Snouck Hurgronje, Christiaan

International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences | 1968 | 700+ words | Copyright

Snouck Hurgronje, Christiaan

WORKS BY SNOUCK HURGRONJE SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (18571936), Dutch orientalist and colonial official, was educated at Leiden University. He was a lecturer at his alma mater between 1880 and 1889 and for 17 years thereafter was an adviser on religious and native affairs to the Netherlands Indies government. From 1906 until his death, he was professor of Arabic and Islamic institutions at Leiden and concurrently (until 1933) adviser to the Ministry of Colonies. Snouck Hurgronje is best known as one of Europes two nineteenth -century pioneers in the scientific study of Islam (the other being the Hungarian Ignaz Goldziher). His rigorously critical, historical approach, based on close scrutiny of scriptural texts and Arabic commentaries, shed new light on such crucial problems as the origins of the faith and the role of Muhammad in its growth and development, and the nature of the hadith (the recorded usages and traditions of the Prophet and the early Muslim communities). Snouck was the first to recognize the central role in Islam of the fiqh, i.e., a repository of quasi-judicial regulations pertaining not only to legal and social affairs but also to the relation of the individual to Allah, and of the idjma, i.e., the consensus on interpretations of the ftqh reached by the four recognized schools of Islam, which is binding on all Muslims. At the same time Snouck Hurgronje critically re-examined Islam as a historical reality, reconstructing, on the basis of the Quran (Koran) and the hadith, the origins of the first Muslim communities, with special emphasis on the adaptations to pre-existing rituals instituted by Muhammad. Snouck was also the first to clarify the interplay between pre-Islamic usages (da) and fiqh and hence the pattern of diversity within unity. Islamic eschatology, especially that centering on the Mahdi, and Islamic mysticism were other important fields opened up by him, which were subsequently thoroughly explored in the Indonesian setting by some of his outstanding Dutch students. Although Snouck was recognized as a leading authority on Islam in European and Muslim lands even during his lifetime, his other achievements have as yet received only scanty scholarly attention. Apparently without formal academic training in anthropology, Snouck produced ethnological and ethnographic studies of lasting importance. It was his concern for Islam as a living reality, his sharp sense of observation and his mastery of both scriptural and vernacular languages, and his careful field work that permitted him to do so. His classic two-volume work, Mekka (18881889), the result of his sojourn there in 1885, typically combined a reconstruction from original texts of the Holy Citys history with vivid, detailed descriptions of daily life, gathered in coffee shops, diwans, mosques and living quarters. Snouck almost intuitively grasped the concept of culture, as is evidenced in the preface to his standard work on the Achinese of northern Sumatra (18931894): To him who really wants to penetrate the Muham-madan factor in the life of a people, childrens games, adult entertainments, profane literature, the organization of a village or provinceall these are in many respects as important as are the books used in religious instruction, the mystical orders propagating in the land, the position of the scribes (18931894, vol. 1, p. xii). A similar perceptive-ness pervades his observations on Javanese Islam, published (in part only) pseudonymously in 18911892 as a series of letters from a retired Javanese district head. As lecturer in a training institute for colonial officials from 1880 on and as the first Dutchman to gain on-thespot knowledge of the Indonesian (Djawa) colony in Mecca, Snouck H urgronje was throughout his career deeply and often passionately involved in the problems confronting a European colonial power ruling millions of Indonesian Muslims. His studies on the Achinese and Javanese were written while he served the colonial government in an advisory capacity; the insights he gained during his Achinese mission were instrumental in terminating a desultory, decades-old and Muslim-inspired war against the Dutch. But more than a mere adviser, Snouck was in fact theoriginator and architect of modern Dutch Islamic policy, a policy basically adhered to until the end of Dutch rule in Indonesia in 1942. Its twin principles were the broadest toleration of religious life, on the one hand, and rigorous repression of Islamic, especially pan-Islamic, political agitation, on the other. Although the dividing line was as difficult to determine in theory as in practice, particularly after the advent of Islamic reformism in Indonesia (after

Snouck had returned to Holland), the twentieth-century Islamic renaissance in the archipelago was doubtless facilitated by the colonial governments adherence to Snoucks directives. However, there is a tragic paradox in the fact that, in spite of his lasting influence on Islamic policies, Snouck Hurgronje was least successful as a colonial statesman in the wider sense of the word. He was one of the very few Dutchmen with a bold vision of the ultimate destiny of peoples under colonial domination and virtually the lone propounder of the associationist ideal that envisaged a future political union between Holland and Indonesia as equal partners sharing a common cultural bond. He was a fervent proponent of rapid Westernization through education, which he believed would readily supplant indigenous, including Muslim, orientations, especially among the Javanese aristocracy. Snouck argued in favor of progressive Indonesianization of the administration, which was to go hand-inhand with a planned withdrawal of European supervisory personnel. Especially in the years after World War i, he became one of the most resolute Dutch advocates of ultimate Indonesian independence. Dutch colonial practice in the twentieth century, however, took a course which was diametrically opposite to that which Snouck Hurgronje advocated. His departure from Indonesia in 1906 had been caused by his inability to persuade the colonial authorities to supplement pacification (in Achin) with meaningful social reconstruction. The iron logic, merciless irony, and uncompromising vehemence with which he argued his case (his later, presumably highly critical, advisory opinions to the Ministry of Colonies have not yet been published) made him the idol of many liberals but also the bete noire of diehard colonial conservatives. In order to undercut his influence and that of his colleague Cornelis van Vollenhoven in the training of colonial administrators at Leiden University, these conservatives in 1925 established a rival department of Indonesian studies at the University of Utrecht. Snoucks failure as a colonial administrator should not obscure his lasting stature in the field of Islamic studies. Social scientists have not yet fully come to appreciate his contributions to many of their specialties. Harry J. Benda [See also Asian Society; Colonialism; Islam; and the biography ofSchrieke.]

WORKS BY SNOUCK HURGRONJE

18881889 Mekka. 2 vols. The Hague: Nijhoff. Volume 1: Die Stadt und ihre Herren. Volume 2: Aus dem heutigen Leben. (1889) 1931 Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th Century: Daily Life, Customs and Learning, the Moslims of the East-Indian Archipelago. Leiden: Brill; London: Luzac. First published in German. A translation of Volume 2 of Snouck Hurgronje 18881889. (18911892) 1924 Brieven van een wedono-pensioen. Pages 111248 in Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, Ver-spreide geschriften. Volume 4: Geschriften betreffende den Islam in Nederlandsch-Indie. Bonn and Leipzig: Schroeder; Leiden: Brill. First published in Java in a Dutch newspaper De Locomotief, between January 7, 1891, and February 22, 1892. (18931894) 1906 The Achehnese. 2 vols. London: Luzac. First published as De Atjehers. Translation of extract from the 18931894 edition was provided by Harry J. Benda. 19231927 Verspreide geschriften. 6 vols. in 7. Bonn and Leipzig: Schroeder; L eiden: Brill. Volume 1: Geschriften betreffende den Islam en zijne geschiedenis. Volume 2: Geschriften betreffende het mohammed-aansche recht. Volume 3: Geschriften betreffende Arable en Turkije. Volume 4: Geschriften betreffende den Islam in Nederlandsch-Indie. 2 vols. Volume 5: Geschriften betreffende taal und letterkunde. Volume 6: Boekaankondigingen; verscheidenheden; registers. Ambtelijke adviezen van C. Snouck Hurgronje, 1889 1936. 3 vols. The Hague: Nijhoff, 19571965. Selected Works of C. Snouck Hurgronje. Edited by G. H. Bousquet and J. Schacht. Leiden: Brill, 1957.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Benda, Harry J. 1958 Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje and the Foundation of Dutch Islamic Policy in Indonesia. Journal of Modern History 30:338347. Bousquet, GeorgesHenri 1938 La politique musul-mane et coloniale des Pays-Bas. Paris: Hartmann. A partial translation of this book was published in 1940 as A French View of the Netherlands Indies, by Oxford University Press. Drewes, Gerardus W. J. 1957 Snouck Hurgronje en de Islamwetenschap: Herdenking van de lOOe ge-boortedag van Prof. Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, 10 februari 1957 . Leiden: Universitaire Pers. Pedehsen, Johannes 1957 The Scientific Work of Snouck Hurgronje. Leiden: Brill. Pijper, Guillaume F. 1957 Islam and the Netherlands. Leiden: Brill. Pijper, Guillaume F. 1961 De islampolitiek der Ned-erlandse regering. Pages 209222 in Henri Baudet and Izaac J. Brugmans (editors), Balans van beleid: Terugblik op de laatste halve eeuw van Nederlandsch-Indi. Assen (The Netherlands): Van Gorcum. Van Niel, Robert 1957 Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje: In Memory of the Centennial of His Birth. Journal of Asian Studies 16:591594. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.
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