Oriental Travel,Arabian Kinship,and Ritual Sacrifice: William Robertson Smith and the Fundamental Institutions

The report of a ten-day expedition to the Arabian Hijaz by William Robertson Smith forms the fulcrum of an inquiry into the work of this denominated orientalist. A biblical scholar, encyclopedist, cultural anthropologist, and student of comparative religion, whose writings profoundly influenced figures such as Emile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, and Bronislaw Malinowski, Smith's experiences in the Arabian peninsula were crucial in his efforts to understand the nature of early Semitic social life, particularly the role played by ritual sacrifice and kinship rules. In this paper I argue that Smith's tour must be read not as an exercise in the Occidental ‘othering’ of the Orient but as a project in self-understanding and as a set of investigations into the genealogy of the Christian West. As such it is used to engage with contemporary debates about orientalism.