What is the first image that comes to mind when you think of the Middle East?  Dark men with beards and a harem full of beautiful women set in the middle of a bustling dusty town?  Camels laden with heavy packs travelling over sand dunes?  The reason why most Westerners affiliate the Middle East with the above visions is because it has been indoctrinated into Western culture for centuries.  These fantastical images pose a problem when Westerners believe them and travel to the Middle East in the hopes of lounging with half-naked women in a harem or travelling to the souk to see a slave auction.  These exaggerated beliefs about the Middle East are the result of the Orientalist discourse of the 16th to 20th centuries.

Orientalism is a term the late Columbia professor Edward Said gave to the racist and naïve Western discipline of Middle Eastern studies.  It encompasses the Western depiction of Eastern cultures in art, literature and foreign policy.  His famous book, Orientalism, spawned a new branch of the study and thus, inspired many writers to study and critique orientalism.  In Orientalism, Said criticizes the entire discipline of orientalism and places the blame on orientalist discourse for perpetuating the anti-Arab and anti-Islam sentiments still present in the West.

Images Of The Orient

Images of the Orient in the 18th and 19th centuries were exoticized and sexualized.  Painters and writers depicted the Orient as being a mysterious, strange and threatening land.  The Orient is seen as separate, eccentric, backward, sensual and passive.  Such books and paintings delighted Western Europeans’ fancies, but they had little interest in how Arabs actually lived and what they thought of the world.  Hidden within these images is the underlying shadow of British and French colonialism.  One should view these works of art in their political context.  Today, these paintings still affect how Westerners view the Middle East and they often stir in their hearts a desire to visit this exotic region.  The Middle East continues to be among the world’s tourist hot spots, attracting about 46 million international tourists in 2007 according to the UNWTO World Tourism Barometer.

History Of Colonialism

The orientalist discourse only served to damage the image of the Oriental in the minds of Westerners and helped to solidify the West’s conviction in colonizing the East.  The Orient became a field of study for Westerners and not so much the other way around for a number of reasons, but mainly because the West had intentions to colonize.

During the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries in England and France, there was a close correlation between Orientalism and colonialism.  The English and French sought to expand their commercial interests in the East and needed full-time translators.  Eventually, institutions for the study of Arabic and the Orient were created, notably the Arabic studies division at Oxford in 1640.  In Cambridge, an Arabic studies program was created in 1636 to increase commercial travel and to enlighten the Arabs.

The underlying concept of Arabs in the encounter’s narrative is essentially negative.  Their portrayals of Arabs offered readers an insight into a barbaric world, a world Westerners loved to hate.  Often, this discourse reveals a fear on the part of the Westerner, a fear of barbarism and savagery.  Westerners pride themselves on having achieved a high degree of civility in the Western world and they fear reverting back to the ways of the savages.  The main reason of this fear of anything Oriental is because of ignorance.

For the large part, European rulers had only to rely on their diplomats’ accounts of their visits to the Middle East for their knowledge of the Arabs.  That and the slew of Orientalist art that made its way back to Europe were the only source of information about the Other.

Orientalist Art

Artists such as Jean-Leon Gerome, John Fredrick Lewis and Rudolph Ernst painted controversial paintings of harems, Turkish baths and slave auctions.  Their whimsical paintings exposed a life of luxury, opulence, laziness and sexuality.  They caused a sensation in Europe and thus many artists seeking riches travelled to the Orient to capture the sensual life of the Arabs.

Orientalist art became largely unpopular and unfashionable in the 20th century, but by the 1970s, wealthy Arab rulers began purchasing Orientalist art.  Soon enough, the paintings were in high demand and the prices went through the roof.  In 2008, Orientalist art grossed $70 million dollars, according to Forbes.com.

Travelling To The Middle East

While the tales of Scheherazade are from bygone days, visitors will still experience a lot of the romantic old world found in Orientalist paintings.  In fact, many Westerners are enticed to visit the Middle East precisely because of these Orientalist images.  Tourists should not be fooled into Orientalist thinking.  The Middle East is a vibrant, complex region with hospitable and warm-hearted inhabitants.  The region is radically different from the West in many ways, yet the culture is utterly charming.

It is hard not to fall in love with your surroundings in the Middle East.  Hundreds of online travel diaries reveal visitors’ love affairs with the Orient, the exotic Other.  The idea of trekking in the desert on a camel or haggling in the souk over silk is a unique experience that many visitors wish to experience once again.  Many visitors make a silent promise to the Middle East right before they leave her sun-drenched lands:  they will return.

Photo:
The Terrace of the Seraglio by Jean-Leon Gerome, Wikimedia Commons