Islamic travelers also pejoratively depicted other peoples, complicating any definition of Orientalism.

Evidence

Take, for instance, premodern Islamic travelogues and travel writings, ranging from those of Ibn Fadlan (tenth century) to Ibn Jubayr (d. 1217) and Ibn Battuta (d. 1369). Or for that matter consider such works as Biruni’s India (mid-eleventh century), or the Islamic or Chinese historical annals in which the Other is represented. Such works are replete with references and extensive discourses that portray other peoples, other cultures, and other religions in less than favorable, indeed often pejorative, terms. And since many of these happened to be speaking about peoples east of them, the question we face is this: Are these “Orientalist” writings? And whether the answer is affirmative or negative, there remains the necessity, in order to answer the question, of defining and understanding what Orientalism really is. Defining it in terms of misrepresentations will not do. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 122

Categorization

• QUESTION: If non-Western empires also produced misrepresentations of other peoples, does Orientalism survive as a category at all, or does it reduce to a general anthropology of Othering?
• XREF: Connects to Hallaq’s broader thesis that Orientalism cannot be defined by misrepresentation alone, and echoes critiques that Said’s framework is Eurocentric in scope.
• SEED: An essay comparing Ibn Battuta’s and Ibn Fadlan’s pejorative depiction of non-Muslim peoples with European orientalist portrayals, testing whether ‘misrepresentation’ is too thin a definition.