Henry Stubbe, a successful pamphleteer ready to attack or defend any number of causes, and, by profession, a physician, wrote his treatise on Islam in the early 1670s, some years before his death in 1676. The work circulated in manuscript but was first published in Lahore in 1911 by Hafez Mahmud Khan Shairani under the title The rise and progress of Mahometanism. Basing himself on the earliest complete version of the text, in a manuscript at the Senate House Library in London, Nabil Matar has restored the original title, The originall and progress of Mahometanism, and published the book together with extensive notes and an introduction. The availability of Stubbe's essay, long recognised by scholars as one of the very first western defences of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, can only be applauded. Much of Matar's introduction is informative. His presentation of Stubbe as a conservative (but somewhat opportunistic) maverick, with remarkably orthodox views on religion – he argues against any association of Stubbe with Socinianism – and a deep sense of loyalty to his former teacher at Oxford, Edward Pococke, is generally convincing. It is also a healthy antidote to the idea of Stubbe as a provocative radical and anti-Trinitarian which emerges from some of the earlier studies. Stubbe's objective was to examine Islam in its historical context, treating it not as ‘a religious aberration or an erratic heresy, but part of the logic of history that had started with Judaism and Christianity’. Unfortunately, however, the quality of Matar's introduction is marred by a number of mistakes, both large and small. He continues, for example, to regard Alexander Ross as the translator of André Du Ryer's French translation of the Koran, first published in English in 1649. Alexander Ross's authorship has long been doubted and was disproved conclusively by Noel Malcolm in 2012. At present the identity of the translator is the object of a lively debate between Malcolm and Mordechai Feingold (the author of an excellent entry on Stubbe in the ODNB). Both agree that Alexander Ross was not the translator, but disagree about who the translator actually was. Other slips, together with the somewhat thin bibliography, suggest that Matar is not always aware of some of the more recent research in his field.