SHARIF, Ja'far, & Gerhard Andreas Herklots.

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Qanoon-e-Islam, or the Customs of the Mussulmans of India; First edition of this valuable study of the Muslims of the Deccan. Written as a counterpart to the Abbé Dubois's Hindu Manners (1816), it was a collaboration between two East India Company employees, an Indian-born Dutch surgeon and a local munshi, a teacher of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu.Herklots (1790-1834) was born at Chinsura, Bengal, the son of a Dutch East India Company employee. He studied medicine in England, and "upon his return in 1818 he was commissioned as Assistant Surgeon in the Madras Establishment and for the next 12 years was attached to several different native infantry battalions. He saw active service in Burma... It was probably upon his return to Madras in early 1826 that he initiated the project that eventually led to the publication of Qanoon-e-Islam" (Vatuk, p.11). Typically for the period, his aim was framed within the necessity of knowing a people to govern them.It is to Ja'far Sharif (d. 1863) that Herklots fully credits the book's conception and content. It follows the life of a typical Muslim, opening with the rituals performed for the benefit of the unborn child and ending with those for the soul after death. Between are descriptions of all of the other rites of passage, with particular attention to marriage, together with a survey of the fundamental tenets of Islam, the forms of prayer, the religious calendar, and the annual observances at the tombs of the most important Muslim saints. Nin

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