16 Facts About William Muir

Sir William Muir was a Scottish Orientalist, and colonial administrator, Principal of the University of Edinburgh and Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Provinces of British India.

William Muir was born at Glasgow the son of William Muir, a merchant, and Helen Macfie.

William Muir was educated at Kilmarnock Academy, the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and Haileybury College.

In 1874 William Muir was appointed financial member of the Viceroy's Council, and retired in 1876, when he became a member of the Council of India in London.

William Muir had always taken an interest in educational matters, and it was chiefly through his exertions that the central college at Allahabad, known as William Muir Central College, was built and endowed.

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In 1884 William Muir was elected president of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Significant rebuttal to William Muir's book was written Syed Ahmed Khan in 1870 called A Series of Essays on the Life of Mohammed, and Subjects Subsidiary Thereto.

Khan praised William Muir's writing talent and familiarity with Oriental literature, but criticized William Muir's reliance on weak sources like al-Waqidi.

William Muir accused Muir of misrepresenting the facts and writing with animus.

William Muir thus combined scholarly and evangelical or missionary purposes.

Fifty year later, William Muir redirected the invective hitherto reserved for the Muslims to the crusading leaders and armies, and while still finding some faults with the former, he praised Saladin for knightly values.

Powell finds that William Muir deserves much of the criticism laid by Edward Said and his followers against 19th century Western scholarship on Islam.

William Muir was a committed Evangelical Christian and was invited to preface many missionary biographies and memoirs, speak at conferences and to publicise Zenana missions.

In India, William Muir founded the Indian Christian village Muirabad, near Allahabad.

William Muir was impressed with the discovery of the Apology of al-Kindy; he lectured on it at the Royal Asiatic Society, presenting it as an important link in what he saw as a chain of notable conversions to Christianity, and later he published the translated sources.

William Muir married Elizabeth Huntly Wemyss in 1840, and had five sons and six daughters; four of his sons served in India, and one of them, Colonel AM Muir, was Political Officer for South Baluchistan, and was acting British Resident in Nepal when he died.