Marie Euphrosyne Spartali Stillman

The photograph above is of the classically beautiful young Marie Euphrosyne Spartali posing as the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, and was taken by Julia Margaret Cameron in the 1860s. Mrs Cameron was much maligned as a photographer in her day. To contemporary tastes her photography was sloppy and uneven, insufficiently formal, but she found admirers among the Pre-Raphaelites, and it was among that nascent artistic circle that she associated at Little Holland House in Kensington; it was in the salon there that this photograph and others with Miss Spatali as model was taken. Here is another:

Mrs Cameron was born in Calcutta, and Little Holland House was leased by Henry Thoby Prinseps of the artistic Prinsep family, directors of the East India Company. This current blog featured an earlier post on the superb draughtsmanship of James Prinsep, once resident in the sacred city of Benares. (See here.) In this present post we begin by underlining the connection of the Prinseps to the Pre-Raphaelite movement. British India both attracted and gave birth to highly creative and intelligent men and women. Mrs Cameron, hosted by Mr Prinsep at Little Holland House, was among them. The influence of the east via these connections - an orientalist influence, that is to say - was part of the Pre-Raphaelite heritage from the outset. This is sometimes not fully appreciated.

Little Holland House, one of the places where the early circle of the Pre-Rephaelite Brotherhood met. It was demolished after the lease contracted by Mr Prinsep expired. 

In any case, Marie Euphrosyne Spartali, of wealthy Greek Orthodox background, was introduced to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, its circle and its ideals, through the photography sessions with Mrs Cameron, the exact connection being that Mrs Cameron owned a house next to the Spartali family's vineyard on the Isle of Wight. She took this Miss Spartali to Kensington and introduced her to such figures as Dante Gabriel Rosetti and George Frederic Watts. Smitten with Miss Spartali's Hellenic beauty, these artists eagerly adopted her as a model. She features in many famous works in the Pre-Raphaelite canon. Here she is, for instance, in a work by Rosetti, A Vision of Fiammetta (1878) :

At length, however, she married an older gentleman, also part of the same circle, an American art critic named William James Stillman. The marriage was against her family's wishes, and proved to be difficult, but it furthered her connections to the world of artists and provoked her to seek training in drawing and painting. She was particularly taken by the work of Mr Rosetti and approached him to be her teacher. Rosetti, too busy, declined but recommended she approach Ford Maddox Brown. This she did - once more through the salon at the Prinsep's Little Holland House - and she began her own artistic career. She trained under Mr Brown's tutelage for some ten years. 

This is all by way of introducing her here as one of the present author's favourite Pre-Raphaelites. There are many "lost" Pre-Raphaelites, and it is fashionable these days to lament their neglect - especially the neglect of the females. In the case of the work of Mrs Spartali Stillman the neglect is particularly lamentable, because she was a very fine artist who received scant recognition in her own time or since. When she died she noted in her Will that it seemed odd to make a Will when she had nothing of worth to bequeath. In fact, she left a canon of extremely fine paintings in the Ruskinesque Pre-Raphaelite quasi-Quattrocento style; literary subjects, often neo-medievalist, characterized by complex rather than formulaic compositions, an intensity of colour - as opposed to the gloomy browns of academic painting - and a loving attention to pattern, texture and detail. 

Here is one of her most 'orientalist' works, Woman with Lute. We see the unmistakeable Pre-Raphaelite style adapted to a distinctly orientalist purpose. 

A great many of Mrs Spartali Stillman's work are depictions of single female figures in wistful poses, highly reminiscent of Mr Rosetti's work. Here is a typical example, more medieval Christian and less orientalist in tenor, Cloister Lilies:

 

Possibly her best painting in this genre is the delightful Madonna Pietra degli Scrovigni, from 1884, see below. There is a sense of the mystical in this work, the Madonna clutching a dark crystal ball. Like much of Mrs Spartali Stillman's oeuvre it is done in watercolor and gouache on paper, but with heavy, opaque applications of colour that makes it seem like an oil painting, a method promoted by Edward Burne-Jones and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle. It is a method that Mrs Spartali Stillman perfected. 

But it is in larger paintings set in landscapes that we see more of her unique talent. It is in these paintings that she stands apart. For example, see one of her very best paintings, the dramatic, bleak isolation of Antigone, below:

Another beautiful painting captures a scene from Boccaccio's Decameron. From 1889 it is entitled, The Enchanted Garden, or more fully, The Enchanted Garden of Messer Ansaldo, or, more fully still, Messer Ansaldo showing Madonna Dionara his Enchanted Garden. Messer Ansaldo falls in love with Madonna Dionara, a faithfully married woman. In an attempt to woo her - deploying sorcery - he makes his winter garden blossom like spring (though, gallantly, does not dishonour her in the end.) It is likely that Mrs Spartali Stillman's painting was the inspiration for the more famous Enchanted Garden of Mr John Waterhouse from 1916. Mrs Spartali Stillman's work is here below:

Several very charming paintings of a distinctly neo-medievalist tone, all of them set on the grounds of Kelmscott Manor, the home of Mr William and Mrs Jane Morris - another artistic centre like Little Holland House - are among this writer's personal favorites and demonstrate the best aspects of Mrs Spartali Stillman's talent. Morris, and Rosetti and the Pre-Raphaelites, took inspiration from the gothic manor and its organic surrounds. Mrs Spartali Stillman did as well. Her paintings of the manor and its grounds are especially attractive, although they deviate from many of the Pre-Raphaelite norms. They are not literary, for example, or based upon Renaissance models. They are more folkish, more naif. The artist is more herself and less an admirer of Rosetti in these works. Here are four such paintings, all of them splendid:

Kelmscott Manor: Feeding Doves in Kitchen Yard

The Long Walk at Kelmscott Manor

A Lady in the Garden, Kelmscott Manor

From the Field, Kelmscott Manor

In her later career, Mrs Spartali Stillman moved to Italy where her husband was working. There she turned to Tuscan landscapes and other Italian themes, building upon the Quattrocento themes of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. To this writer's tastes, though, her Tuscan work is not so enchanting, although much of it remains in private collections and is rarely available for public display. This, rather than some Victorian conspiracy against female artists, is largely what accounts for the on-going neglect of her work. Unfortunately, almost all discussion of her art is today part of the tiresome oppressed-woman-artist narrative typical of our times. There is much more of interest in her work than what can be seen through the filter of her gender. Quite apart from such contemporary preoccupations, she is a deserving artist with a distinct character who used the Pre-Raphaelite style as a medium for her own unique viewpoint. Readers can be assured that she is not featured here because she is a woman, but because she is good. 


Yours,


Harper McAlpine Black

The Difference Confucius Makes

The previous posting to this blog concerned the significant differences between the Indo-Vedic civilization on the one hand – which is to say the greater Indian sub-continent and thereabouts - and the Sino-Asiatic on the other – which is to say Southern and North-Eastern Asia. Various points of contrasts were noted – such as the Hindoo world giving way to the Boodhist – with a different relation to salt in the cuisine, and a different salt regime in general, being given as a crucial one. Readers can see the post, Salt and Civilisation, here.

The specific reason for noting the contrasts is that the present author has, in the past few weeks, traversed from one civilization to the other, crossing the invisible line that divides the two. After six months travelling around the sub-continent, most recently along the Malabar coast, he has now made it as far east as the Prince of Wales Island (or what the Malays call ‘Pe Nang’, the so-called ‘Pearl of the Orient’) to take up temporary residence in the elegant historic city of George Town. The contrasts between India and South-East Asia are marked, obvious and everywhere. As he adjusts to the relocation, more and more contrasts present themselves. There are still swastikas on the temples and the Musselmens still give the call to prayer five times a day, along with many other points of continuity with Hindoostan – indeed, there are plenty of Dravidians about and George Town includes an entire area popularly called Little India – so there is a definite sense of being in the same Asia as before, generally speaking. But the distinctions are more profound than the continuities. It is a different spiritual atmosphere, a different construction of traditions, a different culture. What exactly defines these differences? What factors are the most decisive?

One psycho-spiritual difference is immediately apparent: when one enters the Chinese or Chinese-influenced world one enters a new encounter with “luck”. The Hindoo, and even more the Mahometan, can be perfectly fatalistic and will indulge in prayers and amulets to confer good fortune and to attract blessings, but this is quite different to the Chinese preoccupation with “luck”. The Chinaman lives in a web of “luck”, which often manifests as a proclivity to gambling. The present writer saw no instances of gambling anywhere in India. No doubt it exists, but it is not a feature of Indian culture. It is, however, of the Chinese. And, as anywhere, it is unhealthy. “Luck” is surely a trivialization, a degeneration, of the ancient Chinese spirit, a symptom of metaphysical decline. In many respects the Chinese are not nearly as ‘religious’ as the Indians – depending, of course, on what we mean by ‘religious’ – but they are more directly ‘superstitious’ in a profane sense. It is the difference between being “blessed” and being “lucky”. The religious man still seeks blessedness (and whatever than entails) whereas “luck” is a desacralized and profane version of blessedness and is focused upon worldly things. In George Town one can see Chinese lighting incense sticks in temples to assist the outcome of a horse race. Indian superstition is rarely so crude. 

There are, all the same, ways in which the Sino-Asiatic culture is more refined and developed than the Indian. The present writer must relate that, to a great degree, it comes as a relief to be out of an Indian milieu and to be settled in the far more orderly – and clean – realm of the Chinese. A different social order prevails, a different sense of the civic. This is not merely sociological. It goes much deeper.

A friend of the writer, who was himself widely travelled and well acquainted with these distinct worlds, long ago made the remark that, in his opinion, the most fundamental difference between the Indians and the Asians – the Hindoostanis and the Sino-Asiatics – can be put down to one word, one name: Confucius. “Asia has Confucius,” he said, “Whereas India does not.” The two worlds have, as already noted, the Boodha in common, although the Asians embraced him and his fellow Indians did not (or not finally). And Taoism, indigenous to China, is pervasive in its influence in the Chinese world but has never made a mark in the Indian. But, more to the point, - more important even than Lao Tse - China had a Confucius and India had no equivalent.

Chinese culture and religious tradition is often stylized as an amalgam of three main streams: Boodhism, Taoism and Confucianism. Of these three, the latter is the one most often neglected by outsiders and especially by Western observers because it hardly seems like a “religion” at all, and yet it is the tradition that has made the deepest impression upon the Chinese and upon their wider world. Every aspect of Chinese life – the whole of Chinese civilization - is coloured by Confucius and the greater Confucian tradition, and this influence extends on every level throughout the entire sphere of historical and cultural Chinese influence, throughout the whole of South-east Asia as well as Korea and Japan in the north. Confucius and Confusianism, more than any other single factor, has created the very fabric of Sino-Asiatic life.

This is evident in many ways, but primarily in what we might term an elevated notion of ‘civic virtue’. These pages are not the place to explain the manner in which Confucianism operates as a religion and not merely as a philosophy in the lesser sense - it is certainly much more than merely a code of social behaviour. It has much deeper roots in the Asiatic soul. But in practical terms, and for our present purposes, its effect is to inculcate civic virtues. This is conspicuously lacking in the Indian. The Indian order promotes many profound virtues, of course, especially those pertaining to family and to caste, and yet there is a remarkable lack of civic virtues. This becomes all too evident once one has a different social order, such as the Chinese, with which to compare. One wonders why the Indian does not seem to have the slightest degree of civic pride? His virtues are private, and based in family and caste affinities, yet are conspicuously lacking at the civic level. It is a problem with which governments in India must contend all the time – to no great effect. The modern Indian has a newly concocted sense of nationalism, certainly, but that is a different thing again. There is, aside from that, a very definite lack of civic consciousness and civic obligation, virtues which are deeply ingrained in Chinese culture by contrast.

This aspect of Indo-Vedic civilization is on display at every point in the civic environment in every part of the sub-continent. As any traveler can relate, the dirtiness of the Indian civic environment is truly something to behold. The Indian, as many travelers have long remarked, is very clean in his personal habits, and also in his home, but that is where it ends. He feels no obligation to keep the streets clean. Nor does he feel any obligation to respect the beauty of Mother India more generally. This writer heard a story related of a traveler on an Indian train who was chided for putting a plastic wrapper in a rubbish bin. “No, no,” he was told, “you throw it out the window.” He resisted this, but after a while a bin attendant arrived and duly emptied the entire rubbish bin out the door of the moving train. It was suddenly apparent that the traveler had been chided for making the bin attendant’s job more difficult. 

It is such things that make India so incomprehensible to outsiders. Indians are punctilious about purity but think nothing about spitting in public places. This is to say nothing about defecating! Poor Mother India, in truth, is the biggest urinal in the world. The present writer was shocked and horrified to arrive in Cochin – assuredly a beautiful location – only to find the entire foreshore literally ankle deep in rubbish. Most remarkable is the fact that no one seems to notice. Indian families sit on the sandy beaches conducting picnics in amongst the junk and years of accumulated plastic bags. No one makes the slightest effort to clean up the mess. Without doubt the most appalling abuse to be seen is in Boodha Gaya where Indians have been throwing empty drink bottles into the compound housing the Bodhi tree and the Diamond Throne of the Boodha. India is very raw.

Once one enters a world under Chinese influence, however, there is a marked difference. A sense of civic virtue prevails. George Town is spotless. The streets are pristine. The same sense continues throughout all those parts under Chinese influence, the entire Sino-Asiatic realm. Once, in Japan, this writer and his fellow travelers noted an item of rubbish screwed up and shoved into a hedge. It was the only item of rubbish to be seen in the entire city. Someone quipped, though, that the miscreant responsible would probably spend sleepless nights about it and would eventually go back, throw the rubbish in the bin, and might possibly turn himself into the police in shame. This is the mark of Confucius. Such is the hold that Confucius has upon the Asiatic soul. 

It is very noticeable. Why is India the way she is? Why are the profound spiritual traditions of India accompanied by civic chaos? The answer is that India never had a Confucius. In many respects Sino-Asiatic spirituality is not as lofty, not as transcendent, as the Indo-Vedic, but it is consequently more grounded, more concerned with civic realities. This is exactly the nature of Confucianism. We may have difficulty appreciating the ways in which it constitutes a ‘religion’, but such is the very nature of Asian religiosity, certainly as it was shaped by Confucianism. This holds in check the otherworldliness of Boodhism and the emphasis upon nature that characterizes Taoism. India never had such a moderating influence to bridge heaven and earth. 

Confucianism, of course, is far more than merely a deeply rooted civic code. It was among the so-called Neo-Confucian sages such as Zhu Xi and his followers that China found a parallel to the metaphysics of Plato. Westerners are often drawn to Taoism, but it is actually certain schools of Confucianism that are nearest to the occidental temperament. This might be the subject of a later post. 

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

Salt and Civilization

There is an invisible line, somewhere between Hindoostan and Siam, where one civilization gives way to another. One is the Indo-Vedic civilization and the other is the Sino-Asiatic. We today think of India as a country, but in fact it is an entire civilization now partitioned, unhappily, into nation states. It embraces the Republics of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and various disputed territories between and on the fringes of these. Travelling eastwards, there comes a point where we become aware of being in a different civilization altogether, one characterized – to generalize the point - by Chinese rather than Indian influence. Certainly, there were times when the Indian world pushed further into East Asia, and there are instances of Chinese influence in and around the Indian sub-continent – the present writer has just spent a month in Cochin on the Malabar coast (the “-chin” suffix of which probably signifies the historical Chinese community there), but there are all the same two distinct realms, two different orders that together constitute the greater East. 

There are many significant differences between these two civilizations, the most obvious being the place of Boodhism in each. While Boodhism began in the Indian world, it found its home – strange to say - in the Sino-Asiatic one. It thus unites the two worlds and yet distinguishes them at the same time. Travelling eastwards from the sub-continent – or northwards over the Himalayas - Hindooism eventually gives way to Boodhism and suddenly you are in a different yet related spiritual atmosphere. The change is palpable and concerns everything from manners and customs to aesthetics and clothing.

There is a more tangible but less often noted difference too. At a certain point in the transition the cuisine changes and suddenly, without fanfare, something begins to make its appearance upon the tables of restaurants - a small bottle of soy sauce. It is nowhere to be had in India. Beyond a certain point eastwards it becomes ubiquitous. And it signals a major shift in the constitution and the flavors of foods. More specifically, it signals a new relation to salt and saltiness. This is not to say that salt is not used in Indian cuisine, but it is not used as a flavor – only at a catalyst for other flavors. There is no salt to be found on dinner tables, and salty condiments such as soy sauce are conspicuously absent. In eastern Asia, though, the salt shines through. Foods become deliberately rather than incidentally salty, and nearly every savour dish is accompanied by salt-laden soy sauce and/or a range of salted pickles and condiments.

The present writer only noticed the absence of salt in India towards the end of his six month sojourn there. He had long noted the way in which Indian foods are, finally, unsatisfying. He also discussed this with other Europeans along the way. What is it about dal and rotis, tandoor and aloo gobi, and all the rest, that leaves us unfulfilled? Make no mistake: Indian food is generally delicious. But after a while it fails to be deeply satisfying and even the most hardened traveler starts to crave for a European breakfast, bacon and eggs, toast and butter. Eventually, it becomes plain. The difference is salt. There is, of course, as already stated, salt in Indian food, but there is no salt flavor. It is hidden by spices: cumin, coriander, chili, tumeric. Salt is rarely if ever allowed to stand on its own. One takes salt in Indian food, of course, but one rarely experiences it. And in the end, this leaves the occidental man yearning. It is a relief to finally cross that invisible border into eastern – which is to say Sino- - Asia and to be greeted by wok fried vegetables and noodles, or even better seaweed, made palatable with salt and soy sauce. 

At one point in his travels the present writer met up with an old friend who was now living in India. Although immersed in aspects of Hindoo spirituality he seemed unsatisfied with Indian life, and most especially Indian food. His solution - this writer observed - was to sprinkle copious amounts of salt upon his curries. Other long-term residents in India are able to better adapt. Adaptation largely concerns one's ability to adjust to a different salt regime.

Nor is it just a matter of taste. No. The way in which a civilization orders the human consumption salt has deep and profound repercussions. It is no trivial concern. Human beings need salt, of course, for the most basic biological functions. But more than that, there is a deeply esoteric dimension to salt since it is the only directly mineral element in the human diet and so it defines our relation to the mineral realm. By extension, it defines our relation to the solid, the impermeable, the eternal. Different social organizations of salt are conducive to different mentalities and spiritual temperaments. We cannot expound upon these things in full here – it is a subject of alchemical significance about which there is a large and ancient literature – but it is very obvious, in practice, to anyone sensitive to it. Different civilizations compose themselves by different salt regimes. It is one of the most fundamental things that a civilization does. It produces different mind-sets, different ways of thinking and being.

There is a history to this. Primitive man, for example, seems not to have yearned for salt. In many early languages there is no such word. This is probably because primitive man consumed large amounts of blood. With the cooking of meats and a more expansive vegetable diet, however – things which accompanied the advent of civilization – it became necessary to supplement the diet with salt. How this was done became one of the identifying marks of particular civilizations. It is noteworthy, for example, that some civilizations (and some religious codes) introduced a taboo on drinking and eating blood. This is not only to draw a line against primitivism and barbarism but it also insists upon the social organization of salt. ‘Thou shalt not eat blood!’ means ‘Thou shalt mine and trade in salt!’ This becomes a crucial, defining, question in the organization of whole civilizations.

Again: it is not merely a biological issue, nor even a sociological one. The civilized man has a particular relation to salt, and this produces a particular mentality. Salt, as the alchemists insist, is intimately connected to our thinking processes. Thinking is a concentration. Thinking, in a sense, is a hardening. Salt is the physical correlative to the rise of this faculty in the human species. This is to say that salt – the way we use it – is a defining characteristic of the whole psycho-spiritual constitution of civilized man.

Certainly, Indian civilization has a very different psycho-spiritual make-up to Sino-Asia, and one of the reason is that it has a different salt organization. Gandhi once famously marched to the sea and made some salt in defiance of the British salt tax. Salt is among the sacred things that one may give as gifts to a Brahmin. Salt is smiled upon by the Hindoo gods. No one is supposing that salt is unimportant in India. But for all of that, India is not actually a salty civilization. The Indian temperament – like the Indian palette – is sweet. The Indian taste is for milk. Milk, not salt, is primordial to the Indian. Whereas, there is traditionally no place for milk in the Sino-Asiatic diet nor much appetite for the sweet in general. Rather, in Sino-Asiatic civilization, salt is primordial; the diet is typically high sodium and there is a passion and a yearning for salt. These differences extend far beyond the dinner table; they translate to substantive differences in mentality and temperament.

This has been very obvious to this writer as he has travelled from India eastwards in recent weeks. One enters a different civilization. There are many ways to describe and characterize the differences that can be experienced and observed, but the different salt regime – which is to say, finally, a different relation to the mineral realm, which is also to say, paradoxically, a different relation to the sacred – is one of the most fundamental of them.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Against Permaculture

The notion that a modified hunter/gatherer system could be the cure-all to the energy, environmental and organizational dilemmas of post-industrial man is surely one of the maddest ideas ever propagated in the often batty world of alternative farming. Such is “permaculture”, a design concept and related philosophy (and offshoots) concocted by David Holmgren and Bill Mollison in the sleepy backwater of Tasmania under the shadow of the world oil crisis in the late 1970s. The term itself is an elision of the words ‘permanent’ and ‘agriculture’. It has unfortunately become somewhat interchangeable with words like ‘organic’ where this word refers to natural farming methods and the general movement for natural food production free of artificial fertilizers and pesticides. Once there were ‘organic’ gardens. Now they’re ‘permaculture’ gardens. Permaculture, though, is a very specific thing, an assembly of very specific theories and practices, and is therefore quite distinct from other broader manifestations of alternative farming.

In practice it refers to an approach to sustainable agriculture based on perennial as opposed to annual plants. In theory it proposes that the low-energy systems of hunter/gatherers provide the best model for a future agriculture and, by extension, urban and other design challenges. It has developed a large following worldwide; thousands of people have been trained through certified permaculture design courses, and it is eagerly embraced by the wide-eyed and ecologically-minded. There is, however, a worrying absence of critique regarding permaculture, both among its devotees and among outsiders. You can search in vain for material that offers a sober, critical account of the permaculture ‘design concept’. There tends to be a considerable amount of ‘cult’ in permaculture. Permaculturalists, like other greenies, are notoriously zealous; they are on a mission to save the world and have rarely asked hard questions about the assumptions and suppositions that underpin their system.

The present writer, it should be known, is himself a life-long enthusiast and dirt-under-the-nails practitioner of old-fashioned organic farming and gardening – and is not entirely immune to batty ideas - but he has never been either an advocate nor a practitioner of permaculture. In fact, truth be told, permaculture is one of his pet hates. Nowadays it is almost impossible to mingle among the natural farming crowd without constantly having to deal with permaculture and its pervasive ideology. It infects natural farming like canker in an apple orchard. The author’s objections are both philosophical and practical, and longstanding. As it happens, he shares these objections with his son, who is a professional organic horticulturalist and who is well-versed in the shortcomings of permaculture since he encounters them in the field every day. Together, father and son bemoan the prevalence of permaculture on a regular basis. Does no one see its failings? A few of them are as follows:

* * * 

Permaculture is a neo-primitivist, regressive and anti-civilizational philosophy. It is a by-product of late 70s Marxist anthropology-driven utopianism whereby Marx meets Rousseau. Marx supposed that there was an inevitable transition, or cycle, of ‘modes of production’ from primitive communism, through feudalism, industrialism and then to a post-capitalist utopia, advanced communism or primitive communism revisited. Permaculture shares this implicit cyclic structure. It is a return to the lost ideal of the hunter/gatherer. The permaculturalist idealizes the hunter/gatherer mode of production and wants to create a post-industrial post-capitalist version of it. At the same time he sneers upon the accomplishments of the great grain-based civilizations, which is to say civilization in general. This Rousseauian bias is rife among environmentalists; permaculture codifies it into a design system.

As an ideology born out of the 1970s oil crisis permaculture assumes that energy is expensive and scarce and will become more so in future. Like the Mad Max movies from the same era, it is founded upon the myth of scarcity. In reality, though, this world of scarcity has not eventuated. The peak oil apocalypse – a favorite David Holmgren theme – has not happened, and nor is it likely to happen. Permaculture has the same psychology as Marxism; it justifies itself by theorising an inevitable crisis. But the fact is that energy is abundant. Forty years after the publication of Permaculture One oil has never been so cheap, and in the long term the transition to diverse non-oil energy sources is likely to be relatively painless and without intervening crises. As a general point, it is not likely that the captains of industry have made a massive miscalculation – it is more likely that David Holmgren and Bill Mollison have. This makes the whole raison d’etre of permaculture moot. It is premised upon a crisis scenario that did not and is not likely to happen.

Permaculture frowns upon high-energy activities such as digging, ploughing, grain-growing and so on, and opts for low-intensity perennial crops. This allows for certain energy savings, but in every other respect it is massively inefficient. Every efficiency gained by mechanization, division of labour or the human imitation of natural processes is stripped from the system. The plain fact is that permaculture projects are often fatally space inefficient. Like the hunter/gatherer systems upon which permaculture is modelled, it requires a large amount of space to sustain a small number of people. It is often said that organic farming is less productive than chemical-based industrial farming. This is generally true, although usually only to a tolerably small degree. In the case of permaculture, there is often a massive decline in productivity. The idea that an advanced hunter/gatherer system based on perennial crops can feed the world’s population is an utter nonsense. 

This is not to say that all permaculture ideas are misconceived. Like other alternative farming systems it promotes botantical diversity. Monocultures are precarious and can be disasterous, but diversity is over-rated. Often permaculturalists fetishize about “diversity”. Can you have too much diversity? Of course you can – in agriculture as in human society. (To employ a vulgar analogy: Diarrhea is not a cure for constipation.) Diversity is not an inherent good. It is merely one desirable characteristic in a robust, healthy system.  But an overabundance of diversity means a lack of specialization and resulting inefficiencies, as already noted. A permaculture farm will have a hundred different food crops but specialize in none. It is stripped of all economies of scale. 

And who wants a diet based on nibbling perennials anyway? Perennial crops suck. Permaculture yields a diet that is undesirable and unhealthy. Primarily it means a heavy emphasis upon fruit crops. Most of the perennial crops available in temperate zones are fruit-bearing. Permaculture is for fruitarians. Permaculturalists end up eating an awful lot of plums. Their diet is critically low in complex carbohydrates, legumes and their fermented food products, all of which have been the foundation of civilization. It is as mad as the paleo-diet, another hunter/gatherer throwback.

Moreover, permaculture has an entirely perverse view of human labour. It measures labour simply by its energy value. That is, it confuses labour with energy and promotes a crudely utilitarian view of human endeavour. The problem here is that the culture of food by the human hand is much more than merely an expending of energy. It is an expression of our humanness. This is like measuring human activity by its horsepower. It is reductionistic and misses the point. It sees no dignity in human labour at all. Furthermore, throughout permaculture theory there is a contradiction regarding the availability of labour. In an energy crisis labour becomes more available to agriculture, not less, because urbanization starts to reverse – there is a flight to the land. If the projected energy crisis of the permaculture distopia did eventuate, the labour-saving solutions of permaculture would be redundant. Similarly, exporting permaculture to underdeveloped countries is stupid because such countries have an oversupply of able-bodied young men standing around doing nothing. They don't need to save on labour by growing breadfruit instead of wheat. 

In general, the measuring of the relationships between different elements of the farm/garden/system in pure energy terms is distorted and often leads to undesirable results in every dimension. This type of energy-obsessed utilitarianism is crude and backward. You probably can heat your bedroom with your own excrement, but should you?

With a thuggish and sometimes subversive insistence upon utility, permaculturalists have often been responsible for the spread of noxious weeds in many parts of the world. Similarly, a mistaken creed of 'diversity' and an aversion to human intervention has often led to widespread land degradation. 

The proposal to change the plants which we grow from annuals to perennials is a terrible rejection of human culture which comes from a view of people as beasts (i.e their labour is just horsepower/energy). When in fact the cultivated crops (often annuals) are the embodiment of a accumulation of human culture throughout millenia. The selecting of beautiful pumpkins, wheat, rice, etc. from their wild ancestor plants and the human activity of perfecting and developing nature in this manner is the height of what it is to be human and is one of the most important things that differentiates us from the beasts. Our annual cultivated crops are part of humanity - they developed with us, and we developed with them. We have developed to be fed with these crops and cannot do without them, just as they have developed to be cultivated by us and cannot exist without us. This symbiosis completely escapes the permaculturalist. The permacultural world-view is not just anti-civilizational but anti-humanistic and alienated in this respect.

Whilst permaculture often appeals to people who are rejecting the modern, anti traditional relations between man and nature it is in fact an extension of that counter- traditional trend. Reducing relations between man and nature, man and man, and natural system to natural system to nothing but an energy relationship is the height of materialism and a further extension of modernity's materialist mentality.

Sociologically, permaculture thrives among middle-class, disillusioned, ill-educated back-to-nature ferals – all the children of Rousseau’s noble savage. For them, it is not enough to reject the excesses of industrial brutalism as do other natural farming exponents (say, the Prince Charles model of natural farming, or the Catholic distributists.) Instead, they reject civilization per se, at a fundamental level, and glorify the itinerant tribalism of pre-civilization hunter/gatherers. The permaculturalist is typically a scavenger on the fringes. The advent of permaculture should be seen as part of a particular sociology in Australian society during the late 1970s onwards in which the hippy and punk sub-cultures blended into the radical ecological neo-tribalism of the “feral”. These hunter/gatherer “ferals” stand in contrast to the often conservative, earthy, no-nonsense men-of-the-soil types of the broader natural farming movement. This is how civilizations fray.

Old roses in the garden of the author. As well as the points noted here, permaculture is a strictly utilitarian system that overlooks matters of beauty. If you can't eat it, it has no value.  

Finally, in practice, to a great extent permaculture tends to operate like a pyramid scheme. There are endless permaculture design courses that do little else than train more people to run permaculture design courses who then run more permaculture design courses, and so on. There are few successful (which is to say profitable) permaculture farms, especially if one takes out of the equation the money made from offering yet more permaculture design courses. A farm that needs to offer expensive training courses or tours in order to make a profit is not a successful farm. Similarly, a permaculture community garden that needs public funding is not really a successful enterprise. The simple fact is that while there are many successful, robust, sustainable, profitable organic farms – the 'biodynamic' farmers in Australia have over a million hectares under profitable cultivation and a booming export industry -, there are very few really successful permaculture projects and never have been ever since the inception of the system in the 1970s. The ‘design concept’ appealed to a particular demographic of green consciousness in the era of energy anxiety but has produced very little other than a small army of labour-avoiding hobby farmers with a Certificate 3 in permaculture design.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Kolam: Patterns at the Portals

The designs shown on this page are all from a single street in Mattancherry.

The tradition of “kolam” – also called “rangoli” and other names in other parts of Hindoostan ("kolam" being the Tamil word) – is thought to be very ancient. Being an ephemeral art it is very hard to tell. It consists of inscribing geometrical or interlaced patterns on the floor or ground, especially at the entrance to buildings. In an earlier post on these pages (see here) the present writer revealed his fascination for the symbolism of portals and doorways. Kolam is a traditional folk art that is associated with that symbolism. He collects photographs of portals, but he also keeps a collection of kolam designs as he encounters them during his travels. 

In the north of India, in Rajistan and elsewhere, the inscribed patterns are often coloured and resemble what are usually called mandalas. Often they are found on walls or the sides of buildings. In the south, though, the more ancient and rustic practices are preserved and the patterns are found at doorways or on the steps at the front of houses. It is a domestic religious art. Certain patterns are preserved and passed down through families, usually among women. The custom in the south is for women to sweep the doorstep of the house every morning and to inscribe the kolam on the ground using rice powder, a flour paste or, these days, chalk. 

The present author saw a great many such patterns in Bangalore during a visit there several years ago. On his recent journey he has only seen kolam in certain areas of Cochin, specifically some streets in the town of Nazareth and parts of Mattancherry. In particular, one street, resident to a community of Brahmin families, had a large collection of patterns drawn at the front of every house. The pictures illustrating this page are from that street in Mattancherry. 

A very handsome Brahmin gentleman invited the author to photograph them and was happy to discuss them, but he explained that it was largely a matter for womenfolk and he could not provide much information about the actual significances of particular patterns. Some are simple. Some are complex. Some are floriform. Some are astral and star-like. Some are explicitly geometric. Often women pride themselves on being able to inscribe the pattern in a single unbroken movement without lifting the chalk from the ground. “They invite in the god,” the Brahmin explained. This idea is the usual explanation – the patterns are an invitation to the gods, or to good spirits, or to “luck”. Inscribing the pattern at the entryway to the house every morning is regarded as auspicious. 

It should be noted, though, that the patterns are often labyrinthine, and are in this sense connected to portals and doorways. It is sometimes explained that the patterns are designed to bamboozle evil spirits that might try to enter an abode – that, quite the opposite to an “invitation to the god”, they are a barrier to the devil. 

This author is of the opinion that, most probably, the original idea behind such patterns is – like so much other traditional symbolism – astronomical in nature, and that the patterns represent the motions of heavenly bodies and planets as seen from a geocentric viewpoint. They are thus an extension of the astronomical symbolism of portals. The symbolism of the patterns is thus primordial, although its original significance has been forgotten. This is characteristic of Indian religion in general: it persists since very early times and is a remembrance of primordial forms, although the original ideas have been forgotten. Kolam are probably among the clearest examples of this - ancient, primordial patterns preserved as a mere "folk  art" in a simple domestic context. This most humble of art forms might, in fact, be the most pure and profound. The author hopes to explain more of this and expand upon it in later posts.

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

The Hebraic Tongue Restored

About a third of words in Biblical Hebrew, so it’s said, are technically incomprehensible. They either only occur once or else are used in various senses with unique meanings multiple times, or are otherwise obscure in sundry ways. Biblical Hebrew is a compressed language. It has a relatively small vocabulary that is pressed into highly complex and subtle uses. This is all compounded by the fact that it lacks vowels – as a written language it is a language of consonants with pronunciations and distinctions between root words coming later by convention. It is inherently arcane.

* * * 

It is unknown when Jews first arrived on the Malabar Coast. A notice in the Paradiso synagogue in Jew Town, Cochin, says that it was in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple, 72AD. Other traditions say that there were already Jewish traders there at that time. 

The present author was pondering these facts recently while sitting in the Paradiso Synagogue in Jew Town, Mattancherry, the only surviving functional synagogue in Cochin on the Malabar Coast. Once there was a large Jewish community supporting seven or so synagogues in this region. Most of the community has now migrated to Israel. The Paradiso Synagogue, dating back to the early 1600s, remains and is open to the public at selected times every day except the Sabbath. This writer had just had a pleasant conversation with Mrs. Sarah Cohen, aged 93, an embroiderer with a shop directly up from the Synagogue. She related that there is now barely a quorum and that, in all likelihood, when her generation is gone the synagogue will cease to conduct services. Like other Synagogues in the region it will then be classified merely as “heritage” and in the care of organizations based in Israel. It will be a pity, but probably unavoidable. Jew Town is now largely a tourist affair anyway. It is well-preserved and still retains its historic character, and it is frequented by Israeli tourists, but it is not really a Jew Town anymore.

In any case, the present writer was admiring the Synagogue, observing the strict silence and pious atmosphere of the place  as tourists came and went, when he realized that he had little trouble reading some of the Hebrew on the notices on the walls. He could read them quite naturally. This came as something of a surprise because, in truth, it must be over twenty years since he applied himself to any serious study of Biblical Hebrew. He once received some intensive study in the language from an Irish Catholic priest and thereafter dabbled in it – qabbalistically - on and off for several years without ever gaining anything like a decent proficiency. It is surprising how much of it has stuck. Even through years of teaching Biblical Studies – at an undergraduate introductory level – he had little call to use Hebrew to any great degree, other than a few words here and there. Yet, when confronted with a slab of Hebrew text, he can read the letters and recognizes much of the vocabulary, even if the grammar is gone. His every attempt to learn other exotic languages has born little fruit over the years yet, for some reason, he has managed to retain a good amount of Biblical Hebrew. 

In part, this must be because he once owned a copy of and immersed himself in the wonderfully seminal work of the French poet Febre d’Olivet, The Hebraic Tongue Restored. It was once among his very favourite books. He bought a copy in a facsimile edition in the days when he was working in the second-hand book trade. Where this copy is now is a mystery. Like other once favourite books it is long gone. But he remembers it with great fondness. It is one of those priceless tomes, a formative work, strange, eccentric, charming, arcane, instructive, suggestive, impressive. Published by Monsieur d’Olivet in 1767, it is a work that proposes that the Hebrew tongue has great mystic powers and occult significances. It elevates the language of the Bible to a special status. D’ Olivet was writing in the era prior to the Rosetta Stone and the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Among the central claims of his book is the claim that Hebrew contains the lost secrets of the priests of ancient Egypt. As such, it had a profound impact upon the French occult revival and its other European offshoots in the nineteenth century. It championed the notion that the “Hebraic Tongue” is an esoteric language of extraordinary cosmic, occult and metaphysical power. The book purports to investigate the very roots of the language. 

One of the luminaries who joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in London at the end of the nineteenth century once complained that he was promised to be shown the secrets of the universe, and upon this promise swore an oath to the death at his initiation, only to be given a copy of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Such an inflated, cosmic, account of Hebrew in European occult circles goes directly back to The Hebraic Tongue Restored. 

Of course, Monsieur d’Olivet was wrong about the Egyptian hieroglyphs, but aside from that his study of Hebrew and exposition of the roots of the Hebrew language was groundbreaking, insightful and competent. It remains an etymological and linguistic goldmine. And who is to say that his depiction of Biblical Hebrew as a language of extraordinary esoteric depth is mistaken? Its compression and compact vocabulary certainly render it mysterious and potent, and for Jews, as for Christians – and Mahometans too – it is, after all, a tongue in which God Himself chose to speak. By this perspective, every letter necessarily has infinite depth. It is a sacred tongue. It is not the tongue of the ancient Egyptians, but sacred nevertheless. It is a language compressed under the weight of the Divine Word. 

The highlights of the Hebraic Tongue Restored are the lexicon of Hebrew roots, and then – based on that – d’Olivet’s remarkable translation and exposition of the first section of the Book of Genesis, the cosmology of Moses. This is a tour de force in the application of the root ideas exposed in the lexicon and truly one of the most profound expositions of Genesis ever undertaken by either Jew or Gentile. In his younger years the present writer spent night after night delving into the mysteries revealed by Monsieur d’Olivet, and it is probably because these mysteries were so arresting and so compelling – so metaphysically fundamental – that they made a lasting impression upon him. Hebrew speaks to the heart. It is like no other language. The Koran boasts that its Arabic is easy to remember, but for the present writer the claim is even truer of the Bible's Hebrew. Terse, concentrated, potent with meaning, it seems a language just made to carry significances that extend beyond time and space. No study of the language makes this clearer than d'Olivet's Hebraic Tongue Restored. 

In the normal course of events, the present author is an avowed enthusiast and apologist for the inspired status of the Septuagint; in matters Biblical he is most at home with the Greek. But his recent visit to the old Synagogue in Jew Town in Cochin took him back to earlier interests and younger days when he engaged with and was fascinated by the cryptic powers of the Hebrew. The Hebraic Tongue Restored is still available in facsimile edition, and these days in PDF form. Anyone with any interest in Biblical Hebrew – and especially its deeper, qabbalistic dimensions – should acquire a copy. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Sam Gerrans, Quranites & Petra

Those many people who, not unreasonably, suspect that something is profoundly amiss in contemporary Mahometanism often mistakenly turn to the Koran and try to identify odious passages that supposedly give license to suicide bombers, clitorectomies, beheadings and such other Islam-related atrocities that today populate our news feeds with appalling regularity. They will hold up the Koran, point to nefarious texts, and declare that “the problem starts here!” But in fact, as anyone with more than an outside and partisan view of the religion knows from bitter experience, the problem is not the Koran but rather the secondary sources of Islamic piety, the Hadith. These are the so-called ‘Traditions’ of the Prophet, and the thing that characterizes modern Islam – certainly since the rise of the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia – is an uncritical adherence to a selected collation of such Traditions to the extent that the Koran is read through that lens. This fact is on full display in the approved Saudi translation of the Koran known as the Hillel edition. Every passage and verse of the Holy Book is explained by reference to one or other of the voluminous Hadith. The Wahhabis are, first and foremost, Hadithists. They elevate the supposed Traditions of Mahomet to the status of pseudo-Scripture and impose them upon the text and meaning of the Holy Writ. The justifications for suicide bombings, female genital mutilation, and so on, are not to be found in the Koran but rather in the Hadith, or else in the Koran as interpreted via the Hadith. The manifestly unhealthy state of contemporary Mahometanism has its roots there, and nowhere else. Accordingly, efforts to correct this state of affairs, and somehow to rouse the Saracens to sensible reform – some practical accommodation with the facts of modernity – must begin there and nowhere else as well.

This, in a fashion, is the agenda of Sam Gerrans. He has rightly gauged that the religion known as ‘Islam’ is primarily a construction of Traditions (Hadith) and is not a simple reflection of the Koran at all. He thus regards it as a “man-made” construction that has been imposed upon – and violates – the actual teachings of the Holy Koran. He is an enthusiast of the actual teachings of the Holy Koran, but not at all fond of the religion known as ‘Islam’. He devotes himself to separating these two things and to promoting a non-Islamic, non-Mahometan, reading of the Arabic Scripture. It is a unique point of view. He calls himself a ‘Quranite’. He has no doubt that the Koran is a divine revelation, but he insists that it has nothing to do with the man-made religion of those he calls Traditionalists, which is to say Hadithists. He dismisses the Hadith literature of the Muslims as hearsay and affords it no authority at all. He offers a reading of the Koran with the lens of the Hadith, and the whole edifice of the Mahometan faith, removed. To this end he has learnt Arabic, acquired a vast understanding of Koranic grammar, and has produced a copiously annotated Islam-free Koran available for free at his website Quranite.com. 

There are other Koran-only Muslims who have rejected the intruding authority of the Hadith literature, but Mr. Gerrans goes further. He does not count himself a “Muslim” at all. He is only a follower and devotee of the Koran - hence "Quranite". He insists that this has no relation to the historic Islamic religion. Unlike Koran-only Muslims, he has no interest in reforming or correcting Islam or in redefining or sanitizing the designation “Muslim”. He has severed the links entirely. He has cut the Gordian knot. He is a “Quranite” pure and simple. He is immersed in and marvels at the revelatory wonders of the Koran but comprehensively rejects anything and everything to do with the “man-made” religion called ‘Islam’.

It is a radical stance. And challenging, and also, as he does it, refreshing. If nothing else, Mr. Gerrens is a determinedly independent thinker. He has, at some point in his life, encountered the Holy Koran – or it has encountered him – and he has relentlessly pursued his own intuitions regarding that sacred text, and – most impressively – he has done so while holding the pervasive mind-set of the Mahometans at bay at every turn. How many others have been able to grapple with the Koran and keep it rigorously separate from the vast structures of institutional Islam? It is surely a feat of great intellectual discipline. One would imagine that if someone is so moved by the Koran that they become convinced it is a divine revelation this would naturally lead them towards some embrace of the Mahometan creed. Many converts to Islam attest that they came to the faith via the Holy Book. But not Mr. Gerrans. Instead, he was struck by how at odds the Mahometan religion is to the plain teachings of the Book. He was moved by the manifest inconsistencies between the practices of the Muslims and the teachings of the Book they purport to cherish. He was able to keep himself intellectually aloof from Islam and its traditions and to just become a devoted student of the Book. It is a noble independence. His work has the integrity of someone who has been able to think outside all the habits of Islamic civilization, and he does so while maintaining cogency and lucidity. Reading Mr. Gerrens’ work offers a new, fresh view of the Koran, throwing new light on a text that even the most occidental orientalist has habitually viewed through Mahometan eyes.

As an example, let us ask: what does the Koran say concerning non-believers and the propagation of the Koranic message? The institutions of jihad, Mr. Gerrens insists, are Hadith-based and not in the least Koranic. Rather, all the Koran proposes is this: that believers share the ‘Warning of the Last Days’ of the Koran with non-believers, urge them to embrace the One God, but then to leave judgment, reward and retribution to God, while authorizing self-defense if believers are subsequently attacked. This is all that a plain reading of the text allows, and nothing more. Other Mahometan institutions, Mr. Gerrens argues, have no Koranic warrant whatsoever. Are dogs unclean? This is entirely a concoction of the Hadith, he says, and has no basis in the Koran. The laws of Halal slaughter? Traditions, but not Koranic. An obsessive prohibition on alcohol? Not Koranic. Gerrens seeks to liberate the Holy Text from the distortions of the Hadith systematically and comprehensively. In an appendix to his translation of the Holy Writ he compares ‘Islam’ with the actual teachings of the Koran. The religion called ‘Islam’, he concludes, is not Koranic – it is essentially Hadithism. If one views the Koran without the distorting lens of the Hadith we arrive at something very different to any traditional form of the Mahometan faith.

This work of Mr. Gerrens deserves a much wider audience, both among Mahometans and others. It has impressive breadth for the work of a self-taught scholar. He engages with the Arabic text at depth and elucidates the finer meanings of the text with painstaking detail. It is the labour of decades, full of insight and intelligence. If nothing else, he offers a great resource to students of the Koran – the Koran seen through rigorously non-Islamic eyes. If one is looking for a fresh view of the Koranic Scripture, this is an excellent place to start. Let us suppose the Koran was not delivered into the cradle of nascent Islam as the traditional narratives would have it. What would it be like then? The‘Quranite’ exercise of Mr. Gerrens is like a view into parallel universe where the Koran exists and yet Islam does not. Given the state of contemporary Islam one can hardly be blamed for finding this position tempting. What if we throw out Islam but keep the Koran? It is a liberating thought.

It is to Mr. Gerran’s credit that his review of the Koran is not motivated by some shallow modernist agenda. There has been a welter of tawdry Korans of late – the feminist Koran, the ecologist Koran, the gay-gender-diversity-transexual Koran, and so on – that try to enlist VIth century Allah to XXIst century social causes. These are uniformly useless where they are not also ludicrous and cringeworthy. The Quranite endeavour is not in that category, thankfully. Mr. Gerran is not out to show how God is a leftist liberal. He seems intent on following his own methodology and on accepting the results whether they agree with modern sensitivities or not. His translation and commentary has the consistency and integrity that so many others lack.

As it happens, however, the present writer feels that the Gerrens strategy goes a little too far. The Hadith literature is, after all, a vast treasure-house in itself – an extensive folklore, deep and profound, a storehouse of traditional wisdom assembled over many centuries and bringing together diverse strands of oral culture. But it should never be allowed to overshadow the Koran. Would it not be possible to put the test of Koranic compatibility to the Hadith literature and to put the Koran first and the Hadith second-most where it belongs? Need we throw out the baby with the bathwater? The real problem, indeed, is not even the Hadith as Mr. Gerrens and other Koran-only advocates propose, but rather the way in which the Hadith literature is used to construct the Shariah and other Mahometan institutions. It need not be used in that way. The problem lies in elevating the Hadith to the status of pseudo-Scripture instead of recognizing it as an oral tradition of beautiful textures, colours and moods but of strictly limited authority. This writer, at least, celebrates the Hadith literature - acknowledging its many blemishes and obvious forgeries - but he understands that one ought never read the Koran through its lens. The relation between that literature and the Holy Book needs clarification. That is a task of outstanding urgency today. 

One aspect of Mr. Gerrens brave adventure into Koranic independence stands out for special comment. He is so keen to divorce the Koran from Mahometanism that he has embraced, somewhat recklessly, the daring archaeological thesis of Mr. Dan Gibson as advanced in the book Quranic Geography. Mr. Gibson has proposed the extraordinary notion that Mahomet and the early Muslims did not live in Mecca but rather in the Nabatean city of Petra. It is proposed that during civil wars in the first century of the Era of the Hijra the Arabs of the Hijaz region transplanted the geography of Mahometan piety from there to Mecca and thereafter Mecca became the place of Islamic pilgrimage and the holy city of the Musselmans. This is, needless to say, a very radical thesis indeed, and accordingly requires a wealth of compelling evidence to support it if it is to be entertained. Incautiously, Mr. Gerrens has embraced this Petra thesis as a whole and one finds reference to it throughout the footnotes and commentary of his Quranite Koran. Incautiously, because on the face of it the thesis of Mr. Gibson is a long stretch and by no account can it be considered even part way demonstrated. This is not to say it is necessarily wrong, but it is far from being proven. 

Gibson offers some enticing arguments for supposing that the Koran was first composed in Petra, not Mecca, but they are not altogether convincing. There is a tendency in secular scholarship nowadays to suggest – or at least to suspect – that perhaps the origins of the Koran did indeed lie westwards of Mecca in Syria and Nabatea. There is a body of (minority) scholarly thought that supposes that the roots of Koranic Arabic are Syrio/Aramaic. The Arabic of the Koran is strange and at odds with that typical of Mecca. And moreover, as many readers of the Koran have long noted, the geographical notices in the Koran do not seem to match Mecca and surrounds. Secular scholars are happy to consider the possibility that the Koran – or the core of the text – was originally composed somewhere other than around Mecca, most likely in the cradle of ancient Judeo-Christian Syria. Petra was once a sacred city of those Arabs. Mr. Gibson joins the dots and, citing various elements of the archaeology of Petra, argues that Petra is a better locus for the origins of the Koran than is Mecca. Mr. Gerrens, eager to distance the Koran from institutional and historic Islam has attached his non-Islamic reading of the Koran to Mr. Gibson’s proposal.

But to do so is surely premature and it adds an unecessary dimension of conjecture and archaelogical speculation to an otherwise rigorous translation of the Koran. It would have been enough for Mr. Gerrens to note that the geography of the Koran is ill-fitting with the known geography of Mecca and to leave it as an open question. Instead, he has settled on the Petra thesis and argues the case for Mr. Gibson from the signals in the Koranic text. This has the effect of removing the text from its familiar Mecca/Medina setting, and Mr. Gerrens obviously enjoys the way in which this loosens and liberates meanings and messages from the accepted and traditional contexts, but it also has the effect of making his translation seem crankish and eccentric in places. He has hitched a very fine labour of translation to a very dubious, or at least questionable, archaeology.  His work is far more solid than that of Mr. Gibson. 

It remains to be seen if the Quranite translation and Mr. Gerren's work attracts a following or whether it just floats around in cyberspace as yet another one-man adventure in speculative Islam. There are many aspects of his work that are unsatisfying. He rejects the classical distinction between early and late surahs (chapters) in the text, for instance, and some of his renderings of familiar vocabulary seems idiosyncratic. It is, after all, Sam Gerren's lifelong encounter with the Holy Koran that is offered to readers, his personal encounter, and so it carries his fingerprints and is blemished with his personal peculiarities. It is not objective and selfless. But it is courageous and bold, and courage and boldness are certainly qualities that the Koranic world - Islamic and otherwise - need in abundance in these very sorry times. Conventional Islam is in a terrible mess. Some bold thinking outside the strictures of traditional or rather Wahhabist Islam is long overdue. 

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black