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The Medieval Arabic Geographers and the Beginnings of Modern Orientalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Marina Tolmacheva
Affiliation:
Associate Professor in the Department of History, Washington State University, Pullman, Wash. 99164–4030, U.S.A.

Extract

European Orientalism of the 19th and 20th centuries has been the subject of a heated and vigorous debate ever since the publication of Edward Said's monograph. By contrast, the study of the early stages of academic and cultural Orientalism has been neglected. For the beginnings of Oriental studies in Europe one still largely relies on institutional histories and archival research, or even V. V. Barthold's 80-year-old study. The birth of academic Orientalism in the 17th century was occasioned by three major factors: a renewed interest in Islam, major advances in travel and exploration, and the emergence of modern approaches to science and education. Among important background developments were the decline of the perceived Arab threat followed by the rise of a very real Ottoman Turkish one, the geographical shift in hostilities from the European West to the East, and the realignment of European alliances and attitudes in the wake of the Protestant Reformation.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

NOTES

Author's note: The work on this article was supported in part by the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in the Humanities, the Newberry Library Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Humanities Travel to Collections Grant, and a grant from the Bernadotte E. Schmitt Fund of the American Historical Association.

1 The impassioned tone set in that 1978 study has subsided somewhat, whereas research into modern Western contacts with and perceptions of the Orient has continued to produce significant work. A recent example is Melman, Billie, Women's Orients: Englishwomen and the Middle East, 1718–1918; Sexuality, Religion and Work (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A reverse approach was first explored by Lewis, Bernard, The Oriental Discovery of Europe (New York: Norton, 1985)Google Scholar. In “The Question of Orientalism” Lewis has advanced substantive objections to Said's argument and method. This was originally published in 1982 and bears on the early development of Orientalism discussed here from a different perspective. See Lewis, Bernard, Islam and the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 99118Google Scholar.

2 See, for instance, Roman, Stephan, The Development of Islamic Library Collections in Western Europe and North America (London: Mansell, 1990)Google Scholar, reviewed by Rodgers, Jonathan in the International Journal of Middle East Studies 25, 4 (1993): 726–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Harvey, L. P., “British Arabists and al-Andalus,” al-Qantara 13, 2 (1992): 423–36Google Scholar. Another recent example is Feingold, Mordechai, “Arabic and Natural Philosophy in Early Modern Europe” (Paper presented at the conference “Science and Cultural Exchange in the Premodern World,” Norman, Okla., 252702 1993)Google Scholar.

3 Bartol'd, Vasilii Vladimirovich, Istoriia izucheniia Vostoka v Evrope i Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1911; 2nd ed., Leningrad, 1925)Google Scholar, translated into French as Barthold, W., Découverte de I'Asie: histoire de l'orientalisme en Europe et en Russie (Paris: Payot, 1947)Google Scholar. Raymond Schwab's La Renaissance orientate (Paris, 1950) deals primarily with South and East AsiaGoogle Scholar.

4 Joseph-Toussaint Reinaud wrote the first authoritative history of Islamic geography in preparing a new edition of the geographical compilation of Abū al-Fidāʾ (1273–1331): Reinaud, J. T., ed., Géographie dAboulféda, vol. 1, Introduction générate à la géographie des Orientaux (Paris: Imprimérie nationale, 1848)Google Scholar. The timing of this publication was not totally unconnected with the growing colonial interests of France in Algeria. Almost simultaneously with Reinaud, two other studies of medieval geography were published, which included edited maps and summaries of Arab treatises: Lelewel, Joachim, Géographie du Moyen Age, 2 vols. (Brussels: J. Pilliet, 18521857)Google Scholar and Santarém, Vicompte de, Essai de la cosmographie et de la cartographie pendant le Moyen-Age et sur le progrès de la géographie après les grandes découvertes du XVe siècle, 3 vols. (Paris: Maulde et Renou, 18491952)Google Scholar. By then, however, scientific geography was in a state of crisis; as a discipline, it had lost interest in medieval scholarship. See Godlewska, Ann, “Traditions, Crisis and New Paradigms in the Rise of the Modern French Discipline of Geography, 1760–1850,” Annual of the Association of American Geographers, 77 (1989): 192213CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 This derivative is used in the sense suggested by Sabra, A. I. in his article “The Appropriation and Subsequent Naturalization of Greek Science in Medieval Islam: A Preliminary Statement,” History of Science, 24/3, No. 69 (1987): 223–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 On this subject see, for example, Cachia, Pierre and Watt, Montgomery, A History of Islamic Spain (New York: Doubleday, 1967)Google Scholar and Daniel, Norman, The Arab Impact on Sicily and Southern Italy in the Middle Ages (Cairo: Istituto Italiano di cultura per la R.A.E., 1975)Google Scholar. For the exploration of transmission of scientific knowledge through Spain, consult Vernet, Juan, La cultura hispanoárabe en Oriente y Occidente (Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1978)Google Scholar; translated into German as Die spanisch-arabische Kultur in Orient und Okzident (Zurich: Artemis Verlag, 1984)Google Scholar and French as Ce que la culture doit aux Arabes d' Espagne (Paris: Sinbad, 1985; 1989)Google Scholar.

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8 Hess, Andrew C., The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero-African Frontier (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 This shift has been often overlooked in recent, Arab-focused, research on Orientalism. It is correctly noted in Hentsch, Thierry, Imagining the Middle East, trans, and preface Reed, Fred A. (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1992)Google Scholar.

10 Among possible examples are Turkische Chronica (Frankfurt, 1577)Google Scholar and Leunclavius, Johannes, Historiae Musulmanae Turcorum de Monumentis ipsorum excriplae libri XVIll (Frankfurt, 1591)Google Scholar, valued for their historical content. For specific instances of print propaganda, see, for example, Waugh, Daniel Clarke, The Great Turkes Defiance: On the History of the Apocryphal Correspondence of the Ottoman Sultan in Its Muscovite and Russian Variants (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, 1978)Google Scholar and Setton, Kenneth Meyer, Western Hostility to Islam and Prophecies of Turkish Doom (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1992)Google Scholar.

11 See, for example, Vaughan, Dorothy M., Europe and the Turk: A Pattern of Alliances, 1350–1700 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1954)Google Scholar and English and Continental Views of the Ottoman Empire, 1500–1800 (Los Angeles: University of California William Andrews York Memorial Library, 1972)Google Scholar. A concise recent summary of attitudes and interests may be found in Bernard Lewis, “The Ottoman Obsession,” in his Islam and the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 7284Google Scholar.

12 Among the most important early reports on Turkey and the Levant were Thévet, André, Cosmographie du Levant (Paris, 1554)Google Scholar; Nicolay, Nicoló, Le navigation! e viaggi, fatti nella Turchia (Venice, 1580)Google Scholar; Sanderson, John, The Travels of John Sanderson into the Levant, 1584–1602, ed. SirForster, William, 2nd ser., vol. 67 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1931)Google Scholar; and Early Voyages and Travels in the Levant, ed. Bent, James Theodore, pt. I “Thomas Dallam, 1599–1600” (London: Hakluyt Society, 1893)Google Scholar.

13 The geographical scope of the literature of the period is outlined in Numa Broc, Géographie de la Renaissance: 1420–1620 (Paris: éditions du Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, 1975; 2nd ed., 1987)Google Scholar.

14 This is highlighted in the title of Jonathan Haynes's The Humanist as Traveler: George Sandys's “Relation of a Journey begun An Dom. 1610” (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 1986)Google Scholar; for a contrasting study of the types of medieval and modern traveler see Anne, Deneuil-Cormier, , The Renaissance in France 1480–1559, trans. Anne, and Fremantle, Christopher (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969), chap. 9Google Scholar. For the geographical aspect of humanism, see Dainville, François de, La géographie des Humanistes (Paris: Beauchesne, 1940; Geneva: Slatkine reprints, 1969)Google Scholar. On the exoticism of the observed, see Campbell, Mary B., Witness and the other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

15 Varthema, Lodovico, Itinerario de Ludouico de Uarthema Bolognese ne lo Egypto ne la Suria ne la Arabia deserta etfelice ne la Persia ne la India et ne la Ethiopia (Venice, 1517)Google Scholar.

16 Ramusio, Giovanni Battista, Navigationi et viaggi, vol. 1 (Venice, 1550). Leo's tolerance may be explained by his background as a Moroccan Muslim who converted to Christianity as a young captiveGoogle Scholar.

17 Thévet, André, Portraits from the Age of Discovery, ed. Schlesinger, Roger, trans. Benson, Edward (Urbana, III.: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 12Google Scholar.

18 Deneuil-Cormier, Renaissance in France, 236Google Scholar.

19 The Encyclopaedia Britannica's judgment was that “Idrisi's map of the world … [cannot] take rank with Ptolemy's work” (11th ed., 1910, s.v. “Map”). I. Iu. Krachkovskii (Arabskaia geograficheskaia literatura, 294) saw in the map “an apogee and at the same time … a decline, despite considerable improvement of the drawing design.”

20 Lewicki, Tadeusz, “Marino Sanudos Mappa Mundi,” Rocznik orientalistyczny 8 (1976): 169–98Google Scholar, and Sezgin, Fuat, Contribution of the Arabic-Islamic Geographers to the Formation of the World Map (Frankfurt am Main: Institut filr Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften, 1987), 35 and map 34Google Scholar.

21 Vernet, La cultura hispanodrábe, 239Google Scholar. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to this statement.

22 Leo also used information from the historian and geographer al-Masʿudi (d. 965) and the great Hispano-Muslim geographer al-Bakri (d. 1094). For an English translation, see Africanus, Leo, The History and Description of Africa, ed. Brown, Robert, Hakluyt Society Series, vols. 9294 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1896)Google Scholar.

23 Linschot, Jan Huygen van, Histoire de la navigation de lean Hvgues de Linschot Hollandois aux Indes Orientates (Amsterdam, 1610; 2nd ed., 1619)Google Scholar. Linschot spent the years 1579–92 in Portuguese India.

24 The mathematician and professor of astronomy at Oxford John Greaves, a friend of Pococke's, who traveled in the Levant collecting manuscripts on Laud's commission, targeted especially Arabic translations of Greek works.

25 For general information on al-Idrisi and his work, consult Giovanni Oman, s. v., “al-Idrīsī,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960–), 3:1032–35Google Scholar and Ahmad, S. Maqbul, s.v., “al-Idrisi,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 16 vols., ed. Gillispie, Charles Coulston (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 19701980) 7:79Google Scholar.

26 The bibliography of Idrisi studies now counts hundreds of titles. See Oman, Giovanni, “Notizie bibliograflche sul geografo arabo al-Idrisi (XII secolo) e sulle sue opere,” Annali dell' Istituto Universitario Orientate di Napoli, n.s. 11 (1961): 2561Google Scholar; ibid., 12 (1962): 193–94; ibid., 16 (1966): 101–3; ibid., 19 (1969): 45–55.

27 al-Idrisi, , Opus geographicum, sive, “Liber ad eorum delectationem qui terras peragrare studeant,” 9 fascicules, ed. Cerulli, Enrico a. o. (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, and Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 19701984)Google Scholar.

28 Ahmad, S. Maqbul, “Cartography of al-Sharif al-Idrīsī,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 2., Book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, ed. Harley, J. B. and Woodward, David (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

29 Krachkovskii, Ignatii Iulianovich, lzrannye sochineniia, vol. IV, Arabskaia geograficheskaia literature (Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia Nauk SSSR, 1957), 294Google Scholar.

30 Curiously, the first book printed in England (in 1477), The Dictes and Sayenges of the Philosophers, was a translation from the French of an Arabic work by Mubashshir ibn Fātik (cited in Harvey, “British Arabists,” 424).

31 “The Book for one desirous [to read] descriptions of metropolises, regions, countries, islands, cities and remote areas.” The Latin version reads: Oblectatio desiderantis in descriptione civitatumprincipalium et tractum et provinciarum et insularum et urbium etplagarum mundi (Rome: Typographia Medici, 1592)Google Scholar.

32 Anon., Ceographia Nubiensis, id est accuratissima totius orbis in septem climata divisi description continens praesertim exactam universiae Asiae et Africae, rerumque in Us hactenus incognitarum explicationem (Paris: Typographia Hieronymi Blageart, 1619)Google Scholar.

33 Roman, The Development, 153Google Scholar.

34 Ibid., 154.

35 Encyclopaedia Britannica, (1910) 17: 243Google Scholar.

36 Published as Viate Mathematicorum (Amsterdam, 1649) and Cronica dei matematici (Urbino, 1707)Google Scholar. The General Biographical Dictionary, rev. ed., ed. Chalmers, Alexander (London, 1812), 3:258–95Google Scholar.

37 “L'Artiglieria” and “La Nautica,” or “L'invenzione del bossola la navigare” (1578). Biographie universelle, ancienne et moderne (Paris, 1811), 3:270Google Scholar; Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1963), 5:461Google Scholar.

38 Biographie universelle, 3:269Google Scholar.

39 General Biographical Dictionary, 3:258–59Google Scholar.

40 The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3:1033Google Scholar.

41 It is mentioned by Vernet, La cultura hispanoárabe, 46Google Scholar. I am grateful to an anonymous reader for this reference.

42 As a result of these numerous defects, most subsequent research involving al-Idrisi focused on providing new and better, though usually fragmented, translations well into the 19th century. Until the appearance of the first French translation (Jaubert, P. A., Géographie d'Edrisi, 2 vols. [Paris, 18361840])Google Scholar most of them were made into Latin; regrettably, no reliable translation exists to date.

42 As a result of these numerous defects, most subsequent research involving al-Idrisi focused on providing new and better, though usually fragmented, translations well into the 19th century. Until the appearance of the first French translation (Jaubert, P. A., Géographie d'Edrisi, 2 vols. [Paris, 1836–1940])Google Scholar most of them were made into Latin; regrettably, no reliable translation exists to date.

43 The long-lived “Nubian puzzle” was not completely set aside until the appearance of the first critical edition of the Idrisi text in 1866: Description de I'Afrique et de I'Espagne par Edrisi, ed. and trans. Dozy, Raymond and Goeje, Jan Michael de (Leiden, 1866), vi., n. 1Google Scholar. In the late 18th century, when the identity of the author had already been established, Condé, Josef Antonio still titled his book Descripción de España de Xerif Aledris, conocido por el Nubiense (Madrid, 1799)Google Scholar.

44 V.Matveev, V. andKubbel, L. E., ed. and trans., Arabskiie istochniki X-XU vekov po etnografii I slorii narodov Afriki iuzhnee Sakhary (Moscow-Leningrad: Nauka, 1965), 229Google Scholar.

45 A detailed discussion of al-Idrisi's map and Bertius's interpretation of it is offered in Marina Tolmacheva, “Bertius and al-Idrisi: An Experiment in Orientalist Cartography” (forthcoming in Terrae Incognitae).

46 Miller, Konrad, Mappae Arabicae, Arabische Welt- und Landkarten, 6 vols. (Stuttgart, 1926–1927), vols. 1, 2, and 6Google Scholar.

47 Tabularum geographicarum contractarum libri quatuor (Amsterdam, 1600)Google Scholar, republished in 1602 under the title Variae orbis universi et eius partium tabulae XX geographicae ex antiquis geographis el historicis confectae.

48 Libri septem, in quibus tabulae omnes gradibus distinctae descriptiones accuratae, coetera suprà priores editiones politiora auctioraque ad christianissimum Galliae et Navarrae regem Ludovicum XIII (Amsterdam, 1616)Google Scholar.

49 Biographie nationale belgique (Brussels, 1868), 2:293Google Scholar.

50 Petri Bertii de Geographia oratio (Paris, 1622)Google Scholar; Notitia chorographica Episcopatuum Galliae (Paris, 1625)Google Scholar; Breviarum totius orbis terrarum (Paris, 1625)Google Scholar.

51 De aggeribus et pontibus hactenus ad mare extructis digestum novum (Paris, 1629)Google Scholar, cited in Nouvelle biographie générale, 742Google Scholar.

52 Dictionnaire de bibliographie francaise (Paris: Letouzey, 1954), 6:253Google Scholar.

53 Biographie universelle, 4:369Google Scholar.

54 General Biographical Dictionary, 5:163Google Scholar.

55 Commentariorum rerum Germanicarum libri tres (Amsterdam, 1616)Google Scholar; Illustrium et clarorum virorum epistolae (Paris, 1625)Google Scholar.

56 Thfevenot, Melchisédech, Relations de divers voyages (Paris, 1696)Google Scholar.

57 Dapper's, OlfertDescription de I'Afrique (Amsterdam, 1686)Google Scholar is a prominent example. Instances of cartographic borrowing are discussed in Marina Tolmacheva, “Arab Geography in Seventeenth-Century European Maps of Africa” (Paper presented at the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Society for the History of Discoveries, Vancouver, Wash., October 1993).

58 Mandrou, Robert, Introduction to Modern France 1500–1640: An Essay in Historical Psychology, trans. Hallmark, R. E. (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1976); 175176Google Scholar.

59 Dictionnaire des lettres françaises, XVII siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1960), 2:878–79Google Scholar. On the range of Renaudot's activities see Solomon, Howard M., Public Welfare, Science, and Propaganda in Seventeenth Century France: The Innovations ofThéophraste Renaudot (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972)Google Scholar. The writer also benefited from the discussion of Wellmans', Cathleen paper “Science and Social Issues in the Discursi of the Virtuosi of France” (Paper presented at the University of Oklahoma, 1 04 1993)Google Scholar.

60 Thévet served in this capacity for four Valois kings, beginning with Henry II (1547–1959); Bertius and Renaudot served Louis XIII.

61 Thévet, Portraits, 5Google Scholar.

62 Solomon, , Public Welfare, 101Google Scholar.

63 Encyclopaedia Britannica, (1910) 17:647Google Scholar.

64 SeeLestringant, Frank, “Le déclin d'un savoir: La crise de la cosmographie à la fin de la Renaissance,” Annales, 46 (1991): 239–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 For a particular example of royal academic enterprise, see Lux, David S., Patronage and Royal Science in Seventeenth-Century France: the Académie de Physique in Caen (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

66 A useful reference on the process is Boucher, Philip P., The Shaping of the French Colonial Empire: A Bio-Bibliography of the Careers of Richelieu, Fouquet, and Colbert (New York: Garland, 1985)Google Scholar; items 396–551 list the titles of travel relations, missionary accounts, cosmographies, and so on.

67 See, for example, La Découverte de la France au XVIIe siècle (Paris: éditions du Centre Nationale de la recherche Scientiflque, 1980)Google Scholar.

68 Bouchet, , The Shaping, 111Google Scholar.

69 Postel, Guillaume, Cosmographicae disciplinae compendium (Paris, 1561)Google Scholar.

70 Thévenot, Mechisédech, Relations de divers voyages curieux, qui n'ont point esté publiées, ou qui ont esté traduites d'Hacluyt, de Purchas & d'autres voyageurs anglois, hollandois, portugais, allemands, espagnols; et de quelques Persons, Arabes, et autres auteurs orientaux, 4 vols. (Paris, 1663–1672)Google Scholar. This collection also included excerpts from the 1627 travels to the East by Pietro Delia Valle, the last major voyage by a Venetian.

71 Thévenot, Jean, Voyages tant en Europe qu'en Asie et en Afrique, ed. Luisandre, and Croix, Petit de la (Paris, 1689)Google Scholar.

72 Publications were reflecting this fashion as well. See, for example, Happel, Eberhard Werner, Thesaurus exoticorum (Hamburg, 1688)Google Scholar. For a brief survey of Orientalist linguistic attitudes see Amayreh, Isinael, “The Orientalists and the History of Their Relationship With the Arabic Language,” International Journal of Islamic and Arabic Studies, 8, 2 (1991): 2954Google Scholar (in Arabic with an English abstract).

73 Roman, , The Development, 171–72Google Scholar.

74 Ibid., 156–57.

75 Barthold, , Découverte de I'Asie, 129–30Google Scholar. The first chair of Arabic at Cambridge was established in 1632.

76 Molainville, Barthélemy d'Herbelot de, Bibliothèque orientate, ou Dictionnaire universel contenant tout ce qui regarde les connoissances des peuples de 1'Orient, 6 vols. (Paris, 1697)Google Scholar.

77 Roman, , The Development, 153–55Google Scholar.

78 Hottinger, Johann Heinrich, Historiae orientalis: quae, ex variis orientalium monumentis collecta… (Tiguri, 1651)Google Scholar.

79 His own collection was also finally transferred to the Royal Library (later Bibliothèque Nationale) in 1732. See Roman, , The Development, 8283Google Scholar; Bernard-Maitre, Henri, s.v. “Orient,” in Dictionnaire des lettres françaises, XVIII siècle, 3/1:326Google Scholar. Other countries actively participated in collecting efforts as well. The acquisitions also benefited from successful European campaigns against the Turks (especially at Vienna, Buda, and Belgrade). Spain was a notable exception until the 19th century.

80 Roman, , The Development, 74Google Scholar.

81 Golius, Jacobus, Muhammedis Fit. Ketiri Ferganensis, qui vulgo Alfraganus dicitur, Elementa astronomica, Arabice et Latine (Amsterdam, 1669)Google Scholar.

82 Gravius, J., Abulfedae Chorasmiae et Mavaralnahrae descriptio (London, 1650)Google Scholar; cited in Krachkovskii, , Arabskaia geograficheskaia literatura, 392Google Scholar. A manuscript of Abu al-Fidaʾ's work was available at the Bodleian Library in the 17th century. Many of the finest Arabic manuscripts in England came to the library through the acquisition of private collections, including some from the Netherlands. See Roman, , The Development, 3031Google Scholar.

83 Gronovius, Jacobus, De geographiae origine progressu ac dulcedine (Leiden, 1703)Google Scholar, cited in Krachkovskii, , Arabskaia geograficheskaia literatura, 25Google Scholar.

84 Antoine Galland, who introduced this romance to Europe in French translation (1704), was also a traveler to the East and a younger associate of d'HerbelotGoogle Scholar.

85 Krachkovskii, , Arabskaia geograficheskaia literatura, 392Google Scholar. The history of these translations, made into Latin and some never published, is detailed by Reinaud in the introduction to his own critical edition of Taqwīm al-buldān. See Reinaud, , Géographie d'Aboulféda, 1: CDLVGoogle Scholar.