Suzanne Conklin Akbari

Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450

This is an interesting book written by a medieval literary historian about a subject which is currently much discussed. My first concern about the book, however, is whether the title gives the right impression to the prospective reader concerning the contents of the book. ‘Islam’ appears in the title but it is not until the fourth chapter (out of six) that Islam appears. The first chapter is about space—how the world has been divided into major parts, from Classical times until the late Middle Ages, the shift from north-south division into an east-west (orient-occident) division, the significance of climate and proximity to ‘the region of the Sun’ to physical and moral characteristics. The second chapter is about places—Jerusalem, India, and Ethiopia—especially as described in the medieval accounts of the campaigns of Alexander the Great. In this chapter, Jews are mentioned more than Muslims; and it is followed quite naturally by a chapter on the medieval representation of the Jew. This provides an archetype or point of contrast to the representation of the Muslim, which is dealt with first from the point of view of the characteristics of the Saracen’s body [ch. 4], and secondly from the representation of the beliefs of Muslims [ch. 5]. The sixth chapter brings together Muslim, Jewish, and Christian belief about ideal places: paradise and the place of philosophy.

From Due East to True North: Orientalism and Orientation

Since its publication in the late 1970s, Edward Said’s masterful study Orientalism has been the foundation of virtually every effort to characterize literary descriptions of the Near and Middle East. Said argues that the Orient and the Occident mirror one another, locked in a mutually self- sustaining fiction. Yet, as Aijaz Ahmad has pointed out, Said’s account of the origins of the idea of the Orient is, at best, plural; at worst, contradictory. The Orient is simultaneously both a product of Western European colonization of Egypt and the Levant during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and a concept that has existed almost since the beginning of time.2 Said devotes litde space to accounts of the Orient found in medieval texts, a peculiar omission in view of the fact that Western efforts to conquer Jerusalem during the Crusades can be seen as an early manifestation of modern efforts to colonize the Orient.4

The rhetoric of antichrist in Western lives of Muhammad

Abstract Reformation and Early Modern texts frequently suggest that Islam is the manifestation of satanic power, and represent the Prophet of Islam as an instrument of the devil, even as Antichrist. Such depictions have their source in medieval accounts of the life of Muhammad. This article surveys Latin, French, and English lives of Muhammad from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, including those found in the Vita Mahumeti, the Otia de Machomete, the Roman de Mahomet, Lydgates Fall of Princes, and Langlands Piers Plowman. These accounts depict Muhammad as a deceptive magician, controlling his followers by means of false miracles. Like Antichrist, Muhammad is said to be eloquent, possessing material wealth and claiming to be the Messiah. The variations in these lives of Muhammad reveal how the perception of Islam developed differently in the various communities which produced these texts. These texts also reveal much about how medieval Western Christians viewed themselves in relation to the world ar...

Between Diaspora and Conquest: Norman Assimilation in Petrus Alfonsi’s Disciplina Clericalis and Marie de France’s Fables

This chapter examines Norman identity and diaspora comparatively, through texts composed in Sicily and England.