Henry Stanley, 3rd Baron Stanley of Alderley

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Henry Edward John Stanley , 3rd Baron Stanley of Alderley and 2nd Baron Eddisbury (born July 11, 1827 in Nether Alderley , Cheshire ; died December 11, 1903 there), was a British peer , diplomat , orientalist and translator who translated into English and published several writings from the Age of Discovery . He converted to Islam in 1859 and, as Lord Stanley, became the first Muslim in the House of Lords in 1869 .

family

Henrietta Stanley, Baroness Stanley of Alderley, 1860

Henry Edward John Stanley was on 11 July 1827, the family home of the Stanleys in Alderley Park in Nether Alderley in the county (England) Cheshire born. He was the eldest son of Whigs politician and MPs Edward John Stanley , later 1st Baron Eddisbury of Winnington and 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley. His mother was Henrietta Stanley, Baroness Stanley of Alderley , an English champion for the right of women to education. There was a great diversity in religious affairs in the family, with several clergymen of various denominations among the Stanley siblings and brothers-in-law. His brother, Algernon Charles Stanley, was bishop of the Roman Catholic titular diocese of Emmaüs and auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Westminster , while his brother Edward Lyulph Stanley, as an agnostic and deputy chairman of the London School Board , tried vigorously to limit the Church's influence on the school system. His sister Katharine Russell, Viscountess Amberley was the mother of the British philosopher Bertrand Russell .

Probably due to his hearing loss in his youth , Stanley was considered a bore or even downright stupid in the family environment. However, he received a first-class education at Eton College in Berkshire and Trinity College in Cambridge . Even the young Henry Stanley was interested in the Orient and the Arabic language, also influenced by the travel reports of explorers such as the Swiss Jean Louis Burckhardt . In 1846 he began studying Arabic in Cambridge .

Diplomatic service

In December 1847 Stanley joined the Foreign Office in a minor position under Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston , a friend of his father's, to qualify for diplomatic service . At that time the Oriental question was a major issue. While the majority of Victorian society took a reserved attitude towards the leaders of the Ottoman Empire and towards Islam , Lord Palmerston and some of his fellow party members appreciated the positive influence of Islam on Ottoman society and preferred it to Russia's drive for power. Palmerston valued the freedom of trade, religious tolerance, respect for personal freedom and freedom of the press, which he saw more safeguarded in the Ottoman Empire than in the Russian Empire . Stanley was attracted to Palmerston's charisma and intellect and shared his beliefs regarding Islam.

Lord Canning, around 1860

During his service in the Foreign Office, Stanley, like many of his contemporaries, began to doubt the previously undisputed Christian tenets of faith. More recent scientific discoveries refuted parts of the biblical tradition. Thus, by the Geology proved that the earth must be older than from a literal interpretation of the Bible is clear. His doubts resulted in Stanley no longer attending Christian services . Although postponed letters show that Stanley had contact with a Sufi sheikh in Paris as early as 1849 , he has not yet converted to the Islamic faith. When Lord Grenville took over the office of Foreign Minister in December 1851 , Stanley planned to leave the diplomatic service and go into politics as a MP. His father was able to convince him to go first as an attaché to the British embassy in Constantinople . There Lord Canning was envoy at the Sublime Porte and tried to prevent any Russian, Austrian and French influence on the Ottoman Empire and to integrate Turkey under Christian leadership into modern Europe.

Stanley's experience in the diplomatic service gradually led to a withdrawal from the Christian society of foreigners in Constantinople and to a growing disinterest in his work as a diplomat. He not only mastered several European languages, but also Arabic and a little Turkish and Farsi . He was also a member of several learned societies , including the Hakluyt Society and the Royal Asiatic Society . Stanley considered embarking on a scientific career, but remained in the diplomatic service through the 1850s. In 1853 he served at the consulate of the city of Varna, which was contested several times between Russia and the Ottoman Empire . From 1854 to 1859 he was legation secretary in Athens. From 1856 to 1858 he accompanied the British special envoy Henry Bulwer on his diplomatic missions. After the Crimean War and the Third Peace of Paris, Bulwer was the representative of Great Britain in overseeing the princely elections in the former Ottoman Danube provinces, the Principality of Moldova and the Principality of Wallachia , which were later united to form the Principality of Romania . Stanley's undisguised admiration for the Ottomans, which contradicted the sentiments of his compatriots and his colleagues and superiors, was described by Henry Bulwer in a letter to Stanley's father as "absurd and extravagant".

Convert to Islam

In the summer of 1858 Stanley returned briefly to London, but soon set out for Egypt, from where he toured Arabia. In January 1859 he visited Jeddah , but not Mecca , which non-Muslims are prohibited from entering. The details of Stanley's conversion to Islam are not known, but the trip to Jeddah seems to have strengthened his decision. Stanley quit diplomatic service in Athens and traveled through the Muslim world, from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. Although he tried to avoid contact with Europeans during his trip, newspaper reports occasionally appeared in England about his conversion to Islam and about his whereabouts. In the spring of 1859 it was reported that he had converted to Islam and had arrived in Suez from Mecca . At the beginning of May he arrived in the Moluccas , in the same month he visited Henry George Ward , the British governor of Ceylon, in a traditional Muslim dress with a fez . This occurrence received just as extensive and derogatory comments in the British press as the conversion to Islam, which was described as "betraying the faith of one's ancestors".

In 1859 Stanley had vehemently contradicted some of the newspaper reports published in England, presumably out of concern about the expected reactions on his return. The Times took over a report in a small local newspaper on November 16, 1859, in which even Stanley's conversion to Islam was denied. The further route brought him to Siam, Arabia, Egypt and several European countries back to London, where he arrived in April 1860.

marriage

During the 1860s, Stanley toured extensively Europe and the Ottoman Empire. In France he met Fabia San Roman, a Spanish Catholic. Allegedly she was the daughter of a Santiago Federico San Roman from Seville , her real identity was Serafina Fernandez y Funes, from Alcaudete in the Spanish province of Jaén . She had already married Ramon Perez y Abril on September 30, 1851. Nevertheless, Henry Stanley and Fabia entered into an Islamic marriage in Algeria in August 1862 . Because the legal validity of this marriage without the presence of a British consular officer was questionable, the wedding in Constantinople was immediately repeated, again under Islamic law. This first wedding was kept secret from the family by Stanley until his father's death, and the couple secretly lived together in Geneva for seven years .

The official wedding took place on November 6, 1869 in a London registry office. Because of his marriage to Perez, who only died in 1870, these marriages were considered bigamy . A church wedding was held on May 15, 1874 at the Roman Catholic Church of St. Alban in Macclesfield to meet Fabia's concerns about her Catholic faith.

Fabia Stanley appears to have suffered from significant mental health problems. So Stanley sought the advice of a Muslim clergyman with the intention of casting off his "socially incompatible and insane" wife. There was no separation; it was only after Stanley's death, in 1904, that Fabia Stanley was declared insane.

Fabia Stanley died on May 19, 1905, leaving three wills. As part of the inheritance dispute that followed, inquiries were made in her Spanish homeland, which made her first marriage known. Since at least the marriages concluded under Islamic law and civil law were bigamy, Lord Stanley is listed as unmarried in some lists of the Peerage of Great Britain .

House of Lords

Little is known about Stanley's activities during the 1860s, with the exception of his first book publications. Towards the end of the decade he planned to travel from Bengal to China but was deterred by the death of his father on June 16, 1869. Stanley became the first Muslim member of the House of Lords to succeed his father, Edward Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley . Stanley immediately publicly announced his marriage to Fabia and settled in Alderley Park. He then spent some of his time maintaining the Stanley family home and some of his duties in the House of Lords. As a Member of Parliament, he campaigned repeatedly and vigorously for the rights of the people in the British colonies. He had an extensive network of informants, primarily in British India , but also in other parts of the Empire. Stanley frequently questioned the legitimacy of penalties imposed on locals by British colonial institutions, called for the release of political prisoners, protested attacks by British soldiers, opposed corruption in the Indian judiciary and called for criminal justice reform.

On a larger scale, Stanley supported the efforts of the natives in the colonies for greater self-determination. He supported the demand for more Indians in public institutions and for democratic self-government. Stanley was one of the advocates of the newly formed Indian National Congress after 1885 . In 1882 he protested against the British occupation of Egypt . His political activities against aggressive British colonialism had little effect. Not least because of his hearing loss, which severely impaired communication in the House of Lords, Stanley was avoided. In addition, his thoroughly progressive beliefs did not fit into the political climate of his time, they only became acceptable in the 20th century.

Lord Stanley as a Muslim

Interior of the Old Church of St. Padrig in Llanbadrig

When Stanley inherited the title and seat in the House of Lords from his late father, his family emphatically questioned his loyalty to Britain and the royal family. This experience, as well as the reporting on the occasion of his conversion to Islam ten years earlier, may have been the reason why Stanley avoided publicly appearing as a Muslim. He viewed religion as a private matter and neither promoted nor publicly defended the Islamic faith. He was not involved in the increasing efforts since 1880 to create Muslim political and social organizations in Great Britain such as the Liverpool Muslim Institute, which opened in 1887 . As a landowner, however, he ordered the closure of almost all pubs on his land due to the ban on alcohol in Islam .

Instead, he devoted himself to foreign policy, agriculture, questions of tax law and, with considerable donations, Christian churches. He financed the renovation of several churches on Anglesey , St. Mary's Church in Bodewryd , Old Church of St. Padrig in Llanbadrig (1884), St. Dona's Church in Llanddona and St. Peirio's Church in Rhosbeirio . Some of the restorations were made under the condition that the redesign must include elements of Islamic art . When an educational reform in 1870 severely restricted or abolished religious education in state schools, Stanley, the landowner, objected to it. As a result, the schools on his land no longer received state subsidies and had to be supported by him from his own resources for the rest of his life. This commitment and his reluctance to publicly discuss questions of Islam have resulted in some newspapers calling him a Christian or even a Christian cleric after his death.

Lord Stanley, probably the Muslim name Abdul Rahman had assumed died on 11 December 1903 the 21st day of Ramadan , from pneumonia and was in the early hours of December 15 in the garden of Alderley Park in Nether Alderley , Cheshire buried . At the Islamic burial , the First Secretary of the Embassy of the Ottoman Empire was among the mourners, the prayers were performed by the Imam of the Embassy. A funeral service was held by William Henry Quilliam in the mosque of the Liverpool Muslim Institute .

After his death, Lord Stanley's title passed to his younger brother Edward Lyulph Stanley . Lord Stanley is considered to be the first Briton to convert to Islam to live as a Muslim in Great Britain and to die there.

Publications (selection)

Stanley's publications were made during his father's lifetime under the name Henry EJ Stanley, later as Lord Stanley of Alderley. Most of his books have been published by the Hakluyt Society , of which he was a member and vice president.

literature

  • Jamie Gilham: Britain's First Muslim Peer of the Realm: Henry, Lord Stanley of Alderley and Islam in Victorian Britain . In: Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 2013, Volume 33, No. 1, pp. 93-110, doi : 10.1080 / 13602004.2013.791190 .
  • Jamie Gilham: Loyal Enemies. British Converts to Islam, 1850-1950 . Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-937725-1 .
  • Peter Edmund Stanley: The House of Stanley. The History of an English Family from the 12th Century . Chapter XXXIX: The Stanleys of Alderley, Cheshire . Pentland Press, Edinburgh 1998, pp. 388-420, ISBN 1-85821-578-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d e Henry Edward John Stanley, 3rd Baron Stanley of Alderley , The Peerage. A genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain as well as the royal families of Europe , accessed January 31, 2018.
  2. ^ A b Jamie Gilham: Britain's First Muslim Peer of the Realm , p. 94.
  3. ^ A b Peter Edmund Stanley: The House of Stanley .
  4. ^ Bertrand Russell: The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell. 1872-1914 . Atlantic Monthly Press, Boston 1967, p. 35, OCLC 678639151 .
  5. ^ A b Jamie Gilham: Britain's First Muslim Peer of the Realm , p. 95.
  6. ↑ Jamie Gilham: Loyal Enemies. British Converts to Islam, 1850-1950 , p. 22.
  7. ^ A b Jamie Gilham: Britain's First Muslim Peer of the Realm , p. 96.
  8. ^ A b Jamie Gilham: Britain's First Muslim Peer of the Realm , p. 97.
  9. ↑ Jamie Gilham: Loyal Enemies. British Converts to Islam, 1850-1950 , p. 26.
  10. ^ Jamie Gilham: Britain's First Muslim Peer of the Realm , p. 98.
  11. ↑ a b c Jamie Gilham: Britain's First Muslim Peer of the Realm , p. 99.
  12. ↑ The Times , November 16, 1859, p. 9, quoted from Jamie Gilham: Britain's First Muslim Peer of the Realm , p. 99.
  13. ↑ a b c Romance of a Peerage , Star January 20, 1909, accessed January 31, 2018.
  14. ↑ a b Photographs of Nether Alderley, Cheshire, England, UK , accessed January 31, 2018.
  15. ↑ a b c Jamie Gilham: Britain's First Muslim Peer of the Realm , p. 106.
  16. ↑ a b Jamie Gilham: Loyal Enemies. British Converts to Islam, 1850-1950 , p. 48.
  17. ^ A b Jamie Gilham: Britain's First Muslim Peer of the Realm , p. 103.
  18. ^ A b Jamie Gilham: Britain's First Muslim Peer of the Realm , p. 104.
  19. ^ Jamie Gilham: Britain's First Muslim Peer of the Realm , p. 105.
  20. ↑ Jamie Gilham: Loyal Enemies. British Converts to Islam, 1850-1950 , p. 45.
  21. ^ Death of Lord Stanley of Alderley, reported in the Review of Religions from Quilliam's paper , Website The Woking Muslim Mission , accessed January 31, 2018.
  22. ^ A b Jamie Gilham: Britain's First Muslim Peer of the Realm , p. 107.
  23. ^ Jamie Gilham: Britain's First Muslim Peer of the Realm , p. 93.
predecessor Office successor
Edward Stanley Baron Stanley of Alderley
Baron Eddisbury
1869–1903 		Edward Stanley
personal data
SURNAME Stanley, Henry, 3rd Baron Stanley of Alderley
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stanley, Henry Edward John (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British peer, diplomat, orientalist and translator
DATE OF BIRTH July 11, 1827
PLACE OF BIRTH Nether Alderley , Cheshire , United Kingdom
DATE OF DEATH December 11, 1903
Place of death Nether Alderley , Cheshire , United Kingdom