The Spanish Orientalist Movement (a study in the history, tools, development and methodology of the cultural facts)

Abstract

This main objective of this paper is to investigate Spanish orientalistic movement. West European countries including Spain have played a crucial role in the universal orientalistic movement, although the Spanish Orientalistic movement has differed somehow from that of the Europeans. It is evident that Spanish Orientalism has had strong links to the Muslim orient and this is largely due to geographic proximity and historical\cultural relations between the two centers. Further, this paper discusses the onset of the Spanish orientalism, its tools and development and the methodology of three of the most famous Spanish orientalists, and deals only with three of the large number of orientalists , the work of some of them is not available. The study concludes that Andalusian Islamic thought has been a rich subject that attracted the attention of many scholars. Some of those orientalists were moderate, realistic and objective in their approach, however, others were biased, subjective and had a negative attitude towards the Islamic culture. The latter school has probably been influenced by mainly the church position and the overall Spanish attitude towards Muslims and Islam. Some works such as those of Francisco Codera, Miguel Asín Palacios and Ángel González Palencia were comprehensive, insightful and thorough.