Kenan Camurcu

In the West, which has made distancing itself from exclusionary, othering, intolerant, and dogmatic currents a principle of civilization, Said's "Orientalism" offered a hidden opportunity for refinement and concealment to the Muslim cunning that aims to maintain its own dogmatism through Islamophobia propaganda. It also provided an absurd self-confidence for legitimizing always being the victim and always being right.

The audacity in the demonstrations in Western capitals, which proclaim the conquest of those countries and the establishment of Sharia, carries the banner of Orientalism that Said articulated for the social sciences. The colonialism in the language of these protestors, who have no contribution whatsoever to humanity's accumulation of freedom, democracy, and political participation, are fences erected to protect the victimization narrative concerning the powerful West's dominance over the East. Even though colonialism is the purest truth of objective history, when it transforms into a consumer object for Islamist activism, it can cease to be a shameful past for the West.

Let's First Recall Said's Orientalism

According to dictionaries, colonialism derives from the word "colonia," meaning "settlement." That is, the transformation of a region into a settlement by colonizers, its colonization, and the initiation of life there. But what about those who were already settled there, the natives? The concept does not include them. It doesn't even assume their existence. Therefore, the process of forming a new community in new lands necessarily means re-forming the communities that were previously there. This can involve a comprehensive series of practices, including trade, negotiation, war, genocide, and enslavement.

The fact that this engineering is not observed in the invasion and occupation of other peoples' lands by Muslim conquerors stems from their sole interest in tribute to finance their own socio-political regimes. When a frenzy of conversion to Islam began during the Umayyad caliphs' era to escape the jizya tax imposed on non-Muslims, it was decided that the new Muslims would continue to pay jizya. For example, during the caliphate of Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (724-743), when the governor of Khurasan, Ashras ibn ʿAbd Allāh, promised to abolish the jizya tax for new Muslims, he was forced to continue the old practice due to a peasant rebellion, understanding that his revenues would decrease (Ibn al-Athīr, 1966: 5/147-148). In other words, finding absolute evil in Western Orientalism and extracting stories of goodness, tolerance, and mercy from the conditions of Muslim states and societies is overly romantic. Muslim societies always had an excess capacity that eliminated the need to impose autocratic rule. They still do.

Said's mistake was limiting colonialism to that of Westerners towards the East, particularly the conquests of Muslimness. Furthermore, Muslims define divine right for their own invasions and even now are sharpening their teeth, grinding them, and declaring their intentions through various terrorist acts to conquer the West. If Muslims did not bring scientists like Napoleon to the places they conquered and did not engage in the work of definition, this does not exclude their actions from the type of activity in Orientalism theory. This is due to a lack of effort, endeavor, and zeal to allocate time for long-term imperial plans in a neuro-political network preoccupied with rapidly increasing personal welfare.

In an interview, Edward Said pointed out that Napoleon's arrival in Egypt in 1798 was the first modern imperial expedition and a turning point. Napoleon occupied that region, but his occupation was not like the Spaniards' occupation of the New World for plunder. Alongside his enormous army of soldiers, he also brought scientists, botanists, architects, linguists, biologists, and historians. Their task was to record Egypt in every aspect. Of course, not for the Egyptians. They would conduct scientific investigations designed for Europeans. Thus, the work of defining the East, namely Orientalism, began.

Timeless Depiction of the East

If someone living in Paris or London in the 1850s or 1860s wanted to learn about India, Egypt, or Syria, they had very little chance of approaching these countries with a free mind. This was because many works had been written previously, and this was an organized writing activity. One could even call it organized science. Said would call this systematic approach 'Orientalism.'

In this accumulation, there is a constantly emerging archive of images. For example, the emotional woman who is only useful for being used by a man. The mysterious East, full of secrets and monsters. The phrase "wonders of the Orient" is the most known cliché of the period. Orientalism is a political literature woven from narratives, all of which are repetitions of each other.

Said gives the example of the French poet Gérard de Nerval. What this man read in his book about his journey to Syria, after setting off on a trip to the 'Orient,' felt very familiar to him. Then he realized that Nerval had merely repeated what Edward W. Lane had said in his book about the Egyptians. Because in the eyes of the Westerner, the East is always the same, no matter where it is. Whether India, Syria, or Egypt. According to them, all societies in the East contain the same material.

Thus, a timeless depiction of the East develops. As if the East, unlike the West, does not develop but always remains the same. According to Said, this is one of the problems of Orientalism. It creates an image of the East that is outside of history, static, motionless, and eternal. But it is certain that this hypothesis contradicts historical facts. In fact, Europe creates an ideal 'other' for itself.

The part that concerns Edward Said is not the East-West relations. It is the deep internal harmony of Orientalism and its ideas about the East. Thus, our subject, to a much greater extent than prolonged scientific discussions, becomes the power struggles of European and Atlantic powers over the East.

Here, Gramsci's distinction between "civil society" and "political society" appears quite useful to Said. The first is an intelligent and non-coercive togetherness. The other can survive with its army, police, and bureaucratic system. Its role being politics, it is directly concerned with establishing superiority. Orientalist writing is precisely concerned with this superiority and its preservation.

A Life Story That Experienced Orientalism

Edward W. Said was born in 1935 in Jerusalem to a Christian family. His family migrated from Palestine after the establishment of the State of Israel and settled in Egypt. However, it is stated that Said made a slight alteration regarding his biography here. His family never owned a house in Jerusalem (Madīnat al-Quds). Even if he was born there, he grew up in Cairo (Keyes, 2021: 144).

He began his pre-university education at Victoria College, Cairo. Victoria College was founded to educate Arabs and Levantines belonging to the governing class who would take over the administration after the British left the country. When he had to leave this school in 1951, he completed his education at Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, USA. He earned his bachelor's degree at Princeton University and his master's and doctorate at Harvard. In 1974, he was a visiting lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard.

Said taught English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University until his death in 2003.

Said's life journey can be considered a full experience of Orientalism. Born into a Christian Arab family, educated in Western schools that taught in English, and his participation and continuation in academic life in the USA. Because of all these characteristics, he states that he could see himself as neither fully Arab nor fully Western. In his own words, he was always somewhere "between worlds." In his autobiography, he called this situation "unhoused."

His description in his essay titled "Between Worlds" is as follows: Both his mother and father were Palestinian. His mother was from Nazareth, and his father was from Jerusalem. His father had US citizenship, which he acquired while serving in the American Expeditionary Forces in France during the First World War. His father left Palestine, then an Ottoman province, in 1911 at the age of 16 to avoid conscription due to the war in Bulgaria. He went to the US, studied and worked there for a few years, and then returned to Palestine in 1919 with his cousin to establish a business.

"Ottoman Province Palestine," But Where Is "Palestine the Country/State"?

The designation "Ottoman province Palestine" in Said's swift narration is important because it has consequences. For example, a very important consequence is that there was never a state or country named Palestine in Judea, which was renamed "Palestine" as a punishment for the Jews by the Roman Empire due to their freedom uprisings. However, in the "Palestine industry," the main theme is the narrative that the country of Palestine was occupied by Israel. In this case, what happens when the Ottomans seize Judea and Samaria and Gaza? Is Yavuz Sultan Selim's conquest expedition into the Muslim East, entering through Syria and exiting through Egypt and Gaza, included in colonialism? Would appointing governors loyal to the center in these countries constitute Orientalism? If not, what is the Palestinians' freedom uprising against the Ottomans during the First World War? The "Palestinian flag" was the symbol of this uprising, wasn't it?

What about Yavuz Sultan Selim's invasion of Gaza by war (1516) and the Mamluk army losing 5,000 men while taking the city of 6,000 inhabitants? (The Judean article) It's not hard to imagine that many people died in Gaza during this war. If Netanyahu's operation in response to Hamas's October 7 attack, which killed 23,000 civilians in Gaza (1% of the population, as 30,000 of 53,000 casualties were armed combatants), is considered "genocide," then what about Yavuz Selim's massacre and slaughter?

Those who participate in the Palestine industry with various motivations and repeat certain clichés do not like such questioning.

Both Edward and Said

With the unexpected given name (Edward) preceding a clearly Arabic surname (Said), he was an uncomfortably unconventional student throughout his childhood. Born in 1935, his mother greatly admired the Prince of Wales, from whom the name Edward came. He was a Palestinian student in Egypt, with an English given name, an American passport, and no definitive identity. Even worse, his native language, Arabic, and his school language, English, were inseparably intertwined. He says he never knew which was his first language. He states, "Although I dreamt in both, I never truly felt at home in either."

Edward Said is difficult to define by any single affiliation. For instance, he criticized Yasser Arafat, warning him not to contaminate the Palestinian issue with personal leadership ambitions. He accused Arafat's policies of narrow-mindedness. In return, Arafat prohibited his books from being brought into the areas he controlled. Simultaneously, some of Said's books were also banned in certain Arab countries.

Said was a good pianist. While the Israeli government referred to him as a "terrorist intellectual," he was giving concerts with his Jewish musician friend Daniel Barenboim. The East-West Divan Orchestra they founded continues its activities, honoring Said's memory. The orchestra members consist of 110 musicians aged 14-25 from 17 different countries, including Netherlands, Spain, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, and Jordan.

The Story of Orientalist Writing

Edward Said attributes his interest in Orientalism to two reasons. The first is the Arab-Israeli War of 1973.

He states that before the war, Western media contained many images and discussions portraying Arabs as cowardly, incapable of fighting, and destined to always lose because they were not modern. However, when the Egyptian army crossed the canal at the beginning of October 1973 and demonstrated that it could fight like other armies, everyone was surprised, and this had an immediate stimulating effect on him.

The second reason is the constant incompatibility he observed between his own experience as an Arab and its reflection in Western art. He says, "I am talking about very good artists like Delacroix and Gérôme, or novelists writing about the East like Disraeli and Flaubert." He saw that these representations about the East had almost no connection to what he knew about his own past. Thus, he decided to write the history of Orientalism.

But let's not forget, Said does not begin his analysis of Orientalism from scratch. He did not take the Arab-Israeli wars, which began with the Arab states' attacks in 1948, 1967, and 1973, as his subject and problem. He always focused on what came after. If we broaden the expression a little, he knows well that he cannot construct a theory of Orientalism without excluding Muslims' attacks and wars against Israel and the West.

The Thought Scheme of Orientalism

Edward Said published Orientalism, considered a "paradigm-setting work," in 1978. In the book, he examined a writing tradition rooted deeply in the cultural, political, and economic interests of Europe connected to the East.

The book primarily assesses the Orientalism of the 19th-century colonial era, mainly focusing on French and British Orientalism. For this reason, he did not include the Orientalist studies of Germany, which lagged behind in colonial relations. His reference to Orientalist studies in the US, which inherited the legacy of the British and French empires after the Second World War, is quite superficial.

Said's book was neither the first to address Orientalism nor the first to criticize it. However, with the help of Foucault's concepts, Said emphasized the political, rather than objective, nature of knowledge. What he tried to do in the book was to show the connection between Orientalist studies in England, France, and later the US, and the imperialist interests these countries pursued in the Middle East. He assesses this tradition as "an exercise of cultural power" activated by Europe's much broader structures of power and dominance.

In the first chapter of his work, Edward Said explains how Orientalism operates. He lists examples of how European imperialist politicians benefited from Orientalist discourse. He demonstrates how they fortified themselves with Orientalism. In short, he shows what Orientalism meant for politics.

In the second chapter, he addresses the early phases of what he calls "contemporary Orientalism," which began in the second half of the 18th century and continued into the 19th century. He examines the development and institutions of Orientalism on the ground of political history up to the 1880s.

Another thing he wanted to achieve in this chapter was to show how the modern professional terminology that dominated the discourse about the East in the 19th century was produced. This terminology controls everyone who wants to talk about the East, whether Orientalist or not.

According to Said, from the mid-19th century onwards, the Western world embarked on an activity of reshaping and changing the East. Subsequently, Orientalism was able to demonstrate its ability to adapt to new conditions. According to him, a new type of Orientalist would now appear on the scene: imperial agent Orientalists.

In the final section of his work, Edward Said discusses how the Orientalist legacy transferred to the 20th century transformed into a system that continuously reproduced itself within formal patterns of Orientalist discourse.

Intellectual Sources of Orientalism

In evaluations written about Said and his Orientalism, it is particularly noted that Foucault's concepts of discourse and Gramsci's concept of hegemony played an important role in his critical perspective. It is pointed out that Said moved from a hermeneutic and critical historical understanding towards a more radical social-political critique.

Said resorted to Gramsci's concept of hegemony while forming the methodological background of Orientalism. But besides this, he also drew parallels between the thesis that writers are products of their histories and the determinism of texts.

The emphasis on discursivity in Foucault guided Said in understanding the process of the West's dominance over the East within the axis of the knowledge/power relationship. Without his views on topics such as discourse, text, interpretation, discussions of meaning, and the functions of criticism and the intellectual, Said's analyses cannot be understood.

The support he received from Chomsky was strategic, because Chomsky, while researching the source of money allocated by the American government for weapons research during the Vietnam War, exposed the material relationship between this war and objective science. From Raymond Williams, he took the idea that hegemony is persistent and continuous. For even under heavy pressure, writers and intellectuals continued their production.

Orientalism Cocktail

According to Said, the differences between various types of Orientalism are, in fact, different experiences regarding what is called the East.

The difference between England and France and the United States is that England and France once had colonies in the East. That is, the British had long-term relationships and imperial roles in India. Therefore, they accumulated an archive consisting of genuine experiences, such as governing India for several centuries. The same applies to the French, who were in North Africa. For example, they had direct colonial experiences in Algeria and the Indochina region.

Said believes that for Americans, this experience was more indirect. Because there was never a colonial-style American occupation in the Near East. Therefore, the difference between British and French Orientalism and American Orientalism is that the American experience of the East is indirect and based on abstractions.

The second important factor distinguishing the American experience from British and French Orientalism is related to America's most important ally, Israel's, presence in the Middle East. According to him, Israel's presence in the Middle East politicized American Orientalism. That's why for Said, the only problem shown is that Israel's security is threatened by suicide bombers. "But," says Said, "nothing is said about the hundreds of thousands, even millions of Palestinians who live in misery, whose property and homes have been confiscated as a direct result of Israel's actions."

Naturally, Said was frequently asked if he condoned or justified the suicide attacks targeting innocent people in Israel when he spoke this way. Each time, he rejected the accusations and condemned the terrorist attacks. However, when Said compared the Israelis killed in Palestinian suicide attacks with the Palestinians whose homes Israel confiscated, the accusations leveled against Said cannot be deemed unfair.

And there are the "hundreds of thousands," "millions" exaggerations that the Palestine industry never gives up. Are there really hundreds of thousands, millions of Palestinians whose homes have been confiscated? The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that approximately 20,000 homes were demolished between 2009 and 2024 under various accusations. The majority of these accusations involved involvement in attacks against Israeli security forces. Homes demolished for illegal construction are also included in this figure. In all cases, Israel has been accused of violating the Geneva Conventions and human rights. Some demolitions have been brought before Israeli courts. There are cases that resulted in favor of the Palestinians. In fact, the Israeli Supreme Court deemed the demolition of an activist's home in an attack that resulted in the death of an Israeli soldier disproportionate punishment and overturned the decision (Washington Post article). Such precedent examples and rulings are not few at all. It does not seem possible to compare Israel's rule-of-law democracy with Hamas's exhibitionist form of governance in Gaza, where bodies are dragged through the streets.

Is the Image of Iran Merely Orientalism?

Said has other examples at hand regarding Orientalism. For example, Iran. According to him, what was reflected in the media after the Iranian Revolution was a complete arsenal of images: large masses of people shaking their fists, black banners, the stern-faced Khomeini, etc. Thus, the impression you got about Islam was that Islam was more terrifying and mysterious than all terrible things. As if the main duty of Muslims was to threaten and kill Americans.

Well, isn't that already the case? Haven't Muslims been doing such things for decades? And boasting after every action. Despite this, when it's said "making Islam seem terrifying," it's just a provocative slogan.

Documentaries like "Jihad in America," which covered the bombing of the World Trade Center, created an even more terrifying portrait of Islam according to Said. Islam and its teachings were now synonymous with the word terror. Due to the demonization of Islam, there was almost no difference left between 'religiosity' and 'violence'. But, for example, similar generalizations were never made about the person who carried out the Oklahoma City bombing, stating he was a "Christian fundamentalist."

Edward Said describes what happened after the Oklahoma bombing in April 1995: "One of the eager live commentators said something about it looking like a Middle Eastern style bombing and that some dark-skinned people were seen around immediately after the incident. They didn't for a moment think that this event was carried out by a young man named McVeigh, who grew up there, looked entirely American, with an Ahab rage against the world."

The Ahab in Said's metaphor is the 7th king of Israel who reigned in the 8th century BCE. The perpetrator, McVeigh, was also an Evangelical, known as Christian Zionists. It's true that the intellectual mentors of the Bush administration, which started wars in the Middle East beginning in 2001, were Christian and Jewish sympathizers of this sect. But wait a minute, are countless, diverse, and deadly terrorist attacks by Islamists being compared to this single act? Is there not both a methodological error and a moral flaw here?

Said certainly knows the reason why religious generalizations were not drawn from Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma bombing. It's because Christians didn't organize festivals in the streets, hand out halva, or swear to do more after this act, similar to the mass celebrations held in Gaza and the West Bank after every deadly attack on Israel. Despite this, doesn't the level of Americans calling this singular, exceptional, isolated act "domestic terror" carry meaning? Especially when Muslims don't even refer to the continuous and numerous attacks by their own as terrorist acts.

Orientalism's Theses

1. In Said's theory, Orientalism essentially tells us this:

i) What is called Eastern collective identity was constructed by Western understandings and representations of the Orient. ii) Orientalism is a public image-making machine that produces statements about the Orient.

[Şerif Mardin similarly analyzes the West's "Alla Turca" behavioral pattern in his article "Power, Civil Society and Culture in the Ottoman Empire": the West becoming sensitive to the perceived chasm between the Ottoman system and its own, and constructing a synthetic model of Ottoman Turkish culture. However, Mardin criticizes Said's overly liberal use of Foucault's discourse model, defined by power-knowledge relations, by taking it out of its context.]

2. Orientalism is not a European fabrication out of thin air. It is a significant package of doctrines and practices produced by several generations working together with long investments. Because of these ongoing investments, the East must pass through the filter of Orientalism as a knowledge system to hold a place in the Western consciousness.

3. Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient, whether in a specific or general sense, is an Orientalist, and what they do is Orientalism. Regardless of their profession. An anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or linguist.

[Bernard Lewis would object to this definition and ask, for instance, why such a definition is not made for those who study ancient Greece.]

4. Roughly taking the late 18th century as a starting point, Orientalism is the collective institution dealing with the Orient; that is, it makes judgments about the Orient, describes it, and provides its education.

5. The East is not an academic creation integrated with mystical, exotic, and savage representations. It is a conceptualization entirely unique, with a decisive power of its own.

6. A culture that considers itself superior and wishes to maintain this superiority (which Western culture is) cannot understand and evaluate another culture as its equal. Especially if this culture is nourished by the military and economic aims and institutions of colonialism. That is, if it is the dominant culture.

7. The East is an unreal world. It was produced by the Westerner and exists in the Western mindset; it is not real. This situation is not only true for Westerners. It is also true for the Easterner's own definition of the East or the Muslim's own definitions of Islam and Muslimness.

8. The structure of Orientalism is not composed of lies or fairy tales that would burst like a bubble when truths are told. Nor does the value of Orientalism come from being a truthful reasoning about the East. On the contrary, it is a sign of the power of European and Atlantic countries vis-à-vis the East.

9. Orientalism should be examined as a Western style used to dominate the East, restructure the East, and establish authority over the East. Its engagement with the East is to make determinations about the East, legitimize views concerning it, describe and teach it, settle there, and finally govern it.

10. It is not possible to analyze and criticize the history and literature of a single geographical region in isolation. Therefore, such an examination also entails examining the oppressive effects of colonial powers on the region's history and literature.

Is Said an Anti-Westerner?

Said's work was also read by many as "Western criticism" or "defense of the East/Islam." The fact that the author was Palestinian and his close involvement with the Palestinian issue certainly influenced this perception. However, Said always denied being anti-Western. He was actually against conceptualizations like "East" and "West."

Said's creation of a discourse analysis by bringing together very different modes of thought had a devastating effect on Western representations of the East. This effect forced a change in the direction of Orientalist studies. So much so that experts now prefer the name "Eastern studies" instead of Orientalism. The reason for this is that the concept of Orientalism is both vague and very general, and it evokes the 'condescending' managerial attitude of European colonialism in the early 19th and 20th centuries. However, even if different names are preferred in nomenclature, Orientalism continues its existence in academia with its theses about the East and things belonging to the East.

Edward Said's work entitled Orientalism became the focal point of an intense debate in the field of cultural studies after its publication. Objections to Said and his work arose from very different concerns, both from the Western and Eastern worlds. Criticisms were directed by Aijaz Ahmad, Bernard Lewis, Sadiq Jalal al-ʿAzm, Albert Hourani, James Clifford, John McKenzie, David Kopf, Leonard Binder, Fred Halliday, and many other intellectuals.

Among these criticisms is the assessment that non-Western societies attribute the responsibility for their own tyranny, backwardness, shortcomings, flaws, laziness, and crimes to colonialism.

The question of what Said adopted as a correct representation of the East was also asked. According to this criticism, Said was actually pushing for the exact same position as the discourse he criticized.

The historian İlber Ortaylı, in his criticism of Said (Son İmparatorluk Osmanlı, 2006), agrees with Bernard Lewis, Said's harshest critic. Lewis had called Said's Orientalism thesis "utter nonsense" (Moment Magazine article). Based on this discussion, Ortaylı explained Said's Orientalism analysis as an "indecent jockeying for position" between Palestinians and Jews in America. Criticisms were also written accusing Ortaylı and Lewis that this attribution could not be considered criticism.

The theory based on colonial discourse analysis began to be known as postcolonial studies from the early 1990s. However, although it served as a source for postcolonialism discussions, Said never wanted to be referred to as a postcolonialist. He was indifferent to the phenomenon of an entirely new discipline being founded on his work. He even occasionally criticized postcolonialists like Homi Bhabha.

Said's Orientalism critique brought to light a tremendous colonial literature and its background. According to studies on the subject, Said's critical readings of Joseph Conrad, Jane Austen, Rudyard Kipling, and Yeats played a significant role in this.

Said's influence not only led to the emergence of critical branches of Orientalism. He also maintained his importance through his contribution to the social sciences. Therefore, it would be appropriate to examine Edward Said's contribution to the social sciences from a very broad perspective, including ethnicity, culture, identity, exile, and colony.

But blaming the West is the easiest thing to do. Anyone with a bit of conscience and curiosity about the truth cannot deny that the largest share of the blame for the world reaching this point falls on Muslimness. While Islamist militants in Nigeria and Sudan raid Christian villages and mercilessly kill dozens of children, women, and elderly, not even a faint condemnation is heard from Muslim societies. There's no need to go back far; in 2024 alone, Boko Haram, ISIS-Africa, and Fulani militants killed 5,000 Christians. In Congo, nearly 700; in Burkina Faso, 1,500. If the war in Gaza is genocide, what is the situation of thousands of people killed simply because they are Christian?

If Westerners have Orientalism, Muslims also have Occidentalism. Anti-Westernism is everything in the Muslim mind. They always cover up their inadequacy, incompetence, failure, and incapability with anti-Westernism.

If Orientalism is bad, is Occidentalism good?

Translated by Gemini

References

• Akbaş, Beyaz Arif. (2014). Postcolonialism Essays (Postkolonyalizm Denemeleri), YGY (Translated from R. Radhakrishnan's "A Said Dictionary").
• Akınhay, Osman. (2007/2). Mesele Kitap Dergisi. Issue: 9, September, pp: 47-50.
• Arlı, Alim. (2003). “Between Worlds: The Legacy of Edward W. Said” (“Dünyalar arasında: Edward W. Said’in mirası”), Divan İlmî Araştırmalar, no. 15, pp. 169-189. Available online.
• Aynī, Abu Muhammad Badr al-Dīn. (d. 1451). (2001). Umdat al-Qārī Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya.
• Belazurī, Ahmed Yahya. (d. 892). (1959). Ansāb al-Ashrāf. Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif.
• Bukhārī, Muhammad ibn Ismāʿīl. (d. 870). (2002). Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī. Dār Ibn Kathīr, Beirut.
• Bulut, Yücel. “Regarding Edward W. Said and Orientalism” (“Edward W. Said'e ve Oryantalizm'e dair”). Available online.
• Cevherī, Abu Nasr Ismāʿīl ibn Hammād. (d. 1007). (2009). Ṣiḥāḥ, Tāj al-Lugha wa Ṣiḥāḥ al-ʿArabiyya. Cairo: Dār al-Hadīth.
• Dehekī, Ali Gulamī. (2001). “Wars of Apostasy and the Crisis of Succession After the Prophet” (“Cenghâ-yi İrtidad ve Buhran-i Caneşinî pes ez Peyamber”), Maʿrifat, Issue 40, Tehran Shamsi, pp. 34-42. Available online.
• Abu Dawud, Sulaymān ibn Ashʿath. (d. 889). (1997). Sunan Abī Dāwūd. Dār Ibn Hazm, Beirut.
• Haykal, Muhammad Husayn. (d. 1956). (1942). al-Ṣiddīq Abū Bakr. Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif.
• Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr. (d. 1071). (2010). al-Tamhīd li-mā fī al-Muwaṭṭaʾ min al-Maʿānī wa al-Asānīd. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya.
• Ibn ʿAsākir. (d. 1176). (1995). Tārīkh Madīnat Dimashq. Beirut: Dār al-Fikr.
• Ibn Abī Shayba. (d. 849). (2006). Musannaf. Jeddah: Dār al-Qibla li-s-Thaqāfa al-Islāmiyya.
• Ibn al-Athīr. (d. 1233). (1966). al-Kāmil fī al-Tārīkh. Beirut: Dār Ṣādir.
• Ibn Khuzayma, Muhammad ibn Isḥāq. (d. 923). (1992). Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Khuzayma. Riyadh: al-Maktaba al-Islāmī.
• Ibn Khuzayma. (d. 924). (1980). Beirut: Kutub al-Islāmī.
• Ibn Isḥāq. (d. 768). (2004). al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya.
• Ibn Kathīr, Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUmar. (d. 1373). (1978). al-Bidāya wa al-Nihāya. Beirut: Dār al-Fikr.
• Jhally, Sut. (2016). “On Orientalism with Edward Said” (“Edward Said ile Oryantalizm'e Dair”), Trans. Adem Köroğlu, Necmettin Erbakan University Journal of Divinity Faculty, 41, pp. 167-178. Available online.
• Keyes, Ralph. (2021). The Post-Truth Era. Tudem.
• Kulaynī, Muhammad ibn Yaʿqūb. (d. 941). (1988). al-Kāfī. Tehran: Dār al-Kutub al-Islāmiyya.
• Parla, Jale. (1985). Mastery, Orientalism and Slavery (Efendilik, Şarkiyatçılık ve Kölelik), İletişim Yayınları.
• Said, Edward W. (1998). Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (Oryantalizm (Doğu Bilim) - Sömürgeciliğin Keşif Kolu). İrfan Yayınevi.
• Ṭabarī, Muhammad ibn Jarīr. (d. 923). (2011). Tārīkh al-Umam wa al-Mulūk. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya.
• Ṭawūs al-Ḥusaynī, ʿAlī ibn Mūsā. (d. 1266). (1979). al-Ṭarāʾif fī Maʿrifat Madhāhib al-Ṭawāʾif. Qom: Maṭbaʿat al-Khayyām.
• Tirmidhī, Abu ʿĪsā Muhammad. (d. 892). (2000). Ṣaḥīḥ Sunan al-Tirmidhī. Maktabat al-Maʿārif, Riyadh.
• Turanlı, Gül. (2017-1). “Edward Said's Orientalist Discourse Analysis” (“Edward Said'in Oryantalist Söylem Analizi”), Journal of Oriental Studies, Issue 30, pp. 101-119. Available online.
• Wāqidī, Muhammad ibn ʿUmar. (d. 823). (1990). Kitāb al-Ridda, 176-177, Beirut: Dār Gharb al-Islāmī.