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

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[ies] 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)