William Muir

Sir William Muir, KCSI (27 April 1819 – 11 July 1905) was a Scottish Orientalist and popularized the "Muir style" beard.

Early Life

He was born at Glasgow, the second son of a wealthy merchant, William Muir and of Helen nee Macfie. The senior William died in 1820 and Anne moved the family to Kilmarnock. William attended the local Academy followed by Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities. However, before he could graduate an uncle of his mother, Sir James Shaw secured a writership for his with the British East India Company where three brothers, John, James and Mungo were already serving. James and Mungo died shortly after reaching India. After some time at Haileybury College, then the Company's training college, Muir departed for India.

Career in India

Reaching India in 1837, he was stationed in the North West Provinces. He maintained a close association with NWP for the rest of his career, although he was also for several years based in Delhi. Initially, he occupied a series of junior posts. He was not as obviously ambitious as were some of his peers and did not insinuate himself with his superiors. On the other hand, he was diligent and conscientious and earned a reputation for unassuming efficiency. By 1840 he had married Elizabeth Huntley, daughter of the Collector (District Administrator) of Cawnpore and by 1847 he was secretary to board of revenue of the North West Provinces based in Agra. In 1852 he became secretary to the Lt. Governor, James Thompson. Thompson and Muir were both evangelical Anglicans who supported the work of the Church Missionary Society. Muir held office in the local CMS Association. Johm, his surviving brother, was establishing a reputation as a scholar of Sanskrit and of Hindu literature. William began to develop an interest in the study of Islam, largely to assist with polemic and to missionary outreach. In early 1850's he reported on the correspondence between [[Karl Gottlieb Pfander the German born CMS missionary and the Muslim scholar, al-Kairanawi. He described their debate in articles in the Calcutta Review, also summarizing the recent history of Christian mission to Muslims and reviewing relevant literature. These articles were later published as The Mohammedan Controversy (1897). In 1854, he observed the public debate between these two, although after this encounter he did not write a report. Responding to Pfander's call for a reliable account of the life of Muhammad, however, he began serious and detailed work on a biography. He learned Arabic and Persian. During the [First War of Indian Independence]], called at the time the "Mutiny" he and his family, with other British residents, took refuge in the Agra Fort. The Muirs' five children were with them in the Fort (several children had already died). Muir was placed in charge of the intelligence department, later publishing Records of the Intelligence Department of the North-West Provinces of India during the mutiny of 1857, (1902) in which he describes how his agents passed through enemy lines with hidden messages. "The Muslims", he wrote, "defied our government in the most insolent manner." "All the ancient feelings" he continued "of warring for the faith reminding one of the days of the first caliph were resurrected." The same passage says that those taking part were promised immediate entry to paradise. It was also during the siege that he proof-read the first volumes of his originally four volume Life of Mahomet (1858-1862). Later editions would appear in 1878, 1894 and an abridgement, still in print, edited and revised by Thomas Hunter Weir, in 1912. During the siege, he and his family gave house room to the future bishop of Lahore, Thomas Valpy French. French had acted as one of Pfander's seconds during the Agra debate. One of Muir's first acts after the end of the conflict was to make sure that one of his precious mss of any early life of Muhammad was safe. In 1865, he was appointed foreign secretary to the Indian Government.

In 1867 he was created a Knight Commander of the Star of India, and in 1868 he became lieutenant-governor of the North-West Provinces. He is said to have been passed over for this post when it had been vacant in 1864 but subsequently he became a close friend of the Governor-General, John Lawrence and once appointed his incumbency was extended because under his administration the region remained stable. As Lt-Governor, Muir was a strong advocate of education, encouraging female education. Although his writing on Islam expressed a highly critical evaluation and attitude towards his subject, he enjoyed personal friendship with eminent Muslims, including Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, who had remained loyal to the British during the conflict. Muir became the official visitor of Khan's Anglo-Mohammedan Oriental College, later Aligarh Muslim University. Muir was also a friend of the Muslim ruler of Rampur. Muir himself founded what Muir Central College in 1873. In 1887, this became the University of Allahabad, the fourth oldest in India. In 1876, Muir's speeches and addresses as Lt-Governor were published as Addresses Made in the North-West Provinces. Muir tried but failed to restore Persian as an official medium of instruction alongside English.

Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Edinburgh University

In 1885 he was elected principal of Edinburgh University in succession to Sir Alexander Grant. He joined his brother, John who was now Professor of Sanskrit, having retired from his own distinguished service in India in 1853. Among other posts, John was Principal of Victoria College, Varanasi. At Edinburgh, he endowed the Shaw Fellowship in Philosophy in honor of Sir James Shaw. John and William endowed various and prizes chairs in the field of Oriental studies. John, as had Muir, was largely self-taught but received academic recognition from several University. Both were honored by the naming of the Muir Institute to commemorate their contribution to the University.

Muir was always a prolific writer. Now, a series of both scholarly and more popular books and tracts, some of which were translations of works of Christian apology, flowed from his pen. Most notably, he produced an abridged translation of the Apology al Al-Kindy (1882) the Annals of the early Caliphate from original sources (1883) followed by The caliphate: Its Rise, Decline and Fall(1891) also later revised and edited by Weir (1915) and still in print. and his Reed Lectures, delivered in 1888 as the Rede Lectures at University of Cambridge, in many respects the continuation of his Life of Muhammad. He also translated William St-Clair Tisdall's The Sources of Islam, A Persian Treatise in 1901. Tisdall was awarded the Edinburgh DD while Muir was Principal. He retired as principal in 1903.

Muir is credited with recommending "Kaiser-i-Hind" to Queen Victoria as the Indian form of her title Empress of India, and to have assisted her with her study of Indian languages while a guest at Balmoral.

Missionary activist

Muir wrote several apologetic tracts and remained active as a supporter of missionary work until his death. He served on the boards of several mission organization including the Turkish Mission Aid Society and the Church Missionary Society. He was a vice-president of the CMS from 1877.

Honors

In addition to his knighthood, Muir was awarded honorary doctorates from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Oxford and Bologna, where he represented Edinburgh at the University's sixth centennial celebration.

In 1884, Muir was elected President of the Royal Asiatic Society, of which he was a Fellow. In 1903 he was honored with the centennial gold medal.

Family

Elizabeth and William had five sons and six daughters; four of his sons served in India, and one of them, Colonel A. M. Muir (d. 1899), was Political Officer for South Baluchistan, and was acting British Resident in Nepal when he died. Elizabeth died in 1897.

Death

Muir died on July 11, 1905. He was buried in Dean cemetery.

Legacy

Muir's life of Muhammad and history of the caliphate have been described by one of the twentieth centuries leading scholars of Islam and of the Middle East as "still not quite superseded." In his use of original and early sources to reconstruct the chronology of Islam and the life of Muhammad, his work was pioneering in English although he acknowledged a debt to several German scholars, such as Gustav Weil. William Montgomery Watt, another leading twentieth century scholar and distinguished biographer of the prophet, describes Muir's life as "following in detail the standard Muslim accounts, though not uncritically." Watt also commends Muir's description of the available sources for historical reconstruction. However, Muir was not an objective scholar, although he offered his Life and later histories as serious scholarly work. He depicted Muhammad as initially sincere, as a searcher for truth but says that he later began to fabricate revelation to serve his own personal and political agenda. "Mahomet", said Muir was "By whatever deceptive process, led to the high blasphemy of forging the name of God … Thenceforward he spoke literally in the name of the Lord". Muir singles out incidents in Muhammad's life, such as his multiple marriages, some incidents when enemies were allegedly assassinated and especially what he called the "Satanic Verses". This refers to a tradition that when Muhammad recited Surah 53 verses 19-23, which refer to three of the pagan goddesses as "but names", Satan, who always tries to pervert revelation, instead the words that they were exalted cranes, whose intercession could be sought. Following his lengthy description of this so-called compromise with monotheism, or concession, Muir surmises that if Muhammad was Satanically inspired once, perhaps he was always Satan's mouthpiece? Muir had it that Muhammad was prone to some type of melancholy or sickness and that light constantly struggled with darkness in his mind. Muir posited a moral declension; Muhammad was initially close to accepting Christianity but parted company from Christians and Jews when they refused to accept his message.

He concluded that Islam stifles freedom, retards social progress and represents a threat to civilization itself. The sword was used to silence dissent. On the one hand, he spoke of many of the pious traditions about Muhammad as forged. Perveted traditions were the chief tool used to justify any position. Muhammad had even permitted deceit. On the other hand, he thought that the historical material was much more reliable. Muir saw the Qur'an as a composite work borrowing from Jewish, Christian and pagan sources. However, his effort to relate the life of Muhammad to specific Qur'anic passages is a useful contribution to content-context analysis, although what has been called the original order of the Qur'an cannot be precisely determined. Muir's work also stimulated others to attempt a life of Muhammad, or to discuss some of the issues raised by his critique. His own friend and colleague, Syed Ahmed Khan, expressed both praise and criticism for Muir's Life in his own A Series of Essays on the Life of Mohammed, And Subjects Subsidiary Thereto (1870) for which he could find no publisher and so paid for the printing himself. Muir's book was the best available by a non-Muslim but Muir's shortcoming was that he good see nothing beautiful at all in Muhammad. Syyed Ameer Alir, another Muslim writer of this era was less flattering, calling Muir an "avowed enemy" of Islam.

Books by Clinton Bennett and Jabal Buaben have detailed discussion of Muir's legacy.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Ali, Sayyid Ameer. 1891. The Spirit of Islam. London: W. H. Allen.{{OCLC|248006360}.
• al-Kindī, ʻAbd al-Masīḥ ibn Isḥāq, ʻAbd Allāh ibn Ismāʻīl al-Hāshimī, and William Muir. 1882. The apology of Al Kindy: written at the court of Al Mâmûn (A.H.215;A.D.830) in defence of Christianity against Islam. London: Smith, Elder. OCLC 181846755
• Bennett, Clinton. 1992. Victorian Images of Islam. London: Grey Seal. ISBN

• Hourani, Albert Habib. 1980. Europe and the Middle East. London: Macmillan Press. ISBN 9780333269480.
• Khan, Syed Ahmad. 1870. A Series of Essays on the Life of Muhammad and Subjects Subsidiary Thereto. London: Trubner & Co., 1870, reprinted by Lahore: Premier Book House, 1968. OCLC 84560
• Muir, William. 1852-1862. The Life of Mahomet from original sources. London: Smith & Elder. OCLC 156191674.
• Muir, William, and T. H. Weir. 1912. The life of Moḥammad from original sources. Edinburgh: J. Grant. OCLC 3472704
• Muir, William. 2003. Life of Mahomet: from original sources. Delhi: Voice Of India. ISBN 9788185990767.
• Muir, William. 1876. Addresses made in the north-west provinces. Simla: Governmental Central Branch Press. OCLC 54569477
• Muir, W., & Coldstream, W. (1902). Records of the Intelligence Department of the North-West Provinces of India during the mutiny of 1857, including correspondence with the supreme government, Delhi, Cawnpore, and other places. Edinburgh: Clark. OCLC 230422492.
• Smith, George. 1912. "Muir, William." 659-661. Dictionary of National Biography. 2nd Supplement. Volume 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Watt,

Government offices
Preceded by: Edmund Drummond	Lieutenant Governor of the North-Western Provinces 1868–1874	Succeeded by: Sir John Strachey
Academic offices
Preceded by: Sir Alexander Grant	Principal of Edinburgh University 1885–1903	Succeeded by: William Turner

de:William Muir

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