Hostility and Hospitality: Muhammad Qazvini's Critique of Louis Massignon

In his magnum opus The Passion of al-Hallaj, the famous French scholar of mysticism, Louis Massignon (1883–1962), studied the life of the tenth-century religious figure and martyr Mansur al-Hallaj. While this earned Massignon high accolades, most famously from Edward Said in Orientalism, his contemporaries disputed the value of his contributions. In particular, this article will closely examine the writings of Muhammad Qazvini (1877–1949), an Iranian philologist who wrote a private letter to a colleague referring to Massignon's ‘Orientalist charlatanism’. Through Qazvini's private reflections we are able to explore the critical undercurrents of French Oriental studies, particularly in Qazvini's assessment of Massignon's concept of hospitality.