THE PROBLEMS OF MUHAMMADANISM 



BY DUNCAN BLACK MACDONALD 



[Duncan Black Macdonald, Professor of Semitic Languages, Hartford Theological 

 Seminary, Hartford, Connecticut, b. 1863, Glasgow, Scotland. M.A. Glas- 

 gow, 1885; B.D. ibid. 1888; Findlater Scholar, 1887; Black Fellow, 1889-91; 

 Post-Graduate, University of Berlin, 189(^91, 1893. Tutor, University of Glas- 

 gow, 1891-92; Assistant Minister in Parish of Strachur, Scotland, 1892 ; In- 

 structor in Semitic Languages in Hartford Theological Seminary, 1892 ; 



Haskell Lecturer, University of Chicago, 1905-06. Member of Royal Asiatic 

 Society, American Oriental Society, Society of Biblical Literature. Author of 

 Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitutional Theory. 

 Muhammadan editor of Hastings Dictionary of Religion and Ethics; advising 

 editor of Hartford Seminary Concordance to Peshitta Old Testament, being prepared 

 at Urumia, Persia.] 



IN the great disadvantage which must accrue to me high 

 honor though it may also be in following the most eminent living 

 authority on the civilization of Islam, there is at least one point of 

 help. I need not spend time now in demonstrating that Islam is an 

 essential unity and that it is practically impossible to separate the 

 history of its religion from any other element in it. The whole social 

 complex in all its manifestations is religious and the religion of Islam 

 is Islam itself. We must frankly accept this and state our subject, 

 not as any impossible questioning on the history of a religion in our 

 narrow sense, but as a consideration of the problems as to the history 

 of the Muslim organism which still are left unsolved. 



Nor need I lay stress on the comparative impossibility of even 

 this subject in the time at my disposal. Problems are still thickly 

 sown in the path of the investigator of Islam. Not simply details 

 are undeveloped; broad trends and movements remain unconditioned 

 and inexplicable. The student finds an abundance of concrete facts, 

 reputed and otherwise ; but working hypotheses, not to speak 

 of demonstrable and demonstrated systems by which these facts 

 may be criticised, correlated, and explained, are conspicuously 

 lacking. Often the presumed facts, even, fail him. They are still 

 buried in Arabic sources, awaiting the special and rare genius which 

 can recognize and bring them forth. Such Arabic sources, too, are 

 so far only in part accessible. Of those which survived the storm 

 and stress of the Middle Ages, the raids and conquests of Timour and 

 Chingiz Khan, the unending civil conflicts of the Muslim states, a 

 comparatively small though rapidly increasing portion has yet 

 attained to print. All these elements in research, the disinterring 

 of manuscripts, the presenting of them to the world of scholars, the 

 examination and study of them for materials, and the final rearing 

 of the lofty historical structure, philosophizing and conditioning 



