Seventeenth-century European Orientalists pursued rigorous Arabic scholarship even in polemical works

Evidence

In the Arabic language, as also in others, there are certain peculiar colloquialisms, allusions, proverbs and apophthegms which none but Arabs born, and those the most learned and erudite, are able to explain; here in Rome it was not possible to find such.’ In fact, the translation is good, and a source for Sale’s own; and it is as agreeable stylistically as it is possible for a translation from Arabic into so different a language as Latin to be. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1694

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader study of how European scholars constructed the image of Islam — parallels Edward Said’s Orientalism and the history of translation studies. — connects to: Renaissance-era Arabic scholarship in Europe cast Islam more sympathetically than the Crusades had — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 108
• QUESTION: Maracci’s admission that only ‘Arabs born’ can explain Arabic idioms — when did European translators begin routinely partnering with native speakers rather than working alone?