Christiaan snouck hurgronje biography of michael

With this, he achieves great renown. Meanwhile, he prepares for another faraway journey. It has been very turbulent there for several years. In , he is appointed advisor to military governor Van Heutsz and in that capacity makes an important contribution to a bloody war, after which the Acehnese surrender. In addition, he remains consultant for Indonesian Affairs.

Christiaan snouck hurgronje biography of michael

Meetings and lectures are also held in this building. In , Snouck Hurgronje turns seventy and resigns as a professor. Then, together with his successor Prof. Wensinck, he founds the Oriental Institute. Aged almost 80, he dies in his home on Rapenburg. After his death, the entire collection of the Oriental Institute, including the extensive library, is housed in his home at Rapenburg Since then, this house has been known as the Snouck Hurgronje House, where the Leiden University Fund has been housed for over eighty years since his death.

It currently houses the Institute for the Dutch Language. The first volume describes the town and its rulers, while the second looks at day-to-day life in the town as Snouck found it in In addition, Snouck included an atlas with images to complete the set. The fact that the book was published in German made Snouck's research and ideas accessible to an international public for the first time, and made him internationally famous.

In later years, Snouck would publish several other overview studies that were received well. After the publication of Mekka , Snouck began a period of strong academic and political involvement with the Netherlands Indies. While in Mecca, he had encountered numerous Muslim pilgrims from the Netherlands Indies. At the time, this Dutch colonial possession was providing more pilgrims than any other region.

These encounters imbued in Snouck the conviction that the Netherlands, then confronting frequent revolts in the Islamic state of Aceh in northern Sumatra, should study Islam thoroughly if it wished to rule its colony without problems. Snouck convinced the Dutch Ministry of the Colonies to let him make a study trip to the Netherlands Indies, though they would not permit him to start work in Aceh.

During and Snouck first traveled through West and Central Java as a government advisor, tasked with making suggestions for the supervision of Islamic education and the functional improvement of Islamic councils. He produced numerous volumes of travel notes, which remain unpublished and have hardly been touched since they were deposited in his archives in Leiden.

The Java trip did, however, yield several well-received articles on Javanese customs and traditions. Finally, in , Snouck had the opportunity to travel to Aceh, now as a government advisor on Asian languages and Islamic law. The visit lasted just over six months, but Snouck was not allowed to travel outside the Dutch military safety zone, which restricted the scope of his fieldwork studies considerably.

Nevertheless, within three months he produced his report, the first two chapters of which were to form the basis for the two-volume government-sponsored publication De Atjehers —; published in English in as The Achenese. The other chapters of the original report outlined Snouck's iconoclastic ideas about Dutch policies on Aceh. Snouck proposed a departure from the wait-and-see policy that had dominated Dutch actions for over a decade, and advised the government to break the resistance with force in the district of Aceh and Dependencies and thus achieve pacification of the whole area.

The government was not enthusiastic about Snouck's proposal, however, and it would take several incidents in the area and a change of governor-general before his policy advice was implemented, starting in The policy of pacification by force turned out to be very effective, in no small part due to the military skills of Colonel J. Van Heutsz and Snouck cooperated closely in the field for several years.

The chemistry between them was good, and in terms of devising policies and executing them in the greater Aceh area the two men were complementary. Snouck pushed strongly for the appointment of Van Heutsz as civil and military governor of Aceh, as he felt Van Heutsz was the best man to complete the task of full pacification. Snouck himself was appointed as advisor for Indigenous and Arabic Affairs in , and in this position he was Van Heutsz's second-in command from to , though he was only in Aceh until At the end of this period the relationship between the two men turned sour.

Snouck did not agree with the way in which Van Heutsz pushed through the final submission of Aceh. In , the same year a final treaty heralded an end to hostilities between the Dutch government and the sultan-pretender, Snouck asked to be relieved from his post. His request was honored, but it meant the end of his involvement with matters of colonial policy for five years.

Only in , when the new Dutch governor of Aceh, G. Idenburg propose that Snouck be given a government commission to undertake an inquiry in Aceh. Snouck refused this offer, however, because, he claimed, his acceptance would cause Van Heutsz's resignation. Snouck, although not in agreement with Van Heutsz policy-wise, did not find Van Heutsz's resignation a viable option at that time.

In the following years, Snouck focused on the problem of pacification in other parts of the archipelago, and limited his political advice to those areas. He, however, did identify certain radical Muslim scholars Ulama that would only succumb to show of force. In Snouck became Colonel Van Heutsz 's closest advisor in "pacifying" Aceh, and his advice was instrumental in reversing Dutch fortune in ending the protracted Aceh War.

The relationship between Heutsz and Snouck deteriorated when Heutsz proved unwilling to implement Snouck's ideal for an ethical and enlightened administration. In , Snouck married another indigenous woman, with whom he had a son in Disappointed with colonial policies, he returned to the Netherlands the next year to continue a successful academic career.

In the foreword to Snouck Hurgronje's treatise Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th Century , [ 8 ] we come across the following:. Snouck Hurgronje] had an opportunity to stay for a year in Arabia, about half the year in Mekka, where he lived as a student of Muhammadan learning, and half the year in Jeddah. The result of his experiences is given in a work in German in two volumes, under the title "Mekka", published in — In an article published in July , [ 9 ] Arthur Jeffery elaborates further:.

Snouck Hurgronje, the Dutch Orientalist, who still lives at Leiden, though retired from his Professorship. His treatise on the origin and nature of the pilgrimage was written in , and in , after having spent five months in the Dutch Consulate at Jiddah, he journeyed to Mecca, where for six months he lived as a student of the Koran, and gathered the material for his monumental work on that city.

As Burckhardt had been mainly interested in the topography of the city, and the pilgrimage ceremony, Snouck Hurgronje interested himself particularly in a social study of the Meccan community, and so complete is his work that he has left nothing to later writers save to note the changes made by passing years. No other writer has so clearly pictured the condition of a society which is welded from an unusually varied conglomeration of nationalities, and which has been affected by the superstitions and prejudices of them all.

His picture of the blatant immorality of the city is blacker even than Burckhardt's, and is the evidence of a witness who certainly cannot be accused of prejudice against Islam". The fact that Snouck Hurgronje spent his time in Mecca as a convert to Islam has been criticized by some as "treachery and knavery. Snouck Hurgronje. This gentleman was a professor of Oriental studies at Leiden University.

In he spent six months in Jeddah and then went on to live in Mecca for six more months by adopting a fake Islamic name. The entry of Non-Muslims is prohibited within the precincts of the Haram [Mecca]. Yet the worthy Professor lived there under the false disguise of a Muslim and composed his German book "Mekka" 2 volumes on the way of life of the Meccan Muslims.

It is an exercise in futility to seek good will, empathy and fairness in the intentions of those who set about to explore the ceremonies of Islam and the conditions of the Muslims, wrapped in the garb of treachery and knavery. Such writings have resulted in creating the Dutch mental-image of Muslims as poly-haremic, licentious, barbaric and mis-managers.

According to L. Graf, [ 11 ] there was no other possibility for Snouck Hurgronje to be admitted to Mecca without becoming a practicing Muslim:. David Samuel Margoliouth , reminding people of the predicament of non-Muslim observers of the Meccan annual pilgrimage in the nineteenth century, makes the following remark: [ 12 ]. This is seconded by Arthur Jeffery in following terms: [ 13 ].

To further add to the controversy of Hurgronje's cultural appropriation to immorally gain access to a sacred site to perpetuate colonial interests, was his own racist remarks, "he i. After the Indian Mutiny of in which Muslims of India played a predominant role, the British tasked a civil servant, William Wilson Hunter , to submit a report on whether the Indian Muslims were "bound in Conscience to rebel against the Queen"?

Hunter completed his report which subsequently became an influential work titled The Indian Musalmans. In it, W. Hunter advanced the pragmatic view that a religious argument, or fatwa, could be used in favor of Her Majesty's Government as much as against it. He wrote: [ 15 ] "The Law Doctors of Northern Hindustan set out by tacitly assuming that India is a Country of the Enemy [Dar al-Harb], and deduce therefrom that religious rebellion is uncalled for.

The Calcutta Doctors [i. Islamic clerics] declare India to be a Country of Islam [Dar al-Islam], and conclude that religious rebellion is therefore unlawful. This result must be accepted as alike satisfactory to the well-to-do Muhammadans, whom it saves from the peril of contributing to the Fanatic Camp on our Frontier, and gratifying to ourselves, as proving that the Law and the Prophets can be utilized on the side of loyalty as well as on the side of sedition.

Snouck Hurgronje, however, did not agree with W. Hunter's conclusion. He was of the view that close acquaintance with Islamic theological literature on the issue of Dar al-Islam Vs. Dar al-Harb did not warrant Hunter's pragmatism. He wrote: [ 16 ]. If doctrine situated these eastern colonies in the Territory of War [Dar al-Harb] under the rule of a Protectorate, as is the case with colonial India under England and colonial Indonesia under the Netherlands, the statutory rule, which is not without exceptions, would allow Muslims to engage in warlike activities only with the permission of the leader of the Muslim community.

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