A Liminal Orientalism: Turkish Studies by Franz Babinger
Journal: European journal of Turkish studies
Year: 2017

Franz Babinger (1891-1967), a German scholar publishing on Ottoman history, worked outside the mainstream of Oriental philology of his time. While he shared many of the nationalist, patriarchal and gendered views of his generation (he was, however, not anti-Semitic), his interest in the “realities” of history bridled the scope of Orientalist assumptions and the reliance on canonical texts singled out as key to understanding “Islam” or the “Middle East”. Extensive travels and an eye for material