Arabist

; books on astronomy, astrology, and medicine; and the works of some of the Ancient Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle, who unlike Plato had previously been relatively unknown and largely ignored in European Christendom.

Spain was so dynamic a center of medieval Arabism as to draw scholars from throughout Christian Europe, notably Gerard of Cremona, Herman of Carinthia, Michael Scotus, and Robert of Ketton.

Mark of Toledo produced another translation of the Qur'an in the 13th century under a mandate from archbishop Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, who later edited the landmark Historia Arabum ("history of the Arabs"), drawing on the work of al-Razi for the knowledge of al-Andalus prior to the Almoravid conquest.

This trend continued in the 15th century, with Juan de Segovia's trilingual Qur'an (Arabic, Spanish, and Latin), now lost, and Cardinal Cisneros's multilingual Bible.

Later, in the era of the Generación del 98 Spanish Arabism began to produce widely recognized studies, and thus regained its prominence, particularly regarding such Arabists as Miguel Asín Palacios (1871–1944), and Emilio García Gómez (1905–1995), as well as many others.

[3] In England, Robert of Chester translated many books from Arabic into Latin during the 12th Century, including works from scholars such as Abu Musa Jabir Ibn Hayyan and Al-Khwarizmi.

[citation needed] Richard Francis Burton entered Trinity College, Oxford in autumn 1840, after his family had travelled extensively in Europe (he spoke English, French and Italian).

Burton's time in the Pakistani province of Sindh prepared him well for the transgressive pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina that he undertook in 1853 (he was not a Muslim and non-Muslims are forbidden to enter these holy cities).

As he put it, although "...neither Koran or Sultan enjoin the death of Jew or Christian intruding within the columns that note the sanctuary limits, nothing could save a European detected by the populace, or one who after pilgrimage declared himself an unbeliever."

Some notable Arabists from the Middle East worth mentioning are Haim Zafrani in Morocco, Ahmad Zaki Pasha in Egypt, Tarif Khalidi in Lebanon, Zvi Elpeleg in Israel, Mehmet Hakkı Suçin in Turkey and William Duff.