George Foote Moore teaches Islam in History of Religions
Orientalism and the study of Islam 1902
George Foote Moore Teaches Islam in History of Religions
George Foote Moore was born in Pennsylvania in 1851 and studied at Yale University and Union Theological Seminary before joining the Presbyterian ministry. He began his teaching career at Andover Theological Seminary before joining the Harvard faculty in 1902. At Harvard Divinity School, Professor Moore taught a course under the new heading of “History of Religions” that included the religions of Japan, China, Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, the Western Semites (including Judaism and Mohammedanism), India, Persia, the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans, the Celts, and Christianity. He later also taught courses focused on Islam that covered the topics of the life of Muhammad, the Qur’an, the Muslim conquests, and Islamic law and theology. The second volume of his two-volume work, History of Religions (1919), is devoted to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Professor Moore also had an interest in the “history of Mohammedan heresies” and presented a paper on Babism and Bahaism at the American Oriental Society while he was its president.
