Macdonald Center

The Duncan Black Macdonald Center is an academic unit within HIU dedicated to scholarly research, education, publication, and communication with the public.

Named for Professor Duncan Black Macdonald, one of the nation’s early, pre-eminent scholars of Islam who taught Hebrew, Arabic, and Islamic studies at Hartford Seminary from 1892-19323, the Macdonald Center is the country’s oldest center for such study.

Duncan Black Macdonald

Date of Birth: 9 April 1863
Place of Birth: Glasgow
Date of Death: 6 September 1943
Place of Death: Glastonbury, Connecticut

Considered one of the main founders of Arabic Studies in the United States, the Scottish Presbyterian cleric Duncan Black Macdonald taught for 40 years at Hartford Theological Seminary. His multifaceted scholarship opened new avenues in the study of Islam as well as of the Hebrew Bible, and paved the way to new forms of Christian missionary work.

Macdonald was born in Glasgow in 1863, the sixth and last child of Thomas Macdonald (1813-1905) and Margaret Black (1822-91). In November 1880, he entered the University of Glasgow. In addition to his Hebrew classes, he took elementary Arabic and Syriac. He also read a number of Arabic texts, notably while working as a cataloguer in the library of the University’s Hunterian Museum, where he became interested in the early Arabic translations of the Bible. He received his Master of Arts degree in 1885 and a Baccalaureate in Theology in 1888. The same year, he received his licence from the Presbytery of Glasgow. In 1890-1, he studied with Edward Sachau, and met with Ignaz Goldziher in Berlin. Besides Hebrew, Arabic and Syriac, he also learned Ethiopic.

In 1892, Macdonald was appointed as instructor in Hebrew at Hartford Theological Seminary. However, he was back in London that same summer to study Egyptology under F.L. Griffitte and to read Arabic manuscripts of the Gospels at the British Museum. Egyptology also drew him back to Berlin during the summer of 1893, but his workload at Hartford did not allow him to go further into this discipline. During these early years at the seminary, Macdonald taught not only Hebrew but also Arabic and Islam.

His research was mostly devoted to approaching Islam through original sources in Arabic, be it Sufi mysticism as understood by al-Ghazālī, or the life of ordinary Muslims as illustrated in The Arabian nights. The number and quality of his publications confirm his dedication to scholarship during these years. These include the three books analysed below, several academic articles, multiple entries for various encyclopaedias, and innumerable reviews. He also became a popular lecturer at Hartford as well as in other places. For example, in 1904 he delivered a paper on ‘The problems of Muhammadanism’ before the International Congress of Arts and Sciences at St Louis, Missouri.

In 1898, Macdonald married Mary Leeds Leffingwell Bartlett of New York, who was some 12 years older than he. That same year, the newly-married couple built a cottage in Pemaquid Point, Maine, where they would spend most of their summers. They were always very close. Mary knew about all her husband’s work and ‘followed it and understood it’ (Macdonald, ‘Autobiographical notes’, p. 13). She typed and criticised all his writing. She even learned some Arabic and shared his interest in Muslim occultism and in ‘esoteric phenomena generally’ (Macdonald, ‘Autobiographical notes’, p. 14). Their marriage, which did not produce any children, lasted happily until Mary’s death in 1929.

A particularly important year in Macdonald’s career as an Islamicist was 1908. Granted sabbatical leave from the seminary, he and his wife went to the Middle East. They travelled to Algiers and then Cairo in late 1907. After six months in Egypt, followed by short stays in Jerusalem, Damascus, Constantinople and England, they were back in the States at the beginning of November 1908. These were the only months Macdonald ever spent in the Islamic world. In Cairo, he showed almost no interest in ancient Egypt or Pharaonic sites. All his attention was instead given to the Muslim population and the Islamic monuments of Cairo, which he explored during numerous walks. He bought many books and searched for manuscripts of The Arabian nights, met with a number of personalities and enjoyed improving his spoken Arabic by talking with ordinary people. He was also able to witness directly the inadequacy of the way some missionaries conceived of their work among Muslims. For the rest of his life, he would remain under the spell of what he had experienced during this sabbatical.

Back in Hartford, Macdonald resumed his teaching duties and research. His workload and fame increased. In 1909, he received a Doctorate of Divinity from Hartford’s Trinity College, and in 1920 an honorary doctorate from Glasgow University. In 1912, he became special lecturer at the Cambridge Episcopal Divinity School, the Haskell Lecturer on Arabic Literature and the Literature of the Hebrews at Oberlin College in 1914, and lecturer on the Old Testament at the Berkeley Divinity School, New Haven, in 1917-18. His three books on Islam had been generally well received and he maintained frequent epistolary exchanges with several of the greatest Arabists of the time, mostly notably Goldziher, Nöldeke, Snouck Hurgronje, Asin Palacios and Massignon.

Macdonald also developed an interest in the training of missionaries. As early as 1900-1, he had lectured on missions in Egypt and Arabia, Muslim missionary activity and the Muslim attitude towards the Christian scriptures, in addition to his normal courses. In 1910, he arranged for the Anglican missionary W.H.T. Gairdner (1873-1928), with whom he had become acquainted in Cairo, to come to Hartford, and Gairdner stayed with him for five months. In his autobiography, he writes that it was at this point that Gairdner ‘passed from controversy to persuasion’ vis-à-vis Muslims (Macdonald, ‘Autobiographical notes’, p. 16). In a letter to a student, he is less positive and writes that ‘Gairdner failed’ (Macdonald Papers, no. 149988). In 1911, when the Kennedy School of Missions was organised at Hartford Seminary, Macdonald became head of its Muhammadan Department and endeavoured to have the ideas with which he had come back from Egypt applied, i.e. ‘to understand Islam from the inside, to creep into the Muslim mind and discover how it felt there’ (Macdonald Papers, no. 149984). Macdonald kept this position until 1925. As an emeritus professor, he continued to be involved in the Kennedy School. Despite being interested in missionary preparation, Macdonald once confessed that he would himself ‘have never made a good missionary’ (Macdonald Papers, no. 149988).

During a dinner for his 70th birthday in 1933, a group of Macdonald’s students honoured him by offering him a copy of The Macdonald presentation volume just published by Princeton University Press. Now retired, he continued publishing important studies about The Arabian nights, Islam, Christian missions and other topics. He contributed several Islam-related entries to The encyclopædia of Islam, The Jewish encyclopedia, The encyclopædia Britannica, and The encyclopædia of religion and ethics, and he also reviewed an impressive number of books for journals such as The Hartford Seminary Record, The Moslem World, The International Review of Missions, and The Nation. These are listed in ‘A bibliography of Professor Macdonald’s writings up to his seventieth birthday, April 9, 1933’, in The Macdonald presentation volume, pp. 471-87.

In the late 1930s, Macdonald’s health declined, and in 1941 he was forced to move from his house in Sigourney Street, Hartford, to a convalescent home in South Glastonbury. He passed away there, after a long illness, on 6 September 1943. His ashes are buried next to his wife’s grave in Hartford’s Old North Cemetery.

Primary Sources of Information
Archives Hartford CT, Hartford Seminary – Duncan Black Macdonald Papers
D.B. Macdonald, ‘Autobiographical notes’, Bulletin 1 (The Hartford Seminary Foundation, June 1946), 2-21
W.D. McKenzie, ‘Duncan Black Macdonald. Scholar, teacher, and author’, in W.G. Shellabear, E.E. Calverley, E.C. Lane, R.S. Mackensen (eds), The Macdonald presentation volume, Princeton NJ, 1933, 3-9
W.G. Shellabear, E.E. Calverley, E.C. Lane, R.S. Mackensen (eds), ‘A bibliography of Professor Macdonald’s writings up to his seventieth birthday, April 9, 1933’, in The Macdonald presentation volume, Princeton NJ, 1933, 471-87

Secondary Sources of Information
N.G. Awad, ‘“Understanding the other from-within”. The Muslim Near East in the eyes of Duncan Black Macdonald’, The Muslim World 106 (2016) 523-38
Y.M. Michot, Encountering the religious other. Arabian nights, Hebrew genius, Christian mission, Islamic theology, Egypt 1908. Program of the conference & exhibition commemorating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Duncan Black Macdonald (1863-1943), Hartford CT, 2013; http://fr.scribd.com/doc/145474553/Duncan-Black-Macdonald-150th-Anniversary-Conference-Exhibition
S.B. Pirim, ‘A journey from mission to dialogue. Duncan Black Macdonald’s contributions toward Christian-Muslim relations’, The Muslim World 100 (2010) 368-76
G.E. Pruett, ‘Duncan Black Macdonald. Christian Islamicist’, in A. Hussain, R. Olson and J. Qureshi (eds), Orientalism, Islam, and Islamists, Brattleboro VT, 1984, 125-76
J.J. Bodine, ‘The legacy of Duncan Black Macdonald’, International Bulletin of Mission Research 4 (1980) 162-5
J.J. Bodine, ‘Magic carpet to Islam. Duncan Black Macdonald and the Arabian nights’, The Muslim World 67 (1977) 1-11
J.J. Bodine, ‘The romanticism of Duncan Black Macdonald’, Hartford CT, 1973 (PhD Diss. Hartford Seminary)
P. Ipema, ‘The Islam interpretation of Duncan Black Macdonald, Samuel M. Zwemer, Kenneth A. Cragg, and Wilfred C. Smith. An analytical comparison and evaluation’, Hartford CT, 1971 (PhD Diss. Hartford Seminary)
D. Brockway, ‘The Macdonald collection of Arabian nights. A bibliography (III)’, The Muslim World 64 (1974) 16-32
D. Brockway, ‘The Macdonald collection of Arabian nights. A bibliography (II)’, The Muslim World 63 (1973) 185-205
D. Brockway, ‘The Macdonald collection of Arabian nights. A bibliography’, The Muslim World 61 (1971) 256-66
E. de W. Root, ‘Louis Massignon and Duncan Black Macdonald’, The Muslim World 54 (1964) 307-9
E. de W. Root, ‘Duncan Black Macdonald’, Hartford Quarterly 1 (1962) 25-35
E.E. Calverley, ‘Duncan Black Macdonald, teacher of missionaries to Muslims’, The Moslem World 34 (1944) 1-6

Cite this page
Michot, Yahya, “Duncan Black MacDonald”, in Christian-Muslim Relations 1500 – 1900, General Editor David Thomas. Consulted online on 11 December 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2451-9537_cmrii_COM_31381

For more information about Professor Duncan Black Macdonald, please watch this video presentation by Emeritus Professor Yahya Michot.