Viewing the Islamic Orient

British Travel Writers of the Nineteenth Century

Pallavi Pandit Laisram

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317809296
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Geschichte des Nahen Ostens

The Islamic Orient studies the travel accounts of four British travelers during thenineteenth century. Through a critical analysis of these works, the author examines and questions Edward Said's concept of "Orientalism" and "Orientalist" discourse: his argument that the orientalist view had such a strong influence on westerners that they invariably perceived the orient through the lens of orientalism. On the contrary, the author argues, no single factor had an overwhelming influence on them. She shows that westerners often struggled with their own conceptions of the orient, and being away for long periods from their homelands, were in fact able to stand between cultures and view them both as insiders and outsiders.

The literary devices used to examine these writings are structure, characterization, satire, landscape description, and word choice, as also the social and political milieu of the writers. The major influences in the author's analysis are Said, Foucault, Abdel-Malek and Marie Louise Pratt.

Chapter 1

Viewing the Islamic Orient

In the nineteenth century the Western world viewed the Orient through a complex set of stereotypes. The Orient was seen as an exotic, erotic, frightening place, and also as an inferior, unprogressive place, forever trapped in time, simultaneously attractive and repulsive. Underlying these varied attitudes was the Western world’s binary vision of East and West. While the West regarded events, incidents, and inhabitants of the East as stereotypically “Oriental” — in a static manner — without reference to social, economic, and historical forces, it viewed itself contextually as a living, developing force. That is to say, it perceived the Orient as a place essentially different from the West and judged it by a standard it never applied to itself. This perception of the Orient, according to Edward Said can be defined as “a style of thought based upon the ontological and epistemological distinction between ‘the Orient’ and … ‘the Occident’” (Said 1978, reprinted 1979: 2).

Edward Said, the first major critic to pursue an extended study of this style of thought and representation, further defines Orientalism as “a system of knowledge about the Orient, an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness” (ibid., 6). The West did not try to understand the Orient; instead, it perceived the Orient in a way that suited its emotional needs and its political aims. Orientalism thus constitutes an imaginative “Western style for dominating … the Orient” (ibid., 3). In spite of Said’s harshness toward Orientalism, we should keep in mind the fact that this discourse is the natural outcome of contact between technologically superior nations and alien cultures which are technologically inferior, and toward which it has colonial intentions. Since Britain remained a world power throughout the nineteenth century, this attitude (“latent Orientalism” as Said calls it) did not change in spite of a growing body of knowledge (“manifest Orientalism”) about the Orient and its people.

Numerous political statements and literary works bear testimony to this binary view of East and West. But to generalize that all westerners shared this view of the Orient or to argue that westerners did not question this stereotypical view of the Islamic Orient would be to “Occidentalize” the West. In other words, by dismissing all nineteenth century Western works about the East as Orientalist, one would be making the same mistake as the Orientalists.

Did Western travelers to the Orient completely buy in to the traditional, culturally acceptable view of the East? To claim that they simply voiced Orientalist notions of the East would be to deny their individuality and to deny the impact that travel and separation from their homeland had on them. Close study of four popular and influential nineteenth century British travel writers — James Morier, Alexander Kinglake, Richard Burton, and Gertrude Bell — reveals that while they echoed the traditional, culturally defined view of the Islamic Orient, the space they occupied as travelers enabled them to imaginatively step out of their culture and to question its assumptions about the Orient. Their works reveal that though Orientalist discourse had an extremely strong influence on Englishmen, this discourse reflected a value system that was capable of being shaken and questioned. Therefore, to make generalizations about the Western perception of the Orient would be an oversimplification and an Occidentalization of Western cultures.

The social and political milieu of nineteenth century British travelers to the Orient can be best understood through a survey of the centuries’ old fear, hatred, and rivalry that the West felt toward the Islamic Orient. And to understand the unique position of British travelers to the Orient, it is necessary to examine French and British involvement with the Islamic Orient and to observe how their attitudes toward the Orient were based on their country’s political and economic needs.

Europe and the Islamic Orient

The Orientalist attitude as it manifested itself in the relationship between Europe and the Islamic Orient is very interesting because of the long history shared by these two worlds. The Islamic Orient was the West’s first point of contact with the East, and as the European empire expanded, the Islamic Orient also became a political lifeline to the Eastern colonies since it was the only land route to that part of the empire. At the same time, however, from the time of the rise and spread of Islam, Europeans have been aware of the threat the Islamic world posed psychologically and physically.

By its very definition Islam challenged Christian hegemony since it considered itself to be a completion and fulfillment of the message of Jesus, while the Christian world, not surprisingly, branded Islam a heresy, and proceeded to denigrate it. Muslims regard Christ as the forerunner of Prophet Mohammad, and, according to them, Christ had foretold the coming of the Prophet in the parable of the vineyard (Matthew 21: 33–44). The parable is about a householder whose son and servants were destroyed by the husbandmen to whom he let out his vineyard. When the householder sent his servant to collect the fruits, the husbandmen killed him, and one by one they murdered all the servants he sent, and, finally, even the son of the householder. The parable concludes that the householder will now “miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their season … the stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner.” These words are regarded as a reference to Ishmael, from whom the Muslims trace their descent. Ishmael is the “rejected” one, and the tribe of Ishmael constitutes the other “husbandmen” to whom the “vineyard” will be let out.

In addition, Muslims as rigid monotheists deny the Christian trinity and view Christ only as a prophet of God, not the son of God. They do not recognize his death and resurrection because, according to them, Christ was carried up to the heavens and someone else was crucified in his place; instead they regard Mohammad as the last prophet, and believe that to him alone did the Angel Gabriel fully reveal the word of God. And, to add insult to injury, they also believe that at the second coming Christ will come again to lead the faithful — Muslims — into heaven and will consign the rest to hell.

This psychological usurpation of the Christian covenant with God combined with the expansion of Islam through “forced” conversions as a result of the growing physical power of the Arab and the Ottoman empires in Europe (respectively) naturally created a sense of fear and endangerment in the Christian West.¹ Probably because of this sense of threat the West proceeded to caricature Islam and the Islamic Orient. Sixteenth century Europe, reeling under the might of Sultan Sulyman’s (1520–1566) armies, attributed everything vile and despicable to the Turkish national character. The English dramas of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, which are representative of the European vision of the Orient, provide ample proof of this attitude. Shakespeare’s plays, for example, associate lust, cruelty, and deceit with the Turks. In The Merchant of Venice the Duke begs Shylock to have mercy on Antonio because the losses “That have of late so huddled on his back [Antonio’s], / Enow to press a royal merchant down, / And pluck commiseration of [his state] / From brassy bosoms and rough hearts of flints, / From stubborn Turks, and Tartars never trained / To offices of tender courtesy” (IV. i. 28–33). The hard-hearted Turk is also considered deceitful in Much Ado About Nothing where Beatrice has “turn’d Turk” because she has broken her vow never to fall in love with a man. A more serious kind of treachery is associated with the Turks in Richard III when Hastings, justifying the assassination of Richard, says, “What? Think you we are Turks or infidels? / Or that we would against the form of law, / Proceed thus rashly in the villains death” (III. v. 41–43). Disorder and lawlessness, as can be seen from these words, are considered aspects of the Turkish character. Sexual lawlessness, or excess, too was commonly attributed to the Turks. In King Lear “poor Tom” (Edgar) claims that he “in woman out-paramour’d the Turk” (III. iv. 91–92).

The Orient was the “other” world — different, strange, frightening, and morally inferior to sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe; a world that constituted a threat to the Western Christian way of life. In Dekker His Dreame, 1620, Thomas Dekker fearfully describes

The Turkish Halfe-moone on her silver Hornes

Tosses the Christian Diadem, and adornes

The Sphaere of Ottoman with Starry light,

Stolne even from Those, under the Crosse who fight.

In this vision of the Armageddon, Dekker associates the religion and the martial aptitude of the Turks with the forces of evil. This fear of the “other” was dismissed, or at least contained, by the West through denigration of the enemy. The Orient, it appears, existed for Europe only in its imagination while the real Orient was disregarded. In a sense, as Said argues, even before the Orient was colonized it was dominated imaginatively (Said 1979: 49–72 passim).

Even the militarily superior and relatively secular nineteenth century West felt sufficiently uneasy about Islam to denigrate it and to indulge in character assassination of Prophet Mohammad. In his 1845 article (republished in an 1897 anthology), “The Mohammedan Controversy”, well-known Arabic scholar and historian of Islam, Sir William Muir, identifies the sense of threat that the Christian world continued to feel.

Mohammedanism is perhaps the only undisguised and formidable antagonist of Christianity. From all the varieties of heathen religions Christianity has nothing to fear, for they are but the passive exhibitions of gross darkness which must vanish before the light of the Gospel. But in Islam we have an active and powerful enemy; — a subtle usurper who has climbed into the throne under pretence of legitimate succession.… It is just because Mohammedanism acknowledges the divine original, and has borrowed so many of the weapons of Christianity, that it is so dangerous an adversary. The length, too, of its reign, the rapidity of its early conquests, and the iron grasp with which it has retained and extended them, the wonderful tenacity and permanent character of its creed, — all combine to add strength to its claims and authority to its arguments.

When the first tide of Mohammedan invasion set in towards the West, its irresistible flood seemed about to overwhelm the whole of Europe and extinguish every trace of Christianity, …; but though Europe, as a whole, successfully resisted the attack, yet Mohammedan settlements continued for centuries in various quarters to exist upon it. Again, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when Europe poured forth her millions into the East, the Crusaders established for a length of time in Syria and the Holy Land, a succession of posts which in the end were gradually swept away by Moslem arms. And finally in the fifteenth century, the closing conquest of Constantinople and establishment of the Turkish empire with its extended frontier towards Hungary and Italy, confirmed and perpetuated the last and most intimate relations which have taken place between Europe and Islam (Muir 1897: 2).

Although safe from any further Islamic invasions it seems that the memory of earlier conquests still lingers on in the West and survives in its perception of Islam as a conceptual opponent to the Christian religion. Islam, it appears, is still regarded as a living and dangerous corruption within Christianity, capable of quoting scripture like the devil to support its claims. An important aspect to observe in Muir’s argument is his association of Christianity with Europe; for instead of discussing how Christianity withstood Islam he analyzes how Europe resisted and fought against it. The world is thus divided not only along East–West lines but also Islamic–Christian in the sense that Christianity is regarded as Western and not Eastern. We will see James Justinian Morier making these same distinctions in The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan where he conveniently forgets that both the manners and the morals of Christianity arose in the Orient. Even the atheist Gertrude Bell once wrote in a letter home to her mother (in 1902) that she thought Christianity was beyond the Oriental mind.

The internal threat to Christianity from Islam is made visible in the way Mohammedans could and did question and challenge the Christian scriptures. Not only did the Muslims reinterpret the parable of the vineyard, they also identified discrepancies in the Christian faith as can be seen from Muir’s summary of some arguments from a seventeenth century Muslim tract in which a “learned Mohammedan, Ahmed Ibn Zain-al-abidin” challenged the validity of Christianity:

The fact that Christ did not punish the woman taken in adultery, is assumed as conclusive evidence that Christianity abrogated the Mosaical law.… Ahmed also gives the Catholics a sly hit about the Reformation: ‘It appears that you Christians oppose all prophets. You need not, therefore, reproach and reprobate the English as you do.… You say that when some cursed persons came who endeavoured to corrupt the Holy Scriptures, they were unable to succeed; but corrupted only those books, which their own reprobate doctors had written out; and these are the English, some of whom are now at Isfahan’ (emphasis mine ibid., 9).

Although, as a Christian, Muir should not be disturbed by the claim that Christianity abrogated the Mosaic law, the very presence of such criticism has clearly put him on the defensive. Such attacks also aggravated the difference between the Christian sects as can be seen from Ahmed Ibn Zain-al-abidin’s comment which suggests that the English cannot be regarded as Christians. Such controversies continued well into the nineteenth century as can be seen from Muir’s list of various published tracts: Controversial tracts on Christianity and Mohammedanism etc., 1824; Mizan–ul–Haqq, or, a Resolution of the Controversy between Christians and Mohammedans (in Persian), 1835; Controversial Epistles between the Rev. C.G. Pfander and Syad Rehmat Ali and Mohammed Kazim Ali (Urdu manuscript); Controversy between the Rev. C.G. Pfander and Moulavi Syad Ali Hassan (in Urdu), 1845; Khulasa–i–Saulat–uz–Zaigham: An Urdoo Tract in Refutation of Christianity, 1258 Hegiri; Answer to the above, 1845. Considering the currency of such debates it is not surprising that in Morier’s popular novel on Persia The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan, 1824, we are informed of the “Frank dervish” who engaged in discussion with the ulema (Muslim religious leaders, expounders of the Muslim law) to explain and defend the Christian faith.

Almost in a childish tit-for-tat manner Muir reduces the Prophet to a Machiavellian character rather than a spiritually inspired human being in his Life of Mohammad, 1858–61. Muir argues that Mohammad deliberately borrowed from, and was not just influenced by, different religions to appeal to all Arabs: “Had Mohammad, stern to his early convictions, followed the leading of Jewish and Christian truth, and inculcated upon his fellows their simple doctrine, there might have been a “SAINT MOHAMMAD”—more likely a “MOHAMMAD THE MARTYR” — laying the foundation stone of the Arabian Church.… Instead of all this, he, with consummate skill, devised a machinery [Islam].… To the Christian, he was as a Christian; to the Jew he became as a Jew; to the idolator of Mecca, as a reformed worshipper of the Ka’ba. And thus by unparalleled art and a rare supremacy of mind, he persuaded the whole of Arabia, Pagan, Jew, and Christian, to follow his steps with docile submission” (Muir 1912: xcviii). If Islam is a subtle enemy, Muir is an equally subtle aggressor! Under the guise of admiration of Mohammad’s superior skill he has reduced the Prophet to a self-aggrandizing, scheming politician.²

Knowledge, Power, and Orientalism

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries European knowledge of and exposure to the Islamic Orient increased and to some extent this created a restlessness with the inherited notions of the Oriental “other.” At the same time, however, Western advances in technology led to a shift in power from East to West serving only to heighten its prejudiced sense of superiority toward the Orient (as it definitely did in Muir’s case).

European awareness of the Islamic Orient during this period developed along both intellectual and diplomatic lines. In 1704 Antoine Galland translated the Arabian Nights into French and popularized it on the continent and in Britain. Religion and history were studied in detail by George Sale, translator of the Koran (1734), and the Arabic scholar Simon Ockley took the unusual step of using Arab sources to write his History of the Saracens in 1708–18. Diplomatic ties too were established between Europe and the Ottoman empire. In James Morier’s The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan we are informed that “numerous ambassadors … flock here [Turkey] to rub their foreheads against the threshold of the Imperial Gate. So many of these dogs are here, that it is necessary to put one’s trust in the mercies of Allah, such is the pollution they create” (Morier 1897: 547).

The general reading populace and the scholars of the West received one more source of information about the works of travelers and adventurers. Many Europeans learned Arabic and even undertook explorations in the Arabian peninsula, often financed by scholarly institutions or governments, and ultimately recounted their adventures in popular form. Carsten Neibuhr, who explored the southern part of the peninsula (now Yemen) in 1762, was a member of an expedition sponsored by King Frederick V of Denmark. His book, Travels in Arabia, 1772, became a source book for Edward Gibbon’s chapters on the Arabs in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (vol. V, 1788). Another famous explorer, John Lewis Burkhardt (a Swiss), successfully traveled to Mecca and Medina in 1814, masquerading as a Muslim convert. He was partially sponsored in that the Association for Promoting the Discovery of Africa (a British organization) gave him a grant to study at Cambridge in preparation for his travels. His account of his journey, Travels in Arabia, was posthumously published in 1829.

Lack of official backing did not deter explorers and scholars. Lieutenant Richard Francis Burton, scholar, explorer, espionage agent, took leave from the Indian army and traveled to Mecca and Medina in 1853, passing himself off as a Pathan. The itch for travel, and serious exploration, could not be contained and even Victorian women undertook long journeys in the Orient. The most famous of these is Gertrude Lowthian Bell who crossed the Syrian desert on camelback in 1905, accompanied only by Arabs.

Naturally, this close contact with the Islamic Orient led to a tension in the traditional attitude toward it. The Orientals were now no longer regarded only as a barbaric, inferior people, but instead were also perceived, by some, as intelligent, generous, human being...