John Ferguson McLennan
historical figure · 2 works · 5 mentions · 5 anchored passages
مكلينان · McLennan · Dr. McLennan · Mr. J. F. McLennan · الدكتور مكلينان
in the texts
Ansāb al-ʻArab al-qudamāʼ
English student of society, died 1881, presented here as the first to formulate totemism as a theory of social order and as the author of Primitive Marriage.
for he composed upon this subject his book Marriage among the Ancients (Primitive Marriage) and published it for the first time in the year 1865, and then wrote many books upon this subject and what branches from it, in which he set forth the principle of his doctrine and the rules upon which he built his view of totemism.
Professor Robertson Smith, the author of the totemism of the Arabs, came upon McLennan's view of the totemism of the Indians of Australia and America and the like, and saw that certain tribes of the Arabs have the names of animals, and found the genealogists differing over the origins of certain tribes;
for when he came upon what McLennan had written concerning the totem among the savage tribes — he being an Orientalist acquainted with the reports of the Arabs, ill-thinking of their Jāhilīyah, contemptuous of the sayings of their transmitters and their genealogists — and saw among the names of the fathers of the tribes and the sub-tribes what resembles the names of animals, it leapt at once into …
Dissertations on Early Law and Custom
Scholar of early kinship and marriage theory.
McLennan, prematurely lost to this branch of inquiry, who has forced all interested in them to revise or review their opinions.