Prophet of Reason : Science, Religion and the Origins of the Modern Middle East

'An outstanding intellectual biography.' Eugene Rogan In 1813, high in the Lebanese mountains, a thirteen-year-old boy watches a solar eclipse. Will it foretell a war, a plague, the death of a prince? Mikha?il Mishaqa?s lifelong search for truth starts here. Soon he?s reading Newtonian science and the radical ideas of Voltaire and Volney: he loses his religion, turning away from the Catholic Church. Thirty years later, as civil war rages in Syria, he finds a new faith ? Evangelical Protestantism. His obstinate polemics scandalise his community. Then, in 1860, Mishaqa barely escapes death in the most notorious event in Damascus: a massacre of several thousand Christians. We are presented with a paradox: rational secularism and violent religious sectarianism grew up together. By tracing Mishaqa?s life through this tumultuous era, when empires jostled for control, Peter Hill answers the question: What did people in the Middle East actually believe? It?s a world where one man could be a Jew, an Orthodox Christian and a Sunni Muslim in turn, and a German missionary might walk naked in the streets of Valletta.

Author: Peter Hill

Publisher: Oneworld Academic

Publication Date: Jun 11, 2024

Number of Pages: NA pages

Language: English

Binding: Paperback

ISBN-10: 0861547365

ISBN-13: 9780861547364