Important Dates – Background to Orientalism

1312 Church Council at Vienne, France - chairs in Arabic, Greek, Hebrew and Syriac

1389 Battle of Kosovo – Ottoman Turks gain an important foothold in Europe

1413-16 The illuminated manuscript Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry by the Luxembourg Brothers depicts biblical Israelites in Ottoman attire

1453 Ottoman conquest of Constantinople

1683 Ottomans defeated at Vienna

1697 Barthélemy d'Herbelot, Bibliothèque orientale, ou dictionnaire universel contenant tout ce qui regarde la connoissance des peuples de l'Orient, based largely on Hadji Khalfa (1608 – 1657)

1704 Thousand and One Nights translated into French

1721 Montesquieu, Persian Letters

1753 Robert Lowth, The Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews

1771 The Zend Avesta translated into French

1781 Schlözer invents the term “Semitic” for a language family

1786 James Beckford’s Vathek, an Arabian Tale published in English

1798 Napoleon in Egypt

1814 Ingres, Grande Odalisque

1816 Franz Bopp publishes the discovery of Indo-European

1830 France invades Algeria

1835-36 David Strauss, The Life of Jesus

1869 Suez Canal opens, celebrations include performance of Verdi’s Rigoletto (1870 Verdi, Aida)

1877 Victoria is proclaimed Empress of India

1880 General Lew Wallace’s novel, Ben Hur, is a major bestseller

1918 World War I ends; the Ottoman Empire, already much reduced from when it ranged from Morocco to Persia and from Budapest to Mecca, is dissolved; the Ottoman Sultan abdicates as Caliph

1920-24 League of Nations gives “mandates” to Britain to prepare Palestine and Iraq for independence and to found a “Jewish homeland” in Palestine; Saudi dynasty established with British support

1921 The Sheik

1947 Indian independence

1949 At the end of a war Palestine and Jerusalem end up divided between the new State of Israel in the West and Jordan in the East, allowing Jewish refugees to enter freely and displacing Arab Palestinians

1956 Suez crisis; The Ten Commandments

1962 Algerian independence; Lawrence of Arabia

1967 Arab-Israel “Six Day War:” Israel annexes East Jerusalem; occupies the West Bank (Palestinian areas then ruled by Jordan) as well as the Sinai Desert (Egypt), and the Golan Heights (Syria)

1973 “Yom Kippur” or “October” War between Arab states and Israel; “oil crisis”

1978 Egypt-Israel peace accords result in Israel returning the Sinai Desert to Egypt; Said, Orientalism

1979-81 Iran hostage crisis

1991 (First) Gulf War

2000 “Al Aksa Intifada” in Palestine begins

2001 World Trade Center in New York destroyed by airborne suicide bombers

2003 American-led invasion of Iraq