Description
Book SynopsisRepresentations of Muslims have never been more common in the Western imagination than they are today. Building on Orientalist stereotypes constructed over centuries, the figure of the wily Arab has given rise, at the dawn of the twenty-first century...
Trade ReviewAkbari's wide-ranging and ambitious book examines portrayals of the Saracens and the Orient in texts of diverse nature written in Latin and European vernaculars between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.... It will become essential reading for all who wish to understand the place of the Orient and the Saracen in later medieval thought.
-- John Tolan * Journal of Religion *
In Idols in the East, Suzanne Conklin Akbari writes a prehistory of Orientalism. In order to consider the possible contours of a medieval Orientalism, Akbari analyzes a wide range of primary and secondary sources. By focusing on texts that represented Muslims and also on texts that structured a cosmology where Muslims and Islam could fit within a Christian worldview, the book provides a conceptual narrative.
* Speculum *
Provocative yet never overreaching, as compelling as it is meticulously researched, this groundbreaking book now stands as the best treatment of Islam in the medieval Christian imagination that we possess. It will not be easily superseded.
* American Historical Review *
