The Study of the Arabic language on the European Universities. The study of oriental languages, among them that of the Arabic is among the oldest branches of the humanistic scholarship. In the beginning, one can see sporadic individual works, later well-organised activities that take us to the Iberian Peninsula, to Salerno and Paris. In addition to the Koran, philosophical, mathematical and astronomical works were translated from Arabic into Latin in the first half of the second millennium. Later, in the Renaissance, Italia and the Papal State became the centre of the Arabic scholarship. The main ambition of the age was to prepare the texts of the polyglot Bibles, and to investigate the Greek and Arabic medical works. In the following epoch, Leyden and Netherlands emerged from the range of the European universities. Here the aim of the Arabic scholarship was to support the international trade. The Arabic philology on modern sense have been created in Paris by S. de Sacy, who is the common ancestor of all European Arabists. In Hungary, we are attached to him by K. Czeglédy, de Goeje and his Dutch masters.