Prophet of Reason: Science, Religion and the Origins of the Modern Middle East

'An outstanding intellectual biography.' Eugene Rogan

WINNER OF THE BRITISH-KUWAIT FRIENDSHIP SOCIETY BOOK PRIZE

In 1813, high in the Lebanese mountains, a thirteen-year-old boy watches a solar eclipse. Will it foretell a war, a plague, the death of a prince? Mikha’il Mishaqa’s lifelong search for truth starts here. Soon he’s reading Newtonian science and the radical ideas of Voltaire and Volney: he loses his religion, turning away from the Catholic Church. Thirty years later, as civil war ...