The Orient as a topos derives from text and citation, not direct observation.

Evidence

In the system of knowledge about the Orient, the Orient is less a place than a topos, a set of references, a congeries of characteristics, that seems to have its origin in a quotation, or a fragment of a text, or a citation from someone’s work on the Orient, or some bit of previous imagining, or an amalgam of all these. Direct observation or circumstantial description of the Orient are the fictions presented by writing on the Orient, yet invariably these are totally secondary to systematic tasks of another sort. … What we shall see is that for all its eccentric individuality, this narrative consciousness will end up by being aware, like Bouvard and Pécuchet, that pilgrimage is after all a form of copying. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 449

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the Orient as topos rather than place — a foundational concept in Said’s toolkit that the reader can carry forward to Islamophobia readings.
• XREF: Connects directly to the reader’s scaffolding goal of understanding how representation constructs the ‘Other’; parallels the topos concept across literary theory.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 449