Thomas Gray and Oriental Scholarship

Abstract

This chapter is a first exploration of Gray’s place in the world of Enlightenment oriental scholarship, examining his use of earlier writers, both Asian and European, the extent and limits of his linguistic abilities, and the results of his researches, encapsulated in densely argued geographies of western Asia and dozens of genealogical tables of Islamic rulers. In doing so, it makes a forceful argument for Gray’s role as an important but forgotten English orientalist in an era which was increasingly recognising the intellectual and cultural importance of the Islamic world.