Prophet of Reason : Science, Religion and the Origins of the Modern Middle East

Prophet of Reason : Science, Religion and the Origins of the Modern Middle EastAn outstanding intellectual biography.' Eugene RoganIn 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 andthe radical ideas of Voltaire and Volney: heloses his religion, turning away from the Catholic Church.Thirty years later, as civil war rages in Syria, he finds

An outstanding intellectual biography.' Eugene RoganIn 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.