In 1967 few history students at Cambridge were interested in the Prophet of Islam—so few, in fact, that the course’s designated lecturer canceled his proposed lectures and declined to supervise the few students who had chosen the course. This was a way of saying that the subject was no longer available, and another choice should be made. All the other students did indeed abandon the Muhammad paper and go elsewhere. He, however, felt an old stubbornness rise in him. If the subject was offered, it could not be canceled as long as there was a single student who wished to study it; that was the rule. Well, he did want to study it. He was his father’s son, godless, but fascinated by gods and prophets. He was also a product, at least in part, of the deep-rooted Muslim culture of South Asia, the inheritor of the artistic, literary and architectural riches of the Mughals and their predecessors. He was determined to study this subject. All he needed was a historian who was willing to supervise him.
Of the three great historians who were Fellows of King’s at that time, Christopher Morris was the most published, with the most established reputation, historian of Tudor political thought, ecclesiastical history, and the Enlightenment, while John Saltmarsh was one of the grand eccentrics of the university with his wild white hair, mutton-chop side-whiskers, long-john underwear poking out at his trouser cuffs above his sockless, sandaled feet, the unrivaled expert in the history of the college and chapel, and, more broadly, in the local history of the region, often seen tramping the country lanes around Cambridge with a rucksack on his back. Both Morris and Saltmarsh were disciples of Sir John Clapham, the scholar who established economic history as a serious field of study, and both conceded that the thirdmember of the King’s history trinity, Arthur Hibbert, a medievalist, was the most brilliant of them all, a genius who, according to college legend, had answered the questions he knew least about in his own history finals exams, so that he could complete the answers in the time allotted. Hibbert, it was decided, was the most appropriate person to deal with the matter in hand; and he agreed to do so without a moment’s fuss. “I’m not a specialist in this field,” he said, modestly, “but I know a little about it, so if you will accept me as your supervisor, I am willing to supervise you.”
This offer was gratefully accepted by the stubborn young undergraduate standing in his study sipping a glass of sherry. So came about a strange state of affairs. The special subject about Muhammad, the rise of Islam and the early caliphate had not been offered before; and in that academic year, 1967–68, only this one, obdurate student took it; and the following year, owing to lack of interest, it was not offered again. For that single student, the course was his father’s vision made real. It studied the life of the Prophet and the birth of the religion as events inside history, analytically, judiciously,
properly
. It might have been designed especially for him.
At the beginning of their work together Arthur Hibbert gave him a piece of advice he never forgot. “You must never write history,” Hibbert said, “until you can hear the people speak.” He thought about that for years, and in the end it came to feel like a valuable guiding principle for fiction as well. If you didn’t have a sense of how people spoke, you didn’t know them well enough, and so you couldn’t—you
shouldn’t
—tell their story. The way people spoke, in short, clipped phrases, or long, flowing rambles, revealed so much about them: their place of origin, their social class, their temperament, whether calm or angry, warmhearted or cold-blooded, foulmouthed or clean-spoken, polite or rude; and beneath their temperament, their true nature, intellectual or earthy, plainspoken or devious, and, yes, good or bad. If that had been all he learned at
Of the three great historians who were Fellows of King’s at that time, Christopher Morris was the most published, with the most established reputation, historian of Tudor political thought, ecclesiastical history, and the Enlightenment, while John Saltmarsh was one of the grand eccentrics of the university with his wild white hair, mutton-chop side-whiskers, long-john underwear poking out at his trouser cuffs above his sockless, sandaled feet, the unrivaled expert in the history of the college and chapel, and, more broadly, in the local history of the region, often seen tramping the country lanes around Cambridge with a rucksack on his back. Both Morris and Saltmarsh were disciples of Sir John Clapham, the scholar who established economic history as a serious field of study, and both conceded that the thirdmember of the King’s history trinity, Arthur Hibbert, a medievalist, was the most brilliant of them all, a genius who, according to college legend, had answered the questions he knew least about in his own history finals exams, so that he could complete the answers in the time allotted. Hibbert, it was decided, was the most appropriate person to deal with the matter in hand; and he agreed to do so without a moment’s fuss. “I’m not a specialist in this field,” he said, modestly, “but I know a little about it, so if you will accept me as your supervisor, I am willing to supervise you.”
This offer was gratefully accepted by the stubborn young undergraduate standing in his study sipping a glass of sherry. So came about a strange state of affairs. The special subject about Muhammad, the rise of Islam and the early caliphate had not been offered before; and in that academic year, 1967–68, only this one, obdurate student took it; and the following year, owing to lack of interest, it was not offered again. For that single student, the course was his father’s vision made real. It studied the life of the Prophet and the birth of the religion as events inside history, analytically, judiciously,
properly
. It might have been designed especially for him.
At the beginning of their work together Arthur Hibbert gave him a piece of advice he never forgot. “You must never write history,” Hibbert said, “until you can hear the people speak.” He thought about that for years, and in the end it came to feel like a valuable guiding principle for fiction as well. If you didn’t have a sense of how people spoke, you didn’t know them well enough, and so you couldn’t—you
shouldn’t
—tell their story. The way people spoke, in short, clipped phrases, or long, flowing rambles, revealed so much about them: their place of origin, their social class, their temperament, whether calm or angry, warmhearted or cold-blooded, foulmouthed or clean-spoken, polite or rude; and beneath their temperament, their true nature, intellectual or earthy, plainspoken or devious, and, yes, good or bad. If that had been all he learned at
Similar Books
