A very unusual book, a history of Orientalism or more precisely Arabic studies in the West, written for the general reader. It aims to offer a different account of this discipline than that found in Said, mostly through meticulously plotting its history, something that Said's Orientalism doesn't do. The introduction rather oddly has Irwin suggesting he wants to set the record straight pace Said and that certain 'enemies' motivate him in this. This put me off the book at first but his account of Orientalism is actually fairly reasonable and moderate in its approach, written in a friendly and easily digestible style. Certain interesting trends recur, like the fact that many Orientalists were Christian nuts and terrible at teaching. A lot of work done by these scholars is very culturally marginal (mostly because Classical Arabic literature has wrongly no profile in the West at all so there aren't many people who are seeking good scholarly editions of classical texts or translations based on such editions) but it's interesting to see that one of the earliest translation of non-scriptural Arabic text into English, was Pococke's Philosophus Autodidactus (a prose account of how a person could come to know God through the exercise of reason alone based on a earlier work by Ibn Sina) and that this work could have been a formative influence on Locke/his empiricism. More could have been made of Persian poetry/its influence on German romanticism but I guess that's quite a complicated topic that needs book-length treatment in itself.

Many of the figures Said criticizes are given a similarly critical treatment here, particularly von Grunebaum whose conviction of the failure of Islamic culture/civilization ruins a lot of his scholarship. He attempts to argue that Gibb was more politically virtuous than Massignon (in terms of complicity with colonialism etc.) pace Said and I suppose he might have a point (although Said is really more critical of Gibb because of his similar fixation on Islam as a failed culture or as a culture that could never have succeeded given its premises). Irwin also asserts a strict divide in Lewis' work between the unreasonably negative portrayals of Arab Islamic culture/society he wrote for Foreign Policy journals (in part to support Israeli policy) and his scholarship, which is also a reasonable distinction (Said mostly focusses on the former in Orientalism, it has to be said).

The book ends with two chapters, criticizing attempts at criticizing Orientalism, one devoted entirely to Said. You realize in these that the personal nature of Irwin's arguments were probably motivated by the heavy weather he faced as an editor of the TLS when it published critical essays against Said. Many of his arguments relate to fairly petulant accusations of some seemingly trivial form of hypocrisy against Said or issues with the facts on offer in Orientalism (these are often enumerated in tedious lists). Crucially, these latter aren't particularly relevant; Orientalism is a work of thoroughly theoretical bent and is not meant to offer a meticulously precise historical account of Orientalism (and indeed, it construes this much more broadly than Irwin to involve all discourse related to the Arab world, not just scholarly work associated with scholarly institutions). Glimpses of fairly promising critical paths are found, notably the idea that Said's use of mutually exclusive accounts of culture, Gramsci's elite hegemony and Foucault's more impersonal discourse, is problematic, and also the idea that political virtue and issues of bad faith cannot affect the objectivity of scholarship (this one isn't argued ever, just asserted based on quotes by academics). The strength of Said's arguments became apparent to me in reading this and also their radical nature. Perhaps they do suggest that objective scholarship in good faith on the Arab Middle East is impossible for Westerners; certainly they do for such scholarship before the publication of the book, based as it is on imagined geographical categories. Said seems to step back from this conclusion in his 2001 foreword to the work, saying that what's needed is a philological approach (i.e. an approach similar to Auerbach and his close interest in detail). Anyway a nice account that falls down with fairly amateurish arguments at the end.

At times entertaining but often opaque. Some hilarious thrashing of Ziauddin Sardar though and the odd interesting counterpoint to Said's Orientalism.

Was interesting to read about Said's precursors in identifying a strand of Western thought called "orientalism" - basically rebutting Said's implicit claim to first identifying this as a trope.

دانش خطرناک در هفته های اخیر مورد توجه تاریخ خوان ها و پژوهشگران حوزه مطالعات اسلامی قرار گرفت. از منظری کتابی موفق است و از منظری دیگر کتابی عقیم و حیله گر حتی. کتاب در اصل برای پاسخ دادن به کتاب شرق شناسی ادوارد سعید نوشته شده است و میخواهد یکی از اصلی ترین نظرات او را که حرکت سیستماتیک شرق شناسی است بی بنیان نشان دهد. پس ابتدائا باید در نظر داشت که کتاب جنبه های احتجاجی دارد و برای همین هم البته خصوصا در اواخر آن به سمت سطحی گری و اشکال تراشی و ادبیات طعنه ورزانه حرکت میکند.
کتاب مفیدی است از آن جهت که سیری پانورامایی از جریان شرق شناسی را در تاریخ ارائه میدهد و تلاش میکند بدون آن که خسته کننده باشد بر بخش عمده ای از تاریخ شرق شناسی در جهان نوری بیفکند. که البته در این موضوع موفق است. جز آنجا که به بحث شرقشناسی روسی میپردازد. احتمالا چون نویسنده روسی بلد نیست، پس فی الجمله اشاره ای میکند و میگذرد. در حالی که تحولات عمده ای در این حوزه خصوصا در ساحت اقوام مسلمانی که روسها با آنها سروکار داشتند درگرفت و البته مکتب روسی به نوعی و تا حدودی در سبک خاص خودش بنیانگذار جدی "سلف اوریانتالیسم" در جهان شد. این جنبه مثبت قضیه بود که هر ازگاهی با گزارش هایی جزئی و جذاب از زندگی شرق شناسان رنگ و بوی خوشی هم به خود میگیرد. همچنین نویسنده با هدف اثبات نظریه اصلی اش نشان میدهد که اروپایی ها آنطور هم که ما مسلمانان/شرقی‌ها فکر میکنیم به صرت سیستماتیک حرکت نکرده اند و هرکسی که اتفاقا انسان هایی فارغ از چارچوبهای رسمی بوده اند و ذوقی و فردی و آتش به اختیار حرکت میکردند این سنت را رشد داده اند.
از نظر فهم سیر تحولات، توجه به کم و کاستی های این جریان، توجه به تاثیرات پیرامونی در مطالعات شرق شناسانه و نوع مراودات شخصی در میان بزرگان این جریان کتاب موفق و شایسته مطالعه ای است.
اما ناموفق است چرا که تلاش کرده با زیرکی از دال مرکزی نظریه ادوارد سعید که همان تلاش برای "دیگری" سازی به واسطه جریان شرقشناسی در غرب است خودداری کند. غیرقابل انکار است که همیشه بخش عمده ای از ادبیات شرقشناسانه نظار بر ایجاد یک دیگری و تعری کاریکاتور وار از آن بوده. نویسنده ادبیات بازاری شرقی، نقاشی های شرقی، گزارش های علمی ژورنالیستی را به نظرم دانسته کنار گذاشته و تلاش کرده است از شرق شناسی ارتودوکسی خارج نشود. حال آن که بخش عمده ای از تاثیرات شرقشناسی در غرب ناشی از این حوزه ها بوده است. زمانی میتوان در مورد شرق شناسی به مثابه یک جریان سخن گفت که همه این جوانب را مورد مطالعه قرار داد و نویسنده بی شک عامدانه از این منظر چشم پوشی کرده. چرا که تلاش میکند تا چهره استادش لوییس را تطهیر کند.
از نظرات دیگر سعید مزدوری جریان شرق شناسی است که البته کل تلاش نویسنده در طول کتاب انکار این است. اما واقعا نویسنده از وضعیت فوندهای شرق شناسی امروز غرب خبری ندارد؟ نقش سازمان های اطلاعاتی امنیتی غربی در بورس های تحصیلی این حوزه، نقش فوندهای عربی خلیجی، نقش فشارهای روانی و سیاسی جریان های صهیونیستی، نقش فشارهای لابی ارامنه، نقش جریان های خبری کلان در سمت گیری تحقیقات های این حوزه مگر مسائلی است که بتوان اساسا نادیده گرفت تا برسد به انکار آنها؟
نویسنده تلاش کرده است بر اشتباهات سعید پافشاری کند و البته در ادامه مخالفان جریان شرقشناسی را به استهزا بگیرد. مثلا برای متفکر بزرگی همچون سید حسین نصر معتقد است که او طرفدار تعدد زوجات است و ا را با این عنوان یاد میکند. آیا این حرکتی غیراخلاقی نیست؟ برای کسی که هزاران صفحه مطلب علمی نوشته است استفاده از چنین عنوانی شایسته است؟ همین نوع نگرشها شان دهنده ذات احتجاجی کتاب است که بیشتر سعی در اسکات طرف مقابل خود دارد تا تلاش برای فهم حقایق تاریخی.
او یکی از منتقدی شرق شناسی را به انگ طرفداری از صدام میکوبد، اما واقعا لحظه ای به بهانه هایی که برای حمله به عراق پیش کشیده شد و فجایعی که پس از آن رخ داد اشاره نمیکند. آیا مخالفت با حمله یانکی ها به عراق لزوما طرفداری از صدام است و آیا اساسا پذیرش یک جنبه از وانب یک سیاستمدار به معنای طرفداری از همه جنبه های اوست؟
با نگاه ریزبینانه در کتاب میتوان مثالهای مختلفی از این نوع نگرشها در آن پیدا کرد که همگی ریشه در ماهیت ردیه نگارانه آن دارد.
اما با این همه باز هم کتابی است که ارزش خوانده شدن دارد و البته باید از تلاش مترجم آن برای ترجمه خوش خوانش تشکر کرد.

33PP1 on Galen
'It was a systematic way of misunderstanding the world and, in general, a sick person was probably better off going to a wise woman than consulting a learned physician who had immersed himself in Galen.'



39PP2 on Ricoldo da Monte Croce
'Writing of his experience as a missionary, he observed that it was very difficult to convey a correct idea of the Trinity to a Muslim audience and that it was easier to attack Islam than to defend Christianity.'


40PP2 Sea of Vir.
'The anonymous *Sea of Virtues*, written in twelfth-century Syria, mocked the Christians for worshipping someone who was incapable of saving himself from execution.'


41PL
'The Saracens were stock fantasy villians and, as such, the precursors of the Red Indians and the Daleks.'


44P2 - 2nd gen. also - book of the Gentile
'Lull spent nine years studying Arabic and Islam in Majorca. There was some urgency in his studies, for he feared that the Mongols, who at that time had conquered most of Asia, including Iran and Iraq, would convert to Islam unless Christian missionaries reached them first.'



46PP1
'In *The Art of Contemplation* Lull argued, among other things, that going on crusade was a bad idea, for it God had approved of the Crusades they would have been more successful in the past.'



70PP2 on Postel
'"The spiritual sons of Luther are the little bastards of Mahom," as he put it.'



73PP2
'There is a certain triumphalist history of European culture that presents the progress of the arts and sciences in terms of smooth, incremental gains. in this progress every grand intellectual endeavour inevitably brings the results that benefit the world. but such a selective version of intellectual history neglects the past importance of grand projects, supported by the best minds and often by copious funding that still went nowhere. Cultural history is (or at least should be) full of cul-de-sacs, such as the labours of Joseph Justus Scaliger, James Ussher, Count Jean Potocki and others to establish a universal chronology that would confirm the apparent time-frames set out by the Bible, or the attempts to square the circle, by Nicholas of Cusa and others.'



77PP2f philologist and philosopher Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558)
'"Our theological disputes arise from ignorance of grammar.'"


85PP1 historian David C. Douglas
'It is very easy to ridicule the circumstances that attended the private patronage of letters in the early years of the eighteenth century, and the fulsome compliments of contemporary dedications have nourished the self-0satisfaction of an age which prefers the flattery of a large public to the delectation of a patron. But hasty writing designed to extract money as rapidly as possible from the largest number of pockets is not necessarily a better means of producing good books than the effort to please the exigent taste of a cultured and wealthy class.'


124PP2mid 'The establishment...'
'The establishment of an Indo-Aryan family of languages by European philologists is something that has been resented by Edward Said and he appears to doubt the validity of their findings, though he does not explain why.' cites Orientalism p.127



127PP2 Reiske, on his move to Leiden in 1738
'"This served me an ill turn. Dearly, too dearly have I had to pay for my folly! I became a martyr for Arabic literature. Oh if my burning thirst of those days for this literature, which only made me unhappy coming as it did too early, at a time when nobody needed it and still less appreciated it enough to reward or encourage it, oh if it could find its way into a soul which could some day bring life to happier times! If that day ever comes (though there is hardly room for hope) then Arabic literature will be better appreciated and studied with greater application than it is now."'



132PP3 Carsten Niebuhr

"Said and his allies in cultural studies popularized the idea that it is more important to destroy Orientalism than to represent its history accurately." (p. 328)

Quite a remarkable book and mostly quite a lot of fun to read. There are really two sides of the book that need to be considered. On the one hand, it is a history of Oriental studies and as such, is enlightening and entertaining. On the other hand, it is a direct attack on Said's Orientalism. In this, it is more difficult to gauge.

The quick glance I made at reviews of Dangerous Knowledge suggest that Irwin is unquestionably on point in criticizing Said's historical picture, but reviewers are less sure that he has as thoroughly undercut Said as he thinks. This seems likely to me, but I'm looking forward to reading Said again soon to see what I think.

The criticism of Said that stands out most to me throughout is Irwin's point that Said has not read the sources. This comes up time and time again and is not a small matter. For example, Irwin says: "In other words, a book on Middle Eastern and Islamic studies that gave no account of Goldziher's work in the field would not be worth the paper it was printed on" (p. 196).

At the same time, I suspect that Irwin and Said are working on disjunct planes and that this is why Irwin's critiques are not fully destructive of Said's project. The story Irwin tells seems to be that the Orientalists were an eccentric bunch of variously qualified (almost exclusively) men who set out with real interest at getting it right, rather than as a pernicious bunch who set out to construct European identity on the hollow grave of an ad hominem-ed Arab world. But I think Said's point is built more on a piece of what they actually accomplished, rather than what they set out to do, so there is room for some both-and here.

Irwin's writing is a pleasure to read and the book is worth reading for his history of Oriental studies alone. Still, he also seems to allow himself to indulge in a bit of the sensational side himself. He describes Hurgronje as spending months in Mecca taking notes and photos while "disguised as a Muslim" (p. 200). But a quick look at the Wikipedia entry suggests that Hurgronje had permission from the Ottoman governor and had passed an examination by a delegation of Muslim scholars before proceeding. The fuller picture is less glamorous, but probably more impressive.

Highly recommended for those interested in the history of the field and (I suspect) quite important for those coming to grips with the legacy of Said.

A good survey of the history of orientalist (and the crazy orientalists who defines the field) as well as an effective pushback again Edward Said’s Orientalism. Written in an entertaining and accessible fashion with humorous anecdotes, which is appropriate given its critique of the ambiguous contradictory and jargon-filled approach of postmodern critiques of the field. It is interesting to note the Foucaltian assault on whether objective facts can exist or whether only discourse exists has been drawn into the mainstream, and it is refreshing to see lively scholarly debate around this development.

The first part of the book provides a comprehensive history of Oriental scholarship the West, starting in Ancient Greece. Irwin tells us that, unlike what Said is saying, not all scholarship was done with an imperial political agenda in mind. Irwin rightly claims that Said only discusses French and British Orientalism. In doing so, he forgets to mention Oriental scholarship from the Soviet Union and Russia, Nazi Germany, Germany in general (esp. 19c Oriental philology), medieval Europe etc. This historical overview gives nuance to Said's understanding of Oriental scholarship, namely that all of it is interwoven with an imperial and colonialist political agenda. I agree with Irwin that Said's Orientalism is too often unchallenged in Western universities, so this historical overview is important.

However, Said never wanted to give this type of historical overview. Early in his book he even said that he is aware of other types of Orientalism than the French and British ones, such as Dutch Orientalism, and he invited other scholars to look into it. Rather, Said, drawing from Foucault, wanted to give a genealogy (which is *not* a historical overview) of Orientalism. Through Foucaldian discourse analysis, Said wanted to show that the West has defined itself and functioned in history as colonialist. I'd argue that Said's book is theoretically inconsistent (something he later admitted himself, saying he "designed it that way"). Unfortunately, Irwin only devotes three pages to Said's use of Foucault and Said other main influencer, Gramsci. He makes the interesting point that Gramsci's and Foucault's ideas are incompatible and that Said did not realise this. Nonetheless, his critique falls short and he missed a chance of properly criticising Said's nihilism that is the result of Foucault's understanding of representation (=if all representations are constructs of power, then that means that no representation can accurately describe external reality, because truth itself is a representation). Irwin probably thought that the theoretical underpinnings were secondary to Said, and that therefore he could "destroy" Said's Orientalism with just historical facts, but as I just showed, he is wrong. Even if he did not think this, Irwin's methodology is flawed because he did not consider the question of whether historical (empirical) facts can demolish a (non-empirical) theory. As a student of philosophy myself, I am inclined to say this is not possible or at least, this is a complex problem that Irwin (and historians in general..) should have considered. But then again, Irwin would tell me that I am overstating Said's emphasis on theory, and perhaps he is right.

Lastly, Irwin forgets to mention the fact that in 2001, Said distanced himself from his earlier nihilism by saying that not all Oriental scholarship is bad, as long as one is "methodologically conscious" of what they are doing.

For Lust of Knowing is written as a response and corrective to Edward Said's Orientalism, which Irwin views as having greatly distorted the actual history of how the Islamic world has been studied in the West. The lion's share of the book is devoted to Irwin's presentation of a more faithful history of Orientalism, from its medieval and Renaissance roots until what he describes as its "all too brief" heyday in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Irwin's narrative is erudite and cohesive but also dry. As he himself admits, for the most part the individuals who populate the story were devoted if unglamorous scholars working in an obscure field. The real fireworks come in the final 50 pages, in which he contextualizes, reviews, and dismantles much of Said's 1977 work. If my personal experience in graduate school 15 years ago is any indicator, Orientalism continues to be a—perhaps the—key text in Middle Eastern studies despite its grave flaws. Can a polemic speak a greater "truth" despite being based on shoddy history and ideological animus? This is the hand-waving defense that some give of Said; Irwin finds it as inadequate as I do.

May 2017

Originally conceived as an extended rebuttal to Edward Said’s “Orientialism,” this study by the Arabist Robert Irwin is a generous (and occasionally bizarre) history of Western scholars seduced by the cultures of the Middle East — the odyssey of an intellectual obsession. Irwin’s capsule biographies of eccentric Europeans and their “lust for knowing” illuminates a rich tradition more typically caricatured and vilified. It’s hard to exaggerate the pleasures of this book, a kind of outraged memoir but far more, a work of art and scholarship.

July 2024

For any who happen to come upon my short review of Irwin’s wonderful book, I’d like to point to an appreciation of Irwin's work that I just found today. My review here is only an echo of the hundreds of hours I’ve enjoyed reading Irwin and the literature and culture he championed, not least the fabulous Allen Lane/Penguin edition of The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights, Volume 1 to which Irwin provides the introduction. (The link is only to the first of 3 volumes.)

Excellent survey of the history of Orientalism and response Edward Said’s book on Orientalism. Wealth of names & bibliography and evaluation of their work & influence.

It’s infrequently I regret I read a book, but I think I do in this case. Because I’ve admired Robert Irwin: I hugely enjoyed his The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature, I read one of his novels (an Orientalist fantasy; it was fine) and a Mamluk history; he’s been deeply involved in Dedalus’s decadent collection. I admired his range and I liked his style.

But this one is a tirade. And as another reviewer says, he misses the point. He thinks Said says quite other things than what Said said. If you like scholarship as combat you might enjoy this bout. But he excuses himself that Said got personal first, and at least in Orientalism, Said didn’t. Irwin sees no virtue whatsoever in Said's book, which he regards as a polemic (it isn't. On the other hand...) In brief, defensive.

I can’t star this one, I’m afraid. It wouldn’t be pretty.