Islam at 250 – Studies in Memory of G.H.A. Juynboll pdf

Islam at 250 – Studies in Memory of G.H.A. Juynboll Edited by Petra M. Sijpesteijn – Camilla Adang

ISLAM AT 250

Islamic Studies as a Legacy: Remembering Gautier Juynboll

During the night of Sunday 19 December 2010 Dr Gualtherus Hendrik Albert Juynboll, known to his friends as Gual (in the Netherlands) or Gautier (abroad), died in his bed in Leiden.1 His colleagues and friends lost one of the outstanding Islamicist and Arabists of his generation and a most lovable man. For Gautier himself, his death was deliverance from protracted physical and mental suffering.

A Family of Orientalists

The death of Gautier Juynboll also marked the end of a dynasty of scholars going back to the beginnings of modern oriental studies in the Netherlands in the first half of the nineteenth century.

The Juynboll lineage belonged to the patrician families of the Netherlands, going back to the seventeenth century. Their coat of arms displays three onions, depicting the family name: Juynboll means ‘onion bulb’ in ancient Dutch.

The family did not just excel in academia; they paired scholarly commitment, resulting in academic dissertations, with public administration, entrepreneurship, and, at times, martial valour.

Gautier cherished in his sitting room a silver goblet (currently kept at Leiden University Library as part of the Juynboll bequest) one of his ancestors had received in 1628 from a Spanish admiral after he had taken his ship loaded with silver from the Americas, although the well-known commander Piet Heyn took credit for the victory. Previously this ancestor had already sailed to Morocco and later on he would again confront Barbary corsairs.

The family entered oriental studies with Theodorus Willem Johannes Juyn-boll (1802–1861). This specialist in Semitic languages studied in Leiden with Hamaker and Van der Palm and was a professor in Franeker and Groningen.

In 1843, he returned to Leiden to succeed Weijers as professor of Hebrew and Arabic (cf. Brugman & Schröder 1979: 36). His son Abraham Willem Theodorus Juynboll (1834–1887) specialized in Islam and Islamic law.

He lectured at the training institute for civil servants for the Indies in Delft and was known for his gentleness (cf. Buskens 2006: 166). Two of Abraham Willem Theodorus Juyn-boll’s sons would follow in his footsteps.

His eldest son Theodorus Willem Juynboll (1866–1948) studied law and ori-ental languages and became a specialist in Islamic law in his turn.

 In 1903 he published a manual on Islamic law, Handleiding tot de kennis van de Moham-medaansche Wet, which several generations of colonial civil servants had to learn by heart as a preparation for their career in the Indies. ‘Uncle Thé’ would later move to Utrecht to take up the chair of Hebrew.

His older colleague and mentor Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje would never pardon him for this move, because of the rivalry between the “ethical” approach of Leiden and the “petrol” orientation of Utrecht University. Gautier hardly had any memories of this fore-runner. Family lore had it that he peed in his strict great-uncle’s lap as a baby boy.

Theodorus’ only daughter, Wilhelmina Maria Cornelia Juynboll (born in 1898 in Malang, Indonesia—died in 1982), defended a dissertation on the his-tory of Arabic studies in the seventeenth-century Netherlands at Utrecht University in 1931. Later on Gautier would inherit a considerable part of the Juyn-boll orientalist library from “Aunt Min”, albeit not without some difficulties.

A.W.Th. Juynboll’s younger son was Hendrik Herman Juynboll (1867–1945), a specialist in Javanese studies, lovingly known to his children and grandchil-dren as ‘Pieka’. Hendrik Juynboll wrote extensively about Javanese literature and culture and compiled an impressive series of catalogues of the Indonesian collections for the Ethnographic Museum in Leiden, of which he was a director from 1909 until 1932.

He was married to Berta Kern, a daughter of the famous Leiden indologist Jan Hendrik Kern. As a younger brother Hendrik Juynboll suffered because of Theodorus’ sarcasm and disdain, according to Gautier.

H.H. Juynboll’s son Willem Rudolf Juynboll (1903–1977) married Maria Su-sanna van Ysselstein. The village of Ysselstein in Limburg is named after her father, Minister H.A. van Ysselstein. Willem and Maria had two sons, the youngest of whom was born on 20 October 1935 as Gualtherus Hendrik Albert. His father was an art historian with an unruly passion for books.

Gautier detested his father’s bibliomania and enjoyed voicing his disapproval of a habit that had caused considerable trouble to the family in his youth. With his mother, who enjoyed a reputation as a writer and a journalist, he shared a passionate love of animals.

His father’s sister Annette Maria Thérèse Juynboll or ‘Aunt Net’ married Theodoor Scheltema and moved to the United States with their three sons. Her parents would join them there before the Second World War. Gautier’s elder