‘Mahometanism’: a case of father Bombo’s pilgrimage to Mecca

Abstract

Scrutinizing the diverse history of the Atlantic world reveals intriguing insights into the complex interactions between the Orient and the Occident. While Islamophobia and Orientalism are commonly discussed in relation to Muslims and Arabs, the somewhat archaic term Mahometanism shares semantic similarities but is less familiar in contemporary literature. This study adopts a methodology rooted in literary theory to examine the trajectory of the term Mahometanism in Orientalized discourse from the 11th to the 18th centuries. Comparing European Mahometanism with its American counterpart, this study claims that the former primarily symbolizes the perpetual religious conflict between Christianity and Islam, whereas the latter represents the clash of civilizations, transitioning from religious perspectives to secular attitudes during America’s separation from Britain. Given the scant body of relevant literature, the current study makes a unique contribution by offering a deeper understanding of the evolvement of Mahometanism over time and its enduring significance in the literary canon alongside its profound implications on past and modern-day anchors between the East and the West.

Keywords:

• Mahometanism
• first American novel
• cultural and religious conflicts
• eighteenth century
• orientalism

REVIEWING EDITOR:

• Oliver Nyambi, English, University of the Free State, South Africa

SUBJECTS:

• Literature; Literature by Period; Literary/Critical Theory

Introduction

It is crucial to bear in mind that the novel Father Bombo’s Pilgrimage to Mecca is fundamentally a burlesque work. This fact complicates the process of drawing consistent conclusions about the use of Mahometanism and the associated ridiculing images and rhetoric. The term burlesque, derived from the Italian word ‘burlesco or burla meaning joke or farce’, is defined as a form of humor that involves making a mockery of a serious genre by employing grotesque or vulgar parody. It hinges on creating incongruity between the representation of a subject and its true essence (Pavis, 1998, p. 40). Burlesques were particularly popular in 17th and 18th-century British literature. Some noteworthy examples of Burlesque literature, sometimes referred to as Augustan satire, include works like John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel (1681), Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock (1712), Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and Henry Carey’s Chrononhotonthologos (1734), among others (Marshall & Hume, 2009).

Along these lines, this study brings to the forefront FBPTM as a rare example not only of a burlesque, but also as a late eighteenth-century American Orientalist and Islamophobic text (Freneau et al., 1942, p. 459). In contrast to its contemporaneous manuscripts, which primarily focused on local and domestic issues, FBPTM embraced an international approach. Authored in 1770¹ during the Colonial Period by Philip Freneau and Hugh Henry Brackenridge,² the narrative signifies a turbulent era that would soon pave the way to America’s violent Independence of the British Crown (Brackenridge & Freneau, 1975). On par with contemporary British literary works, functioning as both a burlesque and a travel novel, FBPTM stands out among American literature. It unveils perspectives that, while occasionally aligning with imperialist and colonial notions about the Orient, are, at other times, surprisingly sympathetic.

Although the novel’s structure may be undeveloped and inconsistent, its content is particularly mesmerizing and captivating. It lays doubt on literature, illustrating the ferocity of its wit and absurdity, along with a frenzied recklessness that satirizes the literary traditions ‘its authors admired and elsewhere, emulated’ (Brackenridge & Freneau, 1975, p. 19). Such structure can be regarded as one that symbolizes the beginning of the new American era. In that point, 1770s was the year when Golden Hill Battle occurred between British troops and Sons of Liberty; it was also the year when Christopher Seider, the first American young victim, was shot by the Brits; and it was the year when Boston Massacre united the colonies against the Crown. It was the year that marked a period of transition and skepticism whereby Americans who planned to disjoin themselves from the long-termed unvoluntary association with Britain, now experienced a first-hand sense of independence and identity. The authors were primarily interested in historical works that canvassed the era of colonial America. In this regard, the American college they attended was predominantly focused on providing colonial education, designed established to meet the spiritual needs of a new continent (Thornton & Tewsbury, 2011).

Hence, they felt an obligation to their new nation despite all the repercussions that such separation entailed; it was the year when the authors’ college underwent revolutionary transformations characterized by all-encompassing American trends; and it was the year when these two young undergraduates aspired to singularize themselves as pioneers of the new-founded nation, politically, religiously, and literarily. This prevailing sense of insecurity, coupled with deep uncertainty concerning their future personal and professional identities, was a defining feature among these young men who matured during the tumultuous and often violent period of the Revolution. The War for Independence supplied many of them with a renewed sense of purpose and hope.

These sentiments also offer insight into the context of Father Bombo’s Pilgrimage, with its themes of purposelessness, violence, and excess, which contribute to the humor of the narrative (Brackenridge & Freneau, 1975). Still, although FBPTM is wrapped in a farcical package and may be deemed a political allegory, examples such as likening Mahomet (dated form of Muhammad) to Lucian and punishing Father Reynardine Bombo by forcing him to become a Muslim, may seem disparaging and pejorative to today’s Muslims. Surprisingly, Bombo does not describe the pilgrimage in Mecca as the title suggests but rather outlines very briefly how he has spent his time ‘Every morning of these days, [prostrating himself] on the bare pavement, naked, with [his] face towards the East, begging the prophet to pardon [his] crimes’ (p. 92). The image of nakedness in the concluding section serves not only to encapsulate and emphasize the Occident’s continuous mockery and derision towards the Orient throughout the novel, but also extends towards the allegorized literary rivals (the Cliosophic Society), reverberating the ambivalence and confusion of the new nation.

Literature review

Many of the images constructed about Muslims were based on a thin veneer of Western imagination deriving from clashes and wars (violence and bloodthirstiness), or from Arabian nights (lewdness and paganism) rather than from a concrete and close associations. This stance was affirmed by Henry Stubbe, an English writer and Royal physician, who in 1671 closely consulted three Arabic histories about early Islam and emphasized the significance of resorting to authentic sources about Islamic civilization, calling for a reassessment of the most misrepresented and misinterpreted man (Prophet Muhammad) in early modern European religious thought (Thomas, 2016).

Yet, to elucidate the connection of Mahometanism with American attitudes toward Muslims in general and to dispel the religious motive of both authors of FBPTM in particular, it is essential to clarify that both Freneau and Brackenridge endorsed a secular perspective. According to Eberwein (1986), Freneau was labelled a deist. Likewise, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, espoused Franklin’s secularist principles and even established the Pittsburgh Academy, which in 1787 came to be the University of Pittsburgh, a non- denominational school (Luft, 2021). Hence, for the sake of comparison between American and European attitudes toward Islam, it is equally important to briefly revisit some literary and historical European texts of various eras characterized by historical and cultural shifts in addition to semantic and linguistic transformations. Such journey will illustrate the long-standing implications of Mahometanism that are embedded mainly in the current fragile, skeptical, and hostile relationship between Islam and the West. Given that such hostility is relevant to Mohammed, whose name mandates a comprehensive scrutiny into its origins.

Mahometanism

The origins of the term Mahometanism to refer to Islam are not well-documented in available sources, but several ontological and teleological explanations can crystallize its inception. One early variation can be traced back to the 12th to 14th centuries in Old French and Middle English, where terms resembling ‘Muhammad’ appeared. Spooling back through the early days of European Medieval literature, we find a ubiquitous and largely uniform condescending attitude towards Islam. This negative portrayal initially emerged in literary manuscripts that depicted Muslims as pagans and labeled them as worshipers of Baphomet. The term B(M)ahomet was notably used during the trial of The Knights Templar in 1307, where the creature Baphomet, an Old French corruption of the name Mohammad, surfaced as an androgynous figure associated with elements such as Satanism, darkness, eroticism, heathenism, and heresy (Lea, 2007, p. 98; Tolan, 2019, p. 63).

The later form ‘Mahometen’ dated from 1529, probably concurring with the siege of Vienna imposed by Suleiman the Magnificent, sultan of the Ottomans, in 1529, and during which the prophet was also referred to as the Paynim foe, a deceptive and imposture Antichrist (Stubbe, 1911). In Western perceptions, Mahometans primarily signified the Ottoman Empire’s territorial Westward expansion and military power and were called Machometanys by Thomas More who depicted them as ‘a sensual sect [that] dyd in a fewe yeres draw the great part of the world unto it’ (Das et al., 2021, p. 167). Functioning until 1681, the expression was superseded by the form Mohammedan (Cannon & Kay, 1994). Perhaps the following excerpt summarizes how Mahomet and Mahometans were viewed by the English: ‘The figure of ‘Mahomet’ was widely known in early modern England (…) Mahomet was a product of vilification, caricature and misinformation placed at the centre of Christian conceptions of Islam’ ((Dimmock, 2013, pp. i-1).

Along these lines, it is evident that Mahometanism beheld varied meanings and implications in Western literature. In England, particularly during the reign of Henry VIII and his successors, Mahometanism was used to accentuate the religious conflict between Islam and Christianity as in these years the expression never passed beyond Christendom (Dimmock, 2013). Even more, European ancient and Medieval portrayals of Islam were consistently uncomplimentary (Muldoon, 2016). Perhaps such depictions disseminated due to the scant knowledge about the remote, enigmatic East and Islam, alongside the incessant wars between the East and the West. That is, Islam was deemed as the natural enemy of Western Schism through the First Crusade, and there was never a significant lull in the conflict between these powers for centuries (Morton, 2018).

European versus American attitudes toward Islam

While there appear to be some resemblances in the essential content of the attitudes toward Islam and Muslims in Europe and America, these attitudes seem to have been established on rather dissimilar political and cultural contexts existing between the two regions. Americans particularly formed views of Muslims that would endure, in various contexts, into the present day (Morton, 2018). In this regard, although some historical documents may convey ambivalent attitudes regarding Muslims, both accepting and rejecting, since its commencement, the United States adopted a declaration on its policy toward Muslims on which it announced a relatively balanced and pacifying approach. This approach stood in sharp contrast to all the European countries, that, not formally, publicly, or resolutely almost adopted the same path. Perhaps one reason that would explain the fundamental difference of attitude between both parties is that unlike American federalism, a new form of ‘enlightened despotism’ or ‘absolutism’ emerged in many European states until the late eighteenth century (Spielvogel, 2020, p. 428).

In this regard, despite embracing constitutional monarchy in Britain, the Church of England remained an integral part of the English state (Taylor, 1987), and was considered a political institution: ‘it is not possible to touch the subject of her siturgy [sic] or her endowments without trenching on political ground’ (The Scottish congregational magazine, 1860, p. 244). During that period, Europe, including Britain, was launching wars and national crusades against heathenism, or whom they called Mahometans and Turks (Yates, 2016). Even more, in the context of religious and ethnic otherness, Arabs were viewed and depicted as a menacing element to the very existence of the Christians, killing them, destroying their churches, and coercing them to convert to Islam (Abuthawabeh, 2019). In general, European countries had backed a unanimously adversary attitude that perceived Mahometanism as a rival religion and Mahometans as invaders. Hence, the conflict between Mahometanism and Christianity was more acrimonious in Europe than it was with any other religion elsewhere for specific reasons (Greene & Northrop, 1896). On the one hand, the conquest of European cities by the Turks fueled enormous spiteful and hostile sentiments, and hence the definition of who the Turk was went hand in hand with the expressions alien, barbarian, cruel, faithless, and brutally lustful (Bugbee, 2018). On the other hand, such conquest was a heaven-sent chance for Protestants and Catholics to attack one another. To spark the Protestant Reformation in 1517, Martin Luther leveraged the context of the Ottoman Empire’s invasion of Europe. He attributed this invasion to what he saw as God’s wrath and punishment for the perceived apostasy within Christendom and the corruption of the papacy, which he viewed as an instrument of God’s wrath. In response, Catholics held the belief that the Turks were a form of ‘divine punishment for allowing Luther and his followers to flourish’. This complex interplay of religious and geopolitical events marked a significant chapter in the history of the Reformation. As a result, anti-Turk sentiments climaxed dramatically in many European countries leading to founding the Holy League in 1684. The Holy Roman Empire together with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Venetian Republic, and (by and by) Russia, combined forces against the Turks, and challenged them by frequent wars (Jones et al., 2019, p. 9).

As a result of such enmity, stereotypical images of Muslims, including Arabs and Turks have prevailed in Western works of fiction since the eleventh century and surged by the fall of Constantinople in 1453, but then escalated with the Ottoman’s Empire invasion of the Byzantine Empire’s capital. The Orient’s image as the ugly, violent, and devilish Other, versus the beautiful, decent, and graceful Gentile, saturated since the First Crusade (Tiryakioglu, 2015; Morton, 2018). Examples of vilifying Muslims were issued from Byzantium, the ancient Greek city that was the first and only reference in the East to provide sources about Islam to the West. One of such sources was the Teaching of Jacob or Doctrina Jacobi Nuper Baptizati (634), associating Islam with ‘bloodshed’, and illustrating Mohammad as a ‘Saracen’ fraudulent prophet (Kaegi, 1982, pp. 75, 79, 113; Donner, 2017, p. 115).

In literature, Christopher Marlowe’s public play Tamburlaine the Great (1587) was the first to scaffold an Ottoman sultan image on the stage: ‘the swarthy-faced Mohammedan with his turban and crooked falchion haunted the stage’ (McJannet, 2008, p. 62). Likewise, The King of Tars was an allegory to the conspicuous prejudice and animosity against Islam (Heng, 2018, p. 138). A precursor of all these representations was the eleventh-century French epic poem La Chanson de Roland composed by the Norman poet Turoldus, where Mahomet, Apollyon, and Tervagant were portrayed as the peculiar gods of Muslims (Muldoon, 2016). These distorted depictions of Monotheist Islam, which inherently rejects gods and advocates the Oneness of God, were presented in this poem through the perspective of medieval imagery. The poem utilized propagandic text asserting that Islam was polytheistic, depicting the Muslim deity as pretentious and violent. Furthermore, the text claimed that Muhammad and Tervagant (the gods) wrote the Qur’an. Such content gained sweeping popularity, leading to translations into several languages.

Notwithstanding the common misconception about the historical absence of Muslims in Europe, there is abundant documentation demonstrating that their number was estimated by 2.525 million between 1500 and 1800. However, the majority of these individuals were slaves or captives, and their numbers declined from the mid-seventeenth century onward and had completely disappeared by 1800 (Corrales & López-Morillas, 2020, p. 33). Similarly, Muslims came to America through the Atlantic slave trade that lasted three centuries (The First American Muslims, 2020). However, in contrast to Europe’s gradual shrinking Muslim’s presence, the Muslim population in America continued to grow. Although these Muslim slaves numbered thousands, their presence in America had a marginal effect that it went unnoticed. Cotton Mather even said that Americans were in a distant land where, to his knowledge, there had never been a single Muslim (Mahometan) present. As a result, direct contacts with Muslims were rare and that the only two main sources from which early Americans learned about Islam were North Africans’ enslavement of Europeans and Americans, and the broadly disseminated writings and preachments about Islam (Kidd, 2018).

Whether the authors of FBPTM had acquired their beliefs about Mahometanism from such sources or from others, it should be clarified that there is no doubt that Brackenridge and Freneau had some knowledge of Islamic practices. However, they also had misconceptions about Muhammad, viewing him as a figure similar to Jesus. They believed for instance that, despite being buried in a sacred tomb, Muhammad would occasionally manifest to penitents and grant them special salvation (Oren, 2008). In the context of FBPTM, it means that Muhammad would forgive Bombo’s sins. This emphasis on Muhammad, deemed human by Muslims, rather than on Islam, could be a potential explanation for the infrequent use of the term ‘Islam’ by Americans before the twentieth century. Instead, Muslims were commonly referred to as ‘Mahometans’ or ‘Turks’ (Marr, 2015, p. 6). In addition, many English writers from diverse literary periods, avoided calling Arabs by their national name, or even by their religious name, Muslims. They used the name of Saracens instead (Abuthawabeh, 2019). Although the expression ‘Saracen’ is not mentioned in FBPTM, other expressions that fall into the same category and denote Muslims are used instead, such as Bedouin, Arabian, Mamaluke, negro, Assyrian, Parthian, Persian, Turk, and Turkish. In the novel, the expressions Mahometanism and Orient are mentioned only once,³ while Mahomet is mentioned fifteen times⁴ and the synonymous word Musselman is mentioned three times.⁵ In fact, Musselman/Musliman was a Persian variation of Muslim which later became a Turkish one, Müslüman.

Even though early Americans prided themselves on their Christian forbearance, this forbearance excluded Islam as the mortal archrival of Christianity. During the early days of colonial America, laws were pejorative and unfair toward Muslims, especially when America was still answering to the British Crown. In this context, colonization always embedded religious imperatives, and such Western predominance over the Orient was not left behind when the first settlers came to America, but rather were carried with them. Hence, although these settlers lived in a provincial society far flung from the actual habitation of most African or Asian Muslims, in the American psyche, the latter were listed in the collection of clashing world religions (Kidd, 2018).

It is not surprising then to see at Plymouth Colony the following couplet carved into a rock: ‘The Eastern nations sink, their glory ends, and empire rises where the sun descends’ (Frothingham, 2017, p. 156), and it is not surprising to learn that Virginia law of 1682 read as follows: ‘born of and in heathenish, idollatrous, pagan, and Mahometan parentage and country (…) heretofore and hereafter may be purchased, procured, or otherwise obteigned’ as slaves (Manseau, 2016, p. 234); nor is it surprising to learn that several renowned colonial intellectuals such as Harvard’s president, Samuel Langdon, and celebrated clergymen such as Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards frequently condemned Islam as a fabricated, morally debased religion and described Muhammad as the ‘emissary of Satan’ (Marr, 2015, p. 105). Such jaded attitude toward Islam was further fortified by the prejudiced translations of the Quran.

In 1649, Alexander Ross, a Scottish Christian cleric and Orientalist, endeavored to expose what he perceived as the Quran’s ‘contradictions, blasphemies, obscene speeches, and ridiculous fables’, so he presented the Alcoran, newly translated from Du Ryer’s 1647 French version, in English (Du Ryer & Ross, 1649, p. n7). The translation was followed by many others, but the most cutting-edge most widely read colonial-epoch book was that of Humphrey Prideaux in 1697, titled The True Nature of the Imposture, which had a significant impact not only on how the English saw Islam, but it particularly contributed to the creation of an ‘American Orientalist view of Islam’ (Thomas & Chesworth, 2020, p. 96).

One reason for this view was the Islamic global expansion policy in Europe that affronted the American ambitions of disseminating their own Christian-based ideals and virtues worldwide. In this context, American Orientalists departed from the orthodox European focus on predominantly religious or religious-cultural conflicts, shifting towards a more cultural perspective. Therefore, Islam was deemed as a significant adversarial emblem with respect to Americans’ dissimilar, clannish, and prejudiced convictions allied in validating the republican values formulated by Jacksonian democracy,⁶ and the Orient, assumed to be a defiant figure of these values, became the enemy of such a ‘national project’ (López, 2010, pp. 10–11). In this regard, Islam became a parameter by which Americans defined their democracy, emphasizing the despotism of Islam and claiming that wherever Mahomet’s religion was practiced, it was fused with tyrannical rule (Marr, 2015, p. 21). In addition, Islam as a culture was considered as a threatening power lurking near, intimidating America’s new political liberties. Therefore, it was perceived as a cultural nemesis, one that is despotic and authoritarian. Timothy Marr further maintains that the bad blood between the Orient and the Occident can be also attributed to Muslims’ aggression endangering America’s trade and vessels in Eastern Asia, Greece, and North America for about fifty years following the American Revolution (p. 21).

However, it is noteworthy that the Oriental sentiments that Americans harbored towards Islam underwent a shift from their European counterparts. The American ideal identity was heavily influenced by delineating the opposite ‘other’. For instance, American writers spawned and integrated an ‘Islamized’ diversity as a vital, embracing, and even amusing means of upholding the legitimacy of democratic society (Marr, 2015, p. 68). Moreover, satire in American literature leveraged the literary Orientalism’s fantastical traditions rather than the real Islamic convictions (Brackenridge & Freneau, 1775). Along with this, Oriental fiction delivered evidence and hope to the American readers that changing and converting such intimidating aliens was possible by spreading and naturalizing the utopian American ideals including freedom, democracy, and benevolence. Hence, FBPTM can be considered an archetype of American fiction, persistently incorporating elements of Islamic Orientalism while also striving to liberate American satire from conventional constraints.

In this context, America’s far-reaching change of narrative, from religious to secular, occurred mainly after the American colonies severed all political ties with Britain and embarked on building the new nation, substantiating their desire to break away from anything that was British. In this period, allusions to God were intentionally omitted and religious practice became a civil right (Fea, 2016). In addition, ministers were prohibited from becoming public officeholders to advance the church-state separation (Banner, 2021). These measures became the backbone for promoting the principle of the disestablishment. Advocating this principle, the religious dissident Roger Williams was the first leader to articulate such a notion in 1644, advocating for a clear divide between the realm of the church, symbolized as a ‘garden’, and the secular world, often likened to a ‘wilderness’ (Breidenbach & Anderson, 2020, p. 113). Ultimately, the First Amendment passed on December 15, 1791, heightened the principle of the secular-based state. Almost one decade later, Thomas Jefferson resonated Williams’ motto ‘wall of separation’, in his letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1802 (p. 254).

Perhaps this principle was further reinforced as a result of imposing the Coercive Acts on the colonists by the Britons, eventually prompting an opposition that was inherently secular, primarily relying on Whig political philosophy. In fact, an impartial evaluation of the evidence readily reveals that America has never truly functioned as a Christian nation (Fea, 2016). To add, throughout John Adams’ presidency, article 11 of the ‘Treaty of Tripoli’ ratified by the Senate of the United States in 1797 emphasized that America had by no means been instituted on the Christian religion, and therefore it had never waged war on or otherwise was hostile toward any Mahometan country and that the peace that already exists between the two countries would never be disrupted by a pretext based on religious beliefs (Walker, 2021, p. 99). During this specific period, the official institutional messages voiced by Federal America, became more amicable, reconciliatory, and secular as the country’s Constitution was established to create a secular nation allowing for religious pluralism. Other examples of religious tolerance include a letter addressed to James Madison in 1784 from Richard Henry Lee who stated that: ‘true freedom embraces the Mahometan and the Gentoo as well as the Christian religion’ (Lee, 1784). Later in 1785, the Act for Establishing Religious Freedom was ratified alongside George Washington’s welcome of Muslims (and others) who wished to work in his Virginia estate: ‘They may be Mahometans, Jews, or Christians of any sect, or atheists’. (Ford, 1896, p. 80). An additional instance is that of Thomas Jefferson who first read about Muslim civil rights in the work of the English philosopher John Locke. He seemed to believe that religious liberty would ‘comprehend, within the mantle of its protection (…) the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination’. (Mercersburg Review, 1857, p. 504). Surprisingly, Jefferson even purchased the Qur’an eleven years before the Declaration of Independence and his Quran could be found in Library of Congress (Spellberg, 2014, p. 1). This tremendous change in the mainstream antagonistic attitude transpired only after the Americans had succeeded in divorcing themselves (though not completely) from the British influences. Perhaps also, the shift from treating Mahometans as slaves to making them (almost) equal citizens proves that the founding fathers’ intentions in this concern were genuine. All these instances only enhance the belief that America’s clash with Islam, unlike that of the European countries, has been mainly cultural rather than religious (Huntington, 1993).

Father Bombo’s pilgrimage to Mecca

The narrative begins with accusing Bombo of plagiarizing a poem by the Greek-speaking Syrian satirist Lucian of Samosata, determined as father of ‘the first fictional accounts of the extraterrestrial life’, whose works mainly depicted voyages to the moon and interplanetary wars (Darling & Schulze-Makuch, 2016, p. 241). As a result, Lucian’s infuriated apparition seeks vengeance followed by the spirit of the renowned prophet Muhammad (Mahomet) wearing a Turban and a Turkish vest and whom Bombo recognizes immediately (Brackenridge & Freneau, 1775, p. 7). Lucian the writer rebukes Bombo for his immoral deed: ‘O thou wretched rascal Bombo (…) the inexorable Pluto recalls me to his hateful kingdom. In less than an hour thou shalt be informed what labours thou art to undergo in doing penance for this crime’ (p. 6). The encounter between Bombo and Lucian is tailed by the apparition of the anguished prophet Mahomet referred to also as the ‘Turk in a furious tone’ who has received a complaint from Lucian’s ghost. To expiate his sin, Bombo is commanded to embark on a long and insipid Journey to Mecca, convert and embrace Mahometanism, and become a ‘zealous musselman’ (p. 7). In addition, he is instructed to adopt clothing in the style of the Turkish attire, particularly that of a Pilgrim. Undoubtedly, the narrative is pervaded by fallacies and derisions about Muhammad the Prophet from the allegation that he is a Turk to the one where he somewhat coerces Bombo to convert, along with addressing Islam as Mahometanism.

The derisions contradict with the formerly mentioned positive approach toward Muslims and correspond with the opposing faction that was reluctant to advocate the idea of Muslim citizenship in the eighteenth century: ‘Americans had inherited from Europe almost a millennium of negative distortions of the faith’s theological and political character. Given the dominance and popularity of these anti-Islamic representations’ (Spellberg, 2014, p. 4). Though a scarce number of renowned Americans (e.g. John Locke) embraced Muslims, and viewed them as equal citizens, the efforts to achieve such equality were negligible and ultimately went nowhere (p. 4). In this respect, American scholars systematically ridiculed and satanized Muslims without much justification and usually, this was done from afar as ideas journeyed across continents. All the same, such remote and far-flung censures were mostly unheard by Americans, and if they were, their effect did not stand (Marr, 2015, pp. 37–38).

Certainly, literature seemed to follow the same path. With few exceptions, for a long time the United States has been a replica of Great Britain in terms of the literary canon, and American writers’ literary styles were overpoweringly influenced by their counterparts in Europe. As the tradition of imitation continued through the beginning of the twentieth century, Theodore Roosevelt called for a wall of separation in 1911 and insisted that American scholars must uncouple themselves from European models and create a national American model rather than cloning the European civilization. In this regard, he stated the following on December 16, 1911: ‘Our American writers, artists, dramatists, must all learn the same lesson until it becomes instinctive with them and with the American public (…) instead of adopting, in servile style, the conventional and utterly inappropriate Phrygian cap’ (Smith, 1911, p. 915).

Nonetheless, America’s attempts to break away from its mother country were achieved at a slow pace few years before its independence from the British Crown. Hence, one can conclude that FBPTM was still influenced by the European attitude toward Islam. Even as the United States became eager to establish a distinct national literary tradition separate from the British one, the absence of such a tradition necessitated its creation (Baldick, 2016, p. 108). It is only in the twentieth century that this long-term relationship was evidently and effectively interrupted. Father Bombo’s Pilgrimage to Mecca is one distinctive example that demonstrates such literary carryover, and simultaneously a break off from such legacy:

Negative depictions of the Middle East also reached America through the memoirs of European diplomats and travelers, over a hundred of which had been published by the late eighteenth century (…) These depicted the Middle East as an alien realm, at once romantic and threatening (…) Americans of Ledyard’s time had scant access to information about the Middle East, and the little they possessed was exceedingly unreliable and biased (Oren, 2008, p. 1).

This ambivalence is evident in the novel. Although FBPTM could be seen as uniquely American, exposing an innovative significant dimension of the new citizen, drawing on American dialect, American discourse, and American humor and sarcasm, it still followed the European style in many aspects, and its themes were consistent with the Zeitgeist of the era, especially, the burlesque writing and the cynical approach to Islam. Despite the transformative period their college underwent, marked by comprehensive American trends, Brackenridge and Freneau, aspiring to distinguish themselves as pioneers of the newly founded nation politically, religiously, and literarily, emerged as forerunners. They played a pivotal role in shaping the new country and promoting the idea of nationalism (Brackenridge & Freneau, 1975, p. 19). Together with would-be president James Madison, they founded the American Whig society (Freneau, 2020, p. xvi), a fierce rival of then the Cliosophic Society that became the most committed and sophisticated college debating societies at the time (Leitch, 2015).⁷ This cleavage between both factions is reminiscent of England’s political parties Whigs and Tories (1679–85).

Such similitude is referred to in William Bradford’s notebook, ‘This doggerel [FBPTM] in the remainder of the notebook bears the general title, “Satires against the Tories”’ (Collegiate Doggerel, 1771–2). The novel narrates some dramatized occurrences exemplifying the scurrilous Paper War between both societies while parodying the Cliosophic Society presented through the novel’s preposterous characters, Bombo included. The Paper War (1770–1771) climaxed in disparaging letters exchanged between the followers of the two societies (Brackenridge & Freneau, 1975, xi). Similar mayhems were triggered in the period preceding the revolution where student-faculty confrontations reached their peak, and the most representative of all was the one that took place at Harvard College in 1668 (Cohen, 1974). Such concurrent political and social conundrums that permeated the United States in 1765 shifted into an epic struggle that soon set forth the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783).

Although the novel seems to denote such rivalry between these two societies. It conclusively corresponds satirically with the anti-Muslim sentiments ubiquitous in Europe and Georgian England. This animus prompted hostile attitudes toward Muslims who became perceived as savages. Through their satirical portrayal of the savage and often restrictive conventions of civilization, Orientalist narrators sought to awaken a critical awareness in their audience. This awareness was intended to promote a more cosmopolitan and open-minded approach to cultural engagement (Marr, 2015). It is evident that the novel is imbued with interesting particulars including uncomplimentary implications and insinuations about Islam. In this respect, the preposterous writing style does not shield the novel from criticism, particularly when it equates pilgrimage to prostitution. An illustrative example is the coupling of one of Islam’s fundamental five pillars with promiscuity: the New York inn called Lady’s Glove, supposedly ‘an emblem of chastity’, visited by Bombo during his journey as a pilgrim, is revealed to be a brothel (Brackenridge & Freneau, 1975, p. xxx).

As many Americans in general did not know much about Islam, Islamic allusions were regularly used as rhetorical tools, and occasionally they were extremely polemical. Such allusions were issued for religious purposes until the beginning of the 18^th century and for secular ones toward the end of the century. In this regard, Benjamin Franklin’s adoption of a ‘Muslim character’ was part of a well-established tradition that was both popular and employed to shape political perspectives. This tradition involved pointing out the perceived similarities between an opponent’s beliefs and Islamic tenets as a method to undermine and discredit one’s adversaries (Kidd, 2018, p. 1). Another example is when John Adams, writing to Thomas Jefferson in 1814, referred to Napoleon as a ‘fanatic’ and likened him to ‘Mahomet’. Additionally, in 1833, Eli Smith warned against the arrogance and cruelty of ‘Mohammedans’ (Adams & Adams, 1856, p. 101; Smith, 2017, p. 22). These instances demonstrate the ambivalence brought up at the beginning of this article. Using Islam as a secular-based metaphor not to directly attack Islam but to question and disgrace opponents underscores the previously mentioned misconception, but at the same time verifies that the conflict is cultural rather than religious. In the novel, this ambivalence is underscored through Bombo’s frequent humorous encounters that are disparaging to Islam but simultaneously carry an underlying deeper set of political and social tensions not vocally addressed. In addition, Bombo’s aimlessness wandering about trying to fulfill the punishment of pilgrimage insinuates the new reality Americans were experiencing then, having parted company with Britain. The consequence of such parting was that America shifted from the status of the known, the familiar, and the definite, to the status of the uncanny, the exotic, and the unknown. In this new reality, Bombo represented the new America: young, confused, and even clueless.

Before embarking on his trip, Bombo drops by some shops owned by craftspeople assuming Arab/Muslim names. First, he visits a Kingston’s shop of Mustapha Alamanri who makes Bombo’s boots more flexible and relaxing (pp. 11–12), then he goes to Nadir Gaw, the barber who insists on doing off his beard in fashion but scorches it instead as red as a fox. Later, he stops at Boabdella’s the tailor, and finally pays a visit to Hassan Bashang the cobbler (pp. 8–9). The emphasis on citizens of Oriental origins in the context of Bombo’s Pilgrimage carries various implications. Firstly, it imparts legitimacy and credibility to Bombo’s journey, as he is assisted by individuals with firsthand knowledge, and the preparations for his pilgrimage are conducted by those who appear to be well-versed in the process. Secondly, in contrast to Bombo, these Orientals (craftsmen) may be portrayed as possibly uneducated, conveying the less complimentary messages about Muslims. Thirdly, the authors might aim to underscore that Muslims are living in America as free citizens, conveying the reconciliatory messages. However, this celebrated freedom contradicts the previously mentioned 1682 Virginia law. Along with this, although available literature suggests that the authors’ main impetus was probably to criticize and ridicule their literary rivals, FBPTM cannot be simply regarded as humor that commences with satire ‘but moves rapidly into burlesque, ‘making fun’ of everything in sight’ (Bell, 1975, p. 22). Therefore, by revealing the following details, the authors seemed to highlight contemporary practices and considerations prevalent in 1770 America.

Before Bombo sets out on his trip, he studies occult sciences, aligning with the prevalent beliefs of early Americans in concepts such as ghosts, spirits, and phrenology. (Bagans, 2020, p. 114). As a university student, Bombo undergoes a crucial juncture in his life, entertaining the idea that occult sciences, inherently conflicting with formal university education, might aid him in surviving a hazardous journey. Whether the authors intended to satirize the prevailing situation or not, their interest in occult sciences is apparent. However, this could be a maneuver employed by the authors to heighten the Oriental spirit of the narrative. In any case, linking Bombo’s journey with such antiquated forms of scholarship does not accurately reflect the real Muslims of the time and even contradicts the advanced sciences that characterized the contemporaneous Ottoman Empire, which was thriving and prospering in exact sciences at its zenith.

As the narrative progresses, Bombo loses his Turban in an ocean storm. The English expression turban originates possibly from ‘dulband’ in Persian or ‘tulbant/tolibant’ in Turkish (Renne, 2018, p. 23). The Commodore and Mr. Brocado offer making a red wig but Bombo refuses and demands a white wig instead (Brackenridge & Freneau, 1975, p. 53). He justifies his color preference by saying that ‘Turbans among the Turks are white and therefore a white wig will gain the more credit among them’ (p. 55), but what he eventually gets is a red wig, echoing the image of a clown. In fact, the turban has been falsely thought to be a must-wear gear for pilgrimage by the West (Ali, 2013, 236). This confusion around information concerning the turban suggests that the authors are either purposefully ridiculing the pilgrimage’s clothing, or that they have superficial knowledge about pilgrimage.

During his pilgrimage, Bombo journeys mostly American cities and towns including Kingston, Elizabeth, New Burnswick, Long Island, New York City and Amboy, in addition to Ireland. It is only towards the end, specifically in the last three pages, that the protagonist’s arrival in Arabia is documented. In the American cities, he is scorned first by the owner of a piazza, who rebukes him as ‘Ill-fated wretch (…) travelling to [his] own destruction (…) by that devilish Turban, and whose scandalous boots and detestable sleeve’ (p. 14). Following this, in the land of Raritan, a town in New Jersey, a man scorns Bombo’s ‘Turban and holy garb, together with [his] boots and beard’. The combination of the words ‘devilish’, and ‘detestable’ along with others simply resonances the image of Muslims perceived by Westerners as satanic, turban-wearing ‘Christ-killers’ (Arjana, 2015, p. 63). Evidently, this image is still celebrated until this day: ‘Unlike the easy-to-digest American hero vs. evil-turban-guy narratives permeating its more Mainstream-audience Oriented peers (Homberg-Schramm et al., 2016, p. 80).

As the story unfolds, Bombo reveals his plans to give the prophet Mahomet gifts upon arriving at Mecca, including Bunyan’s Hymns, Peter the Hermit, an Alcoran, and two volumes of Bailey’s dictionaries. However, it is not explained why he would want to present predominantly Christian manuscripts to a Muslim Prophet. Bombo’s intention appears absurd because, firstly, Bunyan’s Hymn, published in 1684 (also known as To be a Pilgrim), describes the emblematic journey of a Christian pilgrim from the City of Destruction to the Eternal City of Zion located in ancient Jerusalem (Bunyan, 1681). Secondly, Peter the Hermit was a zealous and distinguished priest during the First Crusade, and his army was commended by the American author Samuel Griswold Goodrich for fighting against Mahometans. Goodrich’s 1832 book criticized ‘Mahometans for despising Christians and annoying the pilgrims in various ways’. Moreover, it affirmed that the defeat in the ‘war’ established ‘a bitter hostility, which future generations could never forget’ (Goodrich, 1832, pp. 181–182). Thirdly, ‘Alcoran’ does not refer to the Qur’an, the sacred scripture of Islam, but rather to the Western translated version which was ‘Newly Englished, for the satisfaction of all that desire to look into the Turkish Vanities. To which is prefixed (…) the Prophet of the Turks, and Author of the Alcoran’ (Johnstone & Robertson, 1930, p. 511). Bombo’s readiness to give Mohammad a copy of Alcoran is hardly appropriate. In addition, portraying him as the Prophet of the Turks and the Author of the Alcoran echoes Goodrich’s adversative position and similar sentiments. In other words, the claims that the Qur’an’s content is vanity and that it was written by Mahomet contradict the belief of approximately 115 million Muslims out of the world’s population in the 18th century (Syed et al., 2011, p. 560). Hence, ‘Alcoran’ in this sense was essentially considered sacrilegious and blasphemous by Muslims because it disqualified Islam.

During his ‘pilgrimage’, Bombo drinks alcohol extravagantly and expresses his craving for pork and bacon on many occasions,⁸ despite the prohibition of alcohol and pork consumption in Islam: ‘I stepped into Caravansera [sic.] where I demanded a dram of the best West-India rum, two quarts of Cyder, a pint of Metheglin and 5 gills of Brandy’ (pp. 12, 83). Later, Bombo eats ‘a Gammon of bacon’ and ‘pork’ (pp. 9, 61, 85). Caravanserai is defined as ‘a public building, for the shelter of a [pilgrim] caravan (q.v.) and of wayfarers generally in Asiatic Turkey’, and it also follows ‘the Mahommedan [lunar] calendar’ (Chisholm, 2011, 303). Mentioning this building which embodies holiness and coupling it with two Islamic prohibitions, the narrative becomes censorious and even derisive towards the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. A typical pilgrim, in contrast to Bombo, should aspire for spirituality and the heavenly world rather than materiality and the earthly world. While the various combinations between delusions and genuine practices underscore the burlesque nature of FBPTM, they undeniably highlight a generic deficiency of knowledge about Islam. Another noticeable inaccuracy lies in Bombo’s intention to travel barefooted, mimicking Muslim pilgrims, when, in reality, pilgrims typically wear sandals or ‘khufoofs’ (Al-Khattab, 2016, p. 46). This inaccuracy may imply that the writers had some knowledge but not a comprehensive understanding of Islamic rituals, leading to misconceptions shaped by their Christian-based imagination as to barefoot travel that characterized Christian pilgrims since the Middle Ages (Solnit, 2014). Given that the first short story ever written in the New World is a charade disclosing such a blend of fact and fabrication to Americans about the Middle East (Oren, 2008), the depiction of significant misunderstandings and misinterpretations of Islamic pilgrimage rituals is totally anticipated. At the same time, the negative portrayal of Islam in the novel can be further attributed to intentional reasons.

The reality that America faced genuine and direct threats to its existence during the ‘Barbary Wars’, which erupted between European powers and corsairs attacking the country’s trade and cargo ships from the 13th to the 18th centuries, is a significant factor (Agoston, 2021, p. 141). For Americans, not until after the Revolutionary War and following America’s independence did the Royal Navy cease to protect the American vessels from Barbary corsairs. As a result, the United States paid tributes ranging from ‘80,000 to $1 million annually to the Barbary States in exchange for protection’ (O’Brien, 2016, p. 24). The corsairs who attacked American ships and enslaved their crews answered to the Ottoman leadership, which became a formidable enemy and aggressor. In this context, the coast of Barbary is among Bombo’s destinations after passing through New York and Long Island, which he was to reach by ship and ‘from thence to (…) Africa till reaching Mecca in Arabia’ (p. 11). The mention of the Barbary coast in the novel not only alludes to the dangers of Bombo’s voyage but also to the Barbary Naval Wars.

Along these lines, the Islamic-Arabic images illustrated in the novel are not purely satirical but rather distinctly stereotypical. That Father Bombo was sent to Mecca garbed in the supposed costume of a fervent musselman only demonstrates that the authors drew inspiration from the trend of Pseudo-Oriental literature that proliferated in England after the translation of the Arabian Nights between the years 1702 and 1712 (Brackenridge & Freneau, 1975, p. xxviii), Voltaire’s 1759 Candide, ou l’Optimisme, and Edward Gibbon’s 2020 Memoirs of My Life and Writings. In this respect, it is unlikely that the authors were making fun of America’s role in these wars, but instead, they were possibly leveling a biting criticism against the Muslim Barbary states. Connecting the coast of Barbary with death in his 1788 poem ‘Palemon to Lavinia’, Freneau underlines his censure against the Muslim states: ‘Finds in a foreign soil [Algiers, the piratical city on the coast of Barbary] an early tomb’ (Freneau, 2020). Undoubtedly, the narrative of white slavery in Africa, which preceded the American slave narrative had a significant effect of the consciousness of the Americans providing a substantial understanding to the cultural exchange between Americans and Moors (Goodin, 2020).

Conclusion

By illustrating how the misnomer Mahometanism was utilized by European and American scholars in various epochs and texts, this article demonstrates the disparities between the attitudes of both parties toward Islam. It further connects the misnomer with recent more familiar expressions including Islamophobia and Orientalism. The depiction of Bombo and the portrayal of his actions may evoke parallels with some contemporary polemic works, all of which, under the guise of parody and art, have provoked and outraged billions of Muslims worldwide. They present examples similar to those provided by FBPTM, such as talking to the prophet, falsified rituals, controversial gifts, and food choices. The question that arises here is how Muslims (and others) would react if this novel were published in modern-day America. Perhaps, we do not have to imagine, as there are many real-life incidents and mayhems worldwide triggered by such misconceptions in the present day. Indeed, there is a fine line between determining whether something or someone is Islamophobic or not, and either is contingent by discourse and context, by place and time, and by performer and audience. Between this and that, between what is allowed and what is not, between respect and derision, and between accusation and acquittal, our behavior must be tempered by common sense and prudence. To conclude, by investigating Mahometanism in a largely overlooked text, this work brings new insights into the current body of research and draws upon significant associations relevant to current sectarian, political, social, and ideological thrusts.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

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Wisam Abughosh Chaleila

Wisam Abughosh Chaleila is an associate professor, pedagogical advisor, and Head of the English Department and EAP Unit at Al-Qasemi Academic College in Israel. She obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in English and German Languages and Literatures, and her Joint-Ph.D. degree in English and American Literature from The University of Haifa in Israel and KU Leuven in Belgium. She was also enrolled in a postdoctoral program in KU Leuven. Chaleila specializes in Literature and her teaching fields include Academic Writing, English Teaching, Anglo-American Literature, British and American Poetry, Multi-Ethnic Literature, and Poetic and Social Justice. Her research spans teaching approaches, early and modern literatures, world literature, American history, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, ethnic identity, Darwinism and social Darwinism.

Notes

1 It was published in its entirety in 1975.

2 Both were undergraduates of the class of 1771 at Nassau Hall, College of New Jersey (now Princeton University).

3 See page 7.

4 Pages 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 19, 22, 28, 31, 63, 64, 66, 67, 92.

5 Pages 7, 19.

6 Jacksonian democracy dates back to the democratic shift of the American Revolution and the Republicans of the 1780s and 1790s.

7 Alexander Leitch maintained that “The American Whig-Cliosophic Society is the oldest college literary and debating club in the United States. Originally two separate groups, Whig and Clio (as they have been known commonly for most of their history) grew out of two earlier student societies, the Plain Dealing Club (Whig) and the Well Meaning Club (Clio), founded about 1765 to promote literary and debating activities (…) conflicts between the two groups led to their suppression in March 1769.” For more details, see A Princeton Companion, p. 504.

8 A dichotomy exists concerning the prohibition of alcohol consumption in the Qur’an, as there is no explicit Tahreem (prohibition) or specified penalty for drinkers. Proponents who contend that alcohol can be consumed often point to the fact that the word “avoid” does not carry the same weight as a clear prohibition. However, most Imams and scholars advocate for Tahreem, substantiating their arguments with reference to the Hadeeths: “Of whatever thing a large quantity intoxicates, even a small quantity is forbidden” see (Abū Dā’ūd, 25:5), and “Every drink that intoxicates is forbidden” see (Bukhāri, 74:3), (Sarton 23).