William Muir

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Sir William Muir
Muir's grave

Sir William Muir KCSI (born April 27, 1819 in Glasgow , † July 11, 1905 in Edinburgh ) was a British colonial politician , orientalist , missionary scholar and one of the most important British scholars of Islam of the 19th century.

Life

Youth and Education (1819–1837)

William Muir was the eighth and last child of the merchant William Muir, who died two years after his birth, and his wife Helen. After the father's death, the family moved to Kilmarnock and later to Edinburgh, where, as in Glasgow, he attended university. However, he did not graduate from either university. The relationships of his great-uncle, Sir James Shaw, former mayor and city treasurer of London, made it possible that William (like his three brothers John, James and Mungo) was taken into the service of the East India Company . After he had been prepared for his work in civil administration in India at Haileybury College , he left England and on December 16, 1837 reached his first assignment, Bombay .

Service in India (1837–1876)

In Bombay, and later in the districts of Cawnpore (today's Kanpur ), Bundhelkund and Fatehpur Sikri , he was initially responsible as a simple civil servant for the collection and collection of property tax. Through the contact with the local population he had the opportunity to get to know the local dialects, customs and religious rites. The use of this knowledge for administrative and political duties, as well as his iron work ethic - Muir is reported to start work at 4 a.m. every morning - enabled him to continue working for the East India Company and the UK during his 39 years of service Colonial government of India to make a career: After he had risen to the management level of the tax authority, he was appointed Minister of the Government of the Northwestern Provinces of India in 1847, based in Agra . During the Sepoy Uprising of 1857 he was appointed by Lieutenant Governor John Russell Colvin shortly before his death to manage the affairs of the provincial government and to manage the intelligence service. After the uprising, Muir again held the office of minister in the provincial government until he was appointed to the legislative council of India in 1864. In 1867 the Viceroy Lord John Laird Mair Lawrence appointed him Foreign Secretary of the British colonial government of India. In the same year he was knighted as Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India . A year later he resigned from this office and became lieutenant governor of the north-west provinces; he held this office until 1874. After a brief stay in Great Britain, Muir was a member of the Executive Council of the British colonial government during the last two years of his service in India (1874–76). In 1876, Muir was discussed as the successor of Lord Northbrook as Viceroy of India , but refused the office. Instead, Muir returned to Britain.

In 1840 he married Elizabeth Huntley, with whom he had 15 children.

Work for the Council of India (1876–1885) and for the University of Edinburgh (1885–1903)

In Great Britain the British Secretary of State for India appointed him to the Council of India in the same year. In December 1885, Muir moved to Edinburgh University , where he was rector until 1903.

Muir's effect

Administrative and political area

Muir's work in the administrative and political area was considered outstanding and exemplary by his contemporaries. Like few other colonial officials, Muir tried to acquire a profound knowledge of the national languages ​​and cultures. Muir stood up for the impoverished rural population, promoted school and university education, supported the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh , which is now the Aligarh Muslim University, initiated by Sayyid Ahmad Khan , and founded the Muir Central College himself, now the University of Allahabad . He vehemently fought against the murder of newborn women resulting from the traditional devaluation of women, as was still practiced in 19th century India. He also saw a hindrance to progress in Islam , the majority religion in the then north-western provinces of India. For this reason he came to the view that the European-British culture and the corresponding expression of Christianity are the only guarantees for civilizational progress in India. Muir supported the Christian mission societies active in India and the Christian minority, although the civil administration officially saw itself as religiously neutral. On his initiative, for example, based the foundation of Muirabad , a Christian settlement near Prayagraj .

Scientific activity

This love for the Indian people and the simultaneous rejection of many customs and religious peculiarities also determined his scientific activity. Muir promoted the scientific study of the Hindu and Islamic religion and culture as well as the Indian languages ​​and dialects. In 1862 he and his brother John, a Sanskrit researcher, founded the Shaw Professorship for Sanskrit and Comparative Literature at the University of Edinburgh in memory of his great-uncle Sir James Shaw . His scientific competence was recognized by the highest authorities when Queen Victoria acquired the title of Empress of India in 1876 ​​and accepted the translation “Kaisar-i-Hind” proposed by Muir.

Honors

The universities of Oxford , Cambridge , Edinburgh, Glasgow and Bologna awarded Muir an honorary doctorate for his diverse linguistic and Islamic research. The Royal Asiatic Society , of which Muir became a member in 1877, elected him President in 1884. This office he resigned after his appointment as rector of the University of Edinburgh, but held the office of Vice President in the years 1885-1886 and 1894-1897. The Royal Asiatic Society recognized its importance for the study of Islamic history and literature in 1903 with the award of the Triennal Jubilee Gold Medal.

The Life of Mahomet

Muir's reputation as one of the most important British scholars of Islam in the 19th century is based primarily on his biography of Muhammad , The Life of Mahomet , which was published in four volumes in the years 1858–1861 and had a large number of editions based on articles in the Calcutta Review. The Life of Mahomet was considered the standard biography of Mohammed in British research from the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century and shaped generations of Islamic scholars and Christian missionaries. Above all, it was praised that Muir was one of the first Western Islamic scholars to base his biography on early Islamic sources in the original and to evaluate them historically and critically. He and his work are still received in the 21st century, even by the Islamic side with regard to his statements on the Koran.

Muir and Mohammed

Muir was one of the first to distinguish between the Meccan and Medinan periods of Muhammad, the former was characterized by the search for religious truth, the latter by worldly ambition and a corrupt thirst for power. While he was still able to find positive sides in Muhammad's early life in Mecca , for Muir the Mohammed of Medina could be characterized by negative terms such as intolerance, immorality and blasphemy. This was due, on the one hand, to the fact that The Life of Mahomet was the aftermath of a debate between the Muslim scholar Rahmatallāh al-Kairānawī and the Christian missionary Karl Gottlieb Pfander , the so-called Mohammedan Controversy , which took place in the Indian city of Agra in 1854 and in which both of them met Saw pages as a winner. On the other hand, Muir's motives for academic engagement with Islam must be observed.

Muir, Christianity and Islam

As an evangelical Christian, Muir wanted to expose Islam - which for him was both religion and culture - as the enemy of Christianity and progress in India and to promote the spread of Christianity as an alternative to this. According to Muir, this should not be done by force of arms and coercion, but rather, with wisdom, love and expertise, the Muslims should be convinced of the doubtfulness of their religion. His scientific treatises as well as the translations and publications of early Islamic and Christian apologetic works were intended to provide Christian missionaries with the necessary armament for the conversion of Muslims to Christianity and to make Muslims aware that their religion was diametrically opposed to the standards of modern science and civilization. While the Western world felt vindicated by this judgment, strong opposition arose on the Muslim side against Muir's portrayal of Islam. This partly led to the radicalization of Indian Muslims, but partly also to the emergence of Islamic modernism in India ( Sayyid Ahmad Khan ). In this way, against his own intention, Muir helped Islam to revive in India.

Works

Web links

literature

  • David A. Kerr: Muir, William, (1819-1905) British colonial administrator in India, Islamic scholar, and advocate of Christian mission in: Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions , ed. Gerald H. Anderson, Macmillan Reference, New York USA 1998 , Pages 478-479

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 1, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 317.
  2. ↑ David A. Kerr: Muir, William, (1819-1905) British colonial administrator in India, Islamic scholar, and advocate of Christian mission in: Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions , ed. Gerald H. Anderson, Macmillan Reference, New York USA 1998, pages 478-479
  3. ↑ http://www.islamreligion.com/de/articles/18/die-erhaltung-des-quran-teil-2-von-2/
  4. ↑ Ibn Warraq : Why I am not a Muslim. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-88221-838-1 , pages 132-154: Muhammad and his message
personal data
SURNAME Muir, William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Muir, Sir William (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British colonial politician, orientalist, missiologist, scholar of Islam
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1819
PLACE OF BIRTH Glasgow
DATE OF DEATH July 11, 1905
Place of death Edinburgh