Prophet of Reason (eBook)

Science, Religion and the Origins of the Modern Middle East

Peter Hill (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
368 Seiten
Oneworld Publications (Verlag)
978-0-86154-737-1 (ISBN)

Infos

'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.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 2.5.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Religionsgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie
• ISBN-10: 0-86154-737-3 / 0861547373
• ISBN-13: 978-0-86154-737-1 / 9780861547371