The inauguration of the first Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies in Scotland is an appropriate occasion for looking at the achievements of Scotsmen in this field in the past, and also for estimating the future prospects of such studies.

I shall presently show that Arabic studies by Scots are of some antiquity, and in a special sense may be said to be lost in the mists of legend; but we cannot claim any direct connection with Muhammad himself. There is, however, a source of confusion which threatens to turn Muhammad into a Scottish national hero, though probably not many in this audience are young enough to have been exposed to it. Writers of history textbooks for elementary schools have been ahead of many university departments of history in extending their purview far beyond Europe in remote centuries. Those of you who are parents may have heard eight-year-olds discoursing on the laws of Hamniurabi. The particular source of confusion which concerns us today is that, through an accident of chronology, the chapter in these textbooks on Columba at Iona tends to be followed by one on Muhammad and the origin of Islam. The following answer was actually given in an Edinburgh school a few years ago.

Confusions aside, the first Scottish Arabist of note, Michael Scot, was active about the year 1200. Unfortunately he also dabbled, or was thought to dabble, in the black arts, and he came to have a great reputation as a sorcerer and magician, which gained him a place in Dante's Inferno. Sir Walter Scott made much use of the legend in The Lay of the Last Minstrel, and says of him: ‘he cleft the Eildon hills in three, and bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone’.