{"id":28339,"date":"2021-03-06T09:06:25","date_gmt":"2021-03-06T13:06:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=28339"},"modified":"2021-03-14T16:20:13","modified_gmt":"2021-03-14T20:20:13","slug":"antoine-isaac-silvestre-de-sacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/antoine-isaac-silvestre-de-sacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy: Leading Orientalist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Who is Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy? What role did he play in the Oriental Studies of the nineteenth century?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy&nbsp;(1758-1838) was a French nobleman, linguist, and Orientalist scholar. He is widely regarded within European academic circles for his work in translating Arabic as well as his success as a leading Orientalist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read about Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy&#8217;s career and contributions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Who Was Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy was one of the intellectual patriarchs of Orientalism. His expertise as an Orientalist made him an important figure within the French imperial state. He served in key posts for the French Empire, advising on France\u2019s interests in the Middle East. De Sacy was an important figure in straddling the gap between academia and public policy\u2014a symbiotic relationship that would become a hallmark of Orientalism as the 19th century wore on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>De Sacy\u2019s students went on to become some of Europe\u2019s leading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/orientalist-scholars\/\">Orientalist scholars<\/a>, including figures like Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Champollion (1790-1832), discoverer of Egypt\u2019s famous Rosetta Stone. Through them, de Sacy\u2019s approach to scholarship influenced the study of the Orient across Europe for the next generation and well into the 20th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A figure fully within the Orientalist tradition, de Sacy saw his role as an interpreter, compiler, editor, and commentator on the Orient. He, like most Orientalist scholars, saw himself bringing to light and unearthing lost knowledge. He believed that experts like himself existed to transmit knowledge of the Orient to Europeans. This knowledge was a symbol and instrument of power. Knowledge gave European Orientalists the ability to define and proscribe the Orient in the collective mind of the West, and justify imperial incursions on the grounds that well-educated, enlightened Europeans were best positioned to save the culture and legacy of the Orient from the barbarism of the modern \u201cOrientals.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was why his work focused on compiling vast stores of knowledge into multi-volume compendia for European consumption. Inherent to this compilation process was the scholar\u2019s subjective judgments about which parts of the Orient were important and which weren\u2019t, and what was and wasn\u2019t worthy of inclusion. This Eurocentric approach to scholarship resulted in the erasure of those elements of Eastern culture and religion that the Orientalists deemed unworthy or unimportant.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who is Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy? What role did he play in the Oriental Studies of the nineteenth century? Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy&nbsp;(1758-1838) was a French nobleman, linguist, and Orientalist scholar. He is widely regarded within European academic circles for his work in translating Arabic as well as his success as a leading Orientalist. Read about Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy&#8217;s career and contributions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":28565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,33],"tags":[222],"class_list":["post-28339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-people","tag-orientalism","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy: Leading Orientalist - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (1758-1838) is best known for his work in translating Arabic and his success as a leading Orientalist scholar.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/antoine-isaac-silvestre-de-sacy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy: Leading Orientalist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (1758-1838) is best known for his work in translating Arabic and his success as a leading Orientalist scholar.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/antoine-isaac-silvestre-de-sacy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-03-06T13:06:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-03-14T20:20:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/book-reading-library-1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1220\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"650\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Darya Sinusoid\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Darya Sinusoid\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/antoine-isaac-silvestre-de-sacy\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/antoine-isaac-silvestre-de-sacy\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Darya Sinusoid\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/0421cce75bc249b11e2517b3a91f9c46\"},\"headline\":\"Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy: Leading Orientalist\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-03-06T13:06:25+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-03-14T20:20:13+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/antoine-isaac-silvestre-de-sacy\/\"},\"wordCount\":400,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/antoine-isaac-silvestre-de-sacy\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/book-reading-library-1.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Orientalism\"],\"articleSection\":[\"History\",\"People\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/antoine-isaac-silvestre-de-sacy\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/antoine-isaac-silvestre-de-sacy\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/antoine-isaac-silvestre-de-sacy\/\",\"name\":\"Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy: Leading Orientalist - 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