Arab-Islamic History and the Orientalizing Imagination

Abstract

While such critics of Orientalism as Said and Meyer have shown, the inescapable intellectual frameworks which imprisoned the Western mind in its treatment of the East, this essay specifies "historical" Orientalism as a touchstone to deepen and sharpen our awareness, not only of the mechanic of Orientalist thinking, but also of the various motives and hidden compulsions that made the shapers of public opinion tackle the Arab-Islamic past. An array of writings is analysed and investigated to come out with fresh conclusions that invite inspiring and dialectic-developing arguments.