page_title: Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje
section_title: Final years
hierarchical_section_title: Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje / Final years
caption_attribution_description: English: Graveyard Groenesteeg, Leiden (The Netherlands). Grave of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936).
context_page_description: Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje was a Dutch scholar of Oriental cultures and languages and Advisor on Native Affairs to the colonial government of the Dutch East Indies.
  Born in Oosterhout in 1857, he became a theology student at Leiden University in 1874. He received his doctorate at Leiden in 1880 with his dissertation 'Het Mekkaansche Feest'. He became a professor at the Leiden School for Colonial Civil Servants in 1881.
  Snouck, who was fluent in Arabic, through mediation with the Ottoman governor in Jeddah, was examined by a delegation of scholars from Mecca in 1884 and upon successfully completing the examination was allowed to commence a pilgrimage to the Holy Muslim city of Mecca in 1885. He was one of the first Western scholars of Oriental cultures to do so.
  A pioneering traveler, he was a rare Western presence in Mecca, but embraced the culture and religion of his hosts with passion in such that he successfully gave people the impression that he had converted to Islam. He admitted that he pretended to be a Muslim as he explained in a letter sent to his college friend, Carl Bezold on 18 February 1886 which is now archived in Heidelberg University Library.
context_section_description: Back in the Netherlands Snouck accepted several professorships at Leiden University, including Arabic language, Acehnese language and Islamic education. He continued to produce numerous elaborate academic studies and became the international authority on all matters relating to the Arab world and Muslim religion. His expert advice on urgent issues was often sought after by other European countries and much of his work was already being translated into a.o. German, French and English. In 1925 he was even offered a professorship at the prestigious National Egyptian University in Cairo, the prime university of the Middle East. In 1927 he stepped down as Rector magnificus and professor, but stayed active as adviser up to his death in Leiden in 1936.
  During and after his academic tenure Snouck remained a progressive colonial adviser and critic. His reformist vision to solve the challenges of a lasting relationship between the Netherlands and the Indies was based on the principle of association. To achieve this future association and end the existing dualist governance of the Dutch East Indies, he advocated increased autonomy through western education of the indigenous governing elite. In 1923 he called for: "Vigorous reform of the constitution of the Dutch East Indies" where "one has to break with the concept of moral and intellectual inferiority of the natives" and allow them "free and representative democratic bodies and optimal autonomy". Conservative elements in the Netherlands reacted by financing an alternative school for Colonial Civil Servants in Utrecht.
caption: Snouck Hurgronje's grave in Leiden
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