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The year 1787 witnessed the birth of two eminent Arab scholars who left their intellectual and literary marks on the reform currents in the Arab World as well as on Western Orientalism: Muhammad bin Ali al-Sanusi (d. 1859) and Hussein Saleem al-Dajani (d. 1858). Both spearheaded local resistance movements against French occupation at opposite ends of the Arab World and, at the same time, engaged European intellectual currents. They later became the subjects of study of famous Orientalists including the French polymath Constantin de Volney (1757-1820), French explorer Henri Duveyrier (1840-1892), Scottish historian H. A. R. Gibb (1895-1971), and the English anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973). This paper examines how cultural contact and conflict, especially that springing from European political designs, shaped al-Sanussi and al-Dajani’s respective contributions to Arabic literary and intellectual life in the 18th century. Their lives and work show both the absorption of values associated with the European enlightenment and the assertion of a religious and intellectual identity which resists the European hegemony. The author builds largely on the work of the eminent Arab scholar, the late Ahmed Sedki Dajani, and his compilations of Arab-European intellectual exchanges about that period. This paper contrasts al-Sanussi and al-Dajani’s ideas as expressed in their own words with their significance as presented by European writers. It aims to bring to life a literary era where ideas flowed between Western and Arabic cultures without erasing the power dynamics therein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]