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WHO SPEAKS FOR WHOM: AUTHORITY, TRADITION AND ENCYCLOPEDIAS OF ISLAM
In retrospect, 1913 seems relatively unremarkable, especially compared to the following year, which ushered the world into the first of the two great wars of the twentieth century. Although not many would consider the publication of a reference work in a Dutch town by a small publishing house a world-historical event, Brill’s First Encyclopaedia of Islam, with its revealing subtitle (“A Dictionary of the Geography, Ethnography and Biography of the Muhammadan Peoples”),1 became a milestone in Western academia. It marked a turn in the attempt to establish definitive knowledge about the Orient, becoming dated so quickly that by the time it was completed in 1936 there was already need for a revised edition. This article examines making of the Western academic tradition of encyclopdias of Islam, especially in reference to Brill's Encyclopedias of Islam.