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65-603: Generations of scholars in Islamic studies, most of whom studied with Orientalist mentors, helped bridge the gap between Orientalism and Religious studies. The subfield that grew out of this effort is called "Islamic studies." The study of Islam is part of a tradition that started in Western academia on a professional scale about two centuries ago, and has been previously linked to social concern. This academic tradition has not only led to an accumulation of knowledge, even if some of it

130-511: A Regius Professor of Hebrew since 1540 (the fifth-oldest regular chair there), and the university's chair in Arabic was founded in about 1643. Oxford followed for Hebrew in 1546 (both chairs were established by Henry VIII). One distinguished scholar was Edmund Castell , who published his Lexicon Heptaglotton Hebraicum, Chaldaicum, Syriacum, Samaritanum, Aethiopicum, Arabicum, et Persicum in 1669, and scholars like Edward Pococke had traveled to

195-639: A global adversary. The end of the Cold War caused an era that has been marked by discussions of Islamist terrorism framing views on the extent to which the culture of the Arab world and of Islam is a threat to that of the West. The essence of the debate reflects a presupposition for which Orientalism has been criticized by the Orient being defined exclusively by Islam. Such considerations were seen to have occurred in

260-406: A great increase in knowledge of Asia among Western specialists, the increasing political and economic involvement in the region, and particularly the realization of the existence of close relations between Indian and European languages by William Jones , there emerged more complex intellectual connections between the early history of Eastern and Western cultures. Some of the developments occurred in

325-476: A major factor in the relative failure of progress of Eastern societies. The study of Islam was particularly central to the field since most people living in the geographical area that was termed as the Orient were Muslims. The interest in understanding Islam was fueled partly by economic considerations of the growing trade in the Mediterranean region and by the changing cultural and intellectual climate of

390-552: A number of cultures , philosophies, central teachings and bodies of esoteric knowledge . Kalām emerged as a discipline in response to political disputes among Muslims, and then later in response to the impact of Hellenistic philosophy and the expansion of the Islamic Empire into territories previously dominated and occupied by the Sassanian and Byzantine Empires. Thus, one of the first and persistent questions challenging

455-409: A topic of modern scholarship (as opposed to a Christological heresy ) was within the context of 19th-century Christian European Oriental studies . Examining and understanding this kind of Islam – a heterogeneous living tradition with some non-discursive elements, which is internally extremely dynamic and multifaceted – is the purview of Islamic studies in the modern world. In the years 1821 to 1850,

520-423: A variety of means went on display in museums throughout Europe. Modern study was influenced by imperialist attitudes and interests and by the fascination for the "exotic" East for Mediterranean and European writers and thinkers, and was captured in images by artists, which is embodied in a repeatedly-surfacing theme in the history of ideas in the West, called " Orientalism ." Since the 20th century, scholars from

585-457: Is almost forgotten or badly neglected, but has also witnessed major changes in interests, questions, methods, aesthetics, and ethics of Islam. Many academic Islamic studies programs include the historical study of Islam , Islamic civilization , history of the Muslim world , historiography , Islamic law , Islamic theology and Islamic philosophy . Specialists in Islamic studies concentrate on

650-525: Is due to the fact that early Islam forbade the painting of human beings, especially the Prophet , as Muslims believe this tempts followers of the Prophet to idolatry . This prohibition against human beings or icons is called aniconism . Despite such a prohibition, depictions of human beings do occur in Islamic art, such as that of the Mughals , demonstrating a strong diversity in popular interpretation over

715-403: Is the oldest school of Sinology and Oriental Studies of Continental Europe . The late 18th century saw the start of a great increase in the study of the archaeology of the period, which was to be an ever-more important aspect of the field in the next century. Egyptology led the way and, as with many other ancient cultures, provide linguists with new material for decipherment and study. With

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780-672: The Crusades produced relatively little in the way of scholarly interchange, the eruption of the Mongol Empire had strategic implications for the Crusader kingdoms and for Europe itself, which led to extended diplomatic contacts . During the Age of Exploration , European interest in mapping Asia , especially the sea routes, became intense, but most was pursued outside the universities. University Oriental studies became systematic during

845-602: The Eastern Roman Empire (the remaining enemies of the Germanic ) has become an umbrella term for all peoples in the world considered “non-Western”, including peoples who were not even from the circum-Mediterranean culture, such as the Sinosphere and Indosphere . The Greeks , despite being former Eastern Romans and Eastern Orthodox , came to be considered “Westerners” from the 19th century onwards thanks to

910-532: The Greek translations to Arabic was an important factor in the Middle Ages . Linguistic knowledge preceded a wider study of cultures and history, and as Europe began to expand its influence in the region, political, and economic factors, that encouraged growth in its academic study. In the late 18th century, archaeology became a link from the discipline to a wide European public, as artefacts brought back through

975-545: The Middle East and other areas that are or have been part of, or influenced by, Islamic culture, such as Hebrew , Turkish , Persian , Urdu , Azerbaijanian and Uzbek . Islamic architecture is the entire range of architecture that has evolved within Muslim culture in the course of the history of Islam . Hence the term encompasses religious buildings as well as secular ones, historic as well as modern expressions and

1040-526: The Oriens - and Occidens -divided administration of Roman Emperor Diocletian in the late 3rd century AD, and the division of the Roman Empire into portions that spoke Latin and Greek . The classical world had an intimate knowledge of its Ancient Persian neighbours (and usually enemies) but very imprecise knowledge of most of the world farther east, including the " Seres " (Chinese). However, there

1105-632: The Philhellenists and the London Conference of 1832 (which put a Germanic monarchy to rule the Greeks without their permission). In most North American and Australian universities, the field of Oriental studies has now been replaced by that of Asian studies . In many cases, the field has been localised to specific regions, such as Middle Eastern or Near Eastern studies, South Asian studies, and East Asian Studies. That reflects

1170-760: The Renaissance , with the linguistic and religious aspects initially continuing to dominate. There was also a political dimension, as translations for diplomatic purposes were needed even before the West engaged actively with the East beyond the Ottoman Empire . A landmark was the publication in Spain in 1514 of the first Polyglot Bible , containing the complete existing texts in Hebrew and Aramaic, in addition to Greek and Latin. At Cambridge University , there has been

1235-1123: The Royal Asiatic Society in England, the Société Asiatique in France, the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft in Germany, and the American Oriental Society in the United States were founded. In the second half of the 19th century, philological and historical approaches were predominant. Leading in the field were German researchers like Theodore Nöldeke   with his History of the Quran , and Ignaz Goldziher  's work on hadith ( Muslim Studies ). Orientalists and Islamic scholars alike preferred to interpret

1300-547: The University of Exeter , University of Oxford , University of Leeds , SOAS at the University of London , Yale University and several universities in Holland and Germany (notably Leiden University and Tübingen University ). A recent HEFCE report emphasises the increasing, strategic importance for Western governments since 9/11 of Islamic studies in higher education and also provides an international overview of

1365-463: The 11th century, such contacts became rarer in Spain. Chairs of Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic were briefly established at Oxford and in four other universities after the Council of Vienne (1312). There was a vague but increasing knowledge of the complex civilisations of China and of India from which luxury goods (notably cotton and silk textiles as well as ceramics ) were imported. Although

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1430-489: The East and wrote on the modern history and society of the Eastern peoples. The University of Salamanca had Professors of Oriental Languages at least in the 1570s. In France, Jean-Baptiste Colbert initiated a training programme for Les jeunes de langues (The Youth of Languages), young linguists in the diplomatic service, like François Pétis de la Croix , who, like his father and his son, served as an Arabic interpreter to

1495-467: The Islamic community was the status of a believer who committed grave sins. The term “Islamic law” would in itself be an example of such a holistic merging of two spheres, conflating a person’s faith with his rights, or even three, if “law” is seen as a natural aspect of state politics that in a modern differentiated system should not be separated from religion, in its institutions and its rules. Islamic jurisprudence relates to everyday and social issues in

1560-722: The King. The study of the Far East was pioneered by missionaries, especially Matteo Ricci and others during the Jesuit China missions , and missionary motives were to remain important, at least in linguistic studies. During the 18th century, Western scholars reached a reasonable basic level of understanding of the geography and most of the history of the region, but knowledge of the areas least accessible to Western travelers, like Japan and Tibet , and their languages remained limited. The Enlightenment thinkers characterized aspects of

1625-544: The Sufi (one who practices Sufism).According to Renard (2021) quoted by Green the meaning of Sufism is “a strong method of Muslim’s knowledge and practice bringing proximity to or meditation with God and believed that it came from Prophet Muhammad from generation to generation who followed him” (P.8). The etymological term Suf has mysticism to the educational notion of asceticism. The ascetics and mystics have different and separate roles in each setting, and everyone needs to search

1690-527: The Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.226 via cp1108 cp1108, Varnish XID 198124244 Upstream caches: cp1108 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 05:35:53 GMT Oriental studies Oriental studies is the academic field that studies Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology. In recent years,

1755-521: The context of Franco–British rivalry for the control of India. Liberal economists, such as James Mill , denigrated Eastern civilizations as static and corrupt. Karl Marx , himself of Jewish origin, characterized the Asiatic mode of production as unchanging because of the economic narrowness of village economies and the state's role in production. Oriental despotism was generally regarded in Europe as

1820-550: The context of a given Sufi’s own time for reasons as to why he/she was known as a Sufi. Sufism is not that, they do not follow the Islam properly it’s just that they spend more time with God. It is an individual way of studying. It might also be referred to as Islamic mysticism. While other branches of Islam generally focus on exoteric aspects of religion, Sufism is mainly focused on the direct perception of truth or God through mystic practices based on divine love. Sufism embodies

1885-521: The detailed, academic study of texts written in Arabic within the fields of Islamic theology , Islamic law , and the Qur'an and Hadith along with ancillary disciplines such as Tafsir or Qur'an Exegesis. However, they also often apply the methods adapted from several ancillary fields, ranging from Biblical studies and classical philology to modern history , legal history and sociology . Scholars in

1950-467: The fact that sensitivity to the term "Oriental" has been heightened in a more politically correct atmosphere, although it began earlier: Bernard Lewis' own department at Princeton University was renamed a decade before Said wrote his book, a detail that Said gets wrong. By some, the term "Oriental" has come to be thought offensive to non-Westerners. Area studies that incorporate not only philological pursuits but identity politics may also account for

2015-517: The fact that the Orient is not a single monolithic region but rather a broad area, encompassing multiple civilizations . The generic concept of Oriental studies has to its opponents lost any use that it may have once had and is perceived as obstructing changes in departmental structures to reflect actual patterns of modern scholarship. In many universities, like the University of Chicago , the faculties and institutions have been divided. The Biblical languages may be linked with theological institutes, and

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2080-436: The field of Islamic studies are often referred to as "Islamicists" and the discipline traditionally made up the bulk of what used to be called Oriental studies . The transitional generation of Islamicists were betwixt and between an era when Islamic studies were dominated by Orientalism and the post-Orientalist era of post-colonial criticism and critical theory in the social sciences and much of religious studies. In fact, some of

2145-698: The former Faculty of Oriental Studies as the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies . Elsewhere, names have remained the same, as in the Chicago , Rome , and the London (only now referred to only by the acronym "SOAS"), and in other universities . Various explanations for the change to "Asian studies" are offered; a growing number of professional scholars and students of Asian Studies are themselves Asian or from groups of Asian origin (like Asian Americans ). This change of labeling may be correlated in some cases to

2210-418: The hesitation to use the term "Oriental". Supporters of "Oriental Studies" counter that the term " Asian " is just as encompassing as "Oriental," and may well have originally had the same meaning, were it derived from an Akkadian word for "East" (a more common derivation is from one or both of two Anatolian proper names). Replacing one word with another is to confuse historically objectionable opinions about

2275-540: The history of Islam in a conservative way. They did not question the traditional account of the early time of Islam, of Muhammad and how the Quran was written. In the 1970s, the Revisionist School of Islamic Studies questioned the uncritical adherence to traditional Islamic sources and started to develop a new picture of the earliest times of Islam by applying the historical-critical method . To understand

2340-428: The history of Islam provides the indispensable basis to understand all aspects of Islam and its culture. Themes of special interest are: The history of women and gender in Islamic studies experienced a surge of scholarly research during the early 1990's. This wave of scholarship was influenced by the growing presence of politically and religiously active women scholars with Muslim and Arab backgrounds. Additionally, there

2405-405: The idea of a uniform Islamic gender discourse. Following the impactful comprehensive syntheses of the early 1990's, more in-depth and context-specific studies have delved into social customs, religious beliefs, and the interplay between the two. Sufism ( تصوف taṣawwuf ) is a mystic tradition of Islam based on the pursuit of spiritual truth as it is gradually revealed to the heart and mind of

2470-405: The life of Muslims. It is divided in fields like: Key distinctions include those between fiqh , hadith and ijtihad . Islamic studies scholars also deal with the long and rich tradition of philosophy as developed by Muslim philosophers . It is divided in fields like: Islamic studies scholars are also active in the history and philosophy of science . Significant progress in science

2535-436: The more traditional Western universities still confer degrees in Arabic and Islamic studies under the primary title of "Oriental studies". This is the case, for example, at the University of Oxford , where classical Arabic and Islamic studies have been taught since as early as the 16th century, originally as a sub-division of divinity . This latter context gave early academic Islamic studies its Biblical studies character and

2600-826: The pagan East as superior to the Christian West in Montesquieu 's Lettres Persanes and Voltaire 's ironic promotion of Zoroastrianism . Others, like Edward Gibbon , praised the relative religious tolerance of the Middle East over what they considered the intolerant Christian West. Many, including Diderot and Voltaire, praised the high social status of scholarship in Mandarin China. The Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale" (English: University of Naples "L'Orientale"), founded in Naples in 1732,

2665-562: The pre-modern period. Increased contact with the Western civilization may also have contributed to human depictions in Islamic art in modern times. Islamic comparative religion is the study of the relationship between Islam and other religions. Islamic economics studies how economics may be brought in accordance with Islamic law . One field of study deals with how Islam reacts on the contact with Western modernity. History of Islam Too Many Requests If you report this error to

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2730-492: The production of all places that have come under the varying levels of Islamic influence. Islamic visual art has, throughout history, been mainly abstract and decorative, portraying geometric, floral, Arabesque , and calligraphic designs. Unlike the strong tradition of portraying the human figure in Christian art , Islamic art is typically distinguished as not including depictions of human beings. The lack of portraiture

2795-591: The region formerly known as "the Orient " had primarily religious origins, which have remained an important motivation until recent times. That is partly since the Abrahamic religions in Europe (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) originated in the Middle East and because of the rise of Islam in the 7th century. Consequently, there was much interest in the origin of those faiths and of Western culture in general. Learning from medieval Arabic medicine and philosophy and

2860-525: The region itself have participated on equal terms in the discipline. The original distinction between the "West" and the "East" was crystalized by the Greco-Persian Wars in the 5th century BC, when Athenian historians made a distinction between their " Athenian democracy " and the Persian monarchy. An institutional distinction between East and West did not exist as a defined polarity before

2925-546: The scholars Eugene Burnouf and Max Müller . The academic study of Islam also developed, and by the mid-19th century, Oriental studies had become a well-established academic discipline in most European countries, especially those with imperial interests in the region. Although scholastic study expanded, so did racist attitudes and stereotypes of Asian peoples and cultures, however, which frequently extended to local Jewish and Romani communities since they were also of Oriental origin and widely recognized as such. Scholarship often

2990-457: The sense used by Edward Said in his book of the same name in scholarship on the Middle East was seen to have re-emerged and risen in prevalence again after the end of the Cold War . It is contended that was partly a response to "a lacuna" in identity politics in international relations generally and within the 'West' particularly, which was brought about by the absence of Soviet communism as

3055-474: The social and political roles and rights of women over time. The work from this era sparked a significant amount of academic research in that, in the subsequent twenty years, not only expanded and detailed the arguments put forth by these scholars, but also analyzed and improved upon their methodologies. Recent years have seen a shift towards utilizing a broader range of sources and developing more intricate interpretive frameworks, some of which have even challenged

3120-474: The state of the field. With the events of 11 September 2001, Islam has become the most prominent world religion and occupies center stage in world politics. In Islamic Studies, there is a tendency to rely on history (as method and approach) as a reassuring scientific framework. However nowadays, besides recurrent debates within history itself, many scientists look unfavorably at a linear conception of time (Rovelli 2018). The first attempt to understand Islam as

3185-587: The study of ancient civilizations in the region may come under a different faculty from that of the studies of modern periods. In 1970, the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the Australian National University was renamed the Faculty of Asian Studies. In 2007, the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Cambridge University was renamed the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and the University of Oxford followed suit in 2022, also renaming

3250-539: The subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Middle Eastern studies and Asian studies . Traditional Oriental studies in Europe is today generally focused on the discipline of Islamic studies ; the study of China , especially traditional China, is often called Sinology . The study of East Asia in general, especially in the United States , is often called East Asian studies . The European study of

3315-728: The term Orient , Orientalism is a term that derives from the Latin word oriens (rising) and, equally likely, from the Greek word ('he'oros', the direction of the rising sun). "Orient" is the opposite of Occident , a term for the Western Roman Empire , which later had its identity appropriated by the Barbarian Kingdoms (such as the Holy Roman Empire ). The “east” which until then was used to refer to

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3380-474: The term often implies prejudiced outsider-caricatured interpretations of Eastern cultures and peoples. That viewpoint was most famously articulated and propagated by Edward Said in his Orientalism (1978), a critical history of that scholarly tradition. In contrast, the term has also been used by some modern scholars to refer to writers of the colonial era who had pro-Eastern attitudes, as opposed to those who saw nothing of value in non-Western cultures. Like

3445-679: The time. During the course of the century, Western archeology spread across the Middle East and Asia, with spectacular results. In the 1850s, for example, the French government was determined to mount large-scale operations in Assyria and Mesopotamia to showcase its dominance in the region. An archaeological team, led by Victor Place , excavated the palace of the Assyrian King Sargon II in Khorsabad (formerly Nineveh ), which

3510-677: The translators of the Qur'an . The earliest translation of the Qur'an into Latin was completed in 1143, but little use was made of it until it was printed in 1543. It was later translated into other European languages . Gerard of Cremona and others based themselves in Andalusia to take advantage of its Arabic libraries and scholars. However, as the Christian Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula began to accelerate in

3575-482: The wider context of the way in which many Western scholars responded to international politics after the Cold War, and they were arguably heightened by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 . Symbolic of that type of response to the end of the Cold War was the popularization of the clash of civilizations thesis. That particular idea of a fundamental conflict between East and West was first advanced by Bernard Lewis in his article "The Roots of Muslim Rage", which

3640-759: Was a notable increase in the utilization of gender studies methodologies within the traditionally conservative realms of Islamic history and law. Works such as Leila Ahmed’s Women and Gender in Islam (1992), Fatima Mernissi’s The Veil and the Male Elite (first published in English in 1991, translated from a 1987 French original), and Fedwa Malti-Douglas’s Woman’s Body, Woman’s Word: Gender and Discourse in Arabo-Islamic Writing (1991) surveyed large swathes of Islamic history and thought, suggesting structural connections between gendered religious discourses and

3705-575: Was a substantial direct Roman trade with India , unlike that with China, during the Roman Empire. The spread of Islam and the Muslim conquests in the 7th century established a sharp opposition or even a sense of polarity in the Middle Ages between European Christendom and the Islamic world , which stretched from the Middle East and Central Asia to North Africa and Andalusia . Popular medieval European knowledge of cultures farther east

3770-440: Was also a consequence of the fact that, throughout early-modern Western Europe, the discipline was developed by churchmen whose primary aim had been to refute the tenets of Islam . Today, academic Islamic studies is usually taught and studied alongside or after an extensive study of the Arabic language, with named undergraduate and graduate degrees in Arabic and Islamic studies existing at universities such as Georgetown University ,

3835-642: Was also a wish to understand Arabic works on medicine , philosophy , and science . That effort, also called the Studia Linguarum , existed sporadically throughout the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance of the 12th century witnessed a particular growth in translations of Arabic and Greek texts into Latin , with figures like Constantine the African , who translated 37 books, mostly medical texts, from Arabic to Latin, and Herman of Carinthia , one of

3900-502: Was intertwined with prejudicial racist and religious presumptions to which the new biological sciences tended to contribute until the end of the Second World War . The participation in academic studies by scholars from the newly-independent nations of the region itself inevitably changed the nature of studies considerably, with the emergence of post-colonial studies and Subaltern Studies . The influence of Orientalism in

3965-486: Was made in the Muslim world during the Middle Ages , especially during the Islamic Golden Age , which is considered a major period in the history of science. Scholars also study the relationship between Islam and science , for example in the application of Islamic ethics to scientific practice. This field includes the study of modern and classical Arabic and the literature written in those languages. It also often includes other modern, classic or ancient languages of

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4030-410: Was poor and depended on the widely-fictionalized travels of Sir John Mandeville and the legends of Prester John , but the equally-famous account by Marco Polo was much longer and was more accurate. Scholarly work was initially largely linguistic in nature, with primarily a religious focus on understanding both Biblical Hebrew and languages like Syriac with early Christian literature , but there

4095-408: Was taken on more famously by Samuel P. Huntington in his 1993 article in Foreign Affairs , "The Clash of Civilizations?" The term Orientalism has come to acquire negative connotations in some quarters and is interpreted to refer to the study of the East by Westerners who are shaped by the attitudes of the era of European imperialism in the 18th and the 19th centuries. When used in that sense,

4160-481: Was the first systematic excavation of the site. The expedition resulted in a pioneering publication, Ninevah and Assyria , which jointly authored by Victor Place and Felix Thomas and was published around 1867. New national museums provided a setting for important archaeological finds, most of which were then bought back to Europe, and they put Orientalists in the public spotlight as never before. The first serious European studies of Buddhism and Hinduism were by

4225-404: Was written in 1990. Again, that was seen as a way of accounting for new forms and lines of division in international society after the Cold War. The clash of civilizations approach involved another characteristic of Orientalist thought: the tendency to see the region as being one homogenous civilization, rather than as comprising various different and diverse cultures and strands. It was an idea that

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