The Scope of Orientalism 65 “Discours” by assuring the reader at length that d'Herbelot’s Bibliothéque was uniquely “utile et agréable”;, other Orientalists, like Postel, Scaliger, Golius, Pockoke, and Erpenius, produced Orientalist studies that were too narrowly grammatical, lexicographical, geographical, or the like. Only d’Herbelot was able to write a work capable of convincing European readers that the study of Oriental culture was more than just thankless and fruitless: only d’Herbelot, according to Galland, attempted to form in the minds of his readers a sufficiently ample idea of what it meant to know and study the Orient, an idea that would both fill the mind and satisfy one’s great, previously conceived expectations.*’ In such efforts as d’Herbelot’s, Europe discovered its capacities for encompassing and Orientalizing the Orient. A certain sense of superiority appears here and there in what Galland had to say about about his and d’Herbelot’s materia orientalia, as in the work of seventeenth-century geographers like Raphael du Mans, Europeans could perceive that the Orient was being outstripped and outdated by Western science.** But what becomes evident is not only the advantage of a Western perspective: there is also the triumphant technique for taking the immense fecundity of the Orient and making it systematically, even alphabetically, knowable by Western laymen. When Galland said of d’Herbelot that he satisfied one’s expectations he meant, I think, that the Bibliothéque did not attempt to revise commonly received ideas about the Orient. For what the Orientalist does is to confirm the Orient in his readers’ eyes; he neither tries nor wants to unsettle already finn convictions. All the Bibliothéque orientale did was represent the Orient more fully and more clearly; what may have been a loose collection of randomly acquired facts concerning vaguely Levantine history, Biblical imagery, Islamic culture, place names, and so on were transfonned into a rational Oriental panorama, from A to Z. Under the entry for Mohammed, d’Herbelot first supplied all of the Prophet’s given names, then proceeded to confirm Mohammed’s ideological and doctrinal value as follows: C’est le fameux imposteur Mahomet, Auteur et Fondateur d’une hérésie, qui a pris le nom de religion, que nous appellons Mahometane. Voyez le titre d’Eslam. Les Interprétes de [’Alcoran et autres Docteurs de la Loy Musulmane ou Mahometane ont appliqué 2 ce faux prophéte tous les éloges, que les Ariens, Paulitiens ou Paulianistes & autres Hérétiques ont attribué 4 Jésus-Christ, en lui tant sa Divinité. . . .*°

66 ORIENTALISM (This is the famous imposter Mahomet, Author and Founder of a heresy, which has taken on the name of religion, which we call Mohammedan. See entry under /slam. The interpreters of the Alcoran and other Doctors of Mustim or Mohammedan Law have applied to this false prophet all the praises which the Arians, Paulicians or Paulianists, and other Heretics have attributed to Jesus Christ, whilé stripping him of his Divinity. . . .) “Mohammedan” is the relevant (and insulting) European designation; “Islam,” which happens to be the correct Muslim name, is relegated to another entry. The “heresy . . . which we call Mohammedan” is “caught” as the imitation of a Christian imitation of true religion. Then, in the long historical account of Mohammed’s life, d’Herbelot can turn to more or less straight narrative. But it is the placing of Mohammed that counts in the Bibliotheque. The dangers of free-wheeling heresy are removed when it is transformed into ideologically explicit matter for an alphabetical item. Mohammed no longer roams the Eastern world as a threatening, immoral debauchee; he sits quietly on his (admittedly prominent) portion of the Orientalist stage.** He is given a genealogy, an explanation, even a development, all of which are subsumed under the simple statements that prevent him from straying elsewhere. Such “images” of the Orient as this are images in that they represent or stand for a very large entity, otherwise impossibly diffuse, which they enable one to grasp or see. They are also characters, related to such types as the braggarts, misers, or gluttons produced by Theophrastus, La Bruyére, or Selden. Perhaps it is not exactly correct to say that one sees such characters as the miles gloriosus or Mahomet the imposter, since the discursive confinement of a character is supposed at best to let one apprehend a generic type without difficulty or ambiguity. D’Herbelot’s character of Mahomet is an image, however, because the false prophet is part of a general theatrical representation called orientale whose totality is contained in the Bibliothéque. The didactic quality of the Orientalist representation cannot be detached from the rest of the performance. In a learned work like the Bibliothéque orientale, which was the result of systematic study and research, the author imposes a disciplinary order upon the material he has worked on; in addition, he wants it made clear to the reader that what the printed page delivers is an ordered, disciplined judgment of the material. What is thus conveyed by the