Controversial Tracts on Christianity and Mohammedanism

This neglected publication by Samuel Lee, Professor of Arabic at Cambridge, whose collection of what he called Martyn’s Controversial Tracts on Christianity and Mohammedanism was first published by the Cambridge University Press. Samuel Lee’s compendium included, in addition to extracts and comments on the Jesuit encounters with the Mughals, a translation of the ‘miracle’ tract that had first provoked Martyn’s own tracts, together with some rejoinders from Persian scholars after Martyn’s departure. Finally, Lee provided his own advice to missionaries on how to engage Muslims in religious interchange. His decision to highlight the only available collection of Martyn’s Persian tracts in English brought Martyn to missionary attention in India at a time when new approaches to Muslims were being urgently considered. Several leading scholars subsequently recorded their debt to Martyn as received through William Muir’s advertising of Samuel Lee’s volume of ‘controversial tracts’.