Mind I never petition for a tribute from you, dear Hugh.

Millions for defense, not one penny for tribute!

Posted by: longtime lurker at April 4, 2006 9:47 AM

Since you mention Snouk Hurgronje, you should probably be aware that he saw himself as a helper for the Christian apologist and missionary as well as a scholar per se. This, of course, does not negate his contributions as a student of Islam or impugn his abilities in dispassionate analysis.

Re Walker, diplomats always have to echo their masters (in Walker's case, the President of the USA). Further, his comment on Islam as a "Big Tent" is right insofar as Islam contains not only the jihadis but also those who would hold jihad in abeyance, syncretists, and persons exiting.

Posted by: Kepha at April 4, 2006 10:34 AM

"Snouk Hurgronje, you should probably be aware that he saw himself as a helper for the Christian apologist and missionary as well as a scholar per se. This, of course, does not negate his contributions as a student of Islam or impugn his abilities in dispassionate analysis."
-- from a posting above

Snouck Hurgronje not only was a scholar, the preeminent scholar of Islam in all of Europe in his lifetime. So thought, at least, Joseph Schacht (who when he arrived finally at Columbia, promptly became the preeminent scholar of Islam in all of North and South America), who went to study with C. Snouck Hurgronje in Leiden. Much later, when Schacht left Germany (he was a non-Jew, and might have stayed, but he not only left in disgust but vowed never to speak or write German again) in 1934, for several decades of peripatetic scholarship (including being the only European to lecture in Arabic at Fuad I University in Egypt), he finallly found himself, after World War II, as a professor in Leiden, and was thrilled to be in the very place where his mentor, the man he admired above all other students of Islam, had taught for so many years. For more on Schacht there are two sources: the touching obituary written by Bernard Lewis, and the pamphlet, by his long-time friend and collaborator, Jeannette Wakin, republished in 2003 by the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School, one of the good things it has done.

The comment above is flatly wrong. C. Snouck Hurgronje was not only not an "apologist" for Christianity but at times sharply critical of it. So critical was Hurgronje, in fact, that Zwemer, the editor of a scholarly journal then called "Moslem World" (in the days before the journal's title changed, and before it became a very different, less impressive and more doubtful enterprise), himself of a missionary bent, repeatedly noted that "even Hurgronje, no friend of Christianity" endorsed such-and-such or took such-and-such a view. To attempt to make Hurgronje into some kind of apologist for Christianity is passing strange.

Of course Hurgonrje studied the texts, studied the history, observed the practice of Islam in all kinds of places, from pilgrims in Mecca (a city which Hurgronje managed to visit, and about which he wrote a book), and he had ample occasion to observe the influence of Islam on the minds and moeurs of men in the Dutch EastIndies, an Islam practiced with various degrees of syncretism, given the Hindu and Buddhist past and still-existent populations, depending on what island, or what part of what island, that was being discussed.

Not only is it wrong to call Hurgronje a Christian "apologist" as a poster does above. When we use that word today we often mean not Christian apologetics (of the kind to be found in any theological library or church where the resident minister, of the quaint old-fashioned kind, still believes in Christian doctrine, but rather the "apologists" of Islam, who are concerned not so much with spreading the true, the real contents of Muslim doctrine, but rather engaging in all manner of ways to mislead Infidels about those doctrines and what they mean, can only mean, for Infidels.

These kind of "apologists" are all over the place in MESA Nostra and official Washington. Among those in and surrounding the government, these apologists have helped stymie the adoption, or even the attempt to adopt, a sensible energy policy. Instead, ever since 1973, when things should have been clear, they have encouraged successive American governments to hand over their energy policy, and our collective energy future, to those who parrot that oft-repeated notion that "our staunch ally" Saudi Arabia -- the very country that is the richest, most determined, and most menacing source of Jihad fervor and money -- would take care of our energy problems, as long as we treated Saudi Arabia kindly. Nonsense on stilts.

A concluding bibliographical (not metaphysical) postscript:

Snouck Hurgronje's books are obtainable mostly in academic libraries. What intelligent Maecenas -- what foundation, what slush fund of the Pentagon or a newly-enlighted State Department, worried about the islamization of Europe and with those on its European
desks rising up and demanding that power be taken away from the apologists for Islam already entrenched at the MIddle Eastern desks -- will pay for those repprintings, not to mention translations into all languages?

I don't think the Middle East Institute will be encouraging anyone to read Snouck Hurgronje, or indeed any of the great Western scholars of Islam, of which samples may be read in Andrew Bostom's "The Legacy of Jihad." I don't think Edward Walker believes it incumbent upon him, or upon those whom he attempts to influence, to read, or even to know about, Abel and Fagnan, Schacht and Margoliouth, Caetani and Levi-Provencal, Zwemere and St. Clair Tisdall, K. S. Lal and Andric and Angelov, Wansbrough and Cook and Crone and Mingana and Luxenberg and a hundred others, each of them alone far more useful, far more impressive in what they help us to understand about Islam, than the collective output of everyone ever associated, on the staff, on the Board of Trustees, of the "Middle East Institute."

Money makes the Middle East Institute go round, as it does so much in Washington. One would like to point to its sponsorship of a lecture series in which such words as "Jihad" and "dhimmi" are not omitted, and not tangential, and not mocked, but become the centeer of analysis, not only of the Middle East, but of those countries now so much affected by the belief-system that determines almost everything in the Middle East -- that is, Islam. When the Middle East Institute sponsors a talk by Walid Phares on "Arabic-speaking Christians in the Middle East" knowing that he will not fail to discuss that little matter of the dhimmi, and that he will not fail to argue that Lebanese Maronites are not Arabs, but victims -- as they are -- of the notion that to use Arabic is to become an Arab -- then we can begin to stop dismissing the Middle East Institute. And when Walker further encourages investigation into the reasons why, during the last 40 years, Western academic study of Islam has deliberately overlooked, and certainly seldom assigned, the copious scholarship on the subject -- scholarship that does not date, for the subject matter of that scholarship, Islam, has not changed as a belief-system, but only in the ability of Muslims to fulfill their duties and desires, and when he further encourages an analysis of Arab and Muslim refusal to accept as a permanent presence the Infidel state of Israel, whatever its size, as arising naturally out of the immutable doctrines of Islam, we may not only stop dismissing, but possibly begin to take seriouslly, the Middle East Institute. And if Walker were to have a symposium on the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyyah, its essential significance as a model for Muslim treaties with all Infidels (no, don't take my word for it -- take the word of Majid Khadduri, in "War and Peace in Islam"), and to show how silly it is to spend so much time on these esssentially idiotic dennis-rossian "negotiations" that can only lead to a meaningless "truce" treaty, for a permanent "peace" treaty ("salaam: rather than "sulh") between Muslims and Infidels is not possible. This means that if a peace is to be maintained, it can only be maintined by allowing the Muslim rulers to invoke the doctrine of "darura" or necessity, which is to say -- the necessity of not attacking because the Infidels not only are overwhelmingly more powerful, but are clearly seen to be such by the Muslim masses, who will then forgive the inaction of their governments (that is why further Israeli surrenders of land, which make Israel appear to be much more vulnerable, are a terrible idea). And here's still another topic among those Topics Never to Be Raised Much Less Sponsored By the Middle East Institute: that is, how the Lesser Jihad against Israel metastasized over the past one-third of a century, ever since the 1973 oil price rise, into the full-blown, world-wide affair we see all around us.

When those topics begin to be the subject of symposia and conferences sponsored by the Middle East Institute, then we can begin to take it, and its Director, seriously. And he, then, can look himself in the mirror without wincing.

One final note. Where does the Middle East Institute get its money? Aside from whatever it may get from the State Department (itself a scandal when it comes to Islam, what disinterested corporate citizens, what very generous foreign governments and institutions, what foundations, pay for all its ostentiously "unbiased" and transparent eugene-birdesque "purely-in-the-national-interest" efforts at "contributing to the debate" or "educating the public" or whatever.

When the Middle East Institute and other, less plausible organizations, such as the "Council on the National Interest" of one Eugene Bird, attempt to suggest that they are all toilers in the vineyards of disinterested examination of the Middle East, and then we discover that the usual cabal of ex-ambassadors and ex-intelligence agents who have made out like gangbusters over the past several decades, some of them soliciting post-retirement jobs for themselves (Raymond Close) or for their friends (the late Honorable John C. West, finding a job for Crawford Cook with the Saudis), many of them becoming "internaional business consultants with a special interest in the Arab world" which allows them to be brought to Yale as a Stillman Fellow, or to lecture hither and yon on such timely topics as "America's Real Interests in the Middle East" or "Saudi Arabia -- Our Oldest Middle Eastern Ally" or... Your Imaginary Idiocy Here. Some bill themselves as "consultants and lecturers on the Middle East" (same result).

Always with these groups is the express or implied notion that they, with their "expertise" -- god, how I'd like to give those experts a little test on Islam and on the history of the Middle East -- are so very different, as they pocket their wages that come, directly or indirectly, from the Arab oil states (directly from those states, their institutions, their rich ruling class, indirectly, from American corporations aiiming to please their Arab customers or suppliers), from those bad old boys at AIPAC, the so-called "Israel lobby."

Come to think of it, AIPAC is just as as unhelpful, for those who in Washington wish to be better informed about the real nature of Islam (not the Bush-Rice "tiny handful of extremists," "perversion...of noble religion" stuff we are force-fed), the nature of Jihad-conquest, historically and at present, study of how Muslims treated non-Muslims under Muslim rule, historically and at present, study of the immutable texts, in a way that makes sense and does not confuse, including such things as the doctrine of abrogration, understanding of taqiyya and kitman and Muhammad's insistence that "war is deception"; ditto with Muhammad the Perfect Man, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, and what that means --and it means a very great deal -- to the behavior of Muslim masses today (the masses, not the westernized plausible completely unrepresentative representatives of the Arabs and Muslims whom one is likely to meet in corridors of power, at embassy receptions, at glittering estate parties where the best that oil revenues can buy helps to lay on a spread, from soup to nuts to bejeweled daggers to bejeweled call girls). The study of Islam will help prevent such polypragmosynistic misallocation of resources as the busybody bringing of "democracy" to Iraq and others, as the American government does its imitation of the Little Engine that Could, bringing toys and good things to eat to little children in the Middle East. The study of Islam will help Western publics, and governments, recognize that continued foreign aid to Muslims is both received, and given, in a spirit of the Jizyah -- and Jizyah, in fact, is exactly what it is. And that is not the only reason, but it is the best reason, for stopping it altogether.

And study of Islam will make clear that the assorted despots and crooks of the Middle East will always create an opposition, and that opposition will always be Islamic in nature. That is, it is not enough for Mubarak or the Al-Saud princes and princelings and princelettes to be corrupt. The charge of "corruption" alone would be enough in the United States or in Western Europe. But that is not enough in Muslim societies where submission to the ruler comes naturally, and is encouraged by the texts of Islam, by the model of Muhammad himself, and by both the inshallah-fatalism, and habit of mental submission that Islam encourages. Discontent in Muslim countries will naturally take on, be given, an Islamic caste because the world is viewed through an Islamic prism, and this means not only that corrupt rulers, such as the Al-Saud, must be depicted not as as "un-Islamic" or even "Infidel" rather than as merely "corrupt," Similarly, Infidels remain Infidels. It is a matter of indifference if they repair schools and hospitals and power grids and do all kinds of wonderful things in Iraq or anywhere else. What the Infidels provide will be pocketed, and more asked for, and inveigled. This will not result in any diminishment of hostility toward those Infidels -- at least to the extent that the population takes its Islam seriously.

This is the kind of thing that needs to be understood by those in official Washington. But AIPAC, so narrow and limited in its concerns, won't touch the subject of Islam -- without which it cannot conceivably make sense of itself, what the war against Israel is all about. In this respect, AIPAC is of as little worth as is the Middle East Institute. In a sense, these two organizations do not so much cancel each other out, as do something far worse. They both promote, either by ignoring or by distorting, what Islam teaches, and what the menace of Jihad is. They do this, of course, for different reasons. But the resulting widespread ignorance about Islam is the same. One can at least say, in AIPAC's defense, that it does not purport to be full of MIddle East "experts," but rather expresses, as do other lobbies, the desire to affect quite specific legislation and narrow policies, and does not seek to educate the ogvernors, or the governed, on anything larger. And AIPAC, unlike the Middle East Institute, receives domestic funds, and not directly or indirectly from those who, because they are in the business of promoting, or defending, or hiding, the Jiahd, are the enemies of the West, of its laws, customs, manners, understandings, and everything that makes that West the West.

Snouck Hurgronje, Joseph Schacht, Henri Lammens, St. Clair Tisdall --none of them would have been amused.

Posted by: Hugh at April 4, 2006 1:39 PM

Hugh,

I’ve been waiting for a long post from you on former high USG officials flacking for the Saudis, etc. Thank you. It was worth the wait.

May I offer one addition to your rogues’ gallery? You seem to have missed Amb. Joe Wilson, IV (http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/wilson.html).

This may have an interesting link to Valerie Palme Wilson. One wonders if this employment of her husband and source of a big portion of their household income was disclosed by her during the various background re-investigations necessary to maintain Valerie’s CIA security clearance? Same question for the period when she promoted Joe for the CIA mission to Niger.

It would be nice to think that Valerie might be in some trouble for covering this up. Unfortunately, the MEI relationship may not be any sort of “red flag” in the CIA background investigation process.

Posted by: MarcH at April 4, 2006 4:29 PM

Really worth reading.

Terrorism, the Iraq war – now we can blame one mysterious, powerful group- by David Aaronovitch

In early March this brace of distinguished academics produced a very long paper entitled The Israel Lobby and a shorter (but still hefty) version of the essay was printed in The London Review of Books (read the article here). Their argument, in essence, is this: first, America is and has been acting against its own obvious interests in the Middle East since God knows when. The reason for this foreign policy perversity, they reveal, has been the influence on domestic politics of the Israel lobby, known simply throughout their document as “the Lobby”. “This situation,” they write portentously, “has no equal in American political history.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2117045,00.html

Posted by: DP111 at April 4, 2006 4:44 PM

Hugh,

Regarding the availability of earlier scholars of Islam and the Middle East, may I direct you to the Gutenberg Project?

A quick browse through the authors delivers direct to your home work by Samuel Zwemer, and a gem from C. Snouck Hurgronje is found here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10163
(Mohammedanism
Lectures on Its Origin, Its Religious and Political Growth,
and Its Present State)

L.Drummond

Posted by: L.Drummond at April 4, 2006 5:43 PM

Mr. Drummond --

May I call you Bulldog? Or would something more formal -- say, Drummond of Hawthornden -- be preferable? You supplied a most useful linnk and everyone who, as a result, can now read Snouck Hurgronje, on a plane, on a train, in a classroom where the lecturer is at this very moment offering a MESA-Nostran brand of apologetics which is flatly contradicted, and most convincingly, in the authoritative text we now have before us on this screen, while he drones on, and we read, instead, Snouck Hurgronje.

I like these Gutenberg Project people. Of course I've heard of Gutenberg, but who's this "Project" guy I keep hearing so much about?

Posted by: Hugh at April 4, 2006 5:54 PM

Islamic culture is a jungle. I just wonder, do folks here think that Islam's menacing aspects are unfettered? Or are there impediments to them? If there are, what are they? What is preventing the roughly one billion Muslims from operating like an en bloc mass of militant fanatics hell-bent on epileptic conquest?

Posted by: Television at April 4, 2006 6:21 PM

"I’ve been waiting for a long post from you on former high USG officials flacking for the Saudis, etc."
-- from a posting above

Just google a few names -- say, "Raymond Close" and "Jihad Watch" and see all the stuff that comes up. More detail about him, Akins, Kennedy apparatchik Fred Dutton, John West, Eugene and Mrs. Eugene Bird, and many others. They're all over the place. Love to see their tax returns.

Posted by: Hugh at April 4, 2006 6:27 PM

Sorry, but what does "polypramosynistic" mean? I'm afraid my greek is not of the best and google is no help.

Posted by: wallyUK at April 4, 2006 9:03 PM

DP111,

Since 1945 the U.S. has supported all different versions of Islamism as part of a Cold War strategy. I would argue that the "Lobby" was only partially successful, although Israel's one time support of Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO shows that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a maxim that has many supporters.

Posted by: Tom at April 4, 2006 9:24 PM

"Sorry, but what does 'polypramosynistic' mean? I'm afraid my greek is not of the best and google is no help."
-- from a posting above

But at least it was Greek to you, which is more than it might have been to many.

The fault is mine. A fast typist (and you should see me when I take off my glasses and hike up my skirt), I hardly ever re-read, lest the piece never actually get finished and out to a waiting world. A psychological problem requiring decades of psychotherapy, sometime inthe future. I left the "g" out of its accustomed spot. Putting that "g" back in into its normal "g" spot thus yields "polypragmosynistic." That adjectival formation is not entirely without fault; I don't want Liddell, Scott, or for that matter Robert George coming after me (did you see what he did to Martha Nussbaum and her Greek?). I could have stuck, as I have in the past, with "polypragmonic" but my fingers just kept going. I was taking liberties. Not the Liberty of the Clink, not a Sloboda in old Moscow or in Shanghai during the Bundish era, not the Statue of Liberty, not "lo stile 'Liberty' which in Italy means the art-nouveau style -- just liberties. That's all I took. Liberties.

The word means acting like, behaving like, a busybody. That leads to all kinds of grand ideas, grand and expensive ideas, that are not winningly but appallingly messianic, and that at this point, given how the Western world is falling apart, is certainly completely unjustified. Husbanding of resources, men, money, and materiel, and even more care taken not to use up good will and damage American military and civilian morale, was not and is not the method of this Administration.

I hope that clears things up. I did my best at Sweeping the Clouds Away.

Posted by: Hugh at April 4, 2006 9:47 PM

Two previous postings, one using, the other explaining, "polypragmosyne" from the same thread on February 6:

#1.

"Spare me all those wolfowitzian spreaders of democracy, that whole naive, insufficiently comprehending-of-Islam polypragmonic brigade, that thinks the United States Must End Poverty or End Worldwide Suffering, and in doing this in the Muslim world, the American government will be just like the Little Engine That Could, Bringing Toys and Good Things to Eat to All the Little Boys and Girls on the other side of the mountain, and all manner of things shall be well. Why? Because ideas don't really matter, and the world's "major religions" all mean "basically the same thing" and "all people want freedom" and stuff like that. Resist the temptation to be a nay-sayer; as Eric Idle says, look on the bright side of life.

I don't want the best and the brightest, or the far from best and the not very bright, with their High School Civics Class Model-U.N. notions of what the world is all about, in charge of conducting a war against the most dangerous enemy since the Nazis. I don't want to be loyal to the shallow and the foolishly obstinate, who repeat ad nauseam the same cheap phrases about "victory" (what, in the battle against islamization world-wide, can this word possibly mean?), and who are fiddling with Iraq while Iran makes its determined way to the unhindered production of nuclear weapons, while the American government is preoccupied with winning hearts and minds in Fallujah or Mosul, and building up the "Iraqi" army and the "Iraqi" police force so that "we can go home" because apparently we just can't can't can't go home until the "Iraqi" police and the "Iraqi" army have been determined capable of holding "Iraq" together when not only should we not give a damn about that, but in fact hope that "Iraq" becomes a source of permanent friction, and worse, between Sunni and Shi'a, Arab Muslim and non-Arab (i.e. Kurdish, in this case) Muslim."

#2.

"Polypragmonic" from "polypragmosyne," a busybody, so busybodyish. The word occurs, I recall, in one of the essays in a green-covered paperback (Cambridge University Press?) with a title -- something like "Archaic and Classical Greece" -- and can also be found, marked "Obs." in Webster's 2nd.

Well, it's not obsolete any longer."

Posted by: Hugh at February 6, 2006 08:03 PM

This website is becoming just like that Word Of The Day outfit, the one that sends subscribers a fresh word in each day's e-mail.

Posted by: Hugh at April 4, 2006 10:00 PM

I wouldn't say that polypragmosune was "obsolete".

"[Eric] Voegelin’s discussion of Plato’s theology and minimum dogma found in The Republic appears in his treatment of the three pairs of concepts that Voegelin finds Plato utilizing in his resistance to his surrounding corrupt society. The first two “Platonic pairs of concepts” are constituted by the opposition of justice [dikaiosyne] to polypragmosyne (“the readiness to engage in multifarious activities which are not a man’s proper business”), and by the opposition of the philosophos (lover of wisdom) to the philodoxos (lover of opinion).

The passages relevant to this study are found in
Voegelin’s explanation of the third pair, the opposition of aletheia (truth) to pseudos (falsehood). Voegelin finds that this “pair of concepts [which “refers to the true and false, or proper and improper, presentation of the gods”] moves in the tradition of Xenophanes.”

Voegelin summarizes the history of this pair:

"The pair of concepts has a long history. It was developed for the first time by Hesiod when he opposed his true history of the gods to current false stories. Xenophanes, then, sharpened the issue to the criteria of “seemliness” in the
symbolization of the gods, and rejected anthropomorphic symbols. Moreover, the
motivating experience became clear, that is, the discovery of universal humanity which can be recognized as such only in relation to a universal transcendental realissimum. The one, unseen, greatest god, who is the same for all men, is correlative with a sameness of men that is now found in the sameness of their
transcendental experiences. Plato, finally, introduced the “types of theology” as
the conceptual instrument for clarifying the issue."

Voegelin goes on to explain the importance of “true theology”:

"True humanity requires true theology; the man with false theology is an untrue man. ‘To be deceived or uninformed in the soul about true being [peri ta onta]’ means that ‘the lie itself’ [hos alethos pseudos] has taken possession of ‘the highest part of himself’ and steeped it into ‘ignorance of the soul’ (Republic 382a-b)." "

-- David Wootton in his introduction to Political Writings of John Locke
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:NS_BPHbh5q8J:etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-06072004-202100/unrestricted/02-FirstSection.pdf+voegelin+polypragmosyne&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=7

[P.S.: Voegelin noted that by virtue of its roots in Greek philosophy and Israelite revelation (and their subsequent synthesis in Christendom), the West has been unique in world history in developing the symbolization of the individual and all that entails. I would add that this development is not finished; it will, in fact, continue indefinitely as long as there are free societies or, at worst, free individuals within the prisons of totalitarian societies.]

Posted by: Television at April 4, 2006 11:59 PM

"I wouldn't say that polypragmosune was 'obsolete.'"
-- from a posting above

No, nor did I mean to imply that it was. Despite my quoting in poker-faced fashion the definition to be found in Webster's 2nd (first published in the mid-1930s), including the characterization of the word as "obs." or obsolete, my gleeful insistence that "well, it's not obsolete any longer" was meant to convey a gloss on the original statement. To wit: "it's not obsolete [if it ever really was] any longer."

Webster's 2nd is the closest thing I possess to a Holy Book. With its limited number of examples of word usage, it remains more imperiously commanding than the O.E.D., with its amplitude of such examples, designed to show, for example, the first known appearance of a word, or its use by a major writer. Webster's 2nd, I now realize, can be likened to the Qur'an, and the O.E.D. likened to the Hadith. Webster's and the O.E.D. are my Qur'an and my Sunna. But they depend on men for their meaning, and for the record of their meaning. As for what would correspond to the chain of transmission for those definitions of words, surely that would consist of those hundreds of thousands of little slips of paper on which willing informants would write down appearances of the word that they had found, somewhere in the written records of the English language, and had carefully noted, with the source, and then sent off those slips of paper, weekly, monthly, yearly, some from Dr. Minot in his rural asylum, some from Marganita Laski in London, and some from each of many thousands of others, mailed to and then gratefully received by, in England, Dr Murray and his assistants at Walton Crescent in Oxford. In America, literate volunteers helped to supplement the work of the professional lexicographers, similarly, by mailing off their finds to the headquarters of Merriam-Webster's in Springfield, Massachusetts.

I like my Qur'an and my Sunna. Not the word of God, but the words of men, and especially of those men who, as Wordsworth put it, constitute the noble living and the noble dead.

Posted by: Hugh at April 5, 2006 12:50 AM

One of the many important, and enjoyable, things about this website is the various bibliographic material provided by Hugh. Much appreciated. But gawd, Hugh, do we really have to try to master all of this stuff concerning a dreary and bloody book and religion, and the bloody and dreary societies they created? (And you and Robert are telling me it's not just a single book, it's many books, mountains of books, sunnah and sira and God knows what else.) I haven't read Nabokov in years, but I finally sat down to Strong Opinions a couple of nights ago, and you're telling me I have to read collections of Hadith? I know the answer of course, but it's appalling.
As for your intelligent Maecenas, maybe Dover Books is the answer. Sure, you may be thinking, what does "All About Ferns" have to do with the struggle against jihad? But as you know, Dover is one of the great unsung pillars of Western Civilization (and I include the above-referenced title in that). A recent trip to Borders disclosed reprints, all under $30, of Gesenius Hebrew Grammar, Zoega's Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic (1910), and Wright's Arabic Grammar -- and good quality reproductions, not blurry at all, with the usual Dover non-acid paper and sewn bindings I believe. Damn this is a great country! Who knows what other philological delights lie buried in their catalogue? So maybe Dover should create a series of reprints of the historical works you mention. It could even feature you in the title of the series, Sir Hugh's Selection of Scholarly Weapons for the Modern Crusader, or something like.

Posted by: Marc at April 5, 2006 1:48 AM

My old Webster's's front pages are missing, so I can't determine its publication date. It doesn't have our P word, so perhaps it's older than the 2nd edition. (I was pleased, however, to stub my toe over polyptote -- "a noun that has many cases" -- while I was looking.)

Posted by: Television at April 5, 2006 2:18 AM

Hugh, you may call me anything except Late For Dinner. That's one thing I never am.

I am a big fan of the Gutenberg Project, which also has some interesting reading as Christianity and Islam by CH Becker and Mahomet by Gladys M Draycott. I've yet to read them, as I've not printed them off yet. That is tonight's homework.

There are a lot of gems to be found when playing with the search engine, and best of all, they are free!

I do love the Word-A-Day concept, please continue with it.

L.Drummond

Posted by: L.Drummond at April 5, 2006 2:22 AM

"...I don't want to be loyal to the shallow and the foolishly obstinate, who repeat ad nauseam the same cheap phrases..."

Very eloquent as usual. But does that not really mean that you will not be loyal to anyone who even begins on the profession of politician as it is in the West today?

Posted by: Paolo at April 5, 2006 4:03 AM

More on matters polypragmonic here.

Mary has used a plural "polypragmones", which I'm not sure is correct. Perhaps her fingers got a bit tired and couldn't keep going.

Posted by: Interested at April 5, 2006 7:20 AM

"Dover is one of the great unsung pillars of Western Civilization..."
-- from a posting above

You are right. Someone very intelligent, or a group of someones, has been choosing titles for Dover. And the very low prices Dover charges for these likely un-best sellers suggests some kind of quietly samaritan organization. Praiseful posts about that pillar are well-deserved.

Posted by: Hugh at April 5, 2006 10:52 AM

"Zoega's Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic (1910)..."
-- from a posting above

Zoega's Dictionary of Old Icelandic for $19.95 from Dover? What does the 1910 Clarendon Press copy go for? At Dover's price, no home should be without one.

I can see, from where I am sitting, such Dover Press books as the Variorum Edition of "The Tempest" and of "Hamlet," the two-volume "A History of Woodcut" by Hind, "A History of Paper-making" by Dard Hunter (but that was to be expected), Foster's "Lectures on the History of Physiology During the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries,"and Capt. Slocum's "Sailing Alone Around the World."

I did buy last year a Dover book on fern identification but it was not called "All About Ferns." I had intended to give it to my father but now am reluctant to part with it. Apparently my filial piety leaves something to be desired.

Just came across a recent arrival that was put out by Dover, "The USSR Olympiad Problem Book" by D. O. Shklarsky, N. N. Chentzov, and I. M. Yaglom, which was also bought with a particular worthy recipient in mind. But I started looking through the thing, and I can't solve Problem #241 and I refuse to pass the book on until I do. I peeked, but only at the first sentence, of the Solution to that problem (on p. 352). It reads: "The proof of Euler's theorem is completely analogous to the first proof of Fermat's theorem."

Well, that's easy for D. O. Shklarsky, N. N. Chentzov, and I. M. Yaglom to say.

Posted by: Hugh at April 5, 2006 1:11 PM

"My old Webster's's front pages are missing, so I can't determine its publication date. It doesn't have our P word, so perhaps it's older than the 2nd edition."
-- from a posting above

Could be the lst, could be the 3rd. Dwight Macdonald's scathing review of the 3rd, when it first appeared with its descriptive chip on its non-prescriptive shoulder, noted that the cut-off point for literary words in the 3rd had been brought forward to 1755, the date of Johnson's Dictionary. That removes from the 3rd many words used by earlier writers, including Shakespeare and Chaucer, unless those words gained a foothold and remained in use. That cut-off point, and the addition of 20th century scientific terms, is what makes the 3rd more valuable for students of science,less valuable for students of literature, than the 2nd.

Posted by: Hugh at April 5, 2006 3:52 PM

Speaking of reprints and Dwight Macdonald, somebody should do a reprint of his periodical "Politics" which came out in the 1940s. That periodical was one of the peaks of sophisticated political commentary in the USA. Since then, things have gone mostly downhill. Look at the Nation, which was fairly intelligent and civilized back in the 40s, but now...

Posted by: Eliyahu at April 6, 2006 6:26 AM