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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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