The lecture will discuss a critique of texts written by European orientalists and their influence on the writing of Arab and Muslim history. This critique was written from 1958-1976 by Abdul Latif Tibawi (1910-1981), born in the village of Taybeh (Tulkarm district). It preceded by at least two decades the appearance of Edward Said’s well-known book Orientalism in the late 1970s, a book that placed the texts of the various orientalists and their groups at the center of a raging debate that has not ended to this day. In his youth, Tibawi was a high-ranking official in the education administration of the British Mandate in Palestine. In the late 1940s he travelled to England for a seminar at Oxford University, but the 1948 Nakba events in his homeland prevented him from returning and he remained in Oxford, earned his PhD, received a permanent position, and subsequently engaged in research and teaching until retiring. His thorough acquaintance with the Mandate government organs in Palestine, strongly influenced by the Oxford school of thought, and his many years of experience at Oxford University and its Department of Islamic Studies granted him a wealth of extensive knowledge on the thought patterns underlying orientalist writing, particularly that originating from British experts. This was manifested in two important books he published from 1965-1979. The first was called English-speaking orientalists: A critique of their approach to Islam and Arab nationalism (Pamphlets – al-Markaz al-Islāmī, Geneva), 1965, and the second Second critique of English-speaking orientalists and their approach to Islam and the Arabs, 1979. Consulting these two books, in addition to in-depth analysis of other studies in this area, indicates an ordered and systematically constructed critical theory regarding the writings of European orientalists about the culture of Islamic and eastern nations, quite a few years before Edward Said’s book and name attained their high acclaim. From a methodical perspective Tibawi has a clear advantage over Said, because he carried out his analysis with the tools of a professional historian closely acquainted with historical methods. He was also intimately familiar with the intricacies of classical Muslim and Arab history. The main conclusion that will be presented in the lecture, illustrated by textual analysis, is that the first seeds of the critique of orientalism by Arab Muslim authors were already sown several years before Said introduced the study of orientalism, with all its complexities, to the global discourse