A marginal mad scholar nonetheless seeded the Orientalist tradition

Evidence

Despite his apparently marginal position as the crazy Cabalist with impractical plans for world peace, he maintained contacts with all the leading Orientalists and Oriental projects. Postel’s pupils included Raphelengius and Joseph Justus Scaliger (on both of whom more shortly). … The manuscripts he collected in the East were also important for future scholarly researches. In particular, a manuscript of the fourteenth-century Syrian prince Abu al-Fida’s geography was to be much studied, as it provided a lot of vital information for cartographers about eastern lands. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 131