Hidden Worlds of Islam: Western Christians Investigating Islamic Traditions (1400-1850)

COURSE TUTOR: Alastair Hamilton (Honorary Fellow, Warburg Institute)

GUEST LECTURER: Jan Loop (University of Copenhagen) 

Venue: Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU. 
NB: this course will be taught in person - we are unable to offer online access or recorded sessions.

The object of this course is to examine certain aspects of Western acquaintance with Islam and the changes and developments in the Islamic world by which they were affected. The course will concentrate on the mosque and the pilgrimage to Mecca. 

One of the first Christian encounters with the mosque was in Jerusalem in the twelfth century. Western pilgrims were fascinated by buildings which were closed to them, but were closely associated with the history of Judaism and Christianity. The mosques were thus a challenge and objects of curiosity which the more enterprising pilgrims discovered ingenious ways of entering. While the mosques of Egypt were rigorously closed to non-Muslims in the early modern period, the mosques of certain countries – above all Turkey and Persia – admitted Western visitors under particular conditions. To the detailed reports produced in the sixteenth century by European antiquarians such as Pierre Gilles, intrigued by buildings which had once been Christian basilicas, were added, in the seventeenth century, ever more elaborate illustrations, by Grelot and other draughtsmen. In the early nineteenth century there was a major change as the ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, welcomed European engineers. He allowed Pascal Coste not only to study the Islamic monuments but asked him to design mosques himself. Muhammad Ali and his successors were followed by the Turkish sultans. By the end of the century European technicians were participating in the restoration, and sometimes the radical rebuilding, of the Muslim heritage of Cairo and Istanbul.  

The other great manifestation of Islam, the hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca, had been observed by Western visitors over the centuries. What attracted them most was the mysterious character of the Holy Places of Mecca and Medina, which could only be visited by Muslims, and the spectacular departure of the pilgrims. The departure of the hajj was dominated, above all in Cairo, but also, at times, in Damascus and Istanbul, by the mahmal, a palanquin borne by a camel which towered above the procession and was surrounded by crowds trying to touch it. But what was the mahmal? the visitors wondered. What did it contain and what were its origins? It was not until the nineteenth century that certain answers were given to these questions. And what about the Holy Places themselves? Gradually more and more Western orientalists managed to visit them, either genuinely converted, or pretending to have been converted, to Islam, and published detailed reports not only about the topography but also about daily life in Mecca and Medina. These reports, like Edward Lane’s work on the ‘modern’ Egyptians, brought the Islamic world far closer to the West than anything that had preceded them. 

The course should appeal to students with an interest in Islam and its history, in mosques, in 'Orientalist' painting, in relations between Islam and the West, and in Western travellers in the Middle East. 

Registration and payment (for four classes taught across four consecutive days): 

• Standard: £110
• Warburg/SAS staff & fellows / external students / unwaged: £100 
• SAS students / LAHP-funded students: £90
• Warburg students: £55

Schedule:
11.00am-1.00pm: Tuesday-Friday, 31 October-3 November 2023

Class 1 - Tuesday 31 October: THE MOSQUE. WESTERNERS AS SPECTATORS. 
The mosque as seen (and visited) by pilgrims to Jerusalem from the late twelfth to the fifteenth century. Challenges and objects of curiosity. Western antiquarians, such as Pierre Gilles, and Turkish mosques in the sixteenth century. Western draughtsmen, Grelot and others, producing illustrations of mosques in Turkey and Persia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 

Class 2 - Wednesday 1 November: THE MOSQUE. WESTERNERS AS CREATORS. 
The increasing accessibility of the Egyptian mosques in the nineteenth century. The encouragement given by Muhammad Ali to Western engineers and architects - Pascal Coste is an example - to produce detailed plans and drawings of the Islamic monuments. The  Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l’Art Arabe and the engagement by Muhammad Ali’s descendants of architects such as Max Herz to restore Mamluk Cairo. The employment of architects - Gaspare Fossati and his brother - by the Ottoman sultan to restore the mosque of Haghia Sofia in Istanbul. 

Class 3 - Thursday 2 November: THE HAJJ. THE MAHMAL, 'AN EGYPTIAN PUZZLE'. 
Western descriptions and representations of the mahmal from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. How much of it did Western visitors actually manage to see before the nineteenth century? What did they know about it and what did they think it contained? How did it affect Western ideas of Islam? The exploration of its origins by nineteenth century orientalists such as Burckhardt and Lane. Its abandonment after the First World War. 

Class 4 - Friday 3 November: THE HAJJ AND THE WESTERN VIEWS OF MECCA 
Images and depictions of Mecca known in the West in the early modern period. The first non-Muslim visitors to Mecca (Varthema in the sixteenth and Pitts in the seventeenth centuries) and the illustrations of Mouradja d’Ohsson’s work on the Ottoman administration in the late eighteenth century. The Western travellers of the nineteenth century, such as Burckhardt and Burton, who managed to visit and write about the Holy Cities.  

Image: 'The mahmal painted by Richard Dalton, in his Musaeum Graecum et Aegyptiacum (London 1751)