Nineteenth-century Europeans relegated Arab glory to the past as superseded.

Evidence

Travelers and traders now paid ever less attention to the Ottoman rulers and understood the region in terms of its indigenous inhabitants, who were mostly Arab. This essentially Arabic Muslim world was no longer seen as a meaningful competitor by a West obsessed with progress; a West that conceived of history as a race of human races in which the Europeans were far ahead. Arab and Muslim glory were still recognised and admired, but were located firmly in the past. This world, much like the Old Testament, was seen as completely superseded by the civilization of the Christian West. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 187

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the Victorian treatment of Jews as a ‘living fossil’ people — the supersessionist logic applied to both groups.