David Samuel Margoliouth

"Margoliouth was a great linguist and scholar and was for a long time a professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford. He wanted his book neither to be an indictment nor an apology, and be did not fail in this endeavour. He was writing for a "tolerant" twentieth-century audience and he decided, even before he wrote his book, to observe towards the prophet "the respectful attitude which his greatness deserves"; and even though the facts he cites sometimes do not do credit to his conclusion, in this resolve too he succeeded. Margoliouth was also a minister, of the Church of England, but he wanted his book to be "absolutely free" from the Christian bias; here too one can safely say that his book shows no conscious Christian bias. If a bias has to be mentioned, it is a European's imperial bias which regards all non-European manners and institutions--in this particular case, Bedouin manners and institutions--as savage."