Said’s Orientalism omits the German and Austrian Orientalists whose absence undermines his thesis

Evidence

The collection of Orientalist authors Said chooses to dwell on can hardly be described as founders of discursivity, a fact that diminishes the truth-value of Said’s response to Hourani, namely, that he studied Orientalism as a “structure of attitudes.” It may have been a more legitimate claim of his had he given an expansive and textured treatment (in the manner he gave, for instance, Massignon) to the mostly German and Austrian Orientalists writing between the mid-nineteenth century and mid-twentieth, notably, figures like Ignaz Goldziher and Joseph Schacht, among others, whose absence from his work (especially in the case of Schacht and the entire field of “Islamic law”) not only is striking but also, as we will see in due course, bears tremendous significance for what Orientalism is and what it must mean. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 95

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what specifically did Schacht and the Islamic law field contribute that Said’s ‘structure of attitudes’ thesis could not accommodate?