Earlier studies of Prophet Muhammad were largely polemical, neglecting to include any Muslim sources and offering little biographical detail. Enlightenment treatments of Islam typically rejected theological perspectives on Islam and instead offered romantic treatments of Islam as a civilized and reasonable tradition and cast Prophet Muhammad as a visionary philosopher. Yet these efforts to humanize Islam would hardly qualify as academic treatments. It was not until the advent of Orientalism that Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and other relevant languages were included as a foundation of academic studies on Islam.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 41