Terrible Turks, Bedouin Poets, and Prussian Prophets: The Shifting Place of Islam in Herder's

Thought
Author(s): Ian Almond
Source: PMLA, Vol. 123, No. 1 (Jan., 2008), pp. 57-75
Published by: Modern Language Association
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12 3-1

Terrible Turks, Bedouin Poets, and Prussian

Prophets: The Shifting Place of Islam in
Herder's Thought
IAN ALMOND

Alas, theclaimsKalligone had to strugglewith unjustly!... This stuffnowa

days is called in so many journals Kritik, and is theorder ofthe day. All the
Kantians,

young
from

heaven

Fichtians,

and whispered

etc., etc., recite

Schellingians,
into the Prophet's

this Koran,

sent

ear.

musste
streiten.
unwiirdig
Behauptungen
[Kalligone]
so viel Journalen Kritik, u. ist
in
des
Tages.
Zeug heifit jetzt
Ordnung
etc. etc. recensiren nach die
Kantianer,
Fichtianer,
Allejunge
Schellingianer,
sem Koran,
vom
u. dem
ins
Himmelgesandt
Prophet
Ohrgeblasen.
Au

wehl

mit welchen

. .. Dies

?Herder

ALL ITSAMUSEMENT,
OF KANTAS A FALSE
HERDER'SIMAGE

FOR

Prophet, seducing a younger generation of followers with his

critical revelations, carries with it a certain sadness (Briefe

IANALMOND teaches part-time at the Cen

tre for Languages, Europa-Universitat Via
drina Frankfurt (Oder), and at the John F.
Kennedy Institute, Freie Universitat Ber
lin. He is the author of three books: Su
fism and Deconstruction: A Comparative
Study of Derrida and Ibn 'Arabi (Routledge,
2004), The New Orientalists: Postmodern
Representations of Islam from Foucault to
Baudrillard (I.B.Tauris,2007), and a popu
lar history of Muslim-Christian alliances,
Two Faiths, One Banner (I.B.Tauris, forth
coming 2008).

He is also the author of

over fortyarticles ina variety of journals,

such as New LiteraryHistory, the Harvard
Theological Review, and the British jour
nal Radical Philosophy. He isworking on a
book-length study of the Bengali thinker
Nirad C Chaudhuri.

toGleim, 13 June 1800

[1979] 8: 137). The picture itpresents ofthe resentful fifty-six-year

old philosopher, who, in his lifetime at least, never managed to outdo
his

former

teacher,

strikes

melancholy

note.

Nietzsche's

"sore

and

unfree thinker," who never felt he could "sit at the banquet of the
actual creators" (qtd. in Behler 247 [fromNietzches Human, All Too
Human]),
springs most immediately tomind when we read Herder's
self-righteous picture of Kant as a Prussian Muhammad
establishing
a new creed of Vernunft with his Koran of Pure Reason.

In observing his former professors rising star,Herder clearly felt

that a new religion was about to bloom. Kant, it should be said, was
not the only person inHerder s letters to be credited with the status of

At various points during his correspondence, Herder em

ployed themetaphor to describe his wife; his friend JohannKaspar Lava
ter; the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, whose odes had "an almost

Muhammad.

Muhammadan
?

2008

boldness"

BY THE MODERN

about them ("einige fastMahomedanische

LANGUAGE

ASSOCIATION

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OF AMERICA

57

58

TerribleTurks,Bedouin Poets,and PrussianProphets:The Shifting

Place of IslaminHerder'sThought
Briefe [1979] 1: 295 [letter to
Jan. 1771]); and, most significantly, Jo
hann Georg Hamann. "Old, pure Prophet," he
writes to his mentor in 1784,
Kuhnheiten";

Hesse,

read

with

[my Ideen]
reward me with
be,

from your

a response,

dear

care

and

patience

itmay

however

breast!...

...

You'll

say your

to me, and that will move me nearer

thoughts
... Mu
me
some aid.
to you and also
give
a
sura
starts
in his Koran:
Praised
hammad

be theMerciful God; he has given the feather

pen tomankind; may he give it to you too!
Lesen
duld

Sie also,
u.

Schonung...
mit
einem

Sie mich

aus

wolle,

Ihrer

mir

werden
mich

zu

seines

reiner

er sei wie

Nachhall,

riicken

... Aber

Brust.

lieben

sagen
u. mir

geben. Mahomed

Korans

an: Lob

dem

er
Sie

u. das wird
auf den

auch

fangt eine
Barmherzi

gen Gott; er hat die Schreibfeder dem Men

schen

gegeben;

er

gebe

sie auch

The young Herder, as is well known, had

at
been a student of both Kant and Hamann
Konigsberg, and a significant amount of schol
arship has been devoted to determining which
ofthe two stars?that ofthe Enlightenment or
the greater influ
This jux
course.1
planetary
two
however?one
of
Muhammads,
taposition
a cunning deceiver, the other a pure source
not merely of bio
of aid and inspiration?is
Sturm und Drang?exerted
ence on Herder's

graphical interest, another handy reference

forHerder scholars to use in coloring the his
tory of a familiar rivalry.Herder's two proph
ets point the way to something more serious
and more

complex in the thinker's attitudes

toward Islam and the peoples and cultures he
to be "Muhammadan."

essay attempts
complexity in Herder's
My

through

more specifically Protestant identity, one that

harbored reservations toward Islam yet nev
ertheless employed it as a positive point of
reference with regard to the idolatry and cru

sades of papism; an aesthetic register, which

appeared whenever Herder wanted to down

and view
play the falsity ofMuhammadanism
its rise as a morally beneficial exercise in sub

limity; and, perhaps most interestingly, a po

litical vocabulary that interpreted the role of
the Koran in the birth of Islam as an impor

for the role of Sprache in the

task of nation building but that also saw Eu

rope's nearest Muslim neighbors (the Turks)

as a barbaric horde and an abiding threat to
civilization. What follows is a brief attempt
to understand the dissonance, complications,
and paradoxes arising from the coexistence of
these four identities inHerder's oeuvre.

Ihnen!

(Briefe [1979] 5: 43 [toHamann, May 1784])

understood

ever saw Islam as a fundamentally mistaken,

aggressive version of the Christian faith; a

tant precedent

mit Ge
Prophet,
u. ermuntern

belohnen

Ihre Gedanken

Ihnen

VerfolgWinke
Sura

alter

PMLA

to understand

the

to Islam

approach
of four separate
voices in his work: an

the delineation

though often jarring

identity, one that for
essentially Christian

The ebb and flow ofHerder's critical recep

tion, from his obscure status as Kant's pupil
and Goethe's correspondent, themyth of his
abhorrence for the Enlightenment, and the
abuses his writings suffered at the hands of a

variety of German nationalist thinkers to the

no small part to
gradual recovery (thanks in
influential
Berlin's
Isaiah
study) and recogni
an
tion of his status as
early thinker of toler
ance, pluralism, and ethnic identity?such a
volatile critical heritage has culminated in an

almost postmodern resurrection ofthe alleged

father of nationalism as a prescient critic of

Eurocentrism

and an affirmer of nonuniver

sal, relatively valid value systems.2 Even those

scholars who stop short of comparing Herder
with Lyotard and Derrida appear to agree on a
figurewho "abhorred all forms of cultural chau
vinism" (Beiser 189), whose impulse towrite
history was driven by "a love of humankind"

(Knoll 129), and whose writings constitute "an

oasis of tolerance and humanity" (Adler 391).
There is certainly nothing false about
such descriptions.

Herder's

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early critique of

123.1

European self-congratulation ("Why should

the western corner of our northern hemi
sphere alone possess culture?" ["Warum sollte
der westliche Winkel unsres Nord-Hemispars
die Kultur allein besitzen? und besitzet er sie
allein?"]) is indeed remarkable,3 as are his at
tacks on imperialism and clannish provin
cialism; unlike Leibniz, Herder never desired
an Egyptian plan, not from the Portuguese

or anyone else. Yet themuch-vaunted

claims
for his humanity, pluralism, and (arguably)
prescient

cultural

require some
Most scholars are

relativism

important qualifications.
happy to remind us how Herder chastised

Jo
and the earl of

hann JoachimWinckelmann
Shaftesbury for judging Egyptian

culture by
Greek or European standards instead of Egyp
tian ones?few, however, dwell on exactly how
he expressed this opinion ("The boy's coat is
certainly too short for the giant!" ["Der Rock
des Knabens ist allerdings fiir den Riesen zu
kurz"]).4 Herder's emphasis on the childish
ness of the Oriental; his negative representa
tion, at times demonization, of the Turk; his
Protestant reservations toward not only Islam

but also "the barbary of papism" ("die Ba-'ba

rei des Papismus") serve to remind us thatwe
are dealing with not a
single,magically coher
ent human being but a varied and inconsistent

collection of texts (Samtliche Werke 32: 143).

Herder's ambiguous attitude toward Islam will
play a crucial role in this problematization of
the place of the non-European
Like

Kant,

Herder

was

in his work.

a voracious

reader

of travelogues and orientalia, even if critics

have rightly acknowledged
the difficulty of
sources
the
forhis under
exactly ascertaining

standing of Islam (Hardiyanto 102). The lively

and varied context of his writings, set against

the unfolding developments

in Arabic and
Persian studies ofthe second half of the Ger
man eighteenth century,presents his somewhat

sympathetic treatment ofthe Muslim Orient as

unusual but by no means without precedent.
The travelogues Herder had to rely on ranged

widely,

from the blatantly biased

traveler's

Ian Almond

tale to themore measured

account that, ifnot

perspective, at least at

free from a European

tempted some form of objectivity. On the one

hand, therewas Thomas Shaw's Travels (1738),

an Anglican chaplain's account ofNorth Africa
and Arabia that, for all the interest and merit of
itsphysical descriptions, essentially saw Arabs
as thieves ("there is no name peculiar to any
body of them, theybeing all the same, and have
all the like inclinations...

of robbing, stripping
and murdering"
Herder
had read and
[viii]);
a
reviewed German translation of the text fa

vorably in the 1770s. On the other hand, there

were slightly more thoughtful observations
from figures such as Herder's correspondent
Carsten Niebuhr, whose Descriptions ofAra
bia (1772) at least allowed for the possibility

of Eurocentric generalization ("I cannot draw

conclusions about thementality of a whole na

of a few bad people"

William
Jones's positive remarks on the
[28]).
Arab inhis 1787 essay ("their eyes are full of vi
tion from the behavior

vacity, their speech voluble and articulate, their

deportment manly and dignified" [50]) most
likey appeared around the same time as Her
der's own idealizations ofthe Arab. Travelogues

apart, Herder's writings also came onto the

scene in the aftermath of a
particularly crucial

debate among German orientalists concerning

the status ofArabic. Scholars such as the bril

liant Leipzig Byzantinist Johann Jacob Reiske

had been attacking the essentially pristine and
unchanging language proposed by philologists
such as Albert Schultens and Johann David
Michaelis
(who had written ofthe difficulty of
"a
Volk
whose customs have remained
finding
unchanged so long as theArabs" [qtd. in Loop
71]). Throughout the 1750s,Reiske had demon
strated a remarkable awareness of the dangers
and blindnesses

involved in the European in

of
Arabic
texts,particularly those
terpretation
ofthe Koran: "What would we say to aMuham

madan who without knowing our theology in

itswidest extentmade a translation ofthe New
Testament

and then poured his philosophi

over
cal sludge
it?"Men such as Reiske, for all

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59

6o

Terrible Turks, Bedouin

Poets, and Prussian

Prophets:

The Shifting Place of Islam in Herder's Thought

their flaws,were remarkably aware of how eas

ily European Arabists might end up reading
something that, ultimately, was nothing more
than a "Christian Koran" (qtd. in Loop 80). In

deed, Herder's hermeneutic approach owes no

small part to the radical, context- and culture
sensitivemethodology of Reiske, whom Herder
cites repeatedly in theAdrastea.
Our investigation into the place of Islam

inHerder's work also offers some parallels to,

and consequences
for,debate about the rela
tion between Herder and Judaism. In both
cases, contradictory remarks proliferate. The
critic Emil Adler shows most clearly the va
riety of references to Jews in Herder's work,
from Herder's description of them as "para

sitic plants" ("die parasitische Pflanze") to his

modern disgust at their persecution (383). Her
der's positive acknowledgment ofthe Hebrew
contribution toworld culture, as Amy New
man points out, in particular his crediting
the Jewswith the "transition from primitive

superstition to rational religion" (459), also

freezes Judaism in a Protestant time frame. In
much the same way, Islam will be accorded an
initial, praiseworthy yet immutable stage in
the gradual evolution ofworld history. Both
it could be said, emerge
Jews and Muslims,
as
in this approach
positive though somewhat

components, peoples and cul

tures that long since served their purpose.
Herder's references to Islam sprawl. Aside
from the few places in his oeuvre where Is

anachronistic

lam takes center stage?the middle chapters

and the Crusades in the Ideen, the
small 1792 essay on Saadi, and an extended

on Arabia

section on Arab

in On

the Effect of
see a dizzying array of references
Poetry?we
to theMuslim Orient, ranging from a passing
culture

tragedies (1765; Sdmtli

cheWerke 32: 142) to a footnote on the Arab
love poetry in the post
origins of European

mention

of Turkish

(1804; 24: 252). The register

also varies widely. Sometimes Herder is dry
a comment on how "Turks
and academic:

humous Adrastea

and Saracens"

copied Greek philosophy

and

PMLA

thereby lost their spirit, for example, or a ref

erence to theArab lexicographer who counted
four hundred words formisery.5 Sometimes

he is self-mocking and lighthearted?as when

he calls himself a Turkish camel driver in a
letter to Hamann

(Briefe [1979] 1: 38 [Feb.

or
addresses the orientalist Niebuhr in
1765])
another letter as his "Hadschi"
(fellowMus
lim pilgrim; 6: 24 [Aug. 1788]). At other times
Herder can sound conventionally Christian
des Geistes, we learn
(in Die Ausgiessung
how "Muhammad
converted through sword
and fire" ["Mahomet bekehrte mit Feuer und
Schwert"; Sdmtliche Werke 1: 58]) or passion
ate and Romantic

in themost secular sense?

there are numerous

positive

to

references

Muhammad's

dreams, imagination, inspira

tion, or stories where the Prophet gives life to
leafless trees (2:265). The cultural constitution

of Islam also varies from reference to refer

ence inHerder. Although
seen

as

an Arabian

it is predominantly
he

phenomenon,

times blends Turks and Arabs:

some

in Auch

eine

Philosophie the Arabs who allegedly burned

the tenth-century
the library at Alexandria,
Arabs who reintroduced Greek philosophy to
and the Turks who conquered Con
are all lumped
as "the
stantinople
together

theWest,
same

barbarians"

("eben

dieselbe

. .. Bar

baren").6 Sometimes he even produces such

phrases as "the Koran ofthe Turks" ("mit dem
Koran der Tiirken"; Briefe [1979] 2: 84).
Scholars looking for some form of chron
ological development in all this will be frus

trated. To a limited extent, one could argue

for a gradual refining of Herder's view of the

Koran?if

in 1766 it is a "mishmash"

("Misch
of different religions (Sdmtliche
masch")
Werke 1: 58), by the time ofthe Ideen (1786) it
has become merely "a peculiar mixture" ("eine
sonderbare Mischung"; 2: 420). Such a pattern

is undermined, however, by difficulties: Her

and the
der's positive account ofMuhammad
rise of Islam in On theEffect ofPoetry (1778),
where the Koran is described as being full of
"divine places" ("erhabne ... Stellen"; Sdmt

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12

licheWerke 8: 360), ismuch less ambiguous

than his treatment of it in the Ideen eight years

later.Moreover, the simple contiguity ofHer

der's positive and negative references to "Mu

hammadans"

same decade,
discourages

the

("Mohammedaner")?in
sometimes in the same year?
the attempt to chart any form of

in his ideas. The fact that his ear

progression
liest reference to Islam (1765) is a complaint
about the present, didactic state of German

drama, obsessed with Christian caricatures

ofMuhammad,
while one of his last letters
ends, "I write as a profaner, a blind pagan, and
a Turk" ("schreibe ich ganz als ein Profaner,
als ein stockblinder Heide

und Turke"; Briefe

[1979]8: 356 [toSchroder,

May 1803]),quickly

sinks any notion of a gradually maturing re

sponse to Islam in his work. Instead of sim
ply asking, What did the historical personage
Herder really think about Islam? we might
more pertinently ask,What voices did Herder
use when he wrote about theMuslim Orient?
What

kind of vocabularies

did these differ

ent voices employ? How far did these various

vocabularies overlap with one another? What

manner

of conflicts did they create?

of Religion
Whoever knowsoftheblindnessand misery of thepa
even

tales, will

through travelers' reports and old

with deep respect what a
blessing
isfor the state and sciences,
religion

ifonly
realize

the Christian

for thegood ofthe citizen and theheart ofmen.

Wer die Blindheit und das Elend derHeiden, auch

nur aus Alterthumern
kennet; wird

es mit der

oder

Reisebeschreibungen

tiefsten Berehrung

erkennen,

was die Christliche Religion fiir den Staat und

fur
dieWiftenschaften,furdas Wohl der Burger undfur
das Herz derMenschenfur eineGliickseligkeitsein.
?Herder,

Die

Ausgiessung

des Geistes

(SamtlicheWerke 1: 58)

Itwould

porous part of his psyche, detached and inde

pendent from the rest of his person. Herder's
Protestant Christianity, far from being a side

lined, closet identity, constitutes the kernel of

his thought: it expresses itself in his nation
alism in his essay on Luther as teacher ofthe
German

nation, in his philology in his work

on biblical hermeneutics, in his understand
ing of history as "the great book ofGod which

transcends worlds and times" ("dem grossen

Buche Gottes, das uber Welten und Zeiten ge

net"; Philosophical Writings 357; Auch eine Phi

losophic 110), and in his reservations about the
Enlightenment as "our century which hates

nothing more thanwhat ismiraculous and hid

den" ("Jahrhunderts, der nichts mehr alsWun
derbares und Verborgenes hasset"; 273; 5).With

regard to Islam, however, Herder returned to a

number of objections again and again, objec
tions that even inmoments of praise and vin

dication he did not relinquish. They are three

in number: the deception and self-deception of

the violent nature of Islam, and

Muhammad,
the faith's origins in Christianity. In an early
passage (Herder is barely twenty-one), we see
the most explicit expression of these famil
iar objections. Between Islam and Christian
ity,writes Herder, lies "a difference as wide as
heaven" ("ein Himmelbreiter Unterschied"):

Herder the Pastor and the Enemies

gans,

Ian Almond

3-1

be wrong to try isolating Herder's

Christian faith or to pretend it lies in a non

When

the enemies

expansion
the spread
they prefer

of religion

of Muhammad's
of our own
to remain

church,

set the quick

against
teaching
it is clear to us
con

blind. Muhammad

verted by the sword and with fire; theApos

tles not with human weapons but by proof
ofthe spirit and its [holy]power. The former
made his religion into amishmash of all reli
gions,

so he could

pitch

it at everyone....

Wenn die Feinde der Religion die schnelle

der Lehre Mahomets,
Fortpflanzung
unsrer Kirche
breitung
entgegen

der Aus
setzen:

so

sieht jeder,dafi sie blind seynwollen. Maho

met bekehrtemit Feuer und Schwert:die
Apo
stelnichtmit Menschlichen Waffen, sondern
mit Beweisung des Geistes und der Kraft: je
ner machte

seine

Religion

zum Mischmasch

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61

62

Terrible Turks, Bedouin

Poets, and Prussian

um

aller Religionen,

sie bei einer

The Shifting Place of Islam in Herder's Thought

Prophets:

in ihnen der Glaube

einzu

jeden

(SdmtlicheWerke 1: 58)

betteln_

Dichtkunst_

an das Gottliche der

(SamtlicheWerke 8: 360;
in Ger.

interpolation

We

if the phrase "the en

have towonder

emies of religion," written at least a decade be

fore theArabs become a Volk of poetry lovers

and a model

ever

for national consciousness,

really went away forHerder. His later appre

ciation for the creativity ofMuhammad
and
for the nation-gathering tone ofMuhammad's

to tread a difficult

achievement forced Herder

of a false
path between the condemnation
creed and a spectacular act of political, and of
course poetic, imagination. In the above pas
sage, the term "mishmash" indicates a lack of
part, or at best a
imagination on Muhammad's
sterile act of cunning. The remark underlines

a predictable belief Herder held all his life,

that Islam, in particular its "subtler aspect[s]"

("das Feinere"; Auch eine Philosophic 53), was

a faith indebted to Christianity and thatwith
out Christianity itwould never have existed

in the first place (Philosophical Writings 311;

Ideen 2: 312). Twelve years later, inOn theEf
we find a description of
fect ofPoetry (1778),
the Koran almost completely stripped of any
so engaged
explicit Christian commentary,
does the pastor from Riga become in the rela
tion between politics and aesthetics:
His

Koran

places;

it could
other

an

not,

than

on

impression
so many

it contained

Arabs]

thing

such

made

because

therefore,

heaven-sent.

have

[the

sublime
been

any

Muhammad

appointed himself on this basis and chal

lenged all to competition: because he excelled
[all around him] in poetry, he also became
in religion,

triumphant

lief in the divinity

so

strong

was

his be

of poetry....

Sein Koran machte solch einen Eindruck

auf sie,weil er so erhabne Poetische Stellen
[hatte]:
Himmel
rauf und
weil

er konnte
stammen.
foderte

er sie

in der

also

nicht

Mahomed

anders
berief

sie zum Wettkampf

Poesie

iiberwand,

als vom
sich da
heraus:
ward

er

auch in der Religion ihr Sieger. So starkwar

PMLA

in orig.)

Of course, the Christian subtext is still there:

the Koran is an untruth, but now a wonder
fully poetic and politically effective untruth.
The absence of any reference to deception or
mishmash, however, deserves attention, de
spite a perceptible use of reported speech. In
an essay concerned with the primarily socio

political question of how poetry can affect

and morality in
and inspire consciousness
different cultures, Herder downplays any pos
interjections in order to focus
point: the political effectiveness

sible Christian
on his main

ofMuhammad's

aesthetics. There even lurks

success
a half legitimation ofMuhammad's
inHerder's reference to the Prophet's convic

tion thatDichtkunst was godly.What enabled

Herder to override his Christian reservations
against the religion of sword and fire, against
themishmash ofthe Koran, so easily?
Between the two passages lies, indeed, a
difference as broad as the heavens: Muham
the cunning salesman, the bric-a-brac
hawker of a patchwork faith, becomes a sub

mad

lime poet, furthering his message

violence

but

through

verse.

For

not through
all

our

em

phasis on the centrality of faith in Herder's

thought, there appear to be moments when

iswilling to diminish, even muffle,

a
his Christian
identity in order to allow

Herder

secular project to emerge. He himself

that there were "warm" and
acknowledged

more

"cold" ways ofwriting history, the coldest his

tories being the "cleverest" ("kliigste"), those
that, likeMachiavelli,
"[measure] out the re

sult of given forces and, moving forward, [cal

culate] a plan" ("den Erfolg gegebener Krafte
ausmisst und fortgehend einen Plan berech
net"; Philosophical Writings 411 [letter 121 in
Letters for theAdvancement
ofHumanity]-,

Briefe [1991] 732). Perhaps thewholly positive

account of Islam he gives in On the Effect of
Poetry was a warm history, a piece of glowing

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IanAlmond

123.i

orientalism, one forwhich his own Christian

feelings had to be sufficiently cooled.

his remarks not only on the Prophet's gifts but

also on his "[morally] transparent life" ("ein

positive, more ambiguous, colder description

revelation: "His Koran, this
ofMuhammad's

an impressively creative
ambiguous picture of
and morally sound yet ultimately misguided
individual, the pastor and the poet appear to
find an uneasy compromise.

This process, like all processes, is vari

able. Ten years later, in the Ideen (1784-87),
we find the beginnings of a return to a less

peculiar mixture
rance,

of poetry, eloquence,
and

cleverness,

arrogance,

igno

is a mirror

of his soul, which shows clearer than any other

prophet's Koran his gifts and failings, his incli
nations and mistakes, the self-deception and

the resourcefulness with which he deceived

himself and others" ("Sein Koran, dies son
derbare Gemisch von Dichtkunst, Beredsam
keit, Unwissenheit, Klugheit und Anmafiung,

ist ein Spiegel seiner Seele, der seine Gaben

und Mangel, seine Neigungen und Fehler, den
er
Selbstbetrug und die Notbehelfe, mit denen

sich und andre tauschte, klarer als irgendein

anderer Koran eines Propheten zeiget"; 2: 421)
More than any other passage inHerder's oeu
vre, the sentence
Herder between

illustrates

the Romantic

the tension

in

and Christian

perspectives on the phenomenon of Islam he

was trying to analyze. Islam was imaginative
yet somehow false, gifted yet somehow cun
ning, beautiful yet somehow wrong. When we
follow the two-page description ofMuham
mad in the Ideen, with its emphasis on the elo

quence, physical beauty ("a youth of beautiful

form" ["ein Knabe von schoner Bildung"]),
and powerful imagination ("gluhend... Phan
tasie") ofthe Prophet (420-21), we realize that

an aesthetic acknowledgment of Islam's power

was the only point on which Herder's Protes
tant and early Romantic
come together?naturally

vocabularies

could

with very different

In the description ofMuham
mad's achievements, something resembling
a tone of apologia pro vita mahometis seems

motivations.

to creep in. If the main aim of the section

on Muhammad
in On the Effect of Poetry is
to illustrate how poetry can be used to give

people an identity and gather them together,

in the Ideen Herder seems to be showing, in

Leben"; 421), how inevitable

and therefore understandable Muhammad's
conviction of divine inspiration was. In this

anschauliches

HerdertheAntipapist
The disparities among the three significant
us
descriptions of Islam that Herder gives

(in 1766, 1778, and 1786) highlight develop

ments in his attitude not merely toward Islam

and the history

faith. If in the earliest pas
sages Islam's conquest through sword and fire
is unfavorably juxtaposed with the spread of

but also toward Catholicism

of his Christian

Christianity ("our church") through the "evi

dence ofthe Holy Spirit" ("unsrer Kirche ...
mit Beweissung des Geistes"; Samtliche Werke
1: 58), twenty years later in the Ideen a very
different picture emerges:

of its

conversion

[in Islam's

Unfortunately,

neighbors] Christianity was also included,

which of all the religions had been the firstto
its faith on

impose

lands

foreign

as a neces

sary condition of blessedness; only [thistime]

the Arabs

not

converted
and

monks,

illicit

trade

women,
through
.. .with
but rather

sword in hand and with the exacting cry

"Convert

or pay

Leider

tribute!"

ging ihnen
tum vor, das unter

nen Glauben,
zur

Seligkeit,

auch

hierin

das Christen
zuerst

alien Religionen
als die notwendige

fremden

Volkern

sei

Bedingung
nur

aufdrang;

derAraber bekehrte nicht durch Schleichhan

del, Weiber
Mann

und Mdnche,

der Wiiste

geziemte,

sondern,
mit

wie

dem

es dem
Schwert

inder Hand und mit der fodernden Stimme:

?Tributoder Glaube!"
(2: 422)
the cynicism
Frauen, friars, and bootleggers...
so
is remarkable?or perhaps not
remarkable,

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63

64

Terrible Turks, Bedouin

Poets, and Prussian

Prophets:

The Shifting Place of Islam in Herder's Thought

given that our church has now become "their"

church and also bearing inmind the generally
low esteem Herder had forEuropean Catholics
Eastern Christians (the latter,we

and Middle

are told in the Ideen, are "a contemptible race

... not
worthy ofthe crosses on their churches"
un
verachtliches
["ein
Menschengeschlecht...

wert des Kreuzes

auf ihren Kirchen"; 423]).

an
Clearly,
altogether more skeptical view of
the spread of religious faith is present here,
even ifhis abiding belief in the inscrutability of
the divine drama's "wisdom and knotty plot"
("Weisheit und Knote des Erfinders") could
all manner of explanations
accommodate

for the success of Christianity (Philosophical

Writings 336; Auch eine Philosophic 85). Also
is a very Protestant Distanzierung
abuses
of a Catholic and Orthodox
the
from

noticeable

past, a determinedly Lutheran redescription

of Islam's victories as having competed against
"the corrupted traditions of... Christianity"

("verderbte Traditionen des... Christentums";

Ideen 2:421). In the familiar praises ofHerder's
to critique the cruel histories of
willingness
Christian nations, his denunciation of "every
form of centralization, coercion and conquest"
(Berlin 158), this point is often overlooked. His
resentment of the Crusades

and imperialism
sense of human
not
his
from
springs
merely
itybut also from his Protestant identity. Re

marks

such as "we Protestants do not want to

undertake any crusade for fallen altars" (Philo

sophical Writings 367) or his reminder of how
Pope Nicholas V gave permission to turn all
unbelievers into slaves suggest thatHerder oc

casionally viewed the colonial and militaristic

abuses of Christianity as more Catholic than
phenomena (394 [letter 116 in Let
tersfor theAdvancement ofHumanity]).
Ironically, although Herder's Lutheran

Christian

faith contributed

to his reservations

about

Islam, it also made sympathetic inroads into

his concept ofthe Muslim other whenever Ca
tholicism was brought into the equation. This
was created in twoways. First, a very
sympathy
Protestant suspicion of representation, of Ro

man Catholic

PMLA

distortion and embellishment,

of medieval
concep

drove his correction

tions of Islam. As Soengeng Hardiyanto has

already pointed out (107), Herder had a low
opinion of previous Catholic representations
of Islam, which he considered nothing more
than the "basest Roman lies and common say
ings" ("die gemeinste Romanluge und Pobel

sage"; Samtliche Werke 15: 84). He dismisses

allegorical attempts to identifyMuhammad
with one ofthe four trumpets inRevelation as
"guessing games" ("Ratselei"; 9: 39); elsewhere,
he goes into some detail to explain how "dur
ing the barbaric Middle Ages, everyone knew
name was

shortened, and how

differently it is stillwritten and pronounced,"
even listing variants ("Jedermann istbekannt,
in den barbarischen
wie der Name Mahomed

Muhammad's

mittleren Zeiten verstummelt wurde, ude wie

verschieden er noch geschrieben und ausge

sprochen wird"; 15: 81). In his early Parallels

between Greek and French Tragedians, Herder
complains how "papist barbary" has created
a popular

theater of "submissive stupidity"

one that does
("unterthanige Dummheit"),
scare puppets
out
didactic
nothing but churn

and religious
("Schreckbilder") ofMuhammad
In
all
these
corrections,
impostors (32: 142).
there is an abiding concern for the veracity of

the image, one that should not be exaggerated

into an empathy with the object of represen
tation. A desire for Veritas and a historicist's

impatience with hasty, uncritical abstractions

drove Herder's ultimately self-affirming criti
cism of such distortions.
never be called
Although Herder could
a Calvino-Turk?those
and
sixteenthseventeenth-century Protestants whose ha
tred ofthe papacy helped them see a potential

are certainly moments

ally in the Turk?there
when he compares Islam with Roman Cathol
icism at the latter's expense. While this com
parison

never

becomes

as extreme

as Luther's

more
position (Luther felt the pope had "done
harm to the kingdom of Christ than Mo

hammed"

[187]), Herder

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does occasionally

Ian Almond

i23-i

to that long Protestant tradition,

to Nietz
stretching from Edward Pococke
sche's "peace with Islam, war on Rome" (246),
subscribe

of evaluating the Catholic Church severely

through Islamic lenses. In reporting the in
tellectual and spiritual backwardness of papal

Rome, which is held almost single-handedly

responsible for the "barbary ofthe Occident"

the persistence ofthe

("Barbarei Occidents"),
Dark Ages, and the synonymy of scholarship
with "sorcery and blasphemy" ("Zauberei und
tells us:

Herder

Gotteslasterung"),

and

out

truly
ences

and

had more

certainly

caliph
to overcome,

or a
ifhe

than a Christian

the sciences,

truly loved

They
sci

the

sought
encouraged
out of a love of them....
A

Saracen

to the

to the monks.

the Saracens

or a

papist?and yet towhat a degree [theArabs]

surpassed them in everything theydid!
Fast mochte

ich hierinn dem Pabst den

Mahomed

und Monchen
Sie haben

vorziehen.
schaften,
und
hatte

aus

Liebe

zu

mehr

Saracenen

selbst,

Kalif,

ein

zu uberwinden,

gesucht
Saracen
wenn

er

dieWissenschaft liebenwollte, als ein Christ,

ein Pabstler haben durfte;und doch, wie sehr
haben

sie diese

iibertroffen,

getrieben haben!
The

"almost"

moment

here

in allem,

was

sie

(SdmtlicheWerke 9: 340)
provides

an

depended on what voice Herder was using at

the time. (Two years earlier, he described the
Arabs as a "savage people" towhom "subtle ab
stractions" were wholly alien ["wilden Volke,"
"feinsten Astraktionen"; Philosophical Writ
ings 220; Samtliche Werke 8: 210]).
This evocation of Islam instead of Cathol
as an

alternative

or counter

paradigm

reference alongside Protestant Christianity

ideas on educa
emerges again in Herder's

tion. In a 1783 text we find the thinker urg

ing geography masters to teach children what

volcanoes, elephants, and crocodiles are and

not merely "dry" facts about German towns:
for a child, "to hear about Muhammad
and
themufti ismore pleasant and essential than

learning about the pope and the cardinals; a

parliament of the storkswill please him more
than the formalities of the Reichstag

die Wissen

ihnen

. . . Ein

getrieben.
gewifi

die

wurklich

this line was and how far it could be stretched

icism

In this I almost preferMuhammad

pope

provenance, and sets a limit on how far one

can go: one can curse the pope but not sym
pathize with Muhammad.
Exactly how elastic

interesting

of hesitation, not simply because it

is negated in the subsequent passage (Herder

clearly does prefer the Saracens to themonks)

but also because it reveals Herder's awareness

in Re

..."
gensburg or the law chambers inWetzlar
zu
Mahomed
und
ist
dem
Mufti
horen
("Von
ihm so angenehm und unentbehrlich, als vom
Pabst und den Kardinalen und ein Reichstag

der Storche und Kraniche wird ihmmehr be

in
hagen, als die Formalien des Riechstags
Regensburg oder des Kammergerichts inWefi
lar_"; Samtliche Werke 30:108). This remark
should not be exaggerated; Herder is advocat
ing not the teaching of Islam in Prussian ju
nior schools but merely amore interesting and
diverse geography syllabus. Muhammad
and
themufti will add color,more than content, to

ofthe provocativeness ofthe gesture. In his let

ters and playful similes elsewhere, Herder has
no qualms about
identities
adopting Muslim
(camel drivers,Mamluks, haj pilgrims). But as

mad displaces the pope as a more relevant and

desirable point of reference, a move that forms

European
line, preventing his critique from wandering
too far into the exotic in its search for an ex

facilitated, though by no means

solely explained, his gaze away from Europe
toward a Muslim Orient, which he, in some

he moves

from a European heresy to a non

one, "almost" acts as a kind of safety

ternal vantage point. It culturally anchors the

passage, reminding the reader of itsChristian

a German

education.

Yet

once

again

Muham

part of Herder's larger project of European

decentering. His mistrust ofwhat he termed
"popery"

at least, was
happy to affirm and
over
and
praise
against itsCatholic neighbor.

moments

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65

66

Terrible Turks, Bedouin

Poets, and Prussian

Prophets:

The Shifting Place of Islam in Herder's

Herder the Poet: Fantasist, Idealist, and

Seeker of Renewal
We

have seen how Herder's

Protestant faith,
with its negative, antipapist underside, for
mulated and colored his attitude toward the
Orient, pushing him sometimes to
cynicism, sometimes to sympathy. Now arises

Muslim

of how Herder's views of poetry

fared in the framework of his ideas on Mu
the question

hammad, Persians, and Arabs. Conversely,

we must also ask what kind of images ofMu

religion and culture Herder sum

(and repressed) in order to articulate

hammadan
moned

his views on poetry. His belief in poetry as

standing in an essential relation to life, in
to the dead, abstract language of
philosophy, is crucial in understanding his at
times hyperbolic eulogies of oriental poetry.
opposition

It is difficult to think of a single negative ref

or
erence by Herder to Islam, Muhammad,
or
artistic
Persians in the context of poetry

creativity. From his early acknowledgment of

the self-expression of genius inTurkish trage

dies, praise of richness ofthe Arabic language

in the Treatise, idealization ofthe Arabs inOn

the Effect of Poetry, and quasi-hagiography

of Saadi to his claims in the Ideen and the
Adrastea

that the Arab

tradition

almost

single-handedly reinvigorated European po

etry, Herder the poet seems to speak about
theMuslim Orient in a language devoted to
idealization (Philosophical Writings 161; Samt
licheWerke 32: 142). In his adaptations from
the poems in Sayings ofAl-Halil, even the nor

mally vilified Turks and Huns, sultans and vi

ziers are presented in a morally positive light.
In his attacks on the cosmopolitanism of
the philosophes, Herder famously lampooned
the "citizen of the world who, burning with
love forhis fellow ghosts, loves a chimera" (qtd.
in Craig 25). Elsewhere he had warned histo
rians of the dangerously misleading abstrac

tions that appear when "your head is full of a

group that you have fallenmadly in lovewith"
("wenn dein Kopf von einer Gruppe,

in die du

Thought

PMLA

dich vernarrt hast, voll ist";Philosophical Writ

ings293; Auch eine Philosophic 31). Yet inmany

ways the Arab forHerder was one such chi

mera. Whenever the subject was poetry or lan
guage, an impromptu halo was extended over
Arabs, and their barbarism, thievery,unbelief,
philosophical backwardness, and bellicosity
were momentarily forgotten, parenthetically
resolved or deferred into a mildly qualifying
afterthought. The reference to "Turks, Arabs,
street thieves, and desert wanderers"
in his

review of Shaw's travelogue ("Tiirken, Araber,

und Wusteneien";
Sdmtliche
Werke 1: 82) or the label "savage people" inOn
Strassenraiiber

theCognition and Sensation oftheHuman Soul

("wilden Volke"; Philosophical Writings 220;
Sdmtliche Werke 8: 210) appears around the
same time that he is describing to us, inOn the

Effect of Poetry, how for the Arabs "language

and poetry ... were originally one" ("ihre
Dichtkunst, wie ihre Sprache ... beide waren
urspriinglich nur eins"), how their "noble free

[was transformed] into turbans instead

of crowns and tents instead of cities" ("edle

dom

statt der Kronen, in

Zelten statt der Stadte"), and how "their spirit
of honor, chivalry, and manly courage" ("den
Freiheit...

in Turbanen

Geist der Ehre, Ritterschaft und des Mannli

chen Muths") consituted a national character
that has remained "unchanged
("Jahrtausende

durch

formillennia"

... unverandert";

Sdmt

licheWerke 8: 360-61). When Herder the poet

writes, theArabs lose the rings in their noses
and begin to speak in couplets.

In his thoughtful study on the place of

Africa in Herder's thought, Arno Sondereg

ger tries to account for the "ambivalence" of

Herder's representation of Africans (some
times

close

to

apes,

sometimes

victims,

sometimes noble savages) as arising out of a

"need for a writing that forces the dynamic
... into a
temporal sign" (122).
thought train
The problematic sequence of noble and brute,
of savagery and sophistication thus becomes a
kind of process, facilitating a rapprochement
to the object of representation through a con

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i23.i

stant depiction of contrasts. This optimistic

treatment of the ambiguity of Herder's non

Europeans sees the variety of viewpoints and

an incessant
images we find in his writings as
or

Verarbeitung,

working

out,

rather

than

an

irreconcilable plurality of jarring voices. Son

deregger, however, refrains from foreground
a
ing that ineluctable polyphony in his study,

gesture thatHerder's varied and diverse oeu

vre would seem to demand.7

When Herder writes of poetry or lan

guage, Islam signifies life, energy, an explo
sion of power, and an expansion of force on
a variety of levels?militarily,
linguistically,
The
familiar con
culturally, theophanically.

cept ofthe Orient as the dawn, childhood, or

Eden of humankind, which Herder emphati
you rightly
cally reiterates ("Morgenland,
["Morgenland, du hiezu
recht auserwahlter Boden Gottes!"; Auch eine

chosen soil of God!"

11]); the natural harmony ofthe

camel-driving Arab with his surroundings

Philosophic

(Philosophical Writings 67); the "rich and pure

and beautiful" language ofArabic ("reich und
rein und schon"; Samtliche Werke 8: 363) and
its crucial proximity toHerder's fantasy of or
igins ("With what pleasure we dream through
poetic narratives about this or that origin:
here the first sailor, there the first kiss ...
here the first camel"
52])?all
ent with

[Philosophical Writings
to fill his Muslim Ori

contributed
an

expansive

vitality,

an

elan

that he,

unlike Kant, neither feared nor sought to con

tain. IfHerder the pastor wanted to box and

limit the "Turkish religion" as an offshoot of

Christianity and a mere mishmash of previ
ous traditions, Herder the poet had no qualms
about tracing themost

significant streams of
culture?poetry, philosophy, even

European
toArab roots.
aspects of language?back
His radical gesture distinguishes
itself
from the standard eighteenth-century oriental

Ian Almond

a variety of orientalists (e.g., Reiske, Pococke,

Jones, Simon Ockley),
George Sale, William
Herder explains in detail how the entire Ro

mance

tradition, its courtly love, knightly bal

lads, and early novels, grew from the Arabs'
language and way of thinking (2: 453). Not

stopping with Sicily or Spain, the textmoves on

to the troubadours, Don Quixote, and even
through themeeting ofNorman heroic sagas

"with the finer chivalry of the Arabs" ("mit

dem feineren Rittertum der Araber"; 454)?
into Germany and northern Europe. Risking

anachronism, I would suggest a Nietzschean

love
feel to this depiction of an Arab-Spanish

of life and its effect on Europe, one that lends

an irony to Nietzsche's
remark in The Anti

christ, a century later, thatMoorish Spain "is

more closely related to us at bottom" ("uns im
Grunde verwandter"; 246). The critique of Eu
ropean inwardness that Herder expressed in
his

references

regular

to "our

northern

corner"

("unsern nordischen Winkel"; SdmtlicheWerke

1: 58) or the "little northern part ofthe world"
(Philosophical Writings 339), coupled with his
cynicism

the "abstracted...

concerning

name"

of European

culture ("Where does itexist... ?

With which people?" [396]), doubtless fed and
in equal measure

sprang from this awareness of

the place ofthe foreign (derFremde) at the heart
of so-called European culture. In this respect,

his empiricism tried to dissolve theGrenzen, or

Kant

boundaries,

had

sought

to preserve.

The

alleged universality of Christianity, central to

Herder's

compassionate

humanism,

never

con

tributed as much

to this boundary dissolution

as his belief in the energy of Sprache. His love
of poetry,more than his religious faith, saw the
simple movement of language as sufficiently
subversive

to problematize

and ridicule

the

bloated, emptymyth of Europe.

The powerful/association inHerder's texts

ist tropes of dawn and origin in the philological

diligence and emphasis with which he worked

ofMuhammad

out the consequences

of such oriental anterior

and Arabia with life, imagina

and
tion, seed,
inspiration does have negative
consequences. His poetic celebration ofthe

ity for theOccident.

In the Ideen, drawing on

and his insistence

Prophet's achievements
on the superior imagination and poetic
gifts

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67

68

Terrible Turks, Bedouin

Poets, and Prussian

Prophets:

The Shifting Place of Islam in Herder's Thought

of the Arab effectively turn the Koran into a

long, impressive poem, an Arab Ossian. Islam,
in turn, loses its truth-value and becomes a
set of tropes. When Herder, writing to his
wife, tells her how "your letters tome are like
the chapters of the Koran, which the angel

Gabriel brought toMuhammad"

("Ihre Briefe
sind mir wie dem Mahomet die Kapiteln im
Koran, die ihm der Engel Gabriel brachte!";
Briefe [1979] 2: 238 [Sept. 1772]), we realize
that the aesthetic has become a space inwhich
the thinker can neutralize the threatening as

sertiveness of Islam's competitive revelation

while retaining its form as a rhetorical tool

and example. The enemies of religion have

become the parodies of religion.
Herder's commitment to the innate imag
ination, poetry, and sublimity of the Arab
mind ("the imagination of [theArabs] ... is
adapted to the excessive, inconceivable, and
...
marvelous"
["die Einbildung des Volkes

fursUbertriebene, Unbegreifliche, Hohe und

Wunderbare
gestimmt ist"; Ideen 2: 434]),
while favorably intended as a counterpoint to
what Herder considered dry, rational, abstract
thought, also effectively sidelines the Arabs

from the status of serious, original think

ers; they are a mere bridge conducting Greek
science to Asia and later to Europe (312). It
would be wrong to deny any development
in this idea: his coarser remarks during the
1770s,

concerning

the Arabs

as a

"savage

peo

ple" trying to deal with abstractions beyond

their ken (Philosophical Writings 220), do not

persist into the next decade. Nevertheless,

while Herder, particularly in the later years
ofthe Ideen, praised the Arabs as preservers
and mediators

of Greek

for their achievements

thought, especially
inmedicine
and the

sciences, the description of Arabia offered

in Auch eine Philosophic?"a
subplot in the
of
formation
ofthe
Europe" ("der un
history
derplot zur Geschichte

der Bildung Europas";

Philosophical Writings 338; Auch eine Phi
are
losophic 88)?lingers. Arab philosophers

described as often being poets who base their

PMLA

work on the Koran or Aristotle

(Ideen 2: 435);
felt that the Arabs, having never had
a "free state" ("Freistaaten"), were unable to
produce any significant political thought or
history. Their history, we are told, "is either

Herder

poetry or woven through with poetry" ("sind

Poesie oder mit Poesie durchwebet"; 436).
On this point, defenders of Herder will

cite his belief in the incommensurability

of
the historical moment ("no two moments in
the world are the same" ["in der Welt keine

zwei Augenblicke

dieselben sind"; Philosophi

cal Writings 293; Auch eine Philosophic 30]);
his emphasis on theHeraclitean nature ofthe

time line and chronology, not tomention the

untranslatability of specific cultural instances
(well-disciplined,
patriarchal authority be
as oriental despotism,
ing misunderstood

and his belief that the "negro,

the [native] American, theMongol has gifts,
talents ... that the European does not have"

for example);

("der Neger, der Amerikaner, der Mongol hat

... die der Euro
Gaben, Geschicklichkeiten
395
nicht
hat";
paer
[interpolation in orig.];

Briefe [1991] 699). Yet the continual organic

metaphors of growth and expansion that he
offers for the human race (child, flower, bush)
do suggest a process that tacitly attributes a
measurable

value

to such

surabilities as the passion

innocence ofthe Negro.

alleged

incommen

of the Arab or the

The price Islam and theMuslim Orient pay

for the imagination, energy, privileged poetic
gifts, and early influence Herder credits them

with is a permanently ancillary place inworld

ac
history, a state of perpetual periphery. His

knowledgment of Europe's debt to the Arab

world ("the light of science came out ofArabia
to darkest Europe" ["aus dem Arabischen das
dem dunkeln Europa
2:
312]) bestows both an honor
aufging"; Ideen
and a frozen primordiality on theArabs. What

Licht derWissenschaften

begins to emerge in his thought?a develop

ment that will find its refined and system
an unwitting
atized culmination inHegel?is
a
episodization of Islam, fixing of the Orient

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12

in a prearranged scheme of growth and devel

opment. Herder's chimeras ("The silent Arab

as with the
spoke with the fire of his words
["der schweigende
lightning of his sword..."
Araber sprichtmit der Flamme desWortes wie

mit dem Blitz seines Schwertes"; 433]) have not

changed over the centuries. Islam and Arabia,

for all their sublimity, vigor, eloquence, and

power, have long since played their part on the
stage ofworld history.

Herder the Nationalist:

Exemplum Seeker

the treatment of nation and nation

Although
hood in Herder's

thought exceeds in com

a
term like nationalist can
plexity anything
interest in the formation of na
convey?his

tional identity pervades his work on poetry,

language, and religion?there are good reasons
for seeing a special relation between Islam and
the effortsHerder

national

dedicated

consciousness.

to the idea of a

Just as his Christian

faith introduced a number of dilemmas

into

his aesthetic, historical, and political approach

to Islam and Muhammadans,
his attention to
in particular the cul
identity?and
own
tivation of his
nation's identity?engen

national

dered an ambiguous relation to theMuslim

world, considered as a topos that was both a
model forGerman identity and a threat to it.
I have mentioned

how the rise of Islam

forHerder

contained

important lessons for

con
the formation of a Volk, particularly
the
essential
role
of
and
lan
cerning
poetry

guage in this process. As a student of history,

combing the world's cultures for exempla in

of
great national and ethnic consciousnesses
the past, he declared that German nation
alism could

learn from the rise of Islam. In

the rather Leibnizian

Idea for theFirst Patri

otic Institute (1788), we are told how "Greek,
Latin and Arabic" offered excellent examples
of "what

secret

dominance

a nation

achieves"

("welch ein geheimes Ubergewicht eine Na

tion erlange") when it learns how tomanip

69

its language (Samtliche

16: 516). In the Ideen, Herder laments
how the Germanic
tribes of Europe never
possessed a text such as the Koran:
ulate and command

Werke

this religion

Whatever

itwas

be,

may

propa

gated through a language thatwas thepurest

dialect ofArabia as well as the pride and joy
of the entire
other

little wonder,

people;
were

dialects

then,

that

into the shade and

pushed
the tri
ofthe Koran
became

that the language

banner
umphant
Such a common

for Arab

world

domination.

for a speaking
and writ
to an
is
advantageous
expanding,

ing style

and Turcophobe

'an Almond

3-1

goal

nation.

blooming

If the Germanic

conquer

ors of Europe had had a classic book in their

as the Arabs
language,
never have had

would

gone

Kaedmon

over

now neither
astray. But
nor Otfried
could become
Koran

hammad's

Latin

their Koran,

their

sovereignty
so many
of their

nor would

tongue,
have

had

still

tribes

Ulfila

nor

what Mu

is to all his

followers:

pledge to their old, genuine dialect, through

which they elevated it to themost authentic
monument of their tribe and throughwhich
one Volk

they remain
Wie

aber

auch

in the whole

diese

world.
sei,

Religion

so ward

sie durch eine Sprache fortgepflanzt,die die

reinsteMundart Arabiens, der Stolz und die
des

Freude

Volks

ganzen

kein Wunder

war;

also, daft die andern Dialekte damit in den

Schatten

wurden
und die Sprache
gedrangt
das siegende Panier der arabischen

des Koran

ward.

Weltherrschaft
verbreiteten

Ziel

Nation

ein

solches

der Rede-

und

Schrei

gemeinschaftliches
bart. Wenn
die germanischen
Buch
ropas ein klassisches
die Araber

ist einer weit

Vorteilhaft

bluhended

den Koran,

Uberwinder

Eu

ihrer Sprache,

wie

hatten,

gehabt

nie ware

die lateinische eine Oberherrin ihrerSprache

auch hatten sich viele ihrer Stamme
geworden,
in der Irre verloren.
nicht so ganz
Nun
aber
diesen

konnte

oder Otfried
noch

jetzt alien

terpfand
welches
Stammes

weder

Ulfila

seinen

ihrer alten
sie zu den
aufsteigen

einVolk bleiben.

noch

Kaedmon

was Mohammeds

werden,

Anhangern
echten

echtesten
und

Koran
ist: ein Un
durch

Mundart,
Denkmalen

ihres

auf der ganzen

(2:

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Erde

431-32)

70

Terrible Turks, Bedouin

Poets, and Prussian

Prophets:

The Shifting Place of Islam in Herder's

The faint tone of resentment evident inHer

der's repudiation of Latin invites the ques
tion, what did itmean for a German thinker
in the 1780s to envy theOrient? The chimera
like idealization Herder bestowed on the
Arabs becomes clearer when we recall the
fragmented and diminished German space he
perceived himself to be living in. His resent
ment of Gallicomanie, or German imitations
of French culture, ofthe "retarded" state of
language, and ofthe "disease of for

German

getfulness" that plagued the Germans' recol

lection of their oldest traditions made him

turn an envious eye toward theArabs and the

clear qualities of their national character (qtd.
inKamenetsky 842). This desire for a solid na
an association
tional disposition?essentially,
does
of stereotype with strength?certainly

not justify the cliches ofthe proud, vengeful,

we encounter in
passionate, wandering Arab

Herder's Gesamtausgabe, but ithelps explain

to unrealis
why Herder, otherwise opposed
tic depictions of foreign cultures, adhered to
his unreal Arabs so persistently and idealized
them so indulgently. His homage to the Ko
serves a subtly Christian purpose,
that of completely secularizing the phenom
enon of Islam, transforming it from a divine
revelation into a powerfully historical event.
ran also

In the subtext of his praise lies the calculated

disenchantment of a holy text.

In remarking how thingswould have been

different had the ancient Teutons possessed
their own Koran, Herder expresses envy and

he
regret as he gazes toward the Orient, but
stops short of locating the contemporary po
litical hope of Europe in the example of Is
lam and the Arabs. Although theArab world

in the Ideen is seen as the reinvigorator of a

the
Europe sunk in barbary and sterility?in

final passage of the nineteenth book Herder

states this explicitly?the political relevance
of Islam seldom spills over into the present
in On the Effect of
day. Nine years earlier,
to this notion.
a
little
closer
drew
he
Poetry,
Having

described

the rise of Islam as inextri

PMLA

Thought

cably linked with the place of poetry inArab

culture, he expresses how desirable itwould
be if "some ofthe incense ofthe oriental kind
were towaft over toward Europe" ("einWeih
rauchduft von der Art aus den Morgenlan
dern nach Europa hinuberwehete"):
is on

Europe

Perhaps

of a new

the brink

pe

riod of influence from Arab poetry, if the

treasures themselves,which still lie in Spain

and
doubt,

become

living
this to happen,

Were

character.

one;
a

it can have

whether

however,

effect on our

and

awake

elsewhere,

itwould have to be from the influence of a

living Volk, inwhom the art of poetry also
can

Libraries

lives.

very

produce

scholarly

corrections,
moments,
illuminating
so that
new tastes in this or that person,

effects,
and

individuals

may
famous.

become

however,

tions,

or
undeservedly
on na
of
The effect
poetry
us
concerns
is what
which
deservedly

else

is something

here,

entirely.

Vielleicht stehtEuropa noch eine neue Peri

ode vonWiirkung derArabischen Dichtkunst
vor,wenn die Schatze derselben, die noch in
und

Spanien
und

gemein

anderswo

aufwachen

liegen,

aber

ich zweifle

werden;

ob

es

je lebendigeWiirkung auf unsren Charakter

seyn werde.
von einem

Soil

diese

lebenden

so mufi

entstehen,
unter

Volk,

sie

auch

dem

die Dichtkunst lebt,bewiirktwerden. Aus Bi

bliotheken konnen jehr gelehrteWiirkungen,
und

Berichtigungen
Aufklarungen,
heit neue Geschmacksarten
jenem
oder
kung

entstehen,
ohne

davon

jetzt davon

reden,

und

Wanner

mit

einzelne

beruhmt

Verdienst

werden;

auf Nationen,

der Dichtkunst

ist etwas

insonder

an diesem

Wiir
wie

wir

anders.

(SamtlicheWerke 8: 364-65)

Politically, as well
osophically, theMuslim

as poetically and phil

Orient is a source of

life?if, in this case, an ultimately discounted

one. In the very act of attributing a role to

as a possible instrument of Europe's

as a provider of life to a con
rejuvenation,
fused and strife-torn continent, Herder also
itoutside
ultimately boxes Arabia and pushes

Arabia

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Ian Almond

123-1

the realm of the living, ontologically deny

ing it actuality. In one sense, this boxing re
inforces what I have said about the spectral

quality ofHerder's Arab fantasies, which pos

sess no concrete
reality (as far as his diaries
and letters show, Herder never met an Arab

or a Turk, but
throughout his life he showed
a
disconcerting faith in the accuracy of travel
reports and tales). It also suggests thatHerder
was uncomfortably aware ofthe constructed
ness of his Orient, the fact that it
only existed
in libraries and travel reports, in chronicles
and anthologies of poetry.
If the idealization ofHerder's Arabs con
stituted a fantasy of life, of regeneration and
return to the origin, the demonized Turks
we find in his collected works reflect some
in his thought. That Herder
thing morbid
sometimes lumped the two groups together
as followers ofMuhammad
(or "Turks and
Saracens"

[Philosophical Writings 5]) and

sometimes kept them apart is striking. This
contrast emerges most clearly in the section

"Alien Peoples in Europe" in the Ideen, where

a
glowingly positive account of the Arabs
(described as our "oriental brothers," whose
has been "fruitful for our con

acquaintance
tinent"

...

Briidern

["morgenlandischen

un

sermWeltteil

erspriesslich"]) is immediately
followed by a brief paragraph on the Turks:
The Turks,
are

a Volk
to

still alien

in Turkestan,

originating
Europe

their

despite

three

. . .
here.
presence
hundred-year-old
They
have
reduced
the most
beautiful
kingdoms
in
to desert
and the once
inventive
Europe
to faithless

Greeks
works
their

of art have
ignorance!

Because

has been
Their

. . .How

slaves.
been

vanquished,
is an
empire

many

destroyed
through
of them, how much

never

to be resurrected!

enormous

prison

for all

do

aliens

Europeans who live in it; itwill fallwhen its

time comes.
have

in

For what

Europe,

who

business

stillwant to be barbarians?
Die

Turken,

seines mehr

ein Volk
als

such

after a thousand

aus Turkestan,

dreihundertjahrigen

years

halts inEuropa diesemWeltteil noch immer

fremde_sie

die

zu einer Wuste
griechischen

schonsten

und

die

Lander

einst

zu treulosen

Volker

Europas

sinnreichsten
Sklaven

Wie vieleWerke der Kunst sind durch diese

Unwissenden
durch

zerstort

worden!

sie untergegangen,

das

Wie

vieles

ist

nie wiederher

gestelltwerden kann. IhrReich istein grofies

Gefangnis fur alle Europaer, die darin leben;
es wird
Denn

untergehen,
was
sollen

Jahrtausended

wenn

seine

Fremdlinge,

asiatische

Zeit

die

Barbaren

len,was sollen sie in Europa?

kommt.

noch

nach

sein wol

(2:436-37)

The absence of any reference to Islam is

striking,
but the firstpoint to be underlined here is the
background presence ofthe Russo-Turkish wars
(1768-74,1787-91). Not as close as Luther and
Leibniz's Vienna, the czarist struggles against
the Ottomans in the Crimea and the Balkans
were still closely followed
by Herder. In a letter
he wrote from France in 1769,we find the trav
eler eagerly asking fornews of and responses to
"the excellent victories over theTurks" ("vortref
flichen Sieges uber die Turken"). He isdelighted

that "Russia's prospects couldn't be more

glo
rious," now that the "main army of the Turks

[is] beaten," the "janissaries wiped out," and

the Russian fleet in the Black Sea ("Russland
kann nicht in glorreicheren Aussichten sein,
als es ist.Die Hauptarmee der Turken
geschla
gen... die Janitscharen... wieder geschlagen";
Briefe [1979] 1: 172-73 [toBegrow, Nov. 1769]).

Although his humanity occasionally led him

to express sympathy for the Turks' defeats?in
theHumanitatsbriefe, he
effectively labels the
destruction by czarist troops of Izmail, a port
on the Danube,
a war crime
(Philosophical
Writings 384)?the Turk, alongside the Hun,
remains one ofthe few genuine hate
objects in
Herder's writings, a figure he never problema
tized for himself and whom he held
curiously
exempt from the criticism of demonization and
ignorant misrepresentation he launched so of
ten elsewhere.

ist trotz
Aufent

As

of Herder's
always, the evaluation
views on the Ottomans
in the context of his

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71

72

Terrible Turks, Bedouin

Poets, and Prussian

Prophets:

The Shifting Place of Islam in Herder's Thought

time largely depends on whom one reads.

There was certainly widespread contempt for
the Turk: words such as tiirkenzen ("to act like
a barbarian") and turkeln ("to stagger drunk
enly") were still widely used in the late eigh
teenth century, and Turk was even a popular
name for dogs (Grimm and Grimm 1852).

Herder's

more

conservative

contemporaries,

such as Friedrich Schlegel and Goethe, bore

no love for the Turk. In 1805
Schlegel wrote

of "Turks, Kurds, and other savage nations"

and declared that "Turkish arts and sciences,
apart from their poetry, are not ofthe slightest

value" ("Turken, Kurden und anderen rohen

... ausser der Poesie nicht von dem
Nationen
geringsten Wert sind"; 161, 208). Neither did
Goethe's vaunted Islamophilia prevent his la
beling the Ottomans "the common foe of Eu
rope and Asia" ("der allgemeine Feind Asien
und Europas"; West-ostlicher Divan 410), and

inDichtung und Wahrheit he even celebrates

the victory of the Russians over the Turks at

(1770) with the observation that "itwas

as if there had been no loss of lifewhen these

Cesme

non-Christians

fell in their thousands"

("als

wenn keine Menschen

aufgeopftert wiirden,
indem diese Unchristen zu Tausende fielen";

Goethes Werke 67). Figures with less interest in

Islam than Goethe were nevertheless capable of
more sympathy: Kant paints a relativelybenign

picture ofthe Turks as friendly and hospitable

in his Physical Geography (1802), and the dra
matist Johann Casparson, while still indebted
to the image ofthe lustfulTurk, in his mourn
ingplay Osmann (1776) at least offersa Lessing

esque point of redemptive humanity

Turkish protagonist's character. Hamann

in the

hap
pily read and enjoyed Turkish histories (172),
and Byron, who fought against theOttomans
on the Greek side, praised their "universal...

dignity" (252). There were, finally, orientalists

such as Heinrich von Diez, who constantly la
mented how "there has never been a dynasty

PMLA

welche von europaische Scribenten so sehr ver

lastertworden ware, als die osmanische") and
their energies to correcting the
much-maligned
image ofthe Turk (102).
The Russo-Turkish wars, however, cannot
who dedicated

explain the entirety ofHerder's enmity for die

Turken. In his treatment ofthe Turk, there is
something abyssal, a repressed horror at the

gratuity of history's darker moments?and

perhaps a deeper, unarticulated anxiety about

the possible emptiness of Geschichte. Herder

described despotism as "the true consuming
abyss forhumanity, which swallows down ev
... into death and uniform
erything
pulveriz
ing" ("der wahre Rachen der Menschheit, der
alles ... in Tod und einformige Zermalmung

hinabschlingt";
Philosophical Writings 301;
Auch eine Philosophic 42). Despite the victo
ries ofthe Russians, theOttoman Empire was

still an example to him of a successful, ex

pansive, and historically dynamic despotism.
The roles Turks are given in his work and the

manner

inwhich he involves them, whenever

possible, in themisfortune he is reporting?
be it the imprisonment of Saadi or the down
fall of the Arabs

(where Turks and Kurds

as "scavengers" ["Raubtieren";
Ideen 2:427])?underline
how emblematic of
were
in
evil
his
they
thought. There is
abiding

are described

a very Lutheran frustration here, one that he,

having invested so much positivity elsewhere

in Islam as a poetic-political
phenomenon,
was unable to resolve as Luther had, with an
appeal to apocalyptic hermeneutics and a de
monization

of Muhammadanism.

The fact thatHerder

saw the Turks some

times as Muslims
(believing only divinity
could have produced the Koran is seen as a
"proof of the Turks" and "horrible nonsense"
["Beweis der Turken,"

"grasslichste Unsinn";

Writings163;Abhandlung123])
Philosophical

ers than the Ottomans"

and sometimes, as in the above paragraph

from the Ideen, as de-Islamified, merely pa
gan barbarians
suggests that he simply did
not know what to do with their faith. But a

niemals

secularized

or nation more

slandered by European writ

("es hat aber wohl
eine Dynastie und Nation gegeben,

form ofthe Turk's familiar apoc

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i23-i

alyptic role in the events of the Last Days is

to be found in his work?not merely in the
telltale prediction of Ottoman collapse in the

from Ideen ("itwill fallwhen its time

comes") but also and more powerfully in his
final work, Adrastea, where his Slavophilism
expresses his hope for a restoration of ancient
passage

and a vanquishing

Hellas

we

[S]uppose
turies.

Russia

ofthe Turk:

should

return

would

have

after
found

cen

some

centre

her

along theBlack Sea; her Asiatic as well as Eu

Provinces

ropean
tile.

. . . From

the aorta

she would

the

have made

inaccessible

of all trade-routes

heart

would

fer

of Asia

be opened;

theOttoman Porte [Istanbul] would no lon

ger exist;

the Mediterranean

she

to be

ought

...

would

the World's

be what

Freeport....

(qtd. inGesemann 432; 2nd ellipsis in orig.)

mea toGreece. Although not quite an Egyptian

plan after themanner of Leibniz, Herder's Ro

mantic hopes for a re-Christianization ofthe

as
Mediterranean?or,
Wolfgang Gesemann
puts it, for a "transfer of Petersburg to the

Bosphorus" (433)?see the European forces of

light, culture, and freedom overcoming those
of tyranny and darkness (theOttomans). The

retaking of Constantinople would form an al

most eschatological condition of this project.
The

uncomfortably

bipolar

tone ofthe

passage,

drawing on Herder's understanding of history

in the Ideen as (somewhat simplistically put)
the conflict and resolution of opposing forces,

explains in part the animal and barbaric con

notations of the Turk in Herder's work, the
necessary separation of the Turk from Islam
and theArab Orient (seen as a force of growth
and culture), not tomention the remarkable

of virtually any reference to Turk

ish poetry, music, or Sufism (unlike Hegel's
interest in Rumi or Goethe's use of Dietz). If

absence

forms a primary, preparatory

in
the
art,
stage
development of European
then Herder's Turk signifies its opposite, the

Herder's Arab

culture's

of freedom,

true

other.

constitutes a fantasy of life,

and
origin,
regeneration, then Herder's Turk
an
constitutes
equally powerful fantasy of evil,
destruction, and death.
IfHerder's Arab

The lessons and consequences

inherent
inHerder's opposition of noble Arab to evil

Turk, in any history of Islam's place in Ger

man thought, emerge most clearly when we
place his fantasies concerning Islam alongside

Kant's footnoting ofthe Orient. Herder stands

out as the firstmajor German thinker after

Lessing to view Islam as a phenomenon in its

own right and not merely as a theophanic ab
erration or aminor heresy. The case ofHerder
also reveals how ambiguous
the benefits of

an empirically
for

A number of threads are wound up in this vi

sion of a pax slavica stretching from the Cri

inverse

polar

lan Almond

grounded

the non-European.

historicism

If Kant's

were

universal

izing abstractions rendered theMuslim Ori

ent largely transparent and inconsequential,
Herder's attention to orientalist detail merely

this inconsequentiality from the outer

rim of a circle to the lowest rung of a ladder.
In Herder, the lesser evil of misrepresenta
tion and the greater evil of nonrepresentation

moved

blur together. If Kant's footnoting of Islam

continued and reinforced a tradition of ex

plicit Eurocentrism, Herder's sublime Arab

and poet-prophet established (though by no
means
initiated) a German worship of the
general Orient, one that would run into di
verse streams such as Goethe,
Schlegel, Nietz

sche, and Max Miiller. The Eurocentrism

inherent in both these approaches
should
not detract from the prescience and value of

critique. In themidst of half a dozen

Muslim-Christian
conflicts, Herder expressed
for
contempt
European imperialism and sym
Herder's

losses of life.Our revision

pathy forMuslim
and problematizing of his much-lauded plu
ralism should in no way make us forget this.
Herder's two prophets, therefore?the K6

nigsberg professor whose Kritik was already

expanding like a world power across theGer
man mind and the fond
figure ofHamann, to

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73

74

Terrible Turks, Bedouin

Poets, and Prussian

Prophets:

The Shifting Place of Islam in Herder's Thought

whom Herder

appealed forwisdom and in

the inherent ambivalence
spiration?reflect

in his response to Islam and to the cultures

and peoples it represented for him. Forever

shuttling between origin and oppressor, poets

and profanity, life force and agent of catastro

phe, the variety and contradictory nature of

Herder's Muslim Orient reveal patterns of
interference among three wavelengths,
the
a
a
contours
of
series
conflict
among
shifting
of different political, religious, and aesthetic

in the Ideen, we encounter

priorities. When,
themultifaceted description ofMuhammad
as "trader, prophet, speaker, poet, hero, and
lawmaker" ("Kaufmann, Prophet, Redner,

Dichter, Held und Gesetzgeber"), we realize

thatHerder would never successfully synthe
size his varied attitudes toward Islam (2: 420).
When, in themiddle of his Humanitdtsbriefe,

among criticism of the Crusades, disgust at

and
European
designs to "plunder Mecca
...

Medina"

("Mekka und Medina

plundern
and praise for those travelers who
genuinely attempt to think like Arabs (Philo

wollte"),

sophicalWritings399,396;Briefe [1991]708),

we encounter
Abbe

an approving description of
de Saint-Pierre as someone who "was

especially
ligion

hostile

because

re

to theMohammedan

it favors

ignorance

as

a mat

ter of basic principle and makes the peoples

animalistic" ("war insonderheit derMahome
Religion feind, weil sie die Unwis
senheit aus Grundsatzen begiinstigt und die

danische

391; 696), we realize

that a repressed evangelical response to Islam,
an irreducible Christian core, would never re

Volker

tierisch macht";

ally leave theMorgenland Herder constructed

for his readers. The different faces of Herder's
Muslim

Turk, noble Arab,

or sublime tapestry,

the Koran

other?savage
as mishmash

Europe's

threat and salvation?constitute

PMLA

Notes
I give special thanks to JaneK. Brown for her
help and sug
translations in this essay are mine.
gestions. Unattributed
1. For an excellent account of this scholarship,

see Bei

ser189-215.
2. See Leventhal
and also Morton's
clearly irritated
response. Whatever Morton might feel about Leventhal's
"sheer lack of comprehension"
(177), similar approaches
have come from a number of quarters. Fox has discerned
between Heidegger
and Herder in a common
on
the
and
of Spra
separateness
emphasis
independence
che, while Simon, somewhat more cautiously, sees a pre
scient "consciousness
in
ofthe problem of metaphysics"
similarities

critique of temporality (124). See also Herz, who

has argued that Herder's
ofthe paradigm
replacement
consciousness with the paradigm
language links Herder's

Herder's

in French
of language with similar positions
and
hermeneutics.
contemporary
poststructuralism

philosophy

3. Philosophical Writings 419 (letter 122 in Letters for

theAdvancement
ofHumanity);
Briefe (1991) 741 (1794).
4. Philosophical
Writings 283; Auch eine Philosophie
17.Discordant
Linker, who

voices have been

argues

raised?most

recently by

that Herder's

(and much
apparent
conceals "the construction of

lauded) pluralism actually

a
teleological philosophy of world history" (268).
5. Philosophical
5, 116 ("How Philosophy
Writings
Can Become More Universal";
"Treatise on the Origin of
Language").
6. Philosophical
Writings 313; Auch eine Philosophie
57. Menze
for
the centrality of faith in under
argues
the
ofthe Ideen and suggests that
composition
standing

contempt for Eurocentric

pride has its origins
in his religious beliefs (45). Critics such as Beiser, on the
other hand, see Herder as someone who essentially secu

Herder's

larized Hamann's
7. Zammito

thought (195).
tries to find a compromise

Herder's

ac

and yet appre

in contrast
anthropologist,"

knowledging
ciating him as a "complete
to the "poor impression" of Kant's
Toward

between

cultural prejudices

the end of his Kant, Herder,

interest in the subject.

and the Birth ofAn

thropology, he admits, thinking primarily of Herder's

views ofthe Chinese,
that the thinker's "pluralism was
not quite so impeccable." Zammito
argues, nevertheless,
that even Herder's "cultural contempt" seems less repug
nant, since tied to its time, than Kant's
qualification"

of entire peoples

"biological

dis

(344-45).

no

progressive Verarbeitung but rather the per

sistent murmur of a collection of passionate,
distinctive, ultimately discordant voices.

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