Eastern Wisdom and Learning: The Study of Arabic in Seventeenth-Century England

ISBN-13: 9780198202912 / Angielski / Twarda / 1996 / 396 str.

G. J. Toomer

Opis

This book narrates the extraordinary growth in the study of Arabic in England from the late sixteenth century, when it was almost non-existe nt, to the end of the seventeenth. In this masterly and original study, Professor Toomer gives the first detailed account of this growth, se t against the religious and political background in England and Europe . He shows how trade with the Ottoman Empire and mistrust of Islam inf luenced the study of Arabic. Finally, he traces the course and causes of the drastic decline in Arabic studies towards the end of the centur y.

Recenzje

The author is to be congratulated on an extremely thoroughly researched, systematic and detailed account of Arabic studies in seventeenth-century England. The present work is based on a very wide range of printed primary and secondary sources, and on unpublished materials, hitherto largely unexplored, in the Bodleian and British Libraries and the Public Record Office.