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Oriental studies is the academic field that studies and societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology. In recent years, the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Middle Eastern studies and Asian studies. Traditional Oriental studies in Europe is today generally focused on the discipline of Islamic studies; the study of China, especially traditional China, is often called Sinology. The study of East Asia in general, especially in the United States, is often called East Asian studies.
The European study of the region formerly known as "the Orient" had primarily religious origins, which have remained an important motivation until recent times. That is partly since the Abrahamic religions in Europe (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) originated in the Middle East and because of the rise of Islam in the 7th century. Consequently, there was much interest in the origin of those faiths and of Western culture in general. Learning from medieval Arabic medicine and philosophy and the Greek language translations to Arabic was an important factor in the Middle Ages. Linguistic knowledge preceded a wider study of cultures and history, and as Europe began to expand its influence in the region, political, and economic factors, that encouraged growth in its academic study. In the late 18th century, archaeology became a link from the discipline to a wide European public, as artefacts brought back through a variety of means went on display in museums throughout Europe.
Modern Oriental studies was influenced by imperialism attitudes and interests as well as by the fascination of Mediterranean and European writers and thinkers for the "exotic East". Captured in images by artists, this was embodied in a repeatedly surfacing theme in the history of ideas in the West called "Orientalism." Since the 20th century, scholars from the region itself have participated on equal terms in the discipline.
Scholarly work was initially largely linguistic in nature, with primarily a religious focus on understanding both Biblical Hebrew and languages like Syriac language with early Christian literature, but there was also a wish to understand Arabic works on Islamic medicine, philosophy, and Islamic science. That effort, also called the Studia Linguarum, existed sporadically throughout the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance of the 12th century witnessed a particular growth in translations of Arabic and Greek texts into Latin, with figures like Constantine the African, who translated 37 books, mostly medical texts, from Arabic to Latin, and Herman of Carinthia, one of the translators of the Qur'an. The earliest translation of the Qur'an into Latin was completed in 1143, but little use was made of it until it was printed in 1543. It was later translated into other European languages. Gerard of Cremona and others based themselves in Andalusia to take advantage of its Arabic libraries and scholars. However, as the Christian Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula began to accelerate in the 11th century, such contacts became rarer in Spain. Chairs of Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic were briefly established at Oxford and in four other universities after the Council of Vienne (1312). Hebrew to Latin, Latin to Hebrew: the mirroring of two cultures 2006, p. 75 Giulio Busi, Freie Universität Berlin. Institut für Judaistik - 2006 "According to the famous decision of the council of Vienne (1311–1312), Oxford was chosen as one of four universities (with Paris, Bologna and Salamanca) in which Hebrew, Arabic, Greek and Aramaic were to be taught."
There was a vague but increasing knowledge of the complex civilisations of China and of India from which luxury goods (notably cotton and silk textiles as well as ceramics) were imported. Although the Crusades produced relatively little in the way of scholarly interchange, the eruption of the Mongol Empire had strategic implications for the Crusader kingdoms and for Europe itself, which led to extended diplomatic contacts. During the Age of Exploration, European interest in mapping Asia, especially the sea routes, became intense, but most was pursued outside the universities.
During the 18th century, Western scholars reached a reasonable basic level of understanding of the geography and most of the history of the region, but knowledge of the areas least accessible to Western travelers, like Japan and Tibet, and their languages remained limited. The Enlightenment thinkers characterized aspects of the pagan East as superior to the Christian West in Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes and Voltaire's ironic promotion of Zoroastrianism. Others, like Edward Gibbon, praised the relative religious tolerance of the Middle East over what they considered the intolerant Christian West. Many, including Diderot and Voltaire, praised the high social status of scholarship in Mandarin China.
The Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale" (English: University of Naples "L'Orientale"), founded in Naples in 1732, is the oldest school of Sinology and Oriental Studies of Continental Europe.
The late 18th century saw the start of a great increase in the study of the archaeology of the period, which was to be an ever-more important aspect of the field in the next century. Egyptology led the way and, as with many other ancient cultures, provide linguists with new material for decipherment and study.
During the course of the century, Western archeology spread across the Middle East and Asia, with spectacular results. In the 1850s, for example, the French government was determined to mount large-scale operations in Assyria and Mesopotamia to showcase its dominance in the region. An archaeological team, led by Victor Place, excavated the palace of the Assyrian King Sargon II in Dur-Sharrukin (formerly Nineveh), which was the first systematic excavation of the site.Potts, D.T. (ed), A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Volume 1, John Wiley & Sons, 2012, p. 51-52; Pouillon, F., Dictionnaire des Orientalistes de Langue Française, KARTHALA, 2008, p. 924 The expedition resulted in a pioneering publication, Ninevah and Assyria, which jointly authored by Victor Place and Felix Thomas and was published around 1867.Maisels, C.K., The Near East: Archaeology in the Cradle of Civilization, Routledge, 2005, pp 40-41; Tanner, J.P., "Ancient Babylon: From Gradual Demise to Archaeological Rediscovery," Near East Archaeological Society Bulletin, Vol. 47 ,2002, pp 11-20; Library notes on Ninive et L'Assyrie, Consul General Avec Des Essais De Restauration,
Pouillon, F., Dictionnaire des Orientalistes de Langue Française, KARTHALA, 2008, p. 924 New national museums provided a setting for important archaeological finds, most of which were then bought back to Europe, and they put Orientalists in the public spotlight as never before.
The first serious European studies of Buddhism and Hinduism were by the scholars Eugene Burnouf and Max Müller. The academic study of Islam also developed, and by the mid-19th century, Oriental studies had become a well-established academic discipline in most European countries, especially those with imperial interests in the region. Although scholastic study expanded, so did racist attitudes and stereotypes of Asian peoples and cultures, however, which frequently extended to local Jewish and Romani communities since they were also of Oriental origin and widely recognized as such. Scholarship often was intertwined with prejudicial racist and religious presumptionsJ. Go, "'Racism' and Colonialism: Meanings of Difference and Ruling Practice in America's Pacific Empire" in ''Qualitative Sociology' 27.1 (March 2004). to which the new biology tended to contribute until the end of the Second World War.
Symbolic of that type of response to the end of the Cold War was the popularization of the clash of civilizations thesis. That particular idea of a fundamental conflict between East and West was first advanced by Bernard Lewis in his article "The Roots of Muslim Rage", which was written in 1990. Again, that was seen as a way of accounting for new forms and lines of division in international society after the Cold War. The clash of civilizations approach involved another characteristic of Orientalist thought: the tendency to see the region as being one homogenous civilization, rather than as comprising various different and diverse cultures and strands. It was an idea that was taken on more famously by Samuel P. Huntington in his 1993 article in Foreign Affairs, "The Clash of Civilizations?"Zachary Lockman, p. 233.
In most and universities, the field of Oriental studies has now been replaced by that of Asian studies. In many cases, the field has been localised to specific regions, such as Middle Eastern or studies, South Asian studies, and Studies. That reflects the fact that the Orient is not a single monolithic region but rather a broad area, encompassing multiple civilizations. The generic concept of Oriental studies has to its opponents lost any use that it may have once had and is perceived as obstructing changes in departmental structures to reflect actual patterns of modern scholarship. In many universities, like the University of Chicago, the faculties and institutions have been divided. The Biblical languages may be linked with theological institutes, and the study of ancient civilizations in the region may come under a different faculty from that of the studies of modern periods.
In 1970, the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the Australian National University was renamed the Faculty of Asian Studies. In 2007, the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Cambridge University was renamed the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and the University of Oxford followed suit in 2022, also renaming the former Faculty of Oriental Studies as the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. Elsewhere, names have remained the same, as in the Chicago, Rome, and the London (only now referred to only by the acronym "SOAS"), and in other universities.
Various explanations for the change to "Asian studies" are offered; a growing number of professional scholars and students of Asian Studies are themselves Asian or from groups of Asian origin (like ). This change of labeling may be correlated in some cases to the fact that sensitivity to the term "Oriental" has been heightened in a more politically correct atmosphere, although it began earlier: Bernard Lewis' own department at Princeton University was renamed a decade before Said wrote his book, a detail that Said gets wrong. By some, the term "Oriental" has come to be thought offensive to non-Westerners. Area studies that incorporate not only philological pursuits but identity politics may also account for the hesitation to use the term "Oriental".
Supporters of "Oriental Studies" counter that the term "Asian" is just as encompassing as "Oriental," and may well have originally had the same meaning, were it derived from an Akkadian word for "East" (a more common derivation is from one or both of two Anatolian proper names). Replacing one word with another is to confuse historically objectionable opinions about the East with the concept of "the East" itself. The terms Oriental/Eastern and Occidental/Western are both inclusive concepts that usefully identify large-scale cultural differences. Such general concepts do not preclude or deny more specific ones.
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