Encountering the Other on the Silk RoadMain MenuIntroductionGoals, Discoveries, & AnalysisLandscape & BackgroundEntrapment"Diseased" BodiesTimeline of ImagesWhat's Next?AboutAbror Akmalov22032929bc97d12664b6a3d6fc7e01f49794eaa6MaryBeth Thommes09a793698a5a4098a59db814b1427da30bcf2bc4
Saracens Deceiving White Knights
1media/saracens deceiving white knights_thumb.jpg2024-07-18T18:58:37+00:00MaryBeth Thommes09a793698a5a4098a59db814b1427da30bcf2bc4182This painting is from the 13th century, painted by Guillaume de Nangis in France for a chronicles manuscript. The story in the painting is about a group of Saracens deceiving a group of white Christian knights saying that they wanted to convert to Christianity, when in reality, they were ready to attack with weapons once they earned enough trust.plain2024-07-18T19:07:23+00:001300MaryBeth Thommes09a793698a5a4098a59db814b1427da30bcf2bc4
1media/ANONYMOUS _ FRANCE (_) (early XIV century)-IlluminationDecretumGratiani-Early XIV century (1).jpg2024-07-17T18:34:08+00:00Goals, Discoveries, & Analysis41plain2024-07-19T13:30:24+00:00Christianity saw the Islamic people and the rise of their traditions and beliefs as a threat to the empire that Christianity had built and maintained over religious identity. Islam, for instance, emerged triumphant in many struggles for control, of Jerusalem in particular. Christianity as its own entity found ways to manipulate the public impression of Islamdom as a negative presence in the medieval world, specifically through artistic media. As Edward Said in his book Orientalism says, "Islam became an image... whose function was not so much to represent Islam in itself as to represent it for the medieval Christian" (Said 60).
The art that we analyzed was all created through a Christian standpoint, made to depict people from the Oriental side of the Medieval era. As a disclaimer, we would have loved to also examine the reverse perspective, but unfortunately, that outcome would have been a much larger and time-consuming project than we had time to complete.
What sorts of solutions or justifications did Christianity implement to eradicate this problem?
One primary strategy was to portray Islamic figures as outside of the time period, and not within the confines of modernity of the time. If a group had no history, they had nothing. The Christian Church made sure this was true for Islam attempting to do so by steadily erasing narratives put forth from Islamic people with their own fabrications or exaggerations. The act of encasing Islamdom in ambivalence put them in a more vulnerable position to have their weaknesses exposed and exploited.
Upon the introduction of these two religions, they were each completely new to one another, and this unfamiliarity manifested as danger. The Islam world was unknowable and undefinable at this point through a Christian perspective, and that inspired fear throughout the Occident, and consequently an urgency to conquer that fear, one way or another. One vocabulary word to remember as you explore this site is "Saracen," which was a derogatory term created to represent Islamic people in the medieval ages, and simply the title on its own grew to inspire this intense sense of fear that white Christians felt towards them.
These the two main images that we selected to analyze in-depth throughout our project, and you can continue on to discover the three main trends that we found in these couple pieces of art that we observed: Landscape & Background; Entrapment; and "Diseased" Bodies.
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