University Of Cambridge Alumni

"[In many cases] there is no doubt that the shrine of a Muslim saint marks the site of some local cult which was practised on the spot long before the introduction of Islam."

""The tomb of alae ‘Masud is said to occupy the site of a former temple of the sun, and the mosque of Shaykh Saddu at Amroha was also originally a temple. The Panj Pir are undoubtedly reminiscent of the Pandavas, the five hero brothers of the Mahabharatta, and it is significant that the shrine of Sakhi Sarwar (in the Dera Ghazi Khan District) contains, besides the tomb of the saint and his wife, a shrine dedicated to Babu Nanak, and a temple to Vishnu, and that Hindus believe that Shah Madar is an incarnation of Lakshman, the brother of the God Rama.’"

"Their energies at all times impetuous were now solely concentrated upon executing the injunctions of the 'king of fierce countenance, understanding dark sentences' that they should enforce belief at the point of the sword which was emphatically declared to be 'the key of heaven and of hell."

"It was from this and much other material that Arnold reached his conclusion that vast number of Indian Muslims are descendent of converts in whose conversion force played no part and in which only the teaching and persuasion of peaceful missionaries were at work."

"Then, too, although Arnold was sceptical of the many stories of conversion under pressure to Islam in the time of Aurangzib, he did not extend the same questioning spirit towards stories of peaceful conversion by saints. In 1965, Dr. S. A. A. Rizvi was to suggest that zamindars retailed these stories in order, in the period when the British were making revenue settlements, to establish their proprietory rights over larger areas of land by an assertion of superior ancestry through connexion with Muslim saints.... But even he whose avowed intention was to portray Islam as a peaceful missionary religion analogous to missionary Christianity of the 19th century, finds that "It is established without doubt that forced conversions have been made by Muhammadan rulers in India.""

"Another lofty claim of mythic proportion being perpetuated about conversion to Islam is that a heterodox variety of Muslims, namely the Sufis, had propagated Islam through peaceful missionary activity. British historian Thomas Arnold (1864–1930)—desperate to alter the centuries-old European discourse of Islam as a violent faith—initiated this propaganda in the 1890s, which has been embraced by numerous Muslim and non-Muslim historians and scholars."

"[T]he jizyah was levied on the able-bodied males, in lieu of the military service they would have been called upon to perform had they been Musalmans; and it is very noticeable that when any Christian people served in the Muslim army, they were exempted from the payment of this tax. Such was the case with the tribe of al-Jurājima, a Christian tribe in the neighborhood of Antioch who made peace with the Muslims, promising to be their allies and fight on their side in battle, on condition that they should not be called upon to pay jizyah and should receive their proper share of the booty."

"Muslim Spain had written one of the brightest pages in the history of mediæval Europe. Her influence had passed through Provence into the other countries of Europe, bringing into birth a new poetry and a new culture, and it was from her that Christian scholars received what of Greek philosophy and science they had to stimulate their mental activity up to the time of the Renaissance."

"In the hours of its political degradation, Islam has achieved some of its most brilliant spiritual conquests: on two great historical occasions, infidel barbarians have set their feet on the necks of the followers of the Prophet, - the Saljūq Turks in the eleventh and the Mongols in the thirteenth century,- and in each case the conquerors have accepted the religion of the conquered. Unaided also by the temporal power, Muslim missionaries have carried their faith into Central Africa, China and the East India Islands."

"Official pressure is said never to have been more consistently brought to bear upon the Hindus than in the reign of Aurangzeb. In the eastern districts of the Punjab, there are many cases in which the ancestor of the Musalman branch of the village community is said to have changed his religion in the reign of this zealot in order to save the land of the village. …. Many Rajput landowners in the Cawnpore district, were compelled to embrace Islam for the same reason to save the family property from confiscation. In other cases, the ancestor is said to have been carried as prisoner or hostage to Delhi, and there forcibly circumcised and converted. It should however be noted that the only authority for these forced conversions is family or local traditions and no mention of such is made in the historical accounts of Aurangzeb’s reign. It is established, without doubt, that forced conversions have been made by Muhammadan rulers, and it seems probable that Aurangzeb’s well known zeal on behalf of his faith has caused many families of Northern India (the history of whose conversion has been forgotten) to attribute their change of faith to this, the most easily assignable cause."

"This passage was cited by Thomas W. Arnold in his Preaching of Islam to support his contention that the most important agents in the spread of Islam in the Deccan were peaceful Muslim saints. While Arnold's general argument may have a good deal of valid- an argument that will be explored in greater depth in the present study, it would seem that in the case of Pir Ma‘bari he ‘chose the wrong example to illustrate it. For the question arises: why did Arnold cite a tradition, the 1884 Bombay Gazetteer, which presented only one side, the “peaceful missionary” side, of Pir Marais life? One possibility is that the hagiographic traditions such a the one quoted above were unknown to Arnold and that he had available to him only the Gazetteer version. Another possibility is that Arnold was aware of the Sufi’ militancy in the hagiographic traditions but chose to ignore it, an interpretation that would accord with the general effort in his books to revise the simplistic nineteenth-century image of Islam as religion of the sword. But it does not suffice to correct one distorted view by presenting an equally distorted, if opposite, view. If the Sufis peaceful character can be supported by both ‘written and oral traditions, so can his militancy. In view of the tendency of both oral and written traditions to extol or even fabricate the pious qualities of Sufis, it is most likely that Pir ‘Matbari like Sufi Sarmast, was in reality a militant Sufi and only acquired the reputation of peaceful missionary through generations of oral transmission of his life story."

"Now wheras I have alwayes noted your wisdome to have had a speciall care of the honor of her Majesty, the good reputation of our country, & the advancing of navigation, the very walks of this our Island, as the oracle is reported to have spoken of the sea forces of Athens: and whereas I acknowledge in all dutifull sort how honorably both by your letter and speech I have bene animated in this and other my travels, I see my selfe bound to make presentment of this worke to your selfe, as the fruits of your owne incouragements, & the manifestation both of my unfained service to my prince and country, and of my particular duty to your honour"

"It became normal to have at each of the major courts a resident “ambassador”—a word defined by the English poet and diplomat Sir Henry Wotton in a punning epigram as “a man sent to lie abroad for his country’s good.” Given the time required for travel, and the hazards en route—especially in an age of dynastic and religious warfare—permanent ambassadors offered a convenient substitute for personal summitry. And their detailed reports required the attention of specialist secretaries who oversaw foreign affairs, such as Francis Walsingham in Elizabethan London or Antonio Perez at the court of Philip III. Day-to-day diplomacy tended to slip out of the hands of rulers."

"I see this wicked creature ordained of God to punish us for our sins and unthankfulness."

"Above all things I wish God's glory and next the queen's safety."

"The main influence on all of the activity in electromagnetic theory during the later years of the nineteenth century came from Maxwell's famous treatise (Maxwell 1873). Poynting was a member of the group of young physicists led by Heaviside, Fitzgerald, Lodge and Hertz who developed Maxwell's electromagnetic theory in the years following his death in 1879. They transformed his 1873 presentation into the formalism recognizable today as Maxwell's equations. The detailed historical accounts by Hunt (1991) and Warwick (2003) describe Poynting's contributions to electromagnetism, mainly during the 1880s. His name is more familiar to students of electromagnetic theory than those of other important members of the group on account of the widespread use of his eponymous energy-conservation theorem and energy-flow vector."

"The evidence is closing in more and more rigorously that the medium which transmits electrical and radiant effects must either completely accompany matter in bulk in its movements or else be entirely independent of such movements."

"The Earth, then, is very round. If an exact model were made the size of a two-inch billiard ball, we should just be able to see that it was flatter at the poles, and, no doubt, in rolling it would exhibit its want of roundness. The highest mountains would be represented by elevations of \frac {1} {800}th inch, say by the thinnest smear of grease, the deepest oceans by the spreading of a drop into a film but \frac {1} {700}th inch thick."

"A very simple experiment shows that a black surface is a better radiator, or pours out more energy when hot, than a surface which does not absorb fully, but reflects much of the radiation which falls upon it. If a platinum foil with some black marks on it be heated to redness, the marks, black when cold, are much brighter than the surrounding metal when hot; they are, in fact, pouring out much more visible radiation than the metal."

"When we see the havoc wrought on a sea-wall by a storm, it is easy to believe that ocean waves exert a pressure against the shore on which they beat. But it is not easy to think that the tiny ripples of light also press against every body on which they fall, to think that when a lamp is lighted waves of pressure are sent out from it—pressing against the source from which they start, pressing against every surface which they illuminate. It is a very minute pressure, far too small, even when it is strongest, to be felt by our bodies, and only to be detected by exceeding sensitive apparatus."

"The direct knowledge of matter that mankind can acquire is a knowledge of the average behaviour and relations of the crowd of molecules."

"A space containing electric currents may be regarded as a field where energy is transformed at certain points into the electric and magnetic kinds by means of batteries, dynamos, thermoelectric actions, and so on, while in other parts of the field this energy is again transformed into heat, work done by electromagnetic forces, or any form of energy yielded by currents. Formerly a current was regarded as something travelling along a conductor, attention being chiefly directed to the conductor, and the energy which appeared at any part of the circuit, if considered at all, was supposed to be conveyed thither through the conductor by the current. But the existence of induced currents and of electromagnetic actions at a distance from a primary circuit from which they draw their energy, has led us, under the guidance of Faraday and Maxwell, to look upon the medium surrounding the conductor as playing a very important part in the development of the phenomena. If we believe in the continuity of the motion of energy, that is, if we believe that when it disappears at one point and reappears at another it must have passed through the intervening space, we are forced to conclude that the surrounding medium contains at least a part of the energy, and that it is capable of transferring it from point to point."

"The chief lesson to be learnt from it is the futility of all argumentation that precedes understanding. We cannot profitably attack any opinion until we have discovered what it expresses as well as what it states."

"An experience has to be formed, no doubt, before it is communicated, but it takes the form it does largely because it may have to be communicated."

"A book is a machine to think with, but it need not, therefore, usurp the functions either of the bellows or the locomotive."

"The physical properties of fluid media, as regards change of state, and as regards capillary phenomena, have been closely illustrated in theory by consideration of a model medium, subject to internal expansive pressure, of kinetic or other origin, which is counteracted by the contractive effect of mutual attraction between its molecules—the latter force extending through much the greater, though for ordinary purposes still insensible, range. For liquids, the difference between these two much larger quantities, of different types, constitutes the transmitted hydrostatic pressure."

"It is very probable that the Hindenburg Line to which the defence of our traditions retired as a result of the onslaughts of the last century will be blown up in the near future. If this should happen a mental chaos such as man has never experienced may be expected. We shall then be thrown back, as Matthew Arnold foresaw, upon poetry. It is capable of saving us; it is a perfectly possible means of overcoming chaos."

"Very simple experiences – a cold bath in an enamelled tin, or running for a train – may to some extent be compared without elaborate vehicles; and friends exceptionally well acquainted with one another may manage some rough comparisons in ordinary conversation. But subtle or recondite experiences are for most men incommunicable and indescribable, though social conventions or terror of the loneliness of the human situation may make us pretend the contrary.”"

"A very large number of optical phenomena have been examined by various experimenters with a view to detecting an influence on them of the Earth's velocity of translation. The only such influence that has been announced is that found by Fizeau on the displacement of the plane of polarization of light, produced by transmission through a pile of glass plates: according to Fizeau's own view the experiment was uncertain owing to the numerous disturbing causes that had to be guarded against; and this doubt as to the feasibility of the observations has been fully shared by Maxwell and most authorities who have considered the matter."

"The researches by which Sir Joseph Larmor will chiefly be remembered belong to the decade 1892–1901, which is now recognized as a transition period in physics. ... Before the end of the decade X-rays, electrons and radio-activity had again set experimental physics in feverish progress, to be followed later by revolutionary changes in the foundations of physical theory. But at the time when Larmor started on his main work there was little to inspire new ideas. ... Classical physics was indeed near the end of its tether. Of those who yet contrived to make substantial progress at this difficult stage—who brought classical physics finally to the point where new methods became inevitable—two names stand out prominently, Lorentz and Larmor. Their work had much in common, so that it is sometimes difficult to assess their contributions separately. Larmor’s reputation has perhaps been overshadowed by that of Lorentz. But on any estimate, Larmor’s achievements rank high; and his place in science is secure as one who re-kindled the dying embers of the old physics to prepare the advent of the new."

"From remote ages the great question with which, since Newton's time, we have been familiar under the somewhat misleading antithesis of contact versus distance, has engaged speculation,—how is that portions of matter can interact on each other which seem to have no means of connexion between them. Can a body act where it is not?"

"It will appear, no doubt, that at various periods of our history there have been decisions as to the nature and description of the religious solemnities necessary for the completion of a perfect marriage, which cannot be reconciled together; but there will be found no authority to contravene the general position, that at all times, by the common law of England, it was essential to the constitution of a full and complete marriage, that there must be some religious solemnity; that both modes of obligation should exist together, the civil and the religious."

"Illegality is not to be presumed; it is to be alleged and proved when it does not appear on the face of the instrument itself."

"Immemorial enjoyment is the most solid of all titles."

"Judicial decisions in Courts of justice are ranked by Lord Hale as one of the grounds or constituents of the common law."

"There is no reason for assuming, that the time of medical men and attornies is more valuable than that of others whose livelihood depends on their own exertions."

"The intention of the testator is the polar star by which we must be guided."

"It is between the stirrup and the ground, Brother; but you may amend by replying."

"It is to be remembered that contracts in restraint of trade are in themselves, if nothing more appears to show them reasonable, bad in the eye of the law."

"Whatever is injurious to the interests of the public is void, on the grounds of public policy."

"Whatever restraint is larger than the necessary protection of the party, can be of no benefit to either, it can only be oppressive; and if oppressive, it is, in the eye of the law unreasonable."

"It is fraud in law if a party makes representations which he knows to be false, and injury ensues, although the motives from which the representations proceeded may not have been bad."

"We should not be too strict in construing instruments or contracts generally drawn up on the spur of the moment."

"Every Court is the guardian of its own records, and master of its own practice."

"The tradition that they originally came from Lydia, reported as a Lydian story by Herodotus, is based on erroneous etymologies, like many other traditions about the origins of 'fringe' peoples of the Greek world. Although the (no doubt numerous) early group movements in and out of Italy, and within its borders, are irretrievably lost, the Etruscans must be regarded as an Italian people."

"What cannot be emphasized enough is that there is nothing to be said for presenting 'the Islamic view' ... as though there exists one view which is shared by all Muslims. All religions contain a variety of interpretations of that religion, and trying to work out what the right view is should not detain us. Working out the orthodox position in each religion is in itself a minefield, and even if we skirt that minefield without coming to harm, it is not at all clear that an unorthodox belief is not nonetheless a belief which can be classified as falling under the religion."

"In the broadest sense, the west's borrowings from the Middle East form practically the whole basic fabric of civilisation. Without such fundamental borrowings from the Middle East, we should lack the following sorts of things among others (unless, of course, we had been quick and inventive enough to devise them all for ourselves): agriculture,‘ the domestication of animals, for food, clothing and transportation; spinning and weaving,‘ building; drainage and irrigation; road- making and the wheel; metal—working, and standard tools and weapons of all kinds; sailing ships; astronomical observation and the calendar; writing and the keeping of records; laws and civic life; coinage; abstract thought and mathematics; most of our religious ideas and symbols. there is virtually no evidence for any of these basic things and processes and ideas being actually invented in the West."

"As a philosopher Stout is quite difficult to situate. His relation to English Idealism is complicated. We know that he advanced a position that Metz describes as ‘a “meeting” of pragmatist, realist and idealist motives’. Metz goes on to label Stout either an ‘old realist’ or a ‘new realist’ but definitely not an idealist. Passmore, more accurately, describes Stout as ‘pre-eminently … a philosopher of the middle way’. It is in this way that Stout is usually painted by much of the literature – a philosopher who was interested in reconciliation and compromise. This I think is true of his philosophy after about 1900."

"The linguistic designation of a category of “Indo-European/Aryan” languages is not the question here. However, the historical, and prevailing, use of the language designation is the issue. For two centuries, scholars concentrating on the South Asian data have described an Indo-European/Aryan migration/invasion into South Asia to explain the formation of Indian civilization. The conflating of language, people/culture, “race” to maintain the “myth of the Aryan invasion” continues, perhaps, as Leach so cogently notes, due to the academic prestige at stake. The distinguished scholar Colin Renfrew (1987) opts to distort the archaeological record rather than to challenge it. Failing to identify archaeological evidence for such a migration in the European post-Neolithic periods, Renfrew argues instead for an Indo-European/Aryan human migration associated with the spread of food production economies from Anatolia. In doing so, he ignores critical archaeological data from Southwest Asia and South Asia. The South Asian archaeological data reviewed here does not support Renfrew’s position nor any version of the migration/invasion hypothesis describing western population movement into South Asia. Rather, the physical distribution of prehistoric sites and artifacts, stratigraphic data, radio- metric dates, and geological data describing the prehistoric/proto-historic environment perhaps can account, in some degree, for the Vedic oral tradition describing a cultural discontinuity of what was an indigenous population movement in the Indo-Gangetic region."

"[Supporters of Renfrew’s theory] “have tried to render the Indo-Iranian problem moot. They argue that the Indo-Iranian branch was somehow divided from the main body of Proto-Indo-European before the colonists brought agriculture to the Balkans. Greek and Indic are thus separated by millenniums of linguistic change - despite the close grammatical correspondences between them (... these correspondences probably represent shared innovations from the last stage of PIE).”"