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

• Author: SALIBA, GEORGE
• Position: Review

Eastern Wisdome and Learning: The Study of Arabic in Seventeenth-Century England. By G. J. TOOMER. Oxford: CLARENDON PRESS, 1996. Pp. xiii + 381. $90.

In the last two years two books have appeared, both dealing with the study of Arabic in England during the seventeenth century. The first, The 'Arabick' Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England, edited by G. A. Russell (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1994), was reviewed in this journal by the present reviewer (JAOS 117 [1997]: 175-77), while the second is the subject of the current review.

The most distinguishing feature that sets these two books apart is that the first was a collection of articles by various authorities and, although they all dealt in one respect or another with the status of Arabic studies in England during the seventeenth century and explored in great depth some issues dealing with that subject, they still lacked the coherence of a continuous book. By their very nature they had to overlap in some areas and leave others uncovered. Toomer's book, by contrast, has the advantage of a single author and, in addition, has the erudition and meticulous scholarship that has always marked his work.

This book is composed of ten chapters set against a historical background that contextualizes the activities of the most distinguished of the English Arabists and the circumstances surrounding their scholarship. The introductory two chapters, which begin with an overview of the interest in Arabic studies in the whole of Europe, especially in the southern tier of that continent, discuss the motivation for such studies during the medieval period, and surveys the development of those studies during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries outside England: in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Chapter three, a pivotal chapter that lays the foundation for the rest of the book proper, begins by focusing on the early English Arabists of the sixteenth century, followed by short accounts of the lives of Bedwell (d. c. 1632), Selden (d. 1654), Bainbridge (d. 1643), John Viccars (d. c. 1660), and the Usshers (James [d. 1656] and his younger brother, Ambrose). Recital of the intricate details that led to the establishment of Arabic studies at Cambridge and Oxford in the early part of the seventeenth century concludes this chapter. In this early episode of Arabic studies in England--that is, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--it is interesting to note how...