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10 - ‘Stracan our Infernall Phesition’
- Tom McInally, University of Aberdeen
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- George Strachan of the Mearns
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Summary
Mistrust
The company of Englishmen that George Strachan had joined in Persia was a motley collection of men of good character and education, mixed with others of little education who included the scourings of the Fleet prison. They had been drawn together by the common ambition of making their fortunes in the East. As company servants, they all received a salary which varied according to their responsibilities, but in each case would never have made them rich. To become wealthy, they had to engage in trade for them-selves; this was in addition to any work they did for the company. The original intention of the East India Company's incorporation as a joint stock company was that its servants should not trade on their own behalf. Given the circumstances, this condition was impossible to enforce. In the first half century of the East India Company's existence, each trading voyage to the East was an individual investment with its profits or losses being assigned to the investors who backed it. This meant that investors in successful voyages made great profits, but when ships did not return their investors lost every-thing. The position of company servants abroad was equally financially precarious, and it was only natural that they should look out for themselves by indulging in private trading. In 1657 the company changed its investment arrangements by producing annual accounts and allocating the risks and profits arising from its enterprises among all the investors. At the same time, the futility of trying to prevent its servants from engaging in private trade was recognised, and they were formally allowed to conduct trade within the country and retain any profit they made; however, trading in goods to be shipped to England was strictly forbidden (Robins 2012: 24–5).
In 1619 the company trading station in Persia was beset with the problems these early restrictions caused and it was the job of the company president, Mr Barker, to keep control of private trading. Unsurprisingly, this led to conflict. The letters preserved in the archives of the East India Company throw some light on the troubled relationships which had grown there. It appears that when Strachan first arrived in Isfahan, the English merchants were still trying to secure their first successful trade on behalf of the company. An earlier failed attempt was the cause of acrimony among the traders.
9 - The English East India Company
- Tom McInally, University of Aberdeen
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- George Strachan of the Mearns
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Summary
Saving William Nellson
Strachan left the Bedouin camp for the last time in 1618 fleeing from Emir Feyyād, impending circumcision and his new wife. It had been five years since he had taken his impulsive decision in Aix-en-Provence to travel east and in the intervening period he had visited many of the Orient's great cities, had learned the Turkish and Persian languages, and mastered Arabic, both demotic and classical. He had studied under eminent scholars who introduced him to a range of important works and helped him under-stand the subtleties of their texts. In the process he had absorbed a great deal on the culture and lifestyle of the Arab and Islamic worlds. In material terms, he had accumulated significant savings as well as having gathered an impressive collection of books which were to be of great intellectual value in the West. To a large extent he had accomplished what he had set out to do, and in his letter of 26 February 1615 to Dupuy he had written that it was his intention to return to Europe in two years’ time. From Baghdad, to return by the way he had come, involved crossing the Great Syrian Desert, the territory controlled by Emir Feyyād. While he remained in Baghdad, Strachan was fully aware that the emir and the wife he had abandoned had not despaired of his return and were looking for an opportunity to reunite him with his Bedouin family. Merchants arriving from Aleppo and Damascus would have told him of the emir's continued vigilance. By June when the scribe al-Ḥasan had completed his second commission, Strachan had been in the city for about four months and had spent a significant sum on books as well as living expenses. It would have been clear to him that the longer it took Feyyād to lose interest the more depleted his savings would become. It made little sense for him to remain in Baghdad.
Given that the way westward was barred to him, he decided to travel east. He let it be known that he intended to visit the court of the Great Moghul emperor in Agra. From India it would be possible to return to Europe travelling on one of the merchant ships that the Portuguese, French, Dutch and English were sending on regular voyages to buy spices in the west coast ports of India.
7 - The Ḥusaynābādī Scholiasts
- Tom McInally, University of Aberdeen
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Muslim Confessional Identities in Islamic Iran
In less than twenty years following the death of Mohammed in 632, Arab armies had conquered the eastern provinces of the Byzantine Empire and the whole of the Sassanian Persian Empire. The desert warriors had little experience of ruling such complex societies, and continued to employ the officials of the former administrations of their new territories to manage civil affairs and collect taxes. Initially in Persia the Pahlavi language and script continued to be used for this work, but in 697 their Arab overlords forced the introduction of Kufi script and, although the Persian language remained predominant, the elite of the administration became bilingual in Farsi and Arabic. Despite the fact that the Arab Empire was defined by Islam, it was tolerant of other faiths. In the continuing Arab wars of con-quest, conversion of the conquered peoples to Islam was not compulsory but a significant number of non-Arabs did become Muslims. Identified as Mawālīs, initially these converts were second-class subjects especially in matters of taxation, but over time they gained equal status to Arabs. This was the experience in Persia and many of its elite became Muslim although the older religions such as Nestorian Christianity and Zoroastrianism continued to be followed. By the ninth century the Arab Empire had incorporated a large number of Mawālīs and the language as enshrined in the Qur’an was being corrupted. This problem needed to be addressed and it was a Persian scholar, Sibawayh, in Shiraz in 840 who first codified Arabic grammar and produced a dictionary of the language (Versteegh 1997: 4). By then, not only were the elite of the Persian administration bilingual but Persia had become a centre of learning for Arabic as well as Pahlavi literature. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Arab Empire in the East began to disintegrate, forming autonomous regions in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Anatolia. Native Persian rulers, and later Turkish invaders, took advantage of the Arabs’ weakened position and gained control of Iran, extending their empire beyond Persia into Afghanistan and parts of northern India. This was the prevailing situation when the Mongols invaded in the thirteenth century capturing the greater part of the region before their advance was halted in Syria by the Mamluks of Egypt.
4 - To Constantinople
- Tom McInally, University of Aberdeen
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- George Strachan of the Mearns
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Summary
East–West Relations
In the early seventeenth century, when George Strachan made his decision to go to the Middle East, journeys by Europeans in the region, although limited to a few categories of travellers, were not unusual. From ancient times there had been interchange between Europe and the East. Obstacles to free movement had appeared with the rise of Islam, and the nature of the relationship between East and West changed again with the Crusades. Following the final extinction of the Crusader kingdoms which occurred with the fall of Acre in 1291, the way in which the two cultures of Islam and Christianity viewed each other went through more transformations. The continuously changing nature of the relationship between East and West has been the subject of much debate among scholars, and different theories regarding the interactions have been developed. These include that of the ‘Global Village’ proffered by Fernand Braudel (Braudel 1972–3), and an almost diametrically opposite view of a mutual exclusion between the Islamic and the Christian worlds that has been described by James G. Harper as the ‘Iron Curtain’ model. Edward Said added to the debate by introducing the concept of Orientalism to identify the changing imbalance of power which defined the relationship:
The orient is not only adjacent to Europe, it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilisations and languages, its cultural contestants, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. (Said 1978: I)
Harper has recently refocused attention on the problem by stating that neither the ‘Iron Curtain’ model nor the ‘Global Village’ theory adequately explains these relationships. East and West were never entirely closed or entirely open to one another in all respects but altered their mutual responses as circumstances dictated (Harper 2011: 5–6).
No matter the view taken, it is generally accepted that in the Early Modern Period, when Strachan went east, free movement was possible. Visitors from the West continued to go east both as pilgrims to the Christian sites of the Holy Land and as merchants trading with the Levant and beyond. Also, numerous as these visitors were, possibly the greatest European presence in the East from the late Middle Ages onwards was that of those who had been taken as slaves.
Bibliography
- Tom McInally, University of Aberdeen
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George Strachan of the Mearns
- Sixteenth Century Orientalist
- Tom McInally
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Provides an up-to-date study of the life of George Strachan (1572–1635), early 17th century Scottish Humanist scholar, Orientalist and traveller.
Frontmatter
- Tom McInally, University of Aberdeen
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2 - Exile
- Tom McInally, University of Aberdeen
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Summary
Peregrinations
In 1593 when Strachan reached the age of twenty-one, he assumed financial responsibility for himself. It would appear that his family continued to provide some support, but there is sufficient evidence to suggest that obtaining an income became increasingly important to him. By that time he had spent five years abroad as a student and was showing a desire to continue his life as a serious scholar. For someone of his limited means, this presented a problem. While completing the Quadrivium, he could support himself in part by teaching younger students. As a gifted scholar, he could obtain a teaching post at a university or college, but such a career would never have been able to provide sufficient income for someone of his social status. His good friend, Thomas Dempster of Muiresk, similarly a younger son of Catholic gentry in the north of Scotland, was unable to support himself while simultaneously holding professorships at four different colleges at the University of Paris. He needed the sponsorship of a wealthy benefactor; until he obtained one he was unable to marry or support a family (Du Toit 2004).
Faced with similar problems while still in his early twenties, Strachan had given consideration to a life in the Church. The views of his family regarding the difficulties this would cause them must have given him some concern. Following his visit home in the late 1590s, he did not abandon all thoughts he had on the matter, but merely refrained from taking a decision. For over a decade the Jesuits continued to hope that he would join the Society. On his return to France in 1598–9, his primary interests still lay in academic study, but it is clear that he had financial problems. Whatever limited money Strachan had received from his family on his visit could not have lasted long. They were in no position to be generous.
Despite the relative bleakness of his prospects, he showed a certain confidence in his financial position since it was on his return to France that Strachan bought his album amicorum. The cost was roughly seventy merks. Parisian booksellers of the time charged two denarii per sheet of paper (Proot 2018: 199–200). The 250 folio sheets unbound would have cost the equivalent of £2 sterling. The leather binding with the gold leaf tooling would have doubled the cost.
3 - The Humanist Scholar
- Tom McInally, University of Aberdeen
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- George Strachan of the Mearns
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Summary
Jesuit Leanings
George Strachan had gained one benefit from his visit to Scotland: he had earned the gratitude and sympathies of the Scottish Jesuits. In their eyes he had suffered for his faith while acting to fulfil the commission given to him by Aquaviva. In their letters both Stinson and Abercrombie made special appeals to the general that Strachan ‘was deserving of appointment to a distinguished position when he returned to Rome’. Their intention in doing so was to help him gain a reward for his efforts on behalf of the Society, and provide compensation for the sacrifices he had made for his faith. They had come to think of him as one of them and Strachan had led them to believe that he intended joining their Society. Abercrombie said as much in his letter, adding that Strachan would be returning to Rome shortly and would give the general a full report on affairs in Scotland in person.
He showed his complete faith in him by entrusting him with another matter. As part of their mission the Jesuits actively recruited students in Scotland to study as seminarians in the Catholic colleges abroad. Normally it was a missionary who escorted these young men to a Jesuit-run college on the Continent. Abercrombie asked Strachan to perform this task, which demonstrates the degree to which he viewed George as part of their Society. By 1602, in addition to Braunsberg, there were two colleges which were exclusively for Scots: one at Douai in the Spanish Netherlands and the Pontifical Scots College in Rome (McInally 2012b: 6–61). The following year a further college was opened in Paris that, due to the Jesuits’ expulsion from the city in the previous decade, was run by secular priests (Chapter 1).
At the time of Strachan's visit to Scotland, twelve-year-old Patrick Seton, son of the Laird of Parbroath in Fife, and nephew of Lord Seton, James VI's late chancellor, was waiting to be taken abroad to study. His widowed mother had asked Abercrombie for his help in this. Patrick was the sixth of her nine sons. Her five eldest had reached manhood and were no longer Lady Seton's responsibility but the younger ones required a higher education which she could not afford. Her wish was that Patrick should travel to a Catholic college on the Continent as his uncle had done in the 1570s.
6 - Mohammed Çelebi
- Tom McInally, University of Aberdeen
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- George Strachan of the Mearns
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Desert Life
The first account we have of Strachan in his new role was written a year after he entered the emir's service and was given by Pietro Della Valle. The Roman nobleman and his party had joined a caravan of merchants in Aleppo to cross the desert to Baghdad. The caravan had stopped at Āna, the chief city of the Anazzah Bedouins, where Strachan had the opportunity to learn about Bedouin life. In a letter home written a month later, he explained that he had been in the realm of Emir Feyyād and went on to write:
[L]iving today with the emir Feiad is one of our Christians, a gentle-man of the Scottish nation, called George Strachan, a Catholic, and an educated and much respected man … he won such a reputation with him [the emir], and such good favour, that he is now Master of the Rod, and the most favoured at court, as well as having acquired the money and many conveniences he needed … So he is very well thought of by everyone; and when one says the name Strachan in the desert, one need say nothing more. (Della Valle 1664: vol. 1, 579: Bull 1989: 98)
Della Valle and Strachan were to become good friends, and his later comments may be coloured by this relationship but, when he wrote his letter in December 1616, he had never met the Scot. It is clear that after being in the desert for a year, Strachan's material circumstances had improved greatly. The post of ‘Master of the Rod’ can best be explained as an honorary role in the emir's entourage, and underlines Della Valle's comments on the respect in which he was held among the Arabs. The emir valued his services as a doctor but this cannot explain the high regard that Della Valle describes. Feyyād would also have been impressed by the ease with which the Scot conducted himself in his presence. Strachan was born of a noble family and, as well as his childhood instruction in the manners of a gentleman, he had learned how to behave in the presence of royalty and nobility during his life at European courts. The emir enjoyed his company, which must have contrasted markedly with the way that he dealt with male members of his own family.
Archives
- Tom McInally, University of Aberdeen
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Introduction
- Tom McInally, University of Aberdeen
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Call for a Biography
In 1983 Victor Winstone, the noted writer on the Middle East and member of the Royal Geographic Society, delivered a paper entitled ‘George Strachan, 17th Century Orientalist’ at a seminar for Arabian Studies held in London. He subtitled his paper ‘Plea for a Biographical Study’ (Winstone 1984: 103–9). A noted biographer himself, Winstone described Strachan as one of the greatest oriental scholars of his time. Although there had been some investigation into the life of Strachan, notably that by Giorgio Levi Dellavida, professor of Semitic languages in Rome (Dellavida 1956), and an early paper by Fr David McRoberts (McRoberts 1952: 110–28) it surprised Winstone that historians had still to conduct a full study of such a deserving subject. He felt that the omission was in large part due to the fact that Strachan had left no record of his travels and, as an earlier researcher had written, ‘his footsteps [could be] tracked piecemeal, only as the palaeontologist makes out the intermittent traces of an extinct wader or batrachians upon the petrified mud of the Eocene’ (Yule 1888: 312).
Research into oriental studies has grown greatly since the work of Johann Fück (Fück 1955) and in the twenty-first century numerous scholars have added substantially to the body of work through such noted series as The History of Oriental Studies, published in Leiden, but there has still been no new biography of Strachan. The late Professor Bosworth included a chapter, ten pages long, summarising the most prominent facts known of Strachan's life and work (Bosworth 2012). In the period since Winstone made his plea, however, some further evidence of Strachan's life has come to light, but most of what is known derives from accounts given by others who crossed the Scotsman's path. Even with this additional knowledge it is still impossible to provide the full biographical account that Winstone felt was justified. Nevertheless, a more rounded picture is emerging of this remarkable man.
George Strachan was a humanist scholar and a member of the European-wide Republic of Letters during a period when academic institutions were experiencing significant growth and intellectual dispute was intense on both religious and philosophical grounds.
1 - Heritage
- Tom McInally, University of Aberdeen
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Of Royal Descent
In his printed poems Strachan gives his name as Georgius Strachanus Merniensis Scotus – George Strachan of the Mearns, Scot. This scant information is supplemented by the family coat of arms on the cover of his album amicorum and by the comments written inside by his friends, professors and fellow students. From these it can be shown that Strachan was born c. 1572, the youngest of three sons of Sir Alexander Strachan of Thornton (d. c. 1600) and Isobel Keith (c. 1543–August 1595). Sir Alexander was the 12th Strachan of Thornton. George's mother was the daughter of William Keith, 4th Earl Marischal, and through his lineage Strachan and his siblings were direct descendants of King James I of Scotland (Balfour 1904: 46–7). Throughout his life Strachan placed great importance on his social status and, no matter how impecunious were the straits in which he found himself, he always expected to be treated with the respect due to a gentleman of noble descent. All parts of his extended family were nobility and gentry, holding lands which stretched from Strathdon in the north-east of Scotland to Dundee in the east. Dunottar Castle, the seat of the Earl Marischal, George's grandfather, is less than fifteen miles from the Strachans’ family home, Thornton Castle. The Thornton estate lies in the rich farmlands of the Howe of the Mearns between the small towns of Laurencekirk and Fettercairn (Balfour 1904: 122).
In the late sixteenth century Scottish nobility and gentry were divided by religious confession. In 1591, when George was still a young man, there were sixteen ‘Papists and discontented Erles and Lordes’ and only eight ‘Protestants and [those] well affected to the course of England’ of similar status. Those nobility and gentry of inferior rank to earls and lords showed an opposite balance, with records for 1592 stating: ‘Protestants 28, Papists 13, neutral, suspect or doubtful 6, minors 9’ (Rogers 1873: 62–3). Strachan of Thornton was strongly Catholic. George's maternal grandfather, the Earl Marischal, was one of twelve peers chosen by Queen Mary in 1560, while still queen of France, to act in her absence as a governing council for Scotland following the death of her mother, Mary of Guise. George's eldest brother, Robert, was his father's heir and stood to inherit all of the family lands.
Acknowledgements
- Tom McInally, University of Aberdeen
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Appendix
- Tom McInally, University of Aberdeen
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The following is a list of known manuscripts belonging to Strachan's library, using Strachan's catalogue numbers, where appropriate. Dates are given in both the Hijri and Gregorian calendars. The diacritics shown for the transliteration of Arabic and Persian script are those used in the given quotations. Dellavida uses DMG (Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft). Others use ALA-LC (American Library Association and Library of Congress).
Strachan's Catalogue No.: 5 Vatican Library Arabic: 422
Title: Bānat Su‘ād
Author: Ka‘b ibn Zuhayr
Strachan's comments: Poema magni nominis inter Arabas, cui nomen [Burda], Auth(ore) Kiab ibn Zuheir qui tempore Mahometis floruit et hoc poema et ipse pseudopropheta discendu(m) suis commendare solebat et lamiat il arab appellabat quia in hanc literam o(mn)es versus desinu(n)t. In singular carmina commentaries [opera?] Ibn Hisham [grammati]ci eximij. Emit Babilonj An(n)o Dni. 1619 Georgius Strachanus Merniensis Scotus.
A poem greatly appraised among the Arabs, entitled Burda, the author of which is Kiab ibn Zuheir, who flourished in Mahomet's time. The Pseudoprophet himself recommended that his followers learn this poem and called it lamiat il arab, because all its verses end with that letter. Each verse has a commentary by Ibn Hisham, an outstanding grammarian. Bought at Babylon in ad 1619 by George Strachan, of the Mearns, Scot. Dellavida's comments: The story related with Ka’b ibn Zuhayr's poem is famous in the history of early Arab literature. When Mahommed had founded his community in Medina but not yet achieved his triumph by the conquest of Mecca, Ka’b ibn Zuhayr, who at that time was one of the best known poets of Arabia, attacked him and his new religion in a violent satire. The increasing power of Mahommed made the position of the poet very dangerous. He was threatened with death should he fall into the hands of the offended Prophet. Therefore, he resolved to appease him, and went directly to the lion's den, to present another poem to him, in which he apologised for the previous attacks, and extolled Mahommed and Islam. Not only was he forgiven but he had the honour of being given the Prophet's own mantle, which was later sold to the Caliphs by his heirs and which became one of the most holy relics in the Islamic world.
11 - Among Friends
- Tom McInally, University of Aberdeen
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Catholic Religious Orders in Persia
George Strachan had left Baghdad in the spring of 1619 to travel to Isfahan with the intention of capitalising on the goodwill of the East India Company, which he felt he had earned by his actions in rescuing William Nellson from execution at the hands of the aga of Baghdad (Chapter 9). If he had failed to gain a positive reception from the merchants in Persia, his plan was to continue eastwards to India. As he explained in his letter to Sir Thomas Smyth, he was travelling to the court of the Great Moghul ‘with good recommendations and fayre expectations’ (Yule 1888: 324). He did not explain from whom he had been given recommendations or who had led him to believe that he would be well treated in India. It is possible that some of his Arab merchant friends had offered introductions to their trading contacts on the sub-continent, but it is more likely that members of Catholic religious orders were the source of his confidence in receiving a welcome at the Moghul court.
He had been reliant on the Franciscans while in Ottoman lands. During his stay in Aleppo, he spent time with them in the Convento di Terra Sancta. There were many Catholic missionary stations throughout the Middle East, India and the Far East. Prominent among the missionary orders was the Society of Jesus which was the most extensive in its reach, but when Strachan arrived in Isfahan there were no Jesuits in Persia. Jesuits and Augustinians had set up missions on the island of Hormuz in the late sixteenth century but suffered from health problems caused by its adverse climate. They had very limited success in making conversions, in part due to the fact that much of the population was non-resident. Merchants made brief stops during which they traded and amused themselves. Hormuz and Kishm were notorious for the abundant opportunities for drinking, gambling and fornication. As well as providing additional income for the residents, these facilities made the islands the trading station of choice for merchants (Coleridge 1997: 104–5). The missionaries attended to the Portuguese garrisons but after a few years both the Jesuits and Augustinians withdrew to Goa. In 1602 Portuguese Augustinians arrived in Isfahan and received permission from Shah Abbas to establish a mission.
Contents
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Index
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5 - Aleppo
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Achille de Harlay, Baron de Sancy
Constantinople was an obvious port of call for George Strachan. His intention in going there may have been to obtain a licence to travel throughout the Ottoman Empire, just as Pietro Della Valle was to do several months later. But he may have chosen the capital city for another reason. He needed access to a cosmopolitan society and learned institutions to improve his language skills. Just as important for the impecunious Scotsman, he may have thought that he could obtain suitable employment while there. However, it offered another benefit. Resident in the city was someone he knew who would offer him hospitality. The French ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Achille de Harlay, Baron de Sancy, had met Strachan when they both attended the court of Henri IV in Paris. This is known from the account of Pietro Della Valle who was aware of Strachan's stay with the ambassador. The Scotsman had left shortly before the Roman arrived to stay with de Sancy. In his journal, he described the French ambassador as the Scotsman's friend (Della Valle 1664: vol. 2, 437).
Strachan and de Sancy had a number of things in common. As well as their experience at the French court, they were polyglot scholars with an interest in oriental languages. Previously, both had strong connections to the Catholic Church, especially the Society of Jesus. Harlay had been bishop-elect of Lavaur before giving up the ecclesiastical life in 1601, when he inherited the family title on the death of his elder brother. His appointment as ambassador came in 1611 following the assassination of the king: the event that ended Strachan's chances of preferment in Paris and led him to abandon the royal court. The queen regent, Marie de Medici, gave Harlay, as ambassador, a specific remit to provide protection for Jesuits working in the Ottoman Empire who were under attack from Muslim fanatics (Goyeau 1910). There can be little doubt, as Della Valle wrote later, that Harlay was pleased to see his old court acquaintance (Della Valle 1664: vol. 2, 437). His position as ambassador was not an easy one and Strachan's convivial company would have been welcome.
It could not have taken Strachan long to realise that Constantinople afforded him few opportunities of employment or restoring his finances.
8 - Strachan’s Library
- Tom McInally, University of Aberdeen
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Summary
Public Libraries
Until the invention of the printing press in Europe, the Arab Islamic civilisation was arguably the most literate and bookish society in the world. From as early as the ninth century, Middle Eastern scholars had benefited from a revolution in book production, driven in large part by the intro-duction of paper. While Europe was using prepared animal skins to make books, Arabs had gained the secrets of paper production from the Chinese. Chinese paper was hand-made. The Arabs greatly improved on the technology by harnessing watermills to operate trip hammers which pounded rags to make the long-fibred pulp needed for the finished paper. In this way they mechanised the most labour-intensive part of papermaking. Arab linen paper was much cheaper to produce and of more consistent quality than parchment or vellum. Papermaking was carried out throughout the Arab Empire from Central Asia to Spain, with Baghdad being the centre of greatest production.
Inexpensive paper allowed books to be produced more cheaply, which led to the foundation of libraries on a scale unknown in Christian Europe where paper technology was not used until the thirteenth century. By that time books were widely available throughout the Islamic world. The great cities of the Middle East developed a tradition of endowed local libraries. Madrassas, mosques, teaching institutions and even the mausoleums of prominent people possessed libraries available for the use of the literate public. As well as public libraries, wealthy individuals had private collections which surpassed almost any available in Europe. Although there are no quantitative records, recent scholarship has arrived at estimates of literacy in excess of 10 per cent among city-dwelling Arabs (Gründler 2016: 31–66). An analysis of the catalogue of an Arabic library of the thirteenth century, that of the Ashrafiya madrassa in Damascus, has shown that this undistinguished establishment had almost 2,000 book titles. The works were on theology, poetry, mathematics, the sciences and history written by ancient Roman and Greek authors as well as great Islamic scholars. The Christian West had little to compare with this modest library of the Arab world. The book collections of all the colleges of Cambridge University combined did not exceed that of the Ashrafiya until two centuries later (Hirschler 2016: 2–3).