Léon Buskens – författare

In recent decades, traditional methods of philology and intellectual history, applied to the study of Islam and Muslim societies, have been met with considerable criticism from rising generations of scholars who have turned to the social sciences, most notably anthropology and social history, for guidance. This change has been accompanied by the rise of new fields, studying, for example, Islam in Europe and Africa, and new topics, such as the role of gender. This collection surveys these transformations and others, taking stock of the field and showing new paths forward.

The Dutch scholar Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857–1936) was one of the most famous orientalists of his time. He acquired early fame throughhis daring research in Mecca in 1884-85, masterly narrated in two books and accompanied by two portfolios of photographs. As an adviser to the colonial government in the Dutch East Indies from 1889 until 1906, he was on horseback during campaigns of “pacification” and published extensively on Indonesian cultures and languages. Meanwhile he successively married two Sundanese women with whom he had several children. In 1906 he became a professor in Leiden and promoted together with colleagues abroad the study of modern Islam, meant to be useful for colonial purposes. Despite his considerable scholarly, political, and cultural influence in the first decades of the twentieth century, nowadays Snouck Hurgronje has been almost forgotten outside a small circle of specialists, since he mainly published in Dutch and German. The contributors to this volume each offer new insights about this enigmatic scholar and political actor who might be considered a classic proponent of “orientalism.” Their detailed studies of his life and work challenge us to reconsider common views of the history of the study of Islam in European academia and encourage a more nuanced “post-orientalist” approach with ample attention for cooperation, exchange, and hybridization.Contributors: