M. J. de Goeje (Michael Jan de Goeje, 1836–1909) was a distinguished Dutch Orientalist and professor of Arabic at Leyden, whose name is cited by Snouck Hurgronje in Vol. I of The Achehnese in connection with the comparative study of popular demonological beliefs.
The reference occurs in a footnote appended to Snouck Hurgronje’s discussion of the burong — the evil spirits which, in Achehnese popular belief, are believed to possess pregnant women and women in childbirth. The Achehnese burongs, Snouck Hurgronje explains, bear a close resemblance to the zars which “are wont to ‘possess’ the women of Mekka.” As in Mecca, so in Acheh, these spirits have “certain desires which they express to the comprehension of expert enquirers through the lips of the victims whom they have bereft of their senses.” The Achehnese experts, like their Meccan counterparts, do not confine themselves to reciting a tangkay or exorcising incantation; “they must first know what burong it is they have to do with,” and so enquire whence they come and what their intentions and wishes are. For the comparative material on the Meccan side, Snouck Hurgronje refers the reader to his own Mekka, vol. II, pp. 124 et seq., and to “M. J. de Goeje and Th. Nöldeke in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Vol. XLIV, pp. 480 and 701.”
The two citations in the same volume of the ZDMG — pp. 480 and 701 — show that de Goeje and Nöldeke were engaged, in the late 1880s, in a scholarly exchange on the subject of spirit-possession in the Muslim world. Their work, together with Snouck Hurgronje’s own observations in Mekka (vol. II), provided the comparative framework within which the Achehnese material on the burong could be interpreted. The reference is a small but characteristic instance of the method that pervades Vol. I of The Achehnese: the institutions and beliefs of Acheh are continuously illuminated by comparison with those of the Arabs, the Indians, and the other Muslim peoples among whom Dutch, German, and British Orientalists had begun, in the late nineteenth century, to lay the foundations of comparative Islamic studies.
De Goeje was one of the leading figures of that enterprise. As professor at Leyden and as a long-serving editor of the ZDMG, he played a central role in the institutional consolidation of Arabic and Islamic studies in the Netherlands, and trained or influenced a generation of scholars including Snouck Hurgronje himself. His collaboration with Nöldeke on questions of popular demonology is thus part of the broader intellectual genealogy of The Achehnese — a work that would have been impossible without the comparative scaffolding erected by the Leyden Orientalists and their German counterparts in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.
Sources
Drie Atjeh-mannen: Snouck Hurgronje — Van Heutsz — Van Daalen, door H. T. Damsté (September 1936). OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-111-Drie_Atjeh_mannen_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 5, 9.
See Also
- Th. Nöldeke
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- Mecca
- Leyden
- E. J. Brill
- Acheh
- Snouck Hurgronje’s Mekka journey (1884-1885)
- Mekka (Snouck Hurgronje)
- Leiden University
- Indische Instelling
- Van der Lith
- Nöldeke
- 24 November
- 21 February
- 1874
- 1880
- 1884
- 1885
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.
M. J. de Goeje (Michael Jan de Goeje, 1836–1909) was a distinguished Dutch Orientalist and professor of Arabic at Leyden, whose name is cited by Snouck Hurgronje in Vol. I of The Achehnese in connection with the comparative study of popular demonological beliefs.
The reference occurs in a footnote appended to Snouck Hurgronje’s discussion of the burong — the evil spirits which, in Achehnese popular belief, are believed to possess pregnant women and women in childbirth. The Achehnese burongs, Snouck Hurgronje explains, bear a close resemblance to the zars which “are wont to ‘possess’ the women of Mekka.” As in Mecca, so in Acheh, these spirits have “certain desires which they express to the comprehension of expert enquirers through the lips of the victims whom they have bereft of their senses.” The Achehnese experts, like their Meccan counterparts, do not confine themselves to reciting a tangkay or exorcising incantation; “they must first know what burong it is they have to do with,” and so enquire whence they come and what their intentions and wishes are. For the comparative material on the Meccan side, Snouck Hurgronje refers the reader to his own Mekka, vol. II, pp. 124 et seq., and to “M. J. de Goeje and Th. Nöldeke in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Vol. XLIV, pp. 480 and 701.”
The two citations in the same volume of the ZDMG — pp. 480 and 701 — show that de Goeje and Nöldeke were engaged, in the late 1880s, in a scholarly exchange on the subject of spirit-possession in the Muslim world. Their work, together with Snouck Hurgronje’s own observations in Mekka (vol. II), provided the comparative framework within which the Achehnese material on the burong could be interpreted. The reference is a small but characteristic instance of the method that pervades Vol. I of The Achehnese: the institutions and beliefs of Acheh are continuously illuminated by comparison with those of the Arabs, the Indians, and the other Muslim peoples among whom Dutch, German, and British Orientalists had begun, in the late nineteenth century, to lay the foundations of comparative Islamic studies.
De Goeje was one of the leading figures of that enterprise. As professor at Leyden and as a long-serving editor of the ZDMG, he played a central role in the institutional consolidation of Arabic and Islamic studies in the Netherlands, and trained or influenced a generation of scholars including Snouck Hurgronje himself. His collaboration with Nöldeke on questions of popular demonology is thus part of the broader intellectual genealogy of The Achehnese — a work that would have been impossible without the comparative scaffolding erected by the Leyden Orientalists and their German counterparts in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.
See Also
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.