sistemul sau Întocmirea religiei muhammedane
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Sistemul sau ntocmirea religiei muhammedane by Dimitrie Cantemir; Virgil CndeaReview by: Keith HitchinsMiddle Eastern Studies, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Oct., 1980), pp. 271-272Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4282799.
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BOOK REVIEWS
Sistemul sau intocmirea religiei muhammedane. By Dimitrie Cantemir. Translation,
introduction, and notes
by Virgil Candea.
Bucure?ti:
Editura Minerva, 1977.
Pp.lxxiv
+
687.
Lei
38.
Dimitrie Cantemir,
Prince of Moldavia
(1710-11),
was
the founder of
oriental
studies
in
Rumania
and the
initiator of the
scholarly study
of Islamic doctrine
in
Russia. He
composed
his most
important
works on these
subjects during
his exile
in
Russia from
1711
until his death
in
1723.
His
European reputation
as
an orientalist
has largely rested upon his history of the Ottoman Empire, Incrementa atque
decrementa aulae
othomanicae, completed
in
1716
and
translated
into
English
(1734), French (1743), and German (1745).
But
Cantemir
was
also
the
author
of
other important works on Islamic society: a sophisticated study of Turkish music,
probably completed in 1704 in Constantinople, and an analysis of the Koran
and
the
Muslim
religious
tradition
entitled Curanus.
Cantemir apparently intended
Curanus
to form
part
of a
trilogy
on
the Ottoman Empire
to
be composed
first of
the
history,
then of the
study
of the Muslim
religion
and
finally,
of a
description
of
the
organization and institutions of the Muslim state (the Ottoman Empire,
which
he
tentatively entitled, De muhammedana religione, deque politico
musulmanae
gentis
regimine, but which was never written.
Curanus
was the
only part
of
the trilogy
to
be published during Cantemir s
ifetime.
It appeared in Russian at St. Petersburg in 1722 under the title, Kniga sistima
ili
sostoianie mukhammedanskiia religii. The number of copies seems to have been
limited, and perhaps for this reason the work remained practically unknown in the
West and
even
in
Russia until
after the Second World War. Although its basis
was the
Latin
manuscript, the Russian edition is not simply a translation. The significant
differences between the two texts suggest that Cantemir was continuously revising his
work as the translation (by others) proceeded.
The present Rumanian translation, Sistemul sau intocmirea religiei muhammedane,
is
based upon the Russian edition. It is divided into six books and subdivided
into
chapters. The first book describes in detail the life and
work of
Mohammed.
Although Cantemir rejects the divine mission of the pseudo-prophet ,
his tone
is
scholarly and occasionally even sympathetic. The second book analyzes the Koran,
which Cantemir calls a false work . He shows how its obscurities, contradictions,
and
general
lack of
order
are
proof of its human rather than divine origin.
In
the
next
book
he discusses the prophecies of Mohammed and Muslim apocalyptical beliefs,
demonstrating at the same time his considerable knowledge of Arabic terminology.
Book
four, entitled Mohammedan theology , treats at length a variety of subjects
such as
fatalism
in
Islam, belief in angels and devils, the creation of the world, and
Adam
and
Eve, information based for the most part upon what Cantemir had heard
and
seen
in
Constantinople. The same source is the basis for Book five, which
describes Muslim religious practices. The final book is devoted to Turkish customs of
marriage, divorce, and burial, the orders of dervishes, and the Turkish educational
system.
Cantemir was
severely handicapped
in
writing his study in Russia, because of the
absence of
Arabic, Persian, and Turkish manuscripts and books. Consequently, he
had
to rely largely upon his memory of what he had read and experienced in
Constantinople.
His
principal
source
was the
Koran,
which he had
read
in
both
the
original
and
Western translations and commentaries, notably Refutatio Alcorani by
Ludovico
Marracci
(Padua, 1698). Cantemir does not seem to have had a copy of the
Koran with him in
Russia,
to
judge by the frequent inaccurate citations of chapter
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272
MIDDLE EASTERN
STUDIES
and
verse. For information about the Islamic tradition he also had recourse
to Risdle-i
Muhammediye,
a
collection
of
verses
expounding
Islamic
doctrine
composed
in the
fifteenth century. He supplemented
these
sources with such Western accounts as
Rycaut s The
Present State of the
Ottoman Empire, his own history, and,
for doctrinal
refutations and
comparisons, the Bible and numerous classical and modern writers. A
source of extraordinary
value was his direct contact
with the Islamic
world during the
nearly two decades
he lived in Constantinople.
After two and a half centuries
Sistemul retains
its value for the student
of Islam and
the Ottoman
Empire. Cantemir s information about
the Islamic world
is rich, and his
interpretation of its nature, despite
inaccuracies
of detail, is fundamentally
correct.
His discussion of such matters
as Muslim apocalyptic
beliefs and the
orders
of
dervishes and his judgments
on the
language
and style
of the Koran
demonstrate
a
sure
command of his
subject.
Those parts of Sistemul which, in effect,
constitute
Cantemir s
memoirs of his life in
Constantinople,
are a unique source of information
about the customs and beliefs of the population at large. Of particular nterest for the
scholar
is
Cantemir s
attitude toward
an alien civilization. Although
he took the
position
of the
believing Christian
that there could
be no other true faith,
he
could,
nonetheless,
approach Islamic civilisation
with a full appreciation
of its achievements.
He was thus representative of
the new generation
of intellectuals in south eastern
Europe who were humanist and
increasingly rationalist.
His skepticism, therefore,
was
often directed
not at Islam specifically but
at the myths and
superstitions of
religion
in
general. Cantemir s
attitude toward the
Ottoman Empire was at variance
with
that generally found in
Western works of
the time. In a sense, he viewed
Ottoman
society
from
the inside, from the perspective
of the inhabitant of south
eastern Europe who had had a long and intimate contact with it. Conscious of the
decline
of
the Empire, though
he did not understand
the causes and thought of the
process
in
terms of the loss of
territory, he nonetheless
rejected the idea of the
inherent inferiority
of the East
and the natural superiority of Western
civilization.
The present edition is scholarly
in every respect.
The painstaking translation is the
work of Virgil Candea, the author
of numerous pioneering
studies on the intellectual
history
of
the Rumanian principalities
and of south
eastern Europe in the seventeenth
and
early
eighteenth centuries. He has provided
a comprehensive
introduction,
extensive notes on
the text,
indexes
of
names and
places, of principal
themes
and
terms relating to the cultural
history of the Islamic
world, and of works used by
Cantemir, many of which he himself has identified, and a bibliography.
KEITH HITCHINS
People
of
Sale: Tradition and
Change
in
a Moroccan
City, 1830-1930 by
Kenneth L.
Brown. Manchester:
Manchester
University Press, 1976. Pp.
xx, 265.
Nedroma: L Evolution d une
Medina by Gilbert Grandguillaume. Leiden: E. J.
Brill,
1976.
Pp. xvi, 195.
Both these books are studies of the social and economic evolution of a North African
city
in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Sale
is a Moroccan
port city
with
a
long
and
famous history as a center of
Islamic
learning,
international
trade,
and
Atlantic
piracy.
Nedroma, located in the
hilly interior of
northwestern Algeria, is a
smaller city
whose
place
in
Maghribi history has
been
far more parochial. Yet
both cities
experienced
a
similar set of
transformations as a result
of European
economic
penetration and colonial
rule. These
transformations and
the ways in which they
affected social
relations and
cultural values are the
principal subjects of
both books.
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