Infidels_ A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam - Andrew Wheatcroft [5]
This aleatoric, or unintended, consequence is implicit in any act of communication. When Pope Urban II stood outside the cathedral of Clermont in 1095 and called for Christians to rescue Jerusalem, he did not have “the Crusades” in mind. He launched an idea to the winds, trusting to the grace of God. But Urban had no control over the effects of his words. They echoed and resonated for centuries long after his own death.1 This is the history of non-ideas, of Chinese Whispers. Yet the consequences in human terms of these fuzzy messages are fearsome. This book tries to trace a few of the myriad ways in which the Christian West has responded to the Islamic East. But even talking about the task is complicated. Words such as “West,” “East,” “Christendom,” “Europe,” “Islam” are so strongly contested that it is hard to get beyond them. Typing any of them felt uncomfortable, for I was only too aware that they could (and would) be misinterpreted. Since Edward Said eviscerated “Orientalism,” no one can write on these topics with insouciance. These are now, indeed, things of which we cannot speak with any confidence.2 For me the way through has been to focus on how hatred was communicated, rather than pursuing the why of insult and abuse.
This book covers a huge sweep, of both time and place. It begins in the seventh century and extends into the twenty-first. Its boundaries are Tamanarasset in Algeria to the south, and Vienna to the north, the Atlantic to the west, and the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean to the east. Occasionally, it strays outside those limits, but its center is the world connected with the Mediterranean. That is where I begin. Part One starts with the galley battle at Lepanto off the shores of Greece in 1571. At the time, many thought it the transforming moment in an already age-old conflict. It was not, and I go back to the first point of conflict—in Palestine nine centuries before. Parts Two, Three, and Four take, in turn, three areas—Spain, the Levant, and the Balkans—where Christianity and Islam existed side by side over a long period. Spain takes priority and pride of place. Perhaps the reason is that I understand that land better than the eastern Mediterranean or southeastern Europe. But while the story of the Crusades is well known, and recent tragic events have played a bright light upon the Balkans, Spain’s history “of the Moors” remains in the shadows. Yet much of what happened in Spain had its echoes and connections elsewhere along the shores of the Mediterranean.
I am very conscious that a volume as long as this (or longer) could be written on each of those areas, and still not tell the whole story. This book follows a single thread—the antagonism between the Western Christian and the Mediterranean Islamic worlds, and even then I have space to consider only one aspect of the story. In Part Five I suggest how antagonism was spread, and how it has lasted into the present.
There are other powerful terrors about which I could have written. Western fears of people with dark skins, or malign prejudices in the West extending to half the human race, that is, women, both tempted me. These too, like the fear of Islam, have altered over the centuries but have not been eradicated by enlightenment. Moreover, they appear here, weaving in and out of the long antagonism to Islam. But at least with Islam, there was a starting point, a chronology, that gives some shape to the story. Events,