Henry Stubbe & The Prophet Muhammad: Challenging Misrepresentation
About this ebook
Prophet Muhammad oe shows a consistent pattern of misunderstanding.
Until the nineteenth century, only one writer challenged that history: the
English physician Henry Stubbe (1632–1676), author of “Originall &
Progress of Mahometanism.” Neither an Orientalist nor a theologian,
Henry Stubbe approached Islam as a historian of religion, perhaps the first
in early modern Europe, arguing that the study of another religion should
rely on historical evidence derived from indigenous documents, and not
on foreign accounts. The result of his new historiographical approach was
a “Copernican revolution” in the study of the figure of Muhammad, the
Qur’an, and Islam. It shifted the focus from faith to scholarship. Had his
treatise been published, the course of Western understanding of Islam
might have been different.
About the author
Professor Nabil Matar was born in Beirut, Lebanon to Palestinian parents and studied at the American University of Beirut. In
1976 he completed his Ph.D. at Cambridge University and went on to teach at Jordan University, the American University of
Beirut, Florida Institute of Technology, and the University of Minnesota where he is currently Presidential Professor in the
English Department. Professor Matar’s research in the past two decades has focused on relations between early modern Britain,
the West, and the Islamic Mediterranean. He is author of numerous articles, chapters in books, and encyclopedia entries, and
Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 (Cambridge UP, 1998), Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (Columbia UP, 1999),
and Britain and Barbary, 1589–1689 (UP of Florida, 2005). His most recent publication is with Professor Gerald MacLean,
Britain and the Islamic World, 1558–1713 (Oxford UP, 2011). He is currently editing and introducing Henry Stubbe’s e
Originall & Progress of Mahometanism (forthcoming, Columbia UP, 2012/2013).
