European learning was wholly Greco-Latin before Orientalist translation expanded its canon

Evidence

Before him, one looked for information on the remote past of our planet exclusively among the great Latin, Greek, Jewish, and Arabic writers. The Bible was regarded as a lonely rock, an aerolite. A universe in writing was available, but scarcely anyone seemed to suspect the immensity of those unknown lands. The realization began with his translation of the Avesta, and reached dizzying heights owing to the exploration in Central Asia of the languages that multiplied after Babel. Into our schools, up to that time limited to the narrow Greco-Latin heritage of the Renaissance [of which much had been transmitted to Europe by Islam], he interjected a vision of innumerable civilizations from ages past, of an infinity of literatures; moreover the few European provinces were not the only places to have left their mark in history. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 201

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the baseline ‘old humanism of the Mediterranean basin’ that Orientalist expansion corrected — a framing of Europe’s self-image the reader’s critical-theory toolkit needs.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 201