ABSTRACT
The influence of European scholarship upon Middle Eastern nationalisms is a scarcely acknowledged one. The great work of retrieval and compilation done by European archaeologists and philologists served their own inquiring spirit. Young Martin Hartmann, born the son of a Mennonite preacher in Breslau, had the attributes of a prodigy. In 1869, at the age of seventeen, he enrolled in university in his native city, and displayed a remarkable aptitude for languages. Hartmann dissented not only from the collegial consensus over the contours of his academic discipline. In the same moment he broke with prevailing wisdom about the resilience of the Ottoman Empire and the loyalty of its Arab Muslim subjects. Many years had passed since Hartmann had last set eyes on Syria's shores. Since coming to Berlin he had visited Cairo and Istanbul, and had gone on adventurous expeditions through the Libyan desert and Chinese Turkestan.
