CMR 17: Dean Mahomet, Edward Lane and more British authors from the 19th century

The great CMR project (Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History) has now published volume 17, on Britain, the Netherlands and Scandinavia in the 19th century. Volume 16 was on (Southeast) Asia and had 5 entries written by me. For volume 17 I wrote on Bilderdijk, Salomon Keijzer, J.B.J. van Doren and Snouck Hurgronje. Herewith a cooperation of more than 10 years has come to an end.

Volume 17 has been dedicated for 490 of its 605 pages to Britain with a fine selection of scholars. On the cover is Edward Henry Palmer, professor of Arabic in Cambridge, dressed in Arab style. There is a good introduction to Edward Lane, the giant in lexicography and description of common Egyptians. Pages 330-355 offer the stories of five Victorian ladies travelling in the Ottoman world. A special entry gives an analysis of novelists: not the Arab scholars alone or theologians, but quite a mixed genre of authors. It is also not all about Muslim-Christian relations. In fact, an author like Edward Lane lived and showed as a Muslim, but about his personal faith not much can be said, at least he was not the quite negative and proud 'orientalist' as suggested by Edward Said (who maybe never read his work but wrote about him!)

 A quite intriguing figure is Dean Mahomet (1759-1851), born in Bihar, India. He became as a young boy of 11 the private servant of an English Officer. So he came to Cork, Ireland in 1786, where he was baptised an Anglican and married a local lady. A grandson even became an Anglican priest. In 1800 he moved to London where he opened Indian restaurants. In 1815 he opened in Brighton 'Mahomet's Bath' on King's Road. He wrote in the first years after his arrival in Ireland a book with the long title of The travels of Dean Mahomet, a native of Patna in Bengal, through several parts of India, while in the service of the  Honourable the East India Company written by himself, in a series of letters to his friend. The book was published in 1794, but his conversion to Anglcanism nor his Irish marriage are mentioned here. He only gives a sophisticated and elegant introduction to his native country to British people. His biographer, Michael H. Fisher, who also wrote the CMR entry compares him to Oloudah Equiano (1745-1797), the abolitionist who converted to Christianity as an instrument for his fight against slavery and also wrote an autobiography. For Fisher, Dean Mahomet felt himself a 'member of several cultural communities, with expertise in traditions associated with Muslims, Christians, and Hindus.' So to say: an early, proud and well-informed product of global culture.