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64-460: English Orientalist Sir Gerard Clauson (1891-1974) defined tümän as immediately borrowed from Tokharian tmān , which according to Edwin G. Pulleyblank might have been etymologically inherited from Old Chinese tman or 萬 . It was thought that the same kind of military organization was used by the Magyars during the conquest of Hungary . According to Ahmad ibn Rustah (c. 930),

128-511: 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

192-407: A Persian explorer and geographer relying on second-hand information, the "Magyars are a race of Turks and their king rides out with horsemen to the number of 10,000 and this king is called Kanda ". In Genghis Khan 's military system, a tumen was recursively built from units of 10 (aravt), 100 (zuut) and 1,000 ( mingghan ), each with a leader reporting to the next higher level. Tumens were considered

256-679: 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 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

320-639: 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

384-409: A global intellectual history that shows the parallels and the interrelations in the history of critical thinking in every society. Likewise, the history of reading , and the history of the book , about the material aspects of book production (design, manufacture, distribution) developed from the history of ideas. The concerns of intellectual history are the intelligentsia and the critical study of

448-406: 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

512-476: 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

576-489: A practical size, neither too small for an effective campaign nor too big for efficient transport and supply. The military strategy was based on the use of tumens as a useful building block causing reasonable shock and attack. A Mongol army usually consisted out of three tumen, but armies consisting of only one tumen were also deployed . Regardless, tumen would often be understrength and the number of tumen deployed doesn't provide an accurate number of combatants. The commander of

640-660: A religious focus on understanding both Biblical Hebrew and languages like Syriac with early Christian literature , but there 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

704-461: A spirit close to that with which Lovejoy pursued the history of ideas. The first chapter of Lovejoy's book The Great Chain of Being (1936) lays out a general overview of what he intended to be the programme and scope of the study of the history of ideas. In the History of Ideas, Lovejoy used the unit-idea (concept) as the basic unit of historical analysis. The unit-idea is the building block of

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768-587: A tumen was a tümen-ü noyan , a term sometimes translated "myriarch" (cf. myriad ), meaning commander of 10,000. Tümen is a military unit which is still used in the Turkish Army , consisting of 6,000 to 10,000 soldiers. Its commander is a tümgeneral in the Army and Air Forces and a tümadmiral in the Naval Forces. It is the equivalent of a modern division . Oriental studies Oriental studies

832-410: Is a means for reproducing a historically valid interpretation of a philosophical argument, by implementation of a context in which to study ideas and philosophical movements. Michel Foucault rejected narrative , the historian's traditional mode of communication, because of what he believed to be the shallow treatment of facts, figures, and people in a long period, rather than deep research that shows

896-544: Is applicable to improving society. Nonetheless, anyone who explored his or her thoughts on paper can be the subject of an intellectual history. Intellectual history developed from the history of philosophy and cultural history as practiced since the times of Voltaire (1694–1778) and Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897). The scholarly efforts of the eighteenth century can be traced to The Advancement of Learning (1605), Francis Bacon 's call for what he termed "a literary history". In economics, John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946)

960-579: Is multidisciplinary and includes the history of philosophy and the history of economic thought . In continental Europe, the pertinent example of intellectual history is Begriffsgeschichte (History of Concepts, 2010), by Reinhart Koselleck . In Britain the history of political thought has been a particular focus since the late 1960s, and is especially associated with historians at Cambridge , such as John Dunn and Quentin Skinner , who studied European political thought in historical context, emphasizing

1024-631: 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 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

1088-558: Is that ideas do not develop in isolation from the thinkers who conceptualize and apply those ideas; thus the intellectual historian studies ideas in two contexts: (i) as abstract propositions for critical application; and (ii) in concrete terms of culture, life, and history. As a field of intellectual enquiry, the history of ideas emerged from the European disciplines of Kulturgeschichte (Cultural History) and Geistesgeschichte (Intellectual History) from which historians might develop

1152-469: Is the academic field that studies Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology. In recent years, 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,

1216-403: 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

1280-672: 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

1344-602: 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

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1408-471: The Middle East and Central Asia to North Africa and Andalusia . Popular medieval European knowledge of cultures farther east 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

1472-632: 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

1536-701: 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

1600-679: The African , who translated 37 books, mostly medical texts, from Arabic to Latin, and Herman of Carinthia , one of 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

1664-727: The Atlantic Ocean, e.g. The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (2001), by Louis Menand and The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–50 (1973), by Martin Jay . The historian Arthur O. Lovejoy (1873–1962) coined the phrase history of ideas and initiated its systematic study in the early decades of the 20th century. Johns Hopkins University

1728-681: The Christian Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula began to accelerate in 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

1792-489: 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

1856-538: The East with the concept of "the East" itself. The terms Oriental/Eastern and Occidental/Western are both inclusive concepts that usefully identify large-scale cultural differences. Such general concepts do not preclude or deny more specific ones. History of ideas Intellectual history (also the history of ideas ) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals , people who conceptualize , discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas . The investigative premise of intellectual history

1920-415: The History of Ideas . Since that time, Lovejoy's formulation of "unit-ideas" was developed in different and divergent intellectual directions, such as contextualism, historically sensitive accounts of intellectual activity in the corresponding historical period, which investigative shift is reflected in the replacement of the term "history of ideas" with the term "intellectual history". Intellectual history

1984-544: The History of Ideas, the praxis of Intellectual History studies and deals with ideas in broad historical contexts. That unlike historians of ideas and philosophers ( History of Philosophy ), intellectual historians, "tend to be more relaxed about crossing the boundary between philosophical texts and non-philosophical contexts . . . [Intellectual historians regard] the distinction between 'philosophy' and 'non-philosophy' as something that is, itself, historically conditioned, rather than eternally fixed." Therefore, intellectual history

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2048-722: 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

2112-605: 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 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

2176-408: The basic idea from a work of philosophy and from a philosophical movement, with the investigative principles of the methodology being: (1) assumptions, (2) dialectical motives, (3) metaphysical pathos, and (4) philosophical semantics . The principles of methodology define the overarching philosophical movement in which the historian can find the unit-idea, which then is studied throughout the history of

2240-468: 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

2304-460: The doctorate in History and Culture at Drew University is one of few graduate programs specializing in intellectual history, in the American and European contexts. Despite the pre-eminence of early modern intellectual historians (those studying the age from the Renaissance to the Age of Enlightenment ), the intellectual history of the modern period also has been very productive on both shores of

2368-646: The emergence and development of concepts such as the State and Freedom . Skinner is known for provocative, methodological essays that give prominence to the practice of intellectual history. In the United States, intellectual history encompass different forms of intellectual production, not just the history of political ideas, and includes fields such as the history of historical thought, associated with Anthony Grafton (Princeton University) and J.G.A. Pocock (Johns Hopkins University). Formally established in 2010,

2432-467: 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

2496-575: 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

2560-698: 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

2624-418: 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

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2688-540: The historical actors of the period under study. The philosopher Andreas Dorschel said that Skinner's restrictive approach to ideas, through verbal language, and notes that ideas can materialize in non-linguistic media and genres, such as music and architecture. The historian Dag Herbjørnsrud said that "the Skinner perspective is in danger of shutting the door to comparative philosophy, and the search for common problems and solutions across borders and time." The historian Peter Gordon said that unlike Lovejoy's practise of

2752-412: The history of ideas; though relatively stable in itself, the unit-idea combines with other unit-ideas into new patterns of meaning in the context of different historical eras. Lovejoy said that the historian of ideas is tasked with identifying unit-ideas and with describing their historical emergence and development into new conceptual forms and combinations. The methodology of the unit-idea means to extract

2816-430: The ideas expressed in the texts produced by intellectuals; therein the difference between intellectual history from other forms of cultural history that study visual and non-verbal forms of evidence. In the production of knowledge, the concept of the intellectual as a political citizen of public society dates from the 19th century, and identifies a man or a woman who is professionally engaged with critical thinking that

2880-471: The interconnections among the facts, figures, and people of a specific period of history. Foucault said that historians should reveal historical descriptions through the use of different perspectives of the "archaeology of knowledge", whose historical method for writing history is in four ideas. First, the archaeology of knowledge defines the period of history through philosophy, by way of the discourses among thought , representation , and themes. Second, that

2944-468: The notion of discontinuity has an important role in the disciplines of history. Third, that discourse does not seek to grasp the moment in history, wherein the social and the persons under study are inverted into each other. Fourth, that Truth is not the purpose of history, but the discourse contained in history. In the 21st century, the field of global intellectual history has received increased attention. In 2013, Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori published

3008-766: 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,

3072-531: The particular idea. The British historian Quentin Skinner criticized Lovejoy's unit-idea methodology as a "reification of doctrines" that has negative consequences. That the historian of ideas must be sensitive to the cultural context of the texts and ideas under analysis. Skinner's historical method is based upon the theory of speech acts, proposed by J.L. Austin . In turn, scholars criticized Skinner's historical method because of his inclination to reify social structures and sociological constructs in place of

3136-461: 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 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

3200-546: 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

3264-457: 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

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3328-587: 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

3392-728: 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

3456-474: 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

3520-679: 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

3584-482: 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

3648-568: The world farther east, including the " Seres " (Chinese). However, there 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

3712-673: Was a "fertile cradle" to Lovejoy's history of ideas; he worked there as a professor of history, from 1910 to 1939, and for decades he presided over the regular meetings of the History of Ideas Club . Another outgrowth of his work is the Journal of the History of Ideas . Aside from his students and colleagues engaged in related projects (such as René Wellek and Leo Spitzer , with whom Lovejoy engaged in extended debates), scholars such as Isaiah Berlin , Michel Foucault , Christopher Hill , J. G. A. Pocock , and others have continued to work in

3776-456: Was both a historian of economic thought, and the subject of study by historians of economic thought, because of the significance of the Keynesian revolution . The contemporary understanding of intellectual history emerged in the immediate postwar period of the 1940s, in its earlier incarnation as "the history of ideas" under the leadership of Arthur Lovejoy , the founder of the Journal of

3840-484: 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 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

3904-502: 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

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3968-471: 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,

4032-481: 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

4096-404: 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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