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History of Oriental studies

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lightbulbAbout this topic
The history of Oriental studies refers to the academic discipline that focuses on the study of Eastern societies, languages, cultures, and histories, particularly those of Asia and the Middle East. It encompasses the evolution of scholarly approaches, methodologies, and the impact of colonialism on the understanding and representation of these regions.
lightbulbAbout this topic
The history of Oriental studies refers to the academic discipline that focuses on the study of Eastern societies, languages, cultures, and histories, particularly those of Asia and the Middle East. It encompasses the evolution of scholarly approaches, methodologies, and the impact of colonialism on the understanding and representation of these regions.

Key research themes

1. How did wartime looting influence the acquisition and study of Islamic manuscripts in European Oriental studies?

This theme explores the significant role of war, particularly military conflicts between European powers and the Ottoman Empire, in shaping the physical collection of Islamic manuscripts—especially Qur'anic texts—in Europe. It investigates how looted materials, often taken as war booty ('Türkenbeute'), became foundational in European Orientalist scholarship, shaping both the availability of primary sources and scholarly approaches to Islamic studies in the early modern to nineteenth centuries.

Key finding: This essay finds that war recurrently shaped European Qur'anic studies from the medieval period through the 19th century by providing access to manuscripts seized through conflict, especially from the Ottoman Empire. Such... Read more
Key finding: This study reveals how Islamic manuscripts, including Qur'ans and related texts captured as war booty during the Ottoman conflicts following the 1683 siege of Vienna, were integrated into the libraries of the Halle orphanage... Read more
Key finding: This paper documents the centrality of looted Qur'an manuscripts acquired as military spoils in shaping European collections from the 15th to 18th centuries, especially in the Habsburg domains. It details how such objects... Read more

2. What is the historical significance of early modern European Orientalist philology and manuscript collection practices exemplified by Thomas Erpenius and his legacy?

This theme addresses the development of philological Orientalism in early modern Europe, focusing on seminal figures like Thomas Erpenius who pioneered systematic collection, study, and translation of oriental manuscripts and texts. It highlights how such scholars laid the groundwork for academic Oriental studies by integrating a wide geographical scope—from the Middle East to Southeast Asia—through textual scholarship and manuscript acquisition practices, contributing to the conceptualization of the Orient as a linguistic and cultural whole.

Key finding: This work establishes Thomas Erpenius as a foundational figure whose philological approach, including mastery of multiple Eastern languages and manuscript collecting, created a systematic study of Oriental texts that expanded... Read more
Key finding: This comprehensive study reconstructs Erpenius’ personal manuscript collection, showing its crucial role in early modern European Oriental studies. The library, enriched with diverse rare manuscripts, was instrumental for... Read more

3. How did institutional developments and academic networks in European universities shape the professionalization and dissemination of Oriental Studies?

This theme examines the history and institutionalization of Oriental studies across European academic centers from the early nineteenth century onward. It analyzes the roles of university positions, cross-national scholarly correspondence, and the impact of political and colonial contexts on the growth, specialization, and sometimes suppression of Orientalist disciplines, with case studies from Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Hungary illustrating the varied trajectories and intellectual milieus influencing the field.

Key finding: This article traces the development of Chinese studies in German universities from the early nineteenth century, highlighting challenges such as Nazi-era emigration, postwar reconstruction, and political divisions (East and... Read more
Key finding: The paper documents the significant yet overlooked contribution of Jewish scholars from Hamburg to Islamic and Oriental studies in early 20th-century Germany, emphasizing how academic education and institutional affiliations... Read more
Key finding: This study analyzes the brief flourishing of Turkish studies at Utrecht University in the late 20th century, shaped by the university's institutional openness and socio-political factors such as immigrant community presence... Read more
Key finding: This ongoing research project provides a pioneering history of Oriental Studies in Rome over the last two centuries, focusing on its academic contexts, key personalities, and manuscript collections. It reveals the entangled... Read more
Key finding: This article unveils the complex intellectual and personal relationship between two prominent Orientalists, highlighting ambivalences such as anti-Semitic attitudes coexisting with scholarly collaboration. It sheds light on... Read more

All papers in History of Oriental studies

Praca dotyczy wątków feministyczych w religii śaktyzmu. W tej religii, która jest odmianą hinduizmu, najwyższym bóstwem jest Bogini (Śakti). Jest to ewenement, gdyż w innych religiach najczęściej najwyższe bóstwo jest płci męskiej.... more
This essay intends to shed light on the historical evolution of Arab Studies in Greece from the establishment of its modern state in the 1830s until the present. More specifically, the major driving forces behind the Greek educational and... more
Il s'agit notamment de l'extension de la juridiction dans les territoires acquis par l'ÉIC à la suite de la convention de 1894 conclue avec la France et l'Angleterre. Contient entre autres : correspondance ; extraits de publications.... more
Strange things happen in Transsylvanien. Oder ist das nur unsere Projektion? Eine Reise in die transsylvanische Stadt Cluj-Napoca, wo sich eine offene und geschichtsbewusste Kulturszene gegen schaurige Sagen behauptet// Strange things... more
In An Eyewink, one of Vladimir Korolenko's early stories-first published in 1886, and republished after revision in 1900-the author transports the reader to a Spanish fort where, just before a ferocious storm, a fisherman arrives seeking... more
En 700 entrées rédigées par 115 spécialistes français et étrangers, ce dictionnaire fait découvrir au lecteur l’extraordinaire diversité géographique, temporelle, linguistique aussi bien que générique des littératures de l’Asie du Sud... more
The beginnings and the first volume of “Rocznik Orientalistyczny”. A contribution to the history of a journal “Rocznik Orientalistyczny” was founded in 1914 from the initiative of Jan Grzegorzewski. Invited to contribute to the... more
When I first came across the archival records of Oriental College Lahore, I was looking for administrative records and visuals of how the British understood linguistic groups in South Asia. Some of these documents can be found at the... more
The Babel-Bible-controversy, triggered by the lectures of German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch from 1902 onwards, stirred up considerable public attention then and has been intensively dealt with in secondary literature since. The... more
In his most famous autobiography and at the same time, his greatest report of the excavation of Troy, in the book “Ilion”, Heinrich Schliemann wrote: “I never forgot Troy”1. But is it true? Closely examining the autobiographical part of... more
How does a Christian denomination view a non-Christian religion? Can we identify certain specific features in its approach to this religion compared to other denominational traditions? And reciprocal, how do representatives of this... more
Sabine Schmidtke and Dror Weil: The numerous Jewish scholars who were born in Germany in the first two decades of the twentieth century, received a thorough Jewish education, and then turned to Islamic/Oriental studies represent the... more
У статті проаналізовані деякі науков твори, що були присвячені українському гетьману Кирилу Розумовському
In: Dietmar Goltschnigg (Hg.): Marianne Beth. Frauenrechtlerin, Friedensaktivistin und Universalgelehrte Texte und Kontexte, Analysen und Kommentare. Wien: Böhlau 2023, S. 87-98.
This article explores the first Western study of jihad by Dutch orientalist Adriaan Reland.
Partendo dallo studio di un Salmo ebraico che il giovane abate Amedeo Peyron (1785-1870), dedicò nel1806 a Ludovico di Breme (1780-1820) in occasione della ordinazione sacerdotale di quest'ultimo, ho cercato di ricostruire il contesto di... more
The present paper sheds new light on the provenance of the Chinese medical manuscripts collected by Paul Ulrich Unschuld. It introduces and analyses an unpublished acquisition notebook in which Unschuld recorded the date and place of... more
This article explores the entanglements of politics and knowledge in the travelogues of Andreas David Mordtmann (1811–1879), a well-known German Orientalist who explored large parts of Anatolia during several excursions in the 1850s. The... more
This work brought a new dimension of cultural diffusion in the mid-seventeenth-century Mughal Bengal, highlighting the growth of European settlement and the spread of Christianity. There has been an established notion in the history of... more
The article highlights the pioneering contributions of Dr. Dmitry D. Eliseev (1926–1994), a Korean manuscript scholar and senior researcher at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences from 1954 to 1992. As... more
The essay deals with Barthélemy’s stay in Italy in 1755–1758, his first impressions of direct acquaintance with the monuments of ancient Roman culture, his plans for future academic work. It also reveals his close and lifelong friendship... more
Тhe article is dedicated to the 65th anniversary of the remarkable Orientalist and teacher Sergei Georgievich Koshurnikov (1960–2002) who has trained many Russian Assyriologists and historians. It contains a biography of the scholar,... more
This study explores the representation of women in Hassani proverbs, a significant component of Sahrawi oral culture in Morocco. The power of language in its various forms and modes lies in its role in shaping and transmitting gendered... more
open access: . Rudolf Strothmanns Bedeutung weit über die deutsche Orientalistik hinaus fußt auf einem wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen Kuriosum, das er selbst in einem Brief an Cornelis van Arendonk 1922 so charakterisierte (Beginnings,... more
Capítulo do livro "Entre o presente e o futuro filosofia, arte e cidadania" (2025).
Syria is by no means one of the key symbols of the Middle East due to events such as the spiritual and physical rebirth of the Armenian people finding there a shelter from a brutal genocide, thus preserving their cultural identity, too.... more
A comprehensive study of the European reception of Iranian antiquities between 1660 and 1830, "Le quaranta colonne" combines a coherent diachronic narrative of reception with in-depth textual and visual analyses of descriptions of... more
A history of non-Muslim Qurʾān translation in Europe from the medieval period to the nineteenth century, as part of the collaborative entry "Translations of the Qurʾān" in the Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān Online.
Sapienza Università di Roma, Dipartimento Istituto Italiano di Studi Orientali, 29 maggio 2025. Muovendo dagli itinerari biografico-intellettuali di alcuni dei protagonisti degli studi orientali italiani dell’Otto-Novecento, il paper si... more
فهرس المحتويات المبتدأ ■ حضارة الغرب، وليد الحروب.. وقوّة إقصاء الآخر الشيخ حسن الهادي الملف ■ حملات الأباطرة الرومان إلى الشرق (تراجان، ماركوس أورليوس، سبتيميوس سيفيروس) أحمد حسين المشعل ■ الاحتلال الروماني لمصر والمغرب العربي... more
This volume presents the results of a long research project, which entailed a seminar and then a conference at Villa I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. Within an interdisciplinary framework that... more
This document presents the official description of the ACMD (Archivum Codicum Manuscriptorum Disiectorum), a protected codicological database created by Prof. Carla Rossi between 2000 and 2025. The ACMD documents over 500 cases of... more
Академик С.Ф. Ольденбург оставил глубокий след по многих отраслях востоковедения - в особенности в исследовании буддийского искусства Центральной Азии. В Санкт-Петербургском филиале Архива РАН в фонде С.Ф. Ольденбурга хранятся девять... more
Neste trabalho acompanhamos três viajantes brasileiros que estiveram no Japão na segunda metade do século XIX e, a partir de seus relatos, refletimos sobre os primeiros contatos entre estes países, antes da imigração oficial japonesa ao... more
Die Studienrichtung Biblische Archäologie gibt es in Europa als eigenständiges Fach nur an wenigen Universitäten. Im deutschsprachigen Raum wird es im Rahmen der Evangelischen Theologie, ganz spezifisch jedoch im Fachbereich Altes... more
Ludolf selbst hat ihn so deutlich ins Zentrum seiner Werke gerückt, dass darin neben einem überaus engen Freundschafts-und Vertrautenverhältnis erkennbar wird, dass Abba Gorgoryos zunächst vor allem Ludolfs gelehrter Lehrer war.3 Ein... more
In 1726 The Royal Library in Dresden acquired oriental manuscripts from the Polish nobleman Adam Derengowski. More than likely, Derengowski bought these books in Constantinople in 1712–1714 when he served as a secretary of the Polish... more
Работа посвящена деятельности следопытов в традиционном туркменском обществе. Их навыки нашли свое применение в поиске пропавших вещей,  скотины и заблудившихся людей.
This exhibition on the history of science focuses on the photographic discovery of the Orient from 1839 to the First World War. It explores the different expectations surrounding the new medium and its contribution to knowledge of the... more
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