enjoying a moment of leisure and drinks in the courtyard of the Dutch consulate in Jeddah in autumn 1884. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 26.404: 1. Portrait of a seated woman in Mecca, photograph probably taken by Sayyid ʿAbd al-Ghaffar b. ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Baghdadi al-Tabib, circa 1886-1888. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 26.403: 79. “Nubian female slave.” Photograph of a black enslaved woman taken by Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje or by Sayyid ʿAbd al-Ghaffar b. ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Baghdadi al-Tabib, probably in Mecca, circa 1885-1887. Print glued on cardboard with a caption in German, probably for display at Snouck Hurgronje’s lecture in Berlin on 5 March 1887. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 26.403: 8 recto. “Pilgrims from Ambon, Kei and Banda. At left the son of an Ambonese man with a Meccan woman.” Photograph taken by Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje in the courtyard of the Dutch consulate in Jeddah in 1884. Source: Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, Bilder-Atlas zu Mekka (1889), plate XXX. Letter of Snouck Hurgronje, 8 November 1913. Leiden Universi- XII 13.1 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 19.1 19.2 List of Illustrations ty Library, MS Leiden Or. 8543. Lids of the boxes of the wax cylinders in the Snouck Hurgronje collection. Photograph by Wim van Zanten and published with permission of the Special Collections Department, Leiden University Library. The first page of Snouck Hurgronje’s Istanbul Diary. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 7114,19. f. 18a. Hotel Messeret in Istanbul, summer 1908. Snouck Hurgronje is standing on the left, wearing a fez. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 12.288 CHS H 1. A draft letter in Turkish by Snouck Hurgronje to Mehmed Hayruddin, Istanbul, 9 August 1908. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 8952 A 0526 007. A letter of Mehmed Hayruddin to Snouck Hurgronje, Stuttgart, 27 March 1910. Leiden University Library, MS Leiden Or. 8952 A 0528 001. Portrait by C. Snouck Hurgronje of Yūsuf Qudsī, the dragoman of the British Consulate in Jeddah, 1884. Original photograph in MS Leiden Or. 26.403, No. 31. (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Portrait by C. Snouck Hurgronje of Tawfīq Pāshā, the Qāʾim-maqām, ‘mayor’ of Jeddah, taken in the courtyard of the Dutch consulate in Jeddah, 1884. Original photograph in MS Leiden Or. 12.288 P, No. 9. (© 2021. Photo by 19.3 19.4 19.5 19.6 19.7 19.8 Jan Just Witkam). Portrait by C. Snouck Hurgronje of Muḥtasib, a neighbour in Jeddah, the son of one of the ringleaders of the Jeddah massacre of 1858. Original photograph in MS Leiden Or. 26.403, No. 16. (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Portrait by C. Snouck Hurgronje of the nephew of the Sultan of Pontianak, Jeddah, September 1884. Original photograph in MS Leiden Or. 26.403, No. 64. (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Sī ʿAzīz b. al-Shaykh al-Ḥaddād, with his black slave, photographed by C. Snouck Hurgronje in the courtyard of the Dutch consulate in Jeddah, late 1884. Original photograph in MS Leiden Or. 12.288 O, No. 9. (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Auguste Hugues Charles Huber (1847-1884) in Arab dress. Studio portrait taken on 3 May 1883 by Mathias Gerschel, Strasbourg. Original print in the archive of the Société de Géographie, Paris, P. 929. Photo by Bibliothèque nationale de France. Maḥmūd, the servant of Charles Huber, photographed by C. Snouck Hurgronje in the courtyard of the Dutch consulate in Jeddah, late 1884. Original photograph in MS Leiden Or. 12.288 P, No. 15. (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Title-page of Zanzibar. Étude sur la constitution physique et médi- XIII List of Illustrations 19.9 19.10 19.11 19.12 19.13 19.14 cale de l’ile. Medical doctor’s thesis by F.J. de Lostalot, Paris 1876, with handwritten dedication to C. Snouck Hurgronje, dated Jeddah, 2 January 1885. Original in Leiden University Library [896 A 9]. (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Portrait said to be Shaykh ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ al-Zawāwī, photographed by C. Snouck Hurgronje in the courtyard of the Dutch consulate in Jeddah, late 1884. Original photograph in MS Leiden Or. 12.288 P, No. 21. (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Raden Aboe Bakar Djajadiningrat, photographed by C. Snouck Hurgronje in the courtyard of the Dutch consulate in Jeddah, late 1884. Original photograph in MS Leiden Or. 12.288 P, No. 19. (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). First page of Snouck Hurgronje’s Jeddah ‘diary’. MS Leiden Or. 7112, p. 1. (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Snouck Hurgronje’s Jeddah ‘diary’ covering end 1884 and beginning 1885, change of address. MS Leiden Or. 7112, p. 43 (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Snouck Hurgronje’s Jeddah ‘diary’ covering 5-10 January 1885, with the note on circumcision. MS Leiden Or. 7112, p. 44 (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Portrait of 1883 or 1884 from the studio of Georges Saboungi in 19.15 19.16 19.17 19.18 19.19 Beirut of Ḥabīb ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Zāhir (1833-1896). Original in Leiden University Library, MS Or. 12.288 J, No. 23. (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). The house and office of vice-consul, merchant and shipping agent P.N. van Chijs (1855-1889) in Jeddah. Photographer unknown. Original photo in MS Leiden Or. 12.288 J, No. 25 (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Portrait by C. Snouck Hurgronje (ʿAbd al-Ghaffār Efendi) of his co-photographer ʿAbd al-Ghaffār b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Baghdādī, Ṭabīb Makka, possibly taken in Mecca in early 1885. Original in MS Leiden Or. 26.403, No. 16 (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Group portrait of European expats in Jeddah between September and December 1884, photo possibly taken by C. Snouck Hurgronje with a time shutter. Photo taken in the courtyard of the Dutch consulate in Jeddah. Original in MS Leiden Or. 26.404, No. 2 (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Portrait by C. Snouck Hurgronje of ʿUthmān Nūrī Pāshā, in 18821886 the Ottoman governor of the Ḥiǧāz, taken in Jeddah possibly on 18 January 1885. Or the portrait was taken later by ʿAbd al-Ghaffār, ṭabīb Makka. Original in MS Leiden Or. 26.404, No. 6 (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). The house of Mūsā Baghdādī in XIV 19.20 19.21 19.22 19.23 19.24 List of Illustrations Jeddah, as seen from the sea side. Photographer unknown. photo taken c. 1885-1887. Original in MS Leiden Or. 26.404, No. 7 (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Police station in Ṣafā, Mecca, next to the Ḥaram. Photo taken in 1886 by ʿAbd al-Ghaffār, ṭabīb Makka. Original photo in MS Leiden Or. 26.404, No. 12. (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Portrait by C. Snouck Hurgronje of Prince Nūr, the son of the Sultan of Bacan, his uncle (left) and his imam Aḥmad. Jeddah, 16 October 1884, courtyard of the Dutch consulate in Jeddah. Original photo in MS Leiden Or. 26.404, No. 16, also reproduced in Bilder-Atlas (1888), plate XXXI. (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Group portrait by C. Snouck Hurgronje of pilgrims from Aceh, taken in the courtyard of the Dutch consulate in Jeddah, October 1884. Original photo in MS Leiden Or. 26.404, No. 120, also reproduced in Bilder-Atlas (1888), plate XXXVI (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Group portrait by C. Snouck Hurgronje of an orchestra of black slaves in Jeddah, late 1884. Original photo in MS Leiden Or. 26.404, No. 44. (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Letter from Charles Huber’s servant and assistant Maḥmūd to 19.25 19.26 19.27 19.28 19.29 the French and Dutch consulates in Jeddah, dated 4 October 1884. Original document in MS Leiden Or. 7111, folder 20. (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Letter from Sī ʿAzīz b. al-Shaykh al-Ḥaddād, dated Mecca, 21 September 1884, to the Consul-General of Holland in Jeddah (J.A. Kruyt). Original document is MS Leiden Or. 8952 A 111-1. (Photograph Leiden University Library). Letter from Ḥabīb ʿAbd alRaḥmān al-Zāhir, dated Jeddah 8 Muḥarram 1302 (28 October 1884) to the Consul-General of Holland in Jeddah. Original document is MS Leiden Or. 8952 A 1112, document 4. (Photograph Leiden University Library). Letter from Raden Aboe Bakar Djajadiningrat to C. Snouck Hurgronje, dated 5 February 1885, possibly from Mecca, to Jeddah. Original document is MS Leiden Or. 8952 A 9, document 2. (Photograph Leiden University Library). Letter from al-Sayyid ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAlawī al-ʿAṭṭās to al-Shaykh ʿUthmān b. al-Marḥūm alShaykh Muḥammad al-Rāḍī in Mecca. Apparently written in Jeddah, on 17 December 1884, and possibly never sent. Original in MS Leiden Or. 8952 A 88, No. 1. (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Polite letter from Muḥammad b. XV List of Illustrations 19.30 20.1 20.2 Aḥmad al-Mashshāṭ in Jeddah to ʿAbd al-Ghaffār Efendi (C. Snouck Hurgronje) in Mecca, dated 30 July 1885. Original in MS Leiden Or. 8952 D 95, No. 2. (Photograph Leiden University Library). Polite letter from Ṣāliḥ alBassām in Jeddah (?) to alShaykh ʿAbd al-Ghaffār Efendi (C. Snouck Hurgronje) in Mecca, dated 23 April 1885. Original in MS Leiden Or. 8952 A 117, No. 1. (Photograph Leiden University Library). The first proverb in Carlo Landberg, Proverbes et dictons du Peuple Arabe. Matériaux pour servir à la connaissance des dialectes vulgaires. Vol. 1. Leyde: E.J. Brill, 1883, p. 1. (Image Michigan University Library). Portrait of Amīn al-Madanī. Lithograph by Abraham Jacobus Wendel (1826-1915) after a photographic portrait by Jan Goedeljee (1824-1905). Frontispice of Het Leidsche Orientalistencongres. Indrukken van een arabisch congreslid. Vertaald en ingeleid door C. Snouck Hurgronje. 20.3 20.4 20.5 20.6 Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1883. Original in Leiden University Library [1434 G 46] (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Carlo Landberg and Amīn alMadanī signing together as participants of the 6th International Congress of Orientalists, Leiden. Archive of the Congress, Leiden University Library, Or. 3105, vol. 1, p. 181, detail (© 2021. Photo by Jan Just Witkam). The first letter from ʿAbd alRaḥīm Efendī Aḥmad to Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, dated 25 December 1885. One of the subjects on the letter is proverbs. MS Leiden Or. 8952 A 52-01-p. 1. (© 2021, Photo by Jan Just Witkam). Beginning of C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekkanische Sprichwörter und Redensarten. Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1886, p. 9. (image Michigan University Library). End of C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekkanische Sprichwörter und Redensarten. Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1886, p. 118. (image Michigan University Library). Notes on Contributors John R. Bowen is the Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and recurrent Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. He has been studying Islam and society in Indonesia since the late 1970s, and since 2001 has worked in France, England, and North America on problems of pluralism, law, and religion, and in particular on contemporary efforts to rethink Islamic norms and civil law. His most recent book on Asia is Islam, Law and Equality in Indonesia: An Anthropology of Public Reasoning (Cambridge, 2003). His Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves (Princeton, 2007) concerned current debates in France on Islam and laïcité. Can Islam be French? (Princeton, 2009) treated Muslim debates and institutions in France and appeared in French in 2011. A New Anthropology of Islam from Cambridge and Blaming Islam from MIT Press appeared in 2012, and European States and their Muslim Citizens: The Impact of Institutions on Perceptions and Boundaries appeared from Cambridge in late 2013. In 2016 he published On British Islam: Religion, Law and Everyday Practice in Shariʿa Councils (Princeton). He also writes regularly for The Boston Review. His current work concerns ways to analytically span regions in studying law, religion (Islam), and the state. Léon Buskens studies and teaches law and culture in Muslim societies from an anthropological and historical perspective, for which he holds a chair at Leiden University. He tries to understand how people shape Islam in everyday life, in relation to other practices and to religious teachings. Since 1984 he has been studying Morocco, in 2005 he first visited Indonesia, another strong interest. He also publishes on the history of oriental studies and anthropology, especially on the European study of Islamic law. From 2016 he has been the director of the Netherlands Institute in Morocco (NIMAR), a branch of Leiden University in Rabat. Kees van Dijk is Emeritus Professor of the History of Modern Islam in Indonesia and a former senior researcher of the KITLV/Royal Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (Leiden). The title of his PhD thesis was Rebellion under the Banner of Islam: the Darul Islam in Indonesia (KITLV 1981). Among his publications are A Country in Despair. Indonesia between 1997 and 2000 (KITLV 2001), The Netherlands Indies and the Great War, 1914-1918 (KITLV 2007), together with Jean Gelman Taylor Cleanliness and Culture. Indonesian Histories (KITLV 2011), together with Jajat Burhanudin Islam in Indonesia: Contrasting Images and Interpretations (Amsterdam University Press 2013), and together with Nico J.G. Kaptein Notes on Contributors XVII Islam, Politics and Change. The Indonesian Experience after the Fall of Suharto (Leiden University Press 2016). Wim van den Doel (1962) received his PhD from Leiden University in 1994 with a dissertation on the colonial civil service on Java. He is Professor of History at Leiden University and Erasmus University Rotterdam and Professor of Humanities and Technology at the Technical University Delft. From 2007 to 2016 he was dean of the Faculty of Humanities of Leiden University and from 2017-2020 member of the Executive Board of the Dutch Research Council. Since 2020 he has been dean of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Universities Alliance. In 2021 he published a biography of Snouck Hurgronje: Snouck. Het volkomen geleerdenleven van Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (Amsterdam: Prometheus). Cees Fasseur (1938-2016), a lawyer and a historian, was Professor of the History of Southeast Asia, in particular of Indonesia and its connection with Dutch history, at Leiden University. He published several books on the Dutch colonial past in Indonesia, such as De indologen (The Indologists), De weg naar het paradijs (The Way to Paradise) en Indischgasten. For a number of years he held the post of senior adviser at the Ministry of Justice. He was awarded the triennial prize for biography from the city of Dordrecht for Wilhelmina. On 14 December 2001 he delivered his farewell address “Rechtsschool en raciale vooroordelen,” (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Balans, 2001). Thereafter he continued his career as a judge at the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam. He retired in 2006. His memoirs Dubbelspoor were published posthumously in 2016. Ulrike Freitag is a historian of the modern Middle East and director of the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in conjunction with a professorship at Freie Universität Berlin (since 2002). She studied history and Middle Eastern studies in Bonn, Damascus and Freiburg from where she obtained her PhD in 1990. After teaching at the Open University, Hagen, she became a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 1993. Freitag has published on modern Syrian historiography (Geschichtsschreibung in Syrien 1920-1990, Hamburg 1991) and on Indian Ocean Migrants and State Formation in Hadhramaut (Leiden 2003). Her main research interest is the history of the Arabian Peninsula in a translocal perspective, with a particular focus on urban and cultural history. Her latest book is A History of Jeddah. The Gate to Mecca in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Cambridge, New York 2020). XVIII Notes on Contributors Peter Hamburger holds a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University. He retired from the Australian Public Service in 2007 as head of the Cabinet Division in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and was awarded a Public Service Medal for work on building a relationship between the public services of Australia and Indonesia on cabinet and policy coordination process. Nico J.G. Kaptein (PhD, 1989) is Professor of Islam in Southeast Asia at Leiden University, the Netherlands. His research deals with the relations between the Middle East and Southeast Asia in the religious domain, both from a historic and a contemporary perspective. Currently, he is working on a biography of Ahmad Khatib of Minangkabau (1860-1916). He is also section and contributing editor for Southeast Asia of the authoritative Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE Edition (Leiden: Brill, 2007-). Jean Kommers is a cultural anthropologist. His dissertation was about the civil service in the Dutch East Indies. Later he remained interested in colonial history and published about Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjèhers and Mekka. Another field of interest, closely related to colonial history, is the formation of images about (exotic) peoples. At the moment he participates in a research project about ‘Gypsies’ (University of Sevilla, Spain: paradojas de la ciudadanía – https://paradojas. hypotheses.org/) and is studying the development and literary presentation of images and stereotypes of ‘gypsies’ in nineteenth-century juvenile literature of four different national traditions: Dutch, English, French and German. Gerard van Krieken (1944) studied in Leiden and Tunis. He earned his doctorate with a dissertation entitled Khayr al-Din et la Tunisie, 1850-1881 (Leiden 1976). He published, among other works, Corsaires et marchands, les relations entre Alger et les Pays-Bas, 1604-1830 (Paris 2002), Syb Talma (1864-1916), een biografie (Hilversum 2013), and together with Paul Brood and Jan Spoelder, De wijde wereld van Cornelis Pijnacker, 1570-1645 (Zwolle 2018). Furthermore, he took care of the publication of Cornelis Pijnacker’s Historysch verhael van de steden Thunes, Algiers ende andere steden in Barbarien gelegen (Den Haag 1975), of which a French translation appeared in Algiers in 2015 entitled Description historique des villes de Tunis, d’Alger et d’autres se trouvant en Barbarie (1626). Notes on Contributors XIX Michael Laffan is Professor of History and Paula Chow Professor of International and Regional Studies at Princeton University, where he has taught since 2005. His previous work has looked at Muslim nationalism and Dutch orientalism across the Indian Ocean. A forthcoming book addresses questions of Malay identity and loyalty during moments of regime change in the same arena. Willem Otterspeer (1950) studied history and philosophy in Utrecht. From 1979 he worked at Leiden University, first as curator at the Academic Historical Museum and later as Professor of University History. Between 1979 and 1990 he contributed as a cultural critic to daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad, and later he also wrote for De Volkskrant. In 1992 he earned his doctorate with a dissertation about Leiden University in the nineteenth century, entitled De wiekslag van hun geest. This book served as the foundation for a four-volume history of Leiden University which was completed in 2021. He also published biographies of philosopher G.J.P.J. Boland (1995), historian Johan Huizinga (2006) and writer W.F. Hermans (two volumes, 2013 and 2015). Annemarie van Sandwijk (1981) holds a double master’s degree in History and in Theology and Religious Studies from Leiden University (both cum laude). For several years she worked as an editor at the Leiden University Centre for the Study of Islam and Society (LUCIS) and the Netherlands Interuniversity School for Islamic Studies (NISIS). In 2016 she co-edited, with Léon Buskens, Islamic Studies in the Twenty-first Century. Transformations and Continuities (Amsterdam University Press). Currently she works as a speechwriter at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Jan Schmidt obtained his doctorate in 1992 at Leiden University, and retired as lecturer in Turkish Studies from the same university in 2016. He wrote numerous monographs and articles on Ottoman history and literature and is the author of a four-volume catalogue of the Turkish manuscripts kept in Dutch libraries. In 2018 he published The Orientalist Karl Süssheim Meets the Young Turk Officer İsma’il Hakkı Bey. Two Unexplored Sources from the Last Decade in the Reign of the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II with Brill. Jan Just Witkam (Leiden, 1945) studied Arabic, Persian and Modern History of the Middle East in Leiden (MA in 1972). In 1989 he defended his Leiden PhD thesis on the life and work of the Mamluk physician Ibn al-Akfani. From 1974 to 2005 he was XX Notes on Contributors keeper of Oriental manuscripts (and since 1980 also of Oriental printed books) in Leiden University Library. He wrote an inventory of the Leiden Oriental manuscripts, now published in 25 volumes (http://www.islamicmanuscripts. info/inventories/leiden/index.html) with the 26th volume in preparation. From 2002 to 2010 he was Professor of Islamic Manuscript Culture at Leiden University. Presently he is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Islamic Manuscripts, published since 2010 by Brill in Leiden. He has published abundantly about Islamic manuscripts and books, and since 1985 also regularly about the life and work of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. Daniël van der Zande (Amsterdam, 1949) is an independent scholar. Wim van Zanten was staff member of the University of Malawi from 1967-1971 and from 19712007 of the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University. He has done fieldwork on music in Malawi (1969-1971, 2008) and Indonesia (1976-present). From 1997-2001 he was programme director of the “Performing Arts in Asia: Tradition and Innovation” research programme of the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden. He has published widely on music of West Java. His most recent publication is Music of the Baduy People of Western Java (Leiden: Brill, 2021) which is about music and dance of the indigenous group of the Baduy and includes audio-visual examples that are available online. For further information and publications see https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1406-3884.