Colonel Du Couret

Orientalism was the essential ideology that European colonizers employed to justify their imperialist actions. Edward Said asserted that Europeans claimed that they had better knowledge about the oriental than the people who lived there, and it was their white man’s burden to civilize the oriental. Ironically, the knowledge about the oriental were created by Europeans who had limited understanding about oriental culture, custom, and history. To justify their occupancy in the oriental, some European travelers, observers, or statesmen, focused on exaggerating or distorting the oriental incidents to create the sense of exotic, uncivilized, and bizarre. Colonel L. du Couret, who traveled to the Middle East and converted to Islam, and witnessed the judicial procedurals of the Arabia, was an excellent example of this kind of writers who provided orientalist description of Eastern nations.

There, Surrounded by his chiefs and a crowd of retainers, he rendered important decisions while smoking his chicha.” Comparing to European courts, the Arabic court sounds strange and extoic in settings, moreover, the judge, Nagib, smoked chicha while he was going to make important decisions. These descriptions depict a peculiar and unfamiliar occasion that most Europeans had never experienced, and this set the distinction between the Occidental and the Oriental. Furthermore, Couret claimed that “Nagib at once rendered justice by decree based upon equity as well as common sense.” Comparing to Europe’s judicial systems, which rely on the principle of laws, the Arabic justice was decided by a single person depending on common sense. Couret conveyed that Arabic justice system was primitive in comparison to more advanced European justice system, regardless Arabic culture and