European study of Arabic declined as hopes of finding scientific value in it faded
Evidence
Despite France’s predatory ambitions in the Middle East and Egypt, there were no major Arabists in France until the appearance of Silvestre de Sacy (on whom, see the next chapter). The decline of Orientalism in the eighteenth century was fairly pervasive throughout Europe. Not only did few patrons take an interest in this recondite branch of learning, but the public at large was somewhat suspicious of the study of Arabic and Islam, suspecting those who undertook such studies to be crypto-Muslims. Moreover hopes had faded since the seventeenth century of finding much of any scientific value in Arabic books (though exceptionally there was interest in Ulugh Beg’s astronomical tables in Persian). — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 228
Categorization
- SEED: An essay angle: how a field’s value collapses when its instrumental justification (salvageable science) is disproven — the eighteenth-century decline of Arabist enthusiasm as a case study in knowledge economics.