Reason and Religion in Ottoman Syria

世俗主义和宗教身份之间的两极分化通常被视为现代中东的定义。但它是从哪里来的？我的项目追溯了19世纪上半叶阿拉伯-奥斯曼世界中世俗和宗教复兴思潮交织在一起的根源。通过对一位杰出人物的微观历史研究，它将揭示长期被忽视的关于宗教信仰与“理性”或批判性思想之间的适当关系的辩论，以及参与其中的鲜为人知的阿拉伯文人社区和网络。这些争论后来形成了世俗倾向的阿拉伯复兴运动（复兴党），以及中东地区萨拉菲斯特和基督教复兴运动的兴起。米哈·米沙卡在黎巴嫩山统治者的宫廷中长大，是一名天主教徒。但在十八岁时，他在遇到欧洲启蒙运动著作的第一个阿拉伯语翻译后，对所有启示宗教失去了信心。在接下来的四分之一个世纪里，他是一个自然神论者和怀疑论者，在此期间，他自学了一系列知识，并在复杂的、经常发生暴力的地方政治舞台上扮演了重要的幕后角色。然而，在他四十多岁的时候，他读了美国传教士翻译成阿拉伯语的新教小册子：最初他持怀疑态度，后来他被说服了，并重新成为他新采用的福音派信仰的小册子捍卫者。他的个人轨迹，以及他留下的大量手稿、印刷品和信件档案，提供了一个独特的切入点，进入一个更广泛的阿拉伯语网络，这些网络热衷于辩论信仰与理性之间的关系。通过一个详细的，微观的帐户米沙卡自己的转换和不同的社会环境，他通过移动，我的研究将揭示在这样的辩论和社会和政治因素，塑造了他们的利益攸关的问题，在一个时期，欧洲的影响力越来越大，奥斯曼帝国的国家中央集权。从现代早期欧洲信仰和怀疑的微观历史学家的工作中汲取灵感，该项目将联合收割机与社会和文化历史的档案方法相结合，重点放在文本的近距离阅读和“关键词”的共鸣上。在手稿和印刷文化、神职和世俗权威、早期现代和殖民现代之间，米哈伊尔·米沙卡和他的对话者参与了宗教信仰合理化的转变，这最终将支撑阿拉伯世界的世俗主义和宗教复兴主义传统。对他们历史的描述不仅有可能为历史学家提供信息，而且也有可能为那些思考宗教和批判性思想在当今阿拉伯世界中各自作用的人提供信息。

The polarity between secularism and religious identities is often seen as defining the modern Middle East. But where did it come from? My project traces the intertwined roots of both secular and religious revivalist currents back into the Arab-Ottoman world of the first half of the nineteenth century. Through a close microhistorical study of one remarkable individual, it will reveal long-neglected debates over the proper relationship between religious faith and 'reason', or critical thought, as well as the little-known communities and networks of Arab literati who took part in them. These debates later went on to shape both the secular-leaning Arab 'revival' or Nahda, and the emergence of both Salafist and Christian revivalisms in the Middle East.Mikha'il Mishaqa was raised as a Catholic at the court of the ruler of Mount Lebanon. But at the age of eighteen he lost faith in all revealed religion after encountering the first ever Arabic translations of writings of the European Enlightenment. He would spend the next quarter-century as a deist and sceptic, during which time he educated himself in a polymathic range of knowledge and played a major, behind-the-scenes role in the complex, often violent local political scene. In his forties, however, he read Protestant tracts translated into Arabic by American missionaries: initially sceptical, he became persuaded of their truth, and re-emerged as a pamphleteering defender of his newly-adopted Evangelical faith. His personal trajectory, and the voluminous archive of manuscripts, printed tracts, and correspondence he left behind, provides a unique entry-point into a wider set of Arabic-speaking networks who were avidly debating the relationship between faith and reason. Through a detailed, microhistorical account of Mishaqa's own conversions and the varied social milieux through which he moved, my study will uncover both the issues at stake in such debates and the social and political factors which shaped them, in a period of growing European influence and Ottoman state centralisation. Taking inspiration from the work of microhistorians of faith and doubt in early modern Europe, this project will combine the archival methods of social and cultural history with a focus on textual close reading and the resonances of 'keywords'. Poised between manuscript and print cultures, clerical and lay authority, the early modern and colonial modernity, Mikha'il Mishaqa and his interlocutors partook of a shift towards the rationalisation of religious belief which would ultimately underpin both secularist and religious revivalist traditions in the Arab world. An account of their history has the potential to inform, not just historians, but those thinking through the respective roles of religion and critical thought in the Arab world of today.