Duncan Black MacDonald (1863-1943) was an American Orientalist, who was a "pioneer of Arabic and Islamic studies in the United States". He was praised by

Hamza Yusuf Hamza Yusuf (born Mark Hanson; 1958) is an American Islamic scholar, neo-traditionalist, and co-founder of Zaytuna College. He is a proponent of classical learning in Islam and has promoted Islamic sciences and classical teaching methodologies ...

as a "great Islamic scholar". He studied

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya language, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew language, Hebrew, Maltese language, Maltese, Modern South Arabian language ...

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

and then

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

, before teaching at the

Hartford Theological Seminary The Hartford International University for Religion and Peace (formerly Hartford Seminary) is a private theological university in Hartford, Connecticut. History Hartford Seminary's origins date back to 1833 when the Pastoral Union of Connectic ...

in the United States starting in 1893, founding the first school in the U.S. devoted to Christian missionary work among the Muslims of the Middle East. His main scholarly interest was

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

theology, which led him to the study of the ''

One Thousand and One Nights ''One Thousand and One Nights'' (, ), is a collection of Middle Eastern folktales compiled in the Arabic language during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as ''The Arabian Nights'', from the first English-language edition ( ...

'', as he believed that the ''Nights'' stories reflected the Muslim popular piety. MacDonald was the second Western scholar to investigate the manuscripts of the ''Nights'', after

Hermann Zotenberg Hermann Zotenberg (1836, Silesia – 1894, Paris) was an orientalist and Arabist. He worked for the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. His most celebrated work is his edition of the ''Chronique de Tabari'' (Paris, 1867–1871) Works ...

, and he began to publish his results in 1908. The Arabic MSS of ''

Ali Baba "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" () is a folk tale in Arabic added to the ''One Thousand and One Nights'' in the 18th century by its French translator Antoine Galland, who heard it from Syrian storyteller Hanna Diyab. As one of the most popu ...

'' he discovered at the

Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1602 by Sir Thomas Bodley, it is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second-largest library in ...

was later found to be counterfeited. But he did successfully prove that the ‘Tunisian MSS’ which

Maximilian Habicht Maximilian or Maximillian (Maximiliaan in Dutch and Maximilien in French) is a male name. The name "Max" is considered a shortening of "Maximilian" as well as of several other names. List of people Monarchs *Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (1 ...

claimed to find and use for his Breslau ''Nights'' edition was a fake. MacDonald planned to prepare a critical edition of the only extensively surviving medieval manuscript of the ''Nights'', the three-volume

Galland Manuscript The three-volume Galland Manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MSS arabes 3609, 3610 and 3611), sometimes also referred to as the Syrian Manuscript, is the earliest extensive manuscript of the ''Thousand and One Nights'' (the only earlier wi ...

. However, nothing came out of it, and this critical edition was produced by

Muhsin Mahdi Muḥsin Sayyid Mahdī (; cited Muhsin S. Mahdi; June 21, 1926 – July 9, 2007) was an Iraqi-American Islamologist and Arabist. He was a leading authority on Arabian history, philology, and philosophy. His best-known work was the first critical ...

(with reference to MacDonald's notes) only in 1984. MacDonald also did important work on Arab magic and superstition, and Muslim-Christian relations. The Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at the Hartford Theological Seminary is named after him.C. Kurzman and Carl W. Ernst, ''Islamic Studies in U.S. Universities'', Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina, 2009, p. 5.

Bibliography

* Duncan Black MacDonald, �
“Ali Baba and the forty thieves” in Arabic from a Bodleian MS
��, ''

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society The ''Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society'' is an academic journal which publishes articles on the history, archaeology, literature, language, religion and art of South Asia, the Middle East (together with North Africa and Ethiopia), Central Asia ...

'' (April 1910): 327-386.

Bibliography

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Further reading