When Edward met Muhammad, take 2

I am grateful to Lloyd Billingsley for his account of Edward Gibbon’s encounter with Muhammad in the pages of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire via Robert Spencer’s The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS. This is nothing more than a long footnote to Lloyd’s post for readers who might be unfamiliar with the text of Gibbon’s monument to posterity or interested in a deeper dive into the text. It is one of the greatest books ever written. One might spend a lifetime trying to unravel its mysteries. Does anyone read it anymore?

In his Autobiography, Gibbon gives this account of the inspiration for his life’s work:

It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind. But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city rather than of the empire; and though my reading and reflections began to point towards that object, some years elapsed, and several avocations intervened, before I was seriously engaged in the execution of that laborious work.

Volume 1 of Gibbon’s History was published in a year that should ring a bell with intelligent readers: the year was 1776. Gibbon brought his History to its conclusion 22 years later in Volume 6 with this reflection:

…every reader(’s) … attention will be excited by an History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind. The various causes and progressive effects are connected with many of the events most interesting in human annals: the artful policy of the Cæsars, who long maintained the name and image of a free republic; the disorder of military despotism; the rise, establishment, and sects of Christianity; the foundation of Constantinople; the division of the monarchy; the invasion and settlements of the Barbarians of Germany and Scythia; the institutions of the civil law; the character and religion of Mahomet; the temporal sovereignty of the popes; the restoration and decay of the Western empire of Charlemagne; the crusades of the Latins in the East; the conquests of the Saracens and Turks; the ruin of the Greek empire; the state and revolutions of Rome in the middle age. The historian may applaud the importance and variety of his subject; but, while he is conscious of his own imperfections, he must often accuse the deficiency of his materials. It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised near twenty years of my life, and which, however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity and candour of the public.

In 1995 Penguin Classics republished the original text of Gibbon’s History in three volumes edited by David Womersley. The three volumes run to more than 3,000 pages and are a treasure.

Historian Keith Windschuttle reckoned with Womersley’s edition in the 1997 New Criterion essay “Edward Gibbon & the Enlightenment” (behind the TNC paywall, but accessible in PDF form here). The Online Library of Liberty has posted John Bury’s text of Gibbon’s History in 12 volumes that are accessible here.

Gibbon is an elegant, elusive, ironic writer. His diction is elevated. His approach to the subject is sweeping. Understanding him is a challenge. One must rise to meet him and even then the task is difficult, for like every serious writer on politics before the nineteenth century, Gibbon concealed his thoughts between the lines. Ralph Lerner provides a valuable introduction to this side of Gibbon in the essay that concludes Playing the Fool: Subversive Laughter In Troubled Times (“The Smile of a Philosophic Historian”).

Gibbon’s frequent irony comes into play especially whenever Gibbon takes up the subject of religion: Roman, Christian, or “Mahometan” (as Gibbon calls it — Muhammad is “Mahomet”). Gibbon takes up Muhammad and Islam in chapter L of the History. Chapter L runs 80 pages in Womersley’s edition and one can find within it the thoughts that are reflected in Lloyd’s post. However, it is not entirely clear to me what judgment Gibbon renders on Muhammad and Islam. Just about every adverse judgment seems to be qualified or mitigated by a positive statement.

Chapter L opens OLL’s volume 9 here. You can see for yourself. Take, just for example, this passage from what appears to be Gibbon’s summing up (Volume III, page 212 of Womersley’s edition):

At the conclusion of the life of Mahomet, it may perhaps be expected that I should balance his faults and virtues, that I should decide whether the title of enthusiast or impostor more properly belongs to that extraordinary man. Had I been intimately conversant with the son of Abdallah, the task would still be difficult, and the success uncertain: at the distance of twelve centuries, I darkly contemplate his shade through a cloud of religious incense; and, could I truly delineate the portrait of an hour, the fleeting resemblance would not equally apply to the solitary of Mount Hera, to the preacher of Mecca, and to the conqueror of Arabia. The author of a mighty revolution appears to have been endowed with a pious and contemplative disposition: so soon as marriage had raised him above the pressure of want, he avoided the paths of ambition and avarice; and, till the age of forty, he lived with innocence, and would have died without a name. The unity of God is an idea most congenial to nature and reason; and a slight conversation with the Jews and Christians would teach him to despise and detest the idolatry of Mecca. It was the duty of a man and a citizen to impart the doctrine of salvation, to rescue his country from the dominion of sin and error. The energy of a mind incessantly bent on the same object would convert a general obligation into a particular call; the warm suggestings of the understanding or the fancy would be felt as the inspirations of heaven; the labour of thought would expire in rapture and vision; and the inward sensation, the invisible monitor, would be described with the form and attributes of an angel of God….

And so on.

On the other hand, Gibbon writes with what appears to be straightforward clarity (at page 218 of Womersley’s edition): “The silence and death of the prophet restored the liberty of the people…” You have to read the whole thing, but even here one can see how difficult it might be to assess Gibbon’s judgment.

I would add only that Chapter L must be read in the context of Gibbon’s famous Chapter XV (“The Progress of the Christian Religion, and the Sentiments, Manners, Numbers, and Condition of the primitive Christians”), at the end of the OLL edition’s volume 2 here. It isn’t easy. It is at least as challenging as Chapter L.

In his learned 1976 essay “Gibbon on Muhammad” (collected in Islam and the West), Bernard Lewis suggests some of the complications:

The honor and reputation of Islam and its founder were protected in Europe neither by social pressure nor by legal sanction, and they thus served as an admirable vehicle for anti-religious and anti-Christian polemic. Gibbon occasionally accomplishes this purpose by attacking Islam while meaning Christianity, more frequently by praising Islam as an oblique criticism of Christian usage, belief, and practice. Much of his praise would not be acceptable in a Muslim country.

One more thought. As a student of Jeffrey Hart I first dipped into Gibbon’s History in the form of The Portable Gibbon, edited by Dero Saunders and now apparently out of print. In his introduction Saunders floats the thought that Gibbon is unconsciously describing himself in commenting on Muhammad (also from chapter L): “Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius…”