Famous Orientalist's Approaches to Arabic Literary History

This study reviews the topics of some famous orientalist's books, regarding Arabic literature, and evaluates the style of their literary history writing, their intellectual inclination and methods. Identifying their methodology in this field, helps us to have a better understanding of their special perspectives. Realizing the position of the" History of Arabic Literature" in orientalist's studies, their share and role they had in giving a true understanding of the history of Arabic literature is also appreciated. The most important point in this regard is the orientalist's method in classifying the periods of Arabic literature. Carl Brukelman, for example, has not only identified literary periods and named the poets, writers, and their works, but he has also examined sciences of the periods such as jurisprudence, philosophy, theology, medicine,and history of Islam. However, other orientalists like Gonzales, have only focused on research of literary works in a particular period and made their attempts to clarify the most specific literary points in a particular era.