Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450 by Suzanne Conklin Akbari (review)

Suzanne Akbari’s book delves into the complexity of premodern Western discourses on Islam and the Orient, revealing how stereotypes of the Muslim ‘other’ began to take form and proliferate, implanting themselves into the medieval Christian imagination. Akbari consults a wide variety of texts, including medieval maps, philosophical and literary works, historical chronicles, and encyclopedias, to provide insight into the medieval notion of the threatening yet awe-inducing Orient. This paradoxical view of the East acts as a constant reference point for Akbari, highlighting the tension that ran high between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries as Christians sought to make sense of the new and alarmingly powerful Islamic force infringing on Christian territory.

As a book which examines deeply rooted Western prejudices of Islam, Idols in the East naturally draws from Edward Said’s Orientalism for his redefinition of the title term as a subjective (as opposed to a factual) study of the East through Western eyes. However, although Akbari uses Said’s work as a foundation, she rightfully notes that his focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century colonialism leaves the medieval phase of Orientalism largely untouched. Akbari accordingly defines the temporal parameters of her book – from the First Crusade and the battles to claim Jerusalem, to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople – as a period in which western Europe underwent a paradigm shift. As the Islamic religion and military rapidly grew in strength and presence, Christians felt threatened and began to identify Muslims as idolatrous pagans and licentious tricksters. Akbari examines such prominent works as The Book of John Mandeville, The Song of Roland, and Dante’s Comedy, illustrating how they played a crucial role in constructing Muslim stereotypes that allowed Western Christians to define themselves through contrast.

Akbari begins by analyzing a variety of medieval maps to demonstrate how Christians envisioned the shape of the world and their place within it. She highlights the opposition between East and West, a concept which emerged in the fourteenth century with the popularity of Macrobian climate maps. Such maps associated the East with blazing heat, while the West was associated with a cool and stable climate. Akbari explains how these distinct climates became intrinsically linked to the characteristics of the peoples who inhabited either territory: those from the cool Western climate were considered rational beings, while those from the scorching East were depicted as irrational and even lustful deviants.

Akbari continues with a brilliant consideration of how the medieval Christian perception of the Jews established a criterion for identifying non-Christian alterity which would later be applied to Islam. Akbari points to the similarity of the terms ‘Jew’ and ‘Saracen,’ both carrying an inseparable combination of ethnic and religious alterity. By examining medieval Christian encyclopedias for their treatment of the Jews, as well as medical treatises discussing the physiological alterity of the Jewish body, Akbari traces the precursors of Western Christian constructions of Saracen identity.

Perhaps the most interesting chapters of Akbari’s book are those in which she enters into dialogue with authorities on medieval Orientalism, including Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, Norman Daniel, Thomas Burman, and John Tolan. Here, Akbari evaluates the two main ways in which these scholars explain Christian perceptions of Islam: the chanson de geste tradition depicts Saracens as polytheistic idolaters, while the Latin and vernacular biographies of Muhammad portray him as a pseudo-prophet and founder of a heretical religion. Akbari contributes to this discourse by linking these seemingly heterogeneous views, demonstrating how different features from each account disseminated throughout the West mutually affected one another and became part of an intrinsic web of anti-Islamic sentiments.

The final portion of Akbari’s study focuses on a series of Western depictions of Islamic paradise. Once again she turns to Judaism – understood by Christians as a religion of the Old Law which placed the letter over the spirit – for its influence on Christianity’s interpretation...