The Turks were feared by the Europe of that time, and the significance of their religion for their worldly power was well known; thus the political side of the question gave Hottinger’s work a special claim to consideration.  Yet, in spite of all this, Hottinger feared that his labour would be regarded as useless, or even wicked.  Especially when he is obliged to say anything favourable of Mohammed and his followers, he thinks it necessary to protect himself against misconstruction by the addition of some selected terms of abuse.  When mentioning Mohammed’s name, he says:  “at the mention of whom the mind shudders” ("ad cujus profecto mentionem inhorrescere nobis debet animus").  The learned Abbe Maracci, who in 1698 produced a Latin translation of the Qoran accompanied by an elaborate refutation, was no less than Hottinger imbued with the necessity of shuddering at every mention of the “false” Prophet, and Dr. Prideaux, whose Vie de Mahomet appeared in the same year in Amsterdam, abused and shuddered with them, and held up his biography of Mohammed as a mirror to “unbelievers, atheists, deists, and libertines.”

It was a Dutch scholar, H. Reland, the Utrecht professor of theology, who in the beginning of the eighteenth century frankly and warmly recommended the application of historical justice even towards the Mohammedan religion; in his short Latin sketch of Islam[1] he allowed the Mohammedan authorities to speak for themselves.  In his “Dedicatio” to his brother and in his extensive preface he explains his then new method.  Is it to be supposed, he asks, that a religion as ridiculous as the Islam described by Christian authors should have found millions of devotees?  Let the Moslims themselves describe their own religion for us; just as the Jewish and Christian religions are falsely represented by the heathen and Protestantism by Catholics, so every religion is misrepresented by its antagonists.  “We are mortals, subject to error; especially where religious matters are concerned, we often allow ourselves to be grossly misled by passion.”  Although it may cause evil-minded readers to doubt the writer’s orthodoxy he continues to maintain that truth can only be served by combating her opponents in an honourable way.

[Footnote 1:  H.  Relandi de religione Mohammedica libri duo, Utrecht, 1704 (2d ed. 1717).]

“No religion,” says Reland, “has been more calumniated than Islam,” although the Abbe Maracci himself could give no better explanation of the turning of many Jews and Christians to this religion than the fact that it contains many elements of natural truth, evidently borrowed from the Christian religion, “which seem to be in accordance with the law and the light of nature” ("quae naturae legi ac lumini consentanea videntur").  “More will be gained for Christianity by friendly intercourse with Mohammedans than by slander; above all Christians who live in the East must not, as is too often the