Islam under the Arabs

The writer, Robert Durie Osborn was a British army officer. Osborn was a serious thinker on both religious and political topics. As a young man he occasionally wrote papers in the magazines on religious and its influence. While in India, he was a conscientious student of Eastern religions, and spent fourteen years in studying materials for his two works, Islam under the Arabs, 1876, and Islam under the Khalifs of Baghdad, 1877; 2nd ed. 1880. These books are highly valued by serious students. They are considered models of lucid and graceful treatment of a perplexing subject. At the same time, Osborn was always a zealous advocate of the rights of the native Indians, and his retirement from the army was largely due to his dissatisfaction with the policy of Lord Lytton, which, in his opinion, outraged native sentiment and needlessly provoked the Afghan war of 1879. Upon his return from India, he settled at Hampstead, and mainly devoted himself to journalistic and literary work. He became London correspondent of the Calcutta Statesman, and took a leading part in the conduct of the London office of the Statesman, which was published for a few months in 1879 and 1880 with a view to resisting Lord Beaconsfield’s policy in India. In The Scotsman, The Nation, and The Contemporary Review, he also wrote much on India and on native claims to popular government.