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The Catholic Historical Review 88.1 (2002) 112-114



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Book Review

The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World


The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World. Edited by Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh. (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. 2001. Pp. vii, 297. $48.00.)

This collection originated in a symposium held at Dunbarton Oaks in May, 1997. The fifteen papers printed here range over such issues as holy war, relations between Byzantium and other peoples, commercial relations with Latins and Muslims, and western influences on art and architecture. The volume opens with an introduction on "The Historiography of the Crusades" by Giles Constable. This essay is especially valuable since the last forty years have witnessed major changes in the study of the crusades, many of which have come quite recently. Not even the fundamental idea of crusade has escaped revision in the works of scholars like Hans Eberhard Mayer, Joshua Prawer, Jean Richard, [End Page 112] Jonathan Riley-Smith, and Christopher Tyerman. The work of some Byzantinists has also contributed to a better understanding of the place of the crusades in the history of the empire. This has been especially true of the work of Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Paul Magdalino, and a number of the contributors to this collection. But it is fair to say that Byzantine scholarship has, in the past, been too concerned about emphasizing its uniqueness, even to the point of overlooking the often close relations between East and West. Of course, there were differences, but these have too often swallowed up essential pieces of a complex history in which common needs brought about co-operation. While many of the essays in this volume make substantial contributions in specific areas, their agenda still lags behind recent trends in crusade historiography.

Roy Parviz Mottahedeh and Ridwan al-Sayyid provide a discussion of the treatment of jihad by Muslim intellectuals prior to the crusade that illustrates its evolution not merely over time but also in varying circumstances. As an idea, jihad possessed a definable content in early Islam, but never seems to have been embraced entirely in practical terms. George Dennis concentrates on the role of the Byzantine emperors as "defenders of the Christian people." He revisits the reasons why Byzantine wars against the Muslims had a different character from those in the West. His presentation of the Byzantine circumstances is most helpful, but he is less satisfactory in dealing with the West. The imperial presence in the East and the Papacy in the West made all the difference. The fragmentation of political authority in the West combined with the traditional relations between the Byzantine emperors and the papacy were critical in shaping the Western role in the war against the Muslims in the East. In essays by Malcolm C. Lyons and Nadia Maria El-Cheikh, we get views of the crusaders and the Byzantines from the Muslim perspective. Robert Thomson discusses relations between the crusaders and the Armenians. Alexander Kazhdan takes us into the realm of perceptions, tracing the way in which Byzantines saw Westerners through a fragmented prism based on their early contacts with barbarian tribes and only gradually did they begin to use more generic terms like Latinoi. He also shows that some westerners were assimilated into Byzantine society at a high level. Elizabeth and Michael Jeffreys trace literary reactions in Byzantium during the Second Crusade, especially to the Emperor Conrad. What emerges is that this poetry was in service of particular interests at the Byzantine court. This research is valuable for the way in which it forces us to look in new ways at the basis for attitudes that have often been swept up in broad generalizations. Tia Kolbaba's study of "Byzantine Perceptions of Latin Religious Errors" deserves very serious attention for its approach to this vexed issue. She argues that debates within Orthodoxy were central to laying the ground work for opposition to Western positions on icons, azymes, and even the theology behind the filioque...

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