PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
It is with considerable diffidence that I publish these pages; the subject with which they deal is so vast, and I have had to prosecute it under circumstances so disadvantageous, that I can hope but for small measure of success. When I may be better equipped for the task, and after further study has enabled me to fill up the gaps[1] left in the present work, I hope to make it a more worthy contribution to this neglected department of Muhammadan history; and to this end I shall be deeply grateful for the criticisms and corrections of any scholars who may deign to notice the book. To such I would say in the words of St. Augustine: “Qui hæc legens dicit, intelligo quidem quid dictum sit, sed non vere dictum est; asserat ut placet sententiam suam, et redarguat meam, si potest. Quod si cum caritate et veritate fecerit, mihique etiam (si in hac vita maneo) cognoscendum facere curaverit, uberrimum fructum laboris huius mei cepero.”[2]
As I can neither claim to be an authority nor a specialist on any of the periods of history dealt with in this book, and as many of the events referred to therein have become matter for controversy, I have given full references to the sources consulted; and here I have thought it better to err on the side of excess rather than that of defect. I have myself suffered so much inconvenience and wasted so much time in hunting up references to books indicated in some obscure or unintelligible manner, that I would desire to spare others a similar annoyance; and while to the general reader I may appear guilty of pedantry, I may perchance save trouble to some scholar who wishes to test the accuracy of a statement or pursue any part of the subject further.
The scheme adopted in this book for the transliteration of Arabic words is that laid down by the Transliteration Committee of the Tenth International Congress of Orientalists, held at Geneva in 1894, with the exception that the last letter of the article is assimilated to the so-called solar [[viii]]letters. In the case of geographical names this scheme has not been so rigidly applied—in many instances because I could not discover the original Arabic form of the word, in others (e.g. Mecca, Medina), because usage has almost created for them a prescriptive title.
Though this work is confessedly, as explained in the Introduction, a record of missionary efforts and not a history of persecutions,[3] I have endeavoured to be strictly impartial and to conform to the ideal laid down by the Christian historian[4] who chronicled the successes of the Ottomans and the fall of Constantinople: οὔτε πρὸς χάριν οὔτε πρὸς φθόνον, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ πρὸς μῖσος ἢ καὶ πρὸς εὔνοιαν συγγράφειν χρεών ἐστι τὸν συγγράφοντα, ἀλλ’ ἱστορίας μόνον καὶ τοῦ μή λήθης βυθῷ παραδοθῆναι, ἣν ὁ χρόνος οἶδε γεννᾶν, τὴν ἱστορίαν.
I desire to thank Her Excellency the Princess Barberini; His Excellency the Prince Chigi; the Most Rev. Dr. Paul Goethals, Archbishop of Calcutta; the Right Rev. Fr. Francis Pesci, Bishop of Allahabad; the Rev. S. S. Allnutt, of the Cambridge Mission, Dehli; the Trustees of Dr. Williams’s Library, Gordon Square, London, for the liberal use they have allowed me of their respective libraries.
I am under an especial debt of gratitude to James Kennedy, Esq., late of the Bengal Civil Service, who has never ceased to take a kindly interest in my book, though it has almost exemplified the Horatian precept, Nonum prematur in annum; to his profound scholarship and wide reading I have been indebted for much information that would otherwise have remained unknown to me, nor do I owe less to the stimulus of his enthusiastic love of learning and his helpful sympathy. I am also under a debt of gratitude to the kindness of Conte Ugo Balzani, but for whose assistance certain parts of my work would have been impossible to me. To the late Professor Robertson Smith I am indebted for valuable suggestions as to the lines of study on which the history of the North African Church and the condition of the Christians under Muslim rule, should be worked out; the profound regret which all Semitic scholars feel at his loss is to me intensified by the thought that this is the only acknowledgment I am able to make of his generous help and encouragement. [[ix]]
I desire also to acknowledge my obligations to Sir Sayyid Aḥmad K͟hān Bahādur, K.C.S.I., LL.D.; to my learned friend and colleague, Shamsu-l ʻUlamāʼ Mawlawī Muḥammad Shiblī Nuʻmānī, who has assisted me most generously out of the abundance of his knowledge of early Muhammadan history; and to my former pupil, Mawlawī Bahādur ʻAlī, M.A.
Lastly, and above all, must I thank my dear wife, but for whom this work would never have emerged out of a chaos of incoherent materials, and whose sympathy and approval are the best reward of my labours.
Aligarh, 1896. [[xi]]