Prophet of Reason: Science, Religion and the Origins of the Modern Middle East

by Peter Hill

Overview

'An outstanding intellectual biography.' Eugene Rogan

In 1813, high in the Lebanese mountains, a thirteen-year-old boy watches a solar eclipse. Will it foretell a war, a plague, the death of a prince? Mikha’il Mishaqa’s lifelong search for truth starts here. Soon he’s reading Newtonian science and the radical ideas of Voltaire and Volney: he loses his religion, turning away from the Catholic Church. Thirty years later, as civil war rages in Syria, he finds a new faith – Evangelical Protestantism. His obstinate polemics scandalise his community. Then, in 1860, Mishaqa barely escapes death in the most notorious event in Damascus: a massacre of several thousand Christians. We are presented with a paradox: rational secularism and violent religious sectarianism grew up together.

By tracing Mishaqa’s life through this tumultuous era, when empires jostled for control, Peter Hill answers the question: What did people in the Middle East actually believe? It’s a world where one man could be a Jew, an Orthodox Christian and a Sunni Muslim in turn, and a German missionary might walk naked in the streets of Valletta.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780861547364
Publisher:	Oneworld Publications
Publication date:	06/11/2024
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Peter Hill is a historian of the modern Middle East, specialising in the Arab world in the long nineteenth century. He is the author of Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda (2020) and has published articles in Past & Present, the Journal of Arabic Literature, and Journal of Global History.

Editorial Reviews

05/27/2024

Hill (Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda), an assistant professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Northumbria University, centers this accomplished study of religious change in 19th-century Syria on diplomat Mikha’il Mishaqa (1800–1888), who served as vice-consul for the United States in Damascus from 1859 to 1870. As Hill points out, Mishaqa lived through nearly a century of upheaval in Syria that included the Ottoman government’s efforts to “centralize and rationalize rule,” Egypt’s occupation, and the increased influence of Western powers. Against this backdrop, Mishaqa abandoned the Greek Catholicism into which he was born for Enlightenment-inspired skepticism at age 18, and converted to evangelical Protestantism at age 48, swayed by American missionaries and religious texts that used “rationalist” approaches—arguing, for example, that certain biblical prophecies had come to pass by citing archaeological evidence. Hill places Mishaqa’s faith journey in the context of a “new religiosity” emerging in Syria that was marked by a burgeoning “public sphere” of newspapers and periodicals in which “controvers between religious and intellectual standpoints” were discussed, as well as the growing acceptance of faith as a matter of individual choice. Rigorous research buttresses the portrayals of Syria’s sociopolitical climate and Mishaqa’s intellectual life, and Hill includes illuminating excerpts from Mishaqa’s own religious tracts and the texts he was influenced by. Historians of the Middle East have plenty to gain from this. (June)

Publishers Weekly

'This accomplished study of religious change in 19th-century Syria... Hill includes illuminating excerpts from Mishaqa’s own religious tracts and the texts he was influenced by. Historians of the Middle East have plenty to gain from this.' Publishers Weekly

'A masterful and captivating book that rescues one of the greatest thinkers of nineteenth-century Syria from obscurity. Mikha'il Mishaqa bursts from the pages as a three-dimensional character and a pioneer in the debates on secularism and religious freedom in the modern Arab world. An outstanding intellectual biography.' Eugene Rogan, author of The Arabs

'In this gripping new exploration of religion, reason, and cultural transformation, Peter Hill brilliantly recreates the many lives and worlds of an Arab renaissance man. Combining meticulous research with original, nuanced insight and a novelist’s eye for detail, Hill brings to life the nineteenth-century Middle East in all its richness. In the process, he reminds us that modernity has many origins and takes many forms.' Andrew Arsan, author of Interlopers of Empire

'Deeply researched and engagingly written, Prophet of Reason gives us the turbulent life of a remarkable individual... Peter Hill’s sympathetic and beautifully contextualised study is at once a gripping biography and an intellectual history of how religious faith and doubt, legacies of rational thinking both local and far-flung, and human networks—contentious and affectionate—were fluid shapers of a history we too often view as set in stone.' Marilyn Booth, Khalid bin Abdullah Al Saud Professor for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World

'While most of the scholars writing about Syria in the nineteenth century speak about "sectarianism", they barely take the religious beliefs and the communitarian belonging of individual actors as seriously as Peter Hill does with this original and emphatic biography of Mikha'il Mishaqa. Through Hill's approach, the life of this well-known figure of Ottoman Syria appears as an extraordinary and exemplary testimony to the social and intellectual dynamics of the early Nahda.' Bernard Heyberger, author of Hindiyya, Mystic and Criminal, 1720-1798

'It has taken over 150 years for Mikha’il Mishaqa to find his historian, and it is Peter Hill. Hill paints a riveting and transformative view of religion and its discontents in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire... This much-needed study breathes new life into the field, and it offers a compelling and human account of the life and times of an Ottoman thinker who has remained thus far elusive to scholars... This book will make readers think in completely new ways about Christianity, Islam and indeed the history of religion itself in the making of the modern Middle East.' John-Paul Ghobrial, author of The Whispers of Cities

'Prophet of Reason is an enthralling and impeccably researched account of the life of Mikha’il Mishaqa, a man at the centre of the shifting religious and political movements of nineteenth-century Levant. Peter Hill has produced a milestone of a book, laying bare Mishaqa’s only too human journey from faith to doubt and back again, all the while showing how the beast of modernity in Ottoman Syria encompassed not just science and secularism but newly divisive religious identities.' Yorgos Dedes, author of The Ascensions of Felicity

From the Publisher

'Deeply researched and engagingly written, Prophet of Reason gives us the turbulent life of a remarkable individual. But Mikha’il Mishaqa’s circuitous intellectual and professional path through the political, socioeconomic, and ideological ferment of nineteenth-century Ottoman Lebanon illuminates a larger canvas of independent spiritual restlessness and institutional rebellion that challenges received notions of "sectarian" identities and fixed orthodoxies in the shifting colonial world of the global nineteenth century. Peter Hill’s sympathetic and beautifully contextualised study is at once a gripping biography and an intellectual history of how religious faith and doubt, legacies of rational thinking both local and far-flung, and human networks—contentious and affectionate—were fluid shapers of a history we too often view as set in stone.'

Marilyn Booth

'A masterful and captivating book that rescues one of the greatest thinkers of nineteenth-century Syria from obscurity. Mikha'il Mishaqa bursts from the pages as a three-dimensional character and a pioneer in the debates on secularism and religious freedom in the modern Arab world. An outstanding intellectual biography.'

Eugene Rogan