ABSTRACT
Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc's oriental studies worked through the frameworks of religion and language, both viewed historically. If this episode seems to be marked by the predatory dimension – polite language would talk about the "culture of collecting" – it nevertheless cannot be confused with what "orientalism" typically connotes. Just as Peiresc was not simply a collector ransacking a tradition of riches the natives perceived only in terms of use-value, he did not view "civilization" and "barbarism" as fixed categories, as the discourse of "Orientalism" would have it. One of Peiresc's most brilliant projects involved the use of collaborative simultaneous eclipse observation to establish longitudes around the Mediterranean and reform maps based on astronomical data. A well-known letter from Saumaise to Peiresc praised the latter for doing precisely this in the sphere of antiquities; here they see it in that of oriental studies.
