ABSTRACT
CALCUTTA University will shortly publish an English translation of Wellhausen’s Arabische Reich und Sein Sturz, by Mrs. Margaret Graham Weir. Mrs. Weir is to be congratulated on her choice and her excellent rendering of the German text. She could not have selected a more scholarly or a more widely-needed book for her literary efforts; and her translation is undoubtedly a work of high literary order. Wellhausen is a far-famed scholar, and his works on Islam mark an epoch in the history of Oriental Learning in Europe. They are characterised by profound research, rare critical powers, judicial impartiality and keen insight. His book on Arab Paganism is a finished piece of historical erudition. It set and accomplished the task of exploring the uncharted sea of Pre-Islamite Arabia. It is a mine of valuable information, and reconstructs for us Arabia before the Prophet, with its quaint fetishism, its strange ways, its strikingly singular customs, its uncanny traditions, its curious social mechanism, and, if we may say so, its extraordinary political constitution. Caussin De Perceval and Wellhausen are the two pioneers in that realm; Caussin, with his easy, graceful, light touch, and Wellhausen with his solid, searching criticism. Next to the Reste comes his book Der Islam—a model of patient enquiry. There, in those pages, unrolls before the reader the entire panorama of the rise, development, and extension of Islam and the Islamic Empire. He has delved deep into original authorities, and has brought western methods to bear upon rich oriental materials that lay to his hand. Not a single text—printed or in manuscript—has escaped his unwearied diligence and not a single modern writer his all-embracing study. We trust, in not too remote a future, we shall have an English translation of this book too; for I consider that simply essential to the study and the understanding of early Islam.
