David Samuel Margoliouth

D.S. Margoliouth

David Samuel Margoliouth, FBA (17 October 1858, London – 22 March 1940, London) was an orientalist. He was briefly active as a priest in the Church of England. He was Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford from 1889 to 1937.

His father, Ezekiel, had converted from Judaism to Anglicanism, and thereafter worked in Bethnal Green as a missionary to the Jews; he was also close to his uncle, the Anglican convert Moses Margoliouth. Margoliouth was educated at Winchester, where he was a scholar, and at New College, Oxford where he graduated with a double first in Greats and won an unprecedented number of prizes in Classics and Oriental languages, of which he had mastered Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Armenian and Syriac, in addition to Hebrew. His academic disseration, published in 1888, was entitled Analecta Orientalia ad Poeticam Aristoteleam. In 1889 he succeeded to the Laudian Chair in Arabic, a position he held until he retired, from ill health, in 1937. He received the degree Doctor of Letters (D. Litt.) from the New College, Oxford, in July 1902.

Many of his works on the history of Islam became the standard treatises in English, including Mohammed and the Rise of Islam (1905), The Early Development of Mohammedanism (1914), and The Relations Between Arabs and Israelites Prior to the Rise of Islam (1924).

He was described as a brilliant editor and translator of Arabic works, as seen in The Letters of Abu'l-'Ala of Ma'arrat al-Nu'man (1898), Yaqut's Dictionary of Learned Men, 6 vol. (1907–27), and the chronicle of Miskawayh, prepared in collaboration with H. F. Amedroz under the title The Eclipse of the 'Abbasid Caliphate, 7 vol. (1920–21). Some of David Samuel Margoliouth's studies are included in The Origins of The Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book edited by Ibn Warraq.

He identified a business letter written in the Judeo-Persian language, found in Dandan Uiliq, northwest China, in 1901, as dating from 718 C.E. (the earliest evidence showing the presence of Jews in China).

He was a member of the council of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1905 onwards, its director in 1927, was awarded its triennial gold medal in 1928, and was its president 1934-37.

Egyptian Poet Laureate Ahmed Shawqi dedicated his famous poem, The Nile, to Margoliouth.

Margoliouth on the Pre-Islamic Arabic Poetry

An article written in a polemical tone speaks of D.S. Margoliouth's "fabulous conspiracy theor[y]"; an "(in)famous theory" that "the poems we know of as pre-Islamic were actual forgeries of a later Islamic period."

Similarly, the Pakistani Islamic scholar Javed Ghamidi spoke of "the recent campaign to cast aspersions on the relevance and reliability of the whole corpus of classical Arabic literature of the Jahiliyyah period which began with ‘Usul al-Shu‘ara al-‘Arabi’ by the famous orientalist D.S. Margoliouth..."

However, a look at D.S. Margoliouth's own writings on Pre-Islamic Arabic poetry reveals that his views were not so black and white as has been claimed in, for instance, the above-mentioned examples, but in fact had shades of gray which indicate scholarly caution and reserve in the face of paucity of data.

In his Mohammed and the Rise of Islam (1st Edition, G. P. Putnam's Sons: New York etc., 1905), Margoliouth wrote: "The language of the Koran was thought by experts to bear a striking likeness to that of the early poetry: and though for us it is difficult to pass an opinion on this point, seeing that the early poetry is largely fabrication modelled on the Koran, we may accept the opinion of the Arabs." (p. 60)

In an article in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1915), Margoliouth writes: "The relation of this Qur'anic style to the verse and rhymed prose of classical Arabic is an enigma which cannot at present be solved." (Vol. VIII, p. 874)

And this is how Margoliouth concluded his famous essay The Origins of Arabic Poetry (in: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1925, pp. 417-449:

"If on the question whether Arabic versification goes back to immemorial antiquity or is later than the Qur'an it seems wisest to suspend judgment, the reason lies in the bewildering character of the evidence that is before us. We are on safe ground when we are dealing with inscriptions; and the Qur'an can be trusted for the condition of the Arabs to whom it was communicated in the Prophet's time. But for the history of Arabic verse we have to go to other authorities, who for the most part treat of times and conditions of which they themselves had no experience, and whose training had caused them to assume much that necessarily misled them. In judging their statements we can carry skepticism too far, but we also may be too credulous." (p. 449)

Margoliouth on the Application of Higher Criticism to the Koran

From: The Moslem World, Volume 20, Issue 3 (July 1930), p. 247:

"The question is sometimes asked whether Islam is faced with the problems which confront Judaism and Christianity in the Higher Criticism. The answer is that so short a time elapsed between the production of the Qur’an and its becoming stereotyped that the question of genuineness is restricted within very small compass. On the other hand, the doubts which are connected with the Higher Criticism and concern the historicity of Biblical characters and events could not fail to have their repercussion in Islam, whose sacred book so largely repeats what is contained in the Christian Scriptures. If, for example, it is held that neither Abraham nor Ishmael can be regarded as historical characters, serious consequences arise for those passages in the Qur’an wherein the two are connected with the building of the Ka‘bah, and other deeds and sayings are ascribed to them."

However, it may be mentioned that with the publication of the works of John Wansbrough and other scholars inspired by his approach, Margoliouth's above-cited statement, to the extent that it speaks about the early production of the Koran, should not be considered unchallenged.

Works

• Lines of Defence of the Biblical Revelation; Hodder and Stoughton, 1900; 2nd ed. 1901.
• Mohammed and the Rise of Islam. 1905.
• Umayyads and 'Abbasids. 1907.
• The Early Development of Mohammedanism. 1914.
• Yaqut's Dictionary of Learned Men. 7 vols. 1908-1927.
• The Poetics of Aristotle; translated from Greek into English and from Arabic into Latin. (Hodder and Stoughton, 1911 ISBN 9789333679183)
• The Kitab al-Ansab of ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Muḥammad al-Sam'ani. Leyden: E. J. Brill, 1912.
• Mohammedanism. 1912.
• The Table-talk of a Mesopotamian Judge. 2 vols. 1921-1922.
• The Eclipse of the Abbasid Caliphate. 1922.
• The Relations Between Arabs and Israelites Prior to the Rise of Islam. Schweich Lecture for 1921. 1924.
• Lectures on Arabic Historians, delivered before the University of Calcutta, February 1929. Byzantine series, 38. Calcutta, 1930 (later reprint: New York City: Burt Franklin).
• Catalogue of Arabic Papyri in the John Rylands Library, Manchester. Manchester, 1933

External links

• Britannica online article
• on-line (pdf) versions of five of his works at muhammadanism.org