Arabic served as the primary gateway language to the Orient for early European Orientalists.
Evidence
The two great themes of Silvestre de Sacy’s life are heroic effort and a dedicated sense of pedagogic and rational utility. Born in 1757 into a Jansenist family whose occupation was traditionally that of notaire, Antoine-Isaac-Silvestre was privately tutored at a Benedictine abbey, first in Arabic, Syriac, and Chaldean, then in Hebrew. Arabic in particular was the language that opened the Orient to him since it was in Arabic, according to Joseph Reinaud, that Oriental material, both sacred and profane, was then to be found in its oldest and most instructive form. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 335
Categorization
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 335
- XREF: connects to: The term Orient originally meant the Islamic world immediately east of Europe — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 2065; Islam was the default framework through which Europe first knew all of the Orient — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 197; Early Arabic study in Europe served Christian scripture and ritual — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2456 (+6 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The term Orient originally meant the Islamic world immediately east of Europe — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 2065; Islam was the default framework through which Europe first knew all of the Orient — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 197; Early Arabic study in Europe served Christian scripture and ritual — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2456 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Zoroastrian communities enabled European Orientalists to access ancient Iranian languages
#complicates(0.72) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 302