Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West: Tracing the Emergence of Medieval Europe - Hardcover

Konig, Daniel G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 019873719X ISBN 13: 9780198737193

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2016

Synopsis

Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West provides an insight into how the Arabic-Islamic world perceived medieval Western Europe in an age that is usually associated with the rise and expansion of Islam, the Spanish Reconquista, and the Crusades. Previous scholarship has maintained that the Arabic-Islamic world regarded Western Europe as a cultural backwater at the periphery of civilization that clung to a superseded religion. It holds mental barriers imposed by Islam responsible for the Muslim world's arrogant and ignorant attitude towards its northern neighbours. This study refutes this view by focussing on the mechanisms of transmission and reception that characterized the flow of information between both cultural spheres. By explaining how Arabic-Islamic scholars acquired and processed data on medieval Western Europe, it traces the two-fold 'emergence' of Latin-Christian Europe - a sphere that increasingly encroached upon the Mediterranean and therefore became more and more important in Arabic-Islamic scholarly literature.

About this title

About the Author:

After studying in Washington D.C., Konigswinter, Cairo, Salamanca, Bonn, and Aleppo, Daniel G. Konig acquired his PhD at the University of Bonn in 2006 with a thesis on the Christianisation of Western Europe. From 2007 to 2011 he worked in Late Antiquity/Early Middle Ages research at the German Historical Institute in Paris where he coordinated a research group on cultural exchange in the medieval Mediterranean. From 2011 to 2014 he worked as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Frankfurt am Main. Since 2014, he has held a start-up professorship for transcultural studies within the area 'Asia and Europe in a Global Context' at the University of Heidelberg.

Review:

"König's work marks a major contribution to the historiography of Christian-Muslim contact in the Middle Ages and constitutes a valuable collection of research on the history of the Latin West according to non-Latin sources. ... König's magisterial study helps us to view the history of intercultural contact in its complexity rather than reduce it into factitious and self-aggrandizing generalizations." -- Ryan Szpiech, Der Islam

"The breadth of König's survey is certainly impressive, and the conclusions he draws are important contributions to scholarship. And it may also be said that his investigation should be a necessary reference for future scholarship within the field....König provides a much needed systematic investigation that convincingly and robustly traces the emergence of medieval Europe in the minds of medieval Arabic-Islamic thinkers. Establishing this process of emergence in itself is an indispensible contribution to scholarship, as it overturns some of the most misleading assertions that have shaped the study of this subject in the past."--Eyad Abuali, Americal Journal of Islamic Social Sciences

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 019873719X
• ISBN 13: 9780198737193
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 464