Description
| Product ID: | 9780861547364 |
| Product Form: | Paperback / softback |
| Country of Manufacture: | GB |
| Title: | Prophet of Reason |
| Subtitle: | Science, Religion and the Origins of the Modern Middle East |
| Authors: | Author: Peter Hill |
| Page Count: | 368 |
| Subjects: | Religion and science, Religion & science, History of religion, History of religion, Middle East |
| Description: | Select Guide Rating A portrait of Enlightenment science, religious identity and empire in the making of the modern Middle Eastern world ''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. |
| Imprint Name: | Oneworld Academic |
| Publisher Name: | Oneworld Publications |
| Country of Publication: | GB |
| Publishing Date: | 2024-05-02 |