Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Holy War, Made in Germany (1915).djvu/11

iv the immense possibilities inherent in the Turkish people and latent in Turkish soil. It is with distinct pleasure that we read the following study of a knotty problem; for it is worked out with the hand of a master. There are few so well equipped or so competent to effect such a study—especially in the relations of the question to the larger problems of the day—as is Dr.C. Snouck Hurgronje. One of the rare Europeans who have ever travelled in that part of Arabia considered by Mohammedans to be sacred and exclusive, his stay of eight months in the capital of their faith (1884–1885) enabled him not only to write the most complete and the most reliable history of that city (Mekka, Leiden, 1888), but also to talk with the faithful from all the corners of the Mohammedan world. As Councillor to the Government of Netherlands—India, he spent the years 1889–1906 in Batavia,