The Western Perception of Islam between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

The Western Perception of Islam between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance PDF Author: Marica Costigliolo
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498208193
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
In the Middle Ages, as Christian sources on the Islamic world show, Muslim culture was perceived as extremely threatening: there were many defenses of Christianity, like the treatise on the “mistakes” of the followers of Allah. This book shows, through an analysis of the works of Nicholas of Cusa and of other authors, that in the course of time this textual attitude was modified, as European authors aimed to point out the Christian truth in comparison with the “falsity” of Islamic theology, in order to reinforce Christian identity through the presupposition of its own absolute truth. The apologetic aim was gradually replaced by a systematic comparison based on partial translations of the Qur’an. The comparison with the “other” was also the basis for reinforcing identity, in order to demonstrate the truth and consequently the supremacy of one’s own theoretical position.

The Western Perception of Islam between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

The Western Perception of Islam between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance PDF Author: Marica Costigliolo
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498208193
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
In the Middle Ages, as Christian sources on the Islamic world show, Muslim culture was perceived as extremely threatening: there were many defenses of Christianity, like the treatise on the “mistakes” of the followers of Allah. This book shows, through an analysis of the works of Nicholas of Cusa and of other authors, that in the course of time this textual attitude was modified, as European authors aimed to point out the Christian truth in comparison with the “falsity” of Islamic theology, in order to reinforce Christian identity through the presupposition of its own absolute truth. The apologetic aim was gradually replaced by a systematic comparison based on partial translations of the Qur’an. The comparison with the “other” was also the basis for reinforcing identity, in order to demonstrate the truth and consequently the supremacy of one’s own theoretical position.

Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe PDF Author: M. Frassetto
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0312299672
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe considers the various attitudes of European religious and secular writers towards Islam during the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. Examining works from England, France, Italy, the Holy Lands, and Spain, the essays in this volume explore the reactions of Westerners to the culture and religion of Islam. Many of the works studied reveal the hostility toward Islam of Europeans and the creation of negative stereotypes of Muslims by Western writers. These essays also reveal attempts at accommodation and understanding that stand in contrast to the prevailing hostility that existed then and, in some ways, exists still today.

Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages

Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Richard William Southern
Publisher: Cambridge : Harvard University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
Lezingen, gehouden voor de Harvard universiteit in 1961

Faces of Muhammad

Faces of Muhammad PDF Author: John Tolan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691186111
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Heretic and impostor or reformer and statesman? The contradictory Western visions of Muhammad In European culture, Muhammad has been vilified as a heretic, an impostor, and a pagan idol. But these aren’t the only images of the Prophet of Islam that emerge from Western history. Commentators have also portrayed Muhammad as a visionary reformer and an inspirational leader, statesman, and lawgiver. In Faces of Muhammad, John Tolan provides a comprehensive history of these changing, complex, and contradictory visions. Starting from the earliest calls to the faithful to join the Crusades against the “Saracens,” he traces the evolution of Western conceptions of Muhammad through the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and up to the present day. Faces of Muhammad reveals a lengthy tradition of positive portrayals of Muhammad that many will find surprising. To Reformation polemicists, the spread of Islam attested to the corruption of the established Church, and prompted them to depict Muhammad as a champion of reform. In revolutionary England, writers on both sides of the conflict drew parallels between Muhammad and Oliver Cromwell, asking whether the prophet was a rebel against legitimate authority or the bringer of a new and just order. Voltaire first saw Muhammad as an archetypal religious fanatic but later claimed him as an enemy of superstition. To Napoleon, he was simply a role model: a brilliant general, orator, and leader. The book shows that Muhammad wears so many faces in the West because he has always acted as a mirror for its writers, their portrayals revealing more about their own concerns than the historical realities of the founder of Islam.

Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages

Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages PDF Author: R.W. Southern
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description


Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West

Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West PDF Author: Daniel G. König
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191057010
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
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. Chapter One questions previous interpretations of related Arabic-Islamic records that reduce a large and differentiated range of Arabic-Islamic perceptions to a single basic pattern subsumed under the keywords 'ignorance', 'indifference', and 'arrogance'. Chapter Two lists channels of transmission by means of which information on the Latin-Christian sphere reached the Arabic-Islamic sphere. Chapter Three deals with the general factors that influenced the reception and presentation of this data at the hands of Arabic-Islamic scholars. Chapters Four to Eight analyse how these scholars acquired and dealt with information on themes such as the western dimension of the Roman Empire, the Visigoths, the Franks, the papacy and, finally, Western Europe in the age of Latin-Christian expansionism. Against this background, Chapter Nine provides a concluding re-evaluation.

Islam and the Medieval West

Islam and the Medieval West PDF Author: Binghamton. State University of New York. Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies. Annual Conference
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780873954099
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Six internationally known scholars focus on such important cultural activities of the Middle Ages as education, scholastic theology, pharmacology, international trade, the Clunia Holy War against Islam, and the movement of ideas from East to West. Contributors who first submitted these papers at the Ninth Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies at SUNY Binghamton include: George Makdisi, Claude Cahen, J. Van Ess, Albert Dietrich, Vicente Cantarino, and Anwar Chejne.

Islam and the Medieval West

Islam and the Medieval West PDF Author: Stanley Ferber
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780873958028
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Illustrated catalogue of crafts exhibition and collection of papers of the Ninth Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, SUNY Binghamton, May 1975.

Light from the East

Light from the East PDF Author: John Freely
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780755600007
Category : Civilization, Western
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
"Long before the European Renaissance, while the western world was languishing in what was once called the 'Dark Ages', the Arab world was ablaze with the creativity of its Golden Age. This is the story of how Islamic science, which began in eighth-century Baghdad, enhanced the knowledge acquired from Greece, Mesopotamia, India and China. Through the astrologers, physicians, philosophers, mathematicians and alchemists of the Muslim world, this knowledge influenced western thinkers from Thomas Aquinas and Copernicus and helped inspire the Renaissance and give birth to modern science."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Islam in the Middle Ages

Islam in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Jacob Lassner
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN: 0275985695
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Islam in the Middle Ages addresses the intellectual and religious achievements of medieval Muslims against the backdrop of an evolving political and social history that shaped the ways in which Muslims understood themselves and the larger world. Unlike many authors of similar surveys, Lassner and Bonner not only emphasize historical trends, but show readers how difficult it is to fashion a coherent historical narrative out of the complex and often contradictory primary sources. Readers thus participate in the intricate process by which professional historians attempt to reconstruct the past. At the same time, since classical Islamic civilization is so important for Muslims in the present-day Near East, this book will help the reader understand the contemporary Islamic world." --Book Jacket.