The image of Islam in Europe has gone through a series of such shifts. Far from being a simple “clash of civilizations,” the East-West encounter is complex, dynamic, and contradictory. This chapter outlines the changing historical circumstances that have produced different images of Islam and Muslims in the West.
Early Contact with Islam
Islam emerged in the seventh century in the Hijaz region of Arabia, which includes the cities of Mecca and Medina. This region was a major hub for trade activity, and the Arabs who lived there were in constant contact with their Christian Byzantine and Persian Sassanid neighbors. It was in this context that Muhammad, a trader by profession, began to devote time to spiritual matters. Muhammad worked for his older, wealthy wife, whose caravans traded with Syria. Muslims believe that in the year 610, while Muhammad was on a retreat in the hills near Mecca, the angel Gabriel appeared to him to deliver a message from God. Over the course of the next two decades (610–32 CE), Muhammad had several such revelations, and on that basis he propagated a new religion called Islam. The word Islam means “the act of submission”; a Muslim is someone who submits to God’s will. The Koran, the holy book of Islam, is a compilation of the Word of God revealed to Muhammad, his prophet.
At first there were very few converts to Islam. The people of Mecca initially greeted Muhammad with hostility. This came in part from the message he preached, which was that God expects people to share their wealth with those needier than them. In 622 Muhammad and his followers left Mecca to travel to Medina, a journey referred to as the Hijra. Here Muhammad became a spiritual and a political leader and attracted a growing community of believers; by the time of his death in 632, Islam had spread beyond the Hijaz and into other parts of Arabia.
Within two decades of Muhammad’s death, Arab Muslim armies not only defeated the Sassanid dynasty (which had ruled Persia and the neighboring regions for centuries) but also took over parts of the Byzantine Empire’s territories. The expansion continued under the Umayyad dynasty (661–750 CE) into North Africa, and then into Europe in the early eighth century. Their conquests began in Spain, continued through the entire Iberian Peninsula, and reached into Italy.
This incursion into Europe drew alarm. At this stage, however, the Muslim invaders were seen as just another menace—no different from the other armies menacing the borders. Norman Daniel characterizes the first four hundred years of contact (between 700 and 1100 CE) as the “age of ignorance.” During this period the West “knew virtually nothing of Islam as a religion. For them Islam was only one of a large number of enemies threatening Christendom from every direction, and they had no interest in distinguishing the primitive idolators of Northmen, Slav, and Magyars from the monotheism of Islam. . . . There is no sign that anyone in northern Europe had even heard the name Mahomet.”1
This lack of information about Islam did not, however, stop the elites in Northern Europe from developing an image of the people they called the Saracens. The Venerable Bede, an eighth-century Bible scholar, expressed the dominant view at the time, arguing that the Saracens were the children of Hagar, one of Abraham’s wives. Hagar’s son Ishmael was associated with the Saracens, and his brother Isaac was understood to be the forefather of the Jews (and therefore the Christians).2 Despite this familial association, the Saracens were still reviled as barbarians.
In Muslim-ruled Spain, however, there was a mix of ideas. “Derogatory and abusive myths about the Saracens were widespread among the Christian and Jewish masses. But these myths were mixed with more reliable impressions based on actual daily contact.”3 Muslim rule over the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal, and parts of southern France) lasted for eight centuries before the Christians finally drove their Muslim rulers out in 1492. During this period, Christians and Jews were tolerated as “people of the book” and were allowed to practice their religion if they paid a fee. This sustained contact mitigated and tempered the more hostile images.
Al-Andalus and Muslim Rule in Europe
While the rest of Europe was enduring a period of cultural stagnation known as the Dark Ages, al-Andalus, as the Iberian Peninsula came to be known under Muslim rule, saw the growth and development of human knowledge. The works of various great societies, from the Greeks to the Persians, were translated into Arabic in the many libraries created by Muslim rulers (not only in al-Andalus but also in Baghdad under the Abbasid dynasty). One great seat of learning was Córdoba in Spain. Here, as elsewhere, tremendous advances were made in the fields of philosophy, medicine, astronomy, architecture, and even urban development. While the rest of Europe stagnated in darkness, the citizens of Córdoba enjoyed streetlights and running water.4
In the context of a flourishing civilization, it is not surprising that negative attitudes toward the “Moors” (Spanish Muslims) would dissipate. Speaking to these changing attitudes, one Christian writer complained:
The Christians love to read the poems and romances of the Arabs; they study the Arab theologians and philosophers, not to refute them but to form a correct and elegant Arabic [sic]. Where is the layman who now reads the Latin commentaries on the Holy Scriptures, or who studies the Gospels, prophets or apostles? Alas! all talented young Christians read and study with enthusiasm the Arab books; they gather immense libraries at great expense; they despise the Christian language as unworthy of attention. They have forgotten their language. For every one who can write a letter in Latin to a friend, there are a thousand who can express themselves in Arabic with elegance, and write better poems in this language than the Arabs themselves.5
María Rosa Menocal, who has studied the intersections of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thought in al-Andalus, argues that this society, particularly its intellectual and artistic realms, was characterized by convivencia, or coexistence in relative peace. And while this age was not free of conflict—as Menocal’s detractors have noted—it nevertheless serves as an example of tolerance and relative harmony between peoples of various faiths. In fact, Park51, the Islamic community center in lower Manhattan whose construction sparked controversy in 2010, was originally named Cordoba House as a tribute to this spirit of convivencia.6 This controversy is discussed further in chapter 9.
Intellectually, Europe owes a debt of gratitude to scholars in the Near East. Various Muslim empires not only initiated a period of translation of the great works of various cultures but also oversaw a period of development. For instance, Muslim scholars built on Persian and Greek scientific concepts, and their work then paved the way for the Renaissance and the development of modern science.7
Europe finally began the process of moving out of the Dark Ages in the early twelfth century, and intellectuals flocked to the various libraries of the Muslim empires to regain lost knowledge. This period saw the retranslation of the great works of humanity from Arabic back into European languages. Through this process, European intellectuals came to absorb the profound contributions made by Near Eastern thinkers. As Zachary Lockman writes,
Translated Arabic writings on medicine, mathematics, astronomy and other sciences were for centuries used as textbooks in medieval Europe, while the writings of Muslim philosophers like Ibn Sina (980–1037, known in the West as Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (1126–98, known as Averroes), and Jewish philosophers who wrote mainly in Arabic like Maimonides (Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, 1135–1204), were eagerly read and discussed and influenced several generations of medieval Christian philosophers and theologians.8
Although the Latin Church rejected Ibn Sina’s work, such contributions opened the door to more accurate understandings of Islam and Muslims. One person who contributed significantly to this was Peter the Venerable, who among other things had the Koran translated. Yet while access to the Koran (as well as other translated Arabic texts) generated a more realistic picture of Islam among non-Muslims, the Church also quoted it selectively to construct anti-Muslim propaganda.9
The Crusades and the Reconquista
The period of European intellectual growth in the eleventh century was accompanied by growth in commerce and trade. Markets and towns began to spring up. By this