Snouck Hurgronje, Christiaan
SNOUCK HURGRONJE, CHRISTIAAN (1857–1936), was a Dutch Islamicist and colonial adviser. At the University of Leiden, Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje studied theology and initially intended to become a minister. His early interest in literary and historical criticism of the Bible, a field then still regarded as suspect by some conservative Christians, contributed to his decision in 1878 to renounce the ministry and pursue a scholarly career in Arabic and Islamic studies. In 1880 he defended a doctoral thesis on the origins of the traditional pilgrimage to Mecca. In August 1884 he traveled to Jidda, where he was invited by Meccan religious scholars and notables to visit Mecca. Although he dressed as a Muslim and adopted a Muslim name, ʿAbd al-Ghaffār, Snouck Hurgronje did not conceal his identity as a non-Muslim from his hosts; he remained in Mecca from February to August 1884. In 1889 he published, with photographs, a detailed ethnographic account of contemporary Meccan social and intellectual life, translated as Mecca in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century (1931). A chapter of this work is devoted to Mecca's Javanese colony.
Snouck Hurgronje's interests as a historian of religions were strongly informed by ethnography. For Snouck Hurgronje, both historical and contemporary religious beliefs and movements had to be understood in terms of the social and political contexts in which they occurred. After his return to Europe from Mecca, he continued to lecture and write on general themes in Islam and Islamic jurisprudence but he became increasingly interested in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia). In 1889 he was sent to Batavia (present-day Djakarta), where he served as a colonial adviser while remaining an ethnographer and a religious scholar. In 1892 he was posted at Aceh, a region of Sumatra in frequent rebellion against Dutch rule since 1873. Living like a Muslim (though again not concealing his European identity) and reestablishing ties with Acehnese he had first met in Mecca, his comprehensive reporting on Islamic political and religious movements began to shape colonial policy. He recommended that the government co-opt the secular chieftains, while suppressing the Islamic leaders who were the instigators of the rebellion. His advice was informed by his view of the Islamic leadership as alien agitators intent upon imposing norms and values contrary to local customs. Snouck Hurgronje continued his role as Islamicist and colonial adviser to the Dutch government from his return to Leiden in 1906 until his retirement in 1927.
Acehnese Religion.
Bibliography
Snouck Hurgronje's ethnography, The Acehnese, 2 vols., translated by A. W. S. O'Sullivan (Leiden, 1906), remains a classic. For an analysis of his scholarship on Islam, see Jacques Waardenburg's L'Islam dans le miroir de l'occident (The Hague, 1970), which contains an extensive bibliography. James T. Siegal's The Rope of God (Berkeley, Calif., 1969) contains an extensive discussion of Snouck Hurgronje's views on Islam and Acehnese society.
New Sources
Snouk Hurgronje, C., and P. Sj. Van Koningsveld. Minor German Correspondences of C. Snouck Hurgronje: From Libraries in France, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Leiden, 1987.
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