Introduction

I cannot tell what to do to Mr Huntington, whether more to honour him or to envy him. He deserves all honour for that worth that appeares in him, by his actings specified in your letter, & I most heartily wish him all happines & prosperity. But I could halfe find in my heart to envy him for this, for that he hath the ocular view of those places in the land of Canaan, that I have bin blundering to find out till I have bin ready to lose my selfe, as I have sitten here....

The English Reformation in an Eastern Key

Chapter 7 explores the attempts of a series of chaplains and merchants to foster links with the Arabic-speaking Christian churches in the Ottoman Empire. It begins with the Arabic translations of liturgical, catechetical, and apologetic literature by Pococke, setting Pococke’s work alongside the more substantial Roman Catholic missions in Ottoman Syria, and documenting Robert Huntington’s attempts to distribute books in Aleppo and beyond. The chapter then traces the chaplains’ initiatives in charitable work among the Eastern Christians, drawing on reports in Robert Frampton’s letters to two English archbishops. The second part of the chapter reconstructs the more ambitious project of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge to produce and to distribute Arabic translations of the Psalms and the New Testament. It uncovers the essential contribution of two travelling Syrians: Solomon Negri and Theocharis Dadichi. Yet the most influential figure behind the SPCK’s work in Aleppo was a merchant called Rowland Sherman, whose activities as a translator and friendship with two Melkite patriarchs of Antioch – Athanasius III Dabbās and Sylvester of Antioch – the final part of the chapter illuminates.

The Road to Jerusalem

Chapter 5 describes the English chaplains’ experiences of the journey to Jerusalem in the seventeenth century. It argues, contrary to a long-held view, that the Jerusalem pilgrimage did not become entirely irrelevant for Protestants. William Biddulph, sometimes seen as an ‘anti-pilgrim’, can be understood rather as a characteristic type of early modern traveller. When the traditional role of the pilgrim was combined with that of the ‘eyewitness’ the holy sites could be compared with Scripture to produce testimonies of service to the biblical scholar. The chapter then argues that ‘devotion and curiosity’ continued to motivate the Jerusalem pilgrimages of both a series of chaplains and many English merchants. The final part of the chapter analyses the report of one such pilgrim, the chaplain William Hallifax, who made the journey to Jerusalem in 1691, leaving in manuscript an account of his time in the city and the antiquities he discovered en route.

Thomas Dawes in Aleppo

Chapter 8 discusses the chaplain Thomas Dawes’s letters from Aleppo in the 1760s. It uses Dawes’s career to reflect again on the book’s central themes. The first section describes Dawes’s work on behalf of the English Hebraist Benjamin Kennicott, and his attempt to view the renowned ‘Aleppo Codex’. It then sets out a series of arguments explaining why English manuscript collecting in Aleppo had tailed off since the days of Pococke and Huntington in the 1630s and 1670s. The shift of British commercial and imperial interests to the Indian subcontinent had been mirrored by a reorientation of scholarly concerns. The chapter then describes Dawes’s meeting with the German traveller Carsten Niebuhr, and explains what had happened to the interest in antiquities since Maundrell was in Aleppo at the end of the seventeenth century. The emergence of professional, state-sponsored antiquarian travellers, such as Niebuhr, had displaced the older more ad hoc collaboration between the chaplain and scholars at home. Although individual erudite travellers would continue to pass through Aleppo, the commerce of knowledge had come to an end.

Henry Maundrell and the Making of A Journey

Chapter 6 reconstructs the production of the most enduring of the chaplains’ works of antiquarian reportage: Henry Maundrell’s A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem at Easter, A. D. 1697 (1703). The first part of the chapter uncovers the story of Maundrell’s election to the Aleppo chaplaincy, and explores some of his early work securing copies of Greek inscriptions from sites in the vicinity of Aleppo. It then turns to his Jerusalem journey, showing how the different strains of interest which had developed during the course of the seventeenth century found expression in Maundrell’s account: the careful description of biblical and Greco-Roman antiquities; the testing of traditions against the authority of first-hand experience; and the attempt to reconcile the testimonies of Scripture with the landscape and material traces of the past.

‘Factor to a Worthy Principle’

Chapter 4 begins with an account of Robert Huntington’s collecting of inscriptions and coins in Syria. It goes on to describe Huntington’s antiquarian acquisitions in Egypt, exploring what his letters reveal about the market for antiquities in the seventeenth century, and Huntington’s dependence on the Catholic missionaries and French commercial infrastructures. The second part of the chapter focuses on two early English journeys to Palmyra. Huntington’s 1678 expedition reveals largely the perils of travel beyond the relative safety of the city limits. In 1691, William Hallifax had more success, yet the chapter explains the problems he faced in attempting to copy the then unknown Palmyrene script, and in describing unfamiliar objects through the lens of long-familiar books.

Edward Pococke in Aleppo

Chapter 2 details the career of the chaplain Edward Pococke during the six years he spent in Aleppo in the 1630s. It asks how Pococke built a library of Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac manuscripts in the face of fierce competition from rival European collectors. The chapter explores Pococke’s personal links with local scholars and booksellers: the Sufi Aḥmad al-Gulshanī, the Christian scribe Thalja Karma, and unnamed Aleppine Jews. It illustrates throughout how these friendships and transactions were intertwined with the English commercial presence in the city. The final part of the chapter assesses the value of Pococke’s collection, pointing both to his achievements in assembling a library of books which he would put to use during a lifetime devoted to scholarship, and to the tasks he had left undone.

‘A Rich Treasure of Manuscripts’: Robert Huntington in Syria

Chapter 3 follows Robert Huntington during the decade he spent in Syria (1671–81), piecing together one of the most extensive collections of oriental manuscripts to come into Europe before the nineteenth century. It describes the changed circumstances in Aleppo since Edward Pococke’s years in the city: the more extensive presence of European (particularly French) collectors. It then surveys Huntington’s work on behalf of a community of English scholars, reconstructing a network of correspondents – from Syria, to Cyprus, to Iraq – which Huntington exploited in his quest for books. This section develops the theme of the working relationships between European collectors and local scholars, charting Huntington’s epistolary exchanges with the Maronite patriarch of Antioch, Isṭifān al-Duwayhī, and the Samaritan scribe, Marhib ben Jacob. It also points to English scholars’ reliance on the longer-established Roman Catholic missions, here exemplified by Huntington’s attempts to secure books and information on the Mandaeans through Carmelite missionaries in Basra. Following Huntington and his books back to England, a concluding discussion describes the sale of Huntington’s library and Huntington’s own career prospects after ten years’ service to English scholarship in Syria. It ends with an assessment of English collectors’ achievements by the end of the seventeenth century.

‘Turky Labours’

Chapter 1 sets out the institutional history of the Levant Company in London and Aleppo. It argues that the infrastructures developed from the late sixteenth century to facilitate trade – the legal protection provided by the capitulations, regular shipping routes, systems of postal communication – laid the foundations for a ‘literarum commercium’, a commerce of letters, that would have implications beyond the immediate mercantile concerns of the Levant Company. New opportunities for scholarly inquiry were augmented by the growth of the English community, or ‘factory’, in Aleppo, and, in particular, by the appointment, from the early seventeenth century, of a line of clergymen employed to minister to the expatriate merchants and consular staff. Drawing on the Levant Company archive, the chapter paints a detailed picture of this small outpost, positioning it alongside the more established Venetian and French (and later Dutch) communities and the various Roman Catholic missions then stationed in Aleppo. The chaplains came to serve as the crucial link between Syria, London, and the English universities (predominantly Oxford), with whose members many of them remained in touch from abroad. The chapter also provides an overview of intellectual developments which sets the scene for the more detailed investigations of individual projects explored in the remainder of the book.