I would keep your essay if that’s what you want to study. What I suggest is emailing the director of the arabic program at U of R and see what he has to say about possibilities for fulfilling the requirement. The academic advisors, depending on who you’re talking to, don’t necessarily know the inner workings of every department. http://mlc.richmond.edu/faculty/msulzerr/
Im also not seeing where six semesters of arabic is required, have you taken any other foreign languages?
http://internationalstudies.richmond.edu/program/middle-east.html
This has all the requirements on it, perhaps I missed it.