ABSTRACT
The Arab “discovery” of Orientalism in the nineteenth century generates fascination with and contestation of European scholarship on Islam and Arabic language and literature. This critical genealogy, which is benefiting from increased scholarly attention, has the potential to refigure the history of Arab–Islamic critique in the modern age, and the history and development of Orientalism in Europe. The exchange of polemics expanded the journal’s circulation and revived the field of Arabic philology in the nineteenth century, bringing about change and novelty along with acrimony and manipulation. Al–Shidyaq’s interplay of taqlid and tahafut becomes crucial to a critique of Orientalism in England but also at home, exposing the lure of a hollow tamaddun forged through the emulation of the West. Al–Shidyaq contests the methods and assumptions of the Orientalist paradigm by confronting the system and the economy through which its misrepresentations and mistranslations arise. In vein, Edward Said as well confronts Arabists and Middle East experts throughout writing and political activism.
