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This chapter discusses the goal of Peter of Cluny in commissioning these translations and in writing two texts about the “law of Muhammad”. It reveals that Peter's goal was not the dispassionate study of a rival religion, but the refutation of what he qualifies as the “diabolical heresy of the Saracens”. It also hopes to show potential doubters among Peter's Latin readers that Christianity is indeed the superior religion, despite the higher level of learning and wealth of the Muslim world.

This chapter examines some of the evidence on the preaching of Christianity, as well as Judaism, to the ‘Arabs’ — also labelled ‘Saracens’ — and its relevance to the rise of Islam as a religion expressed in Arabic. It begins by considering two biographies written by John of Ephesus, one devoted to Zooras and the other to Simeon, ‘the Persian Debater’ who engaged in numerous confrontations with Christians called ‘Nestorians’ because of their belief in a ‘two-nature’ conception of Christ. Simeon also went to the camp of the Tayyoye of the house of Numan, where he made many converts, and persuaded their leaders to build a Christian church. After discussing the conversion of Tayyoye (‘Arabs’), this chapter explores how knowledge of the Bible was transmitted to the Saracens or Tayyoye. Finally, it describes the nature of Syriac identity, culture, and history as well as the flowering of Syriac from 485.

This chapter looks at Valens' interactions with the peoples of the eastern frontier: the Persians, the Armenians, the Georgians, the Saracens, and the Isaurians. Although Valens' court historians Eutropius and Festus bolstered his claims to Armenia and upper Mesopotamia with slanted accounts of Roman history, these gains began to disintegrate toward the end of his reign, when multiple military crises forced Valens to withdraw his forces to other hot spots. Iberia and especially Armenia were not faithfully obedient subjects but powerfully independent friends. The relations of Valens with Persia, Armenia and Iberia are examined also. Festus and Eutropius provided Valens with practical guides to Rome's historical claims to the territories of the east. They were engaging in a historical discourse with very real political and military implications. It is shown that Valens was forced to deal with three peoples who shared environmental and cultural similarities; the Maratocupreni, Isaurians, and Saracens.

This chapter first takes a look at Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice to provide an overview of the relations, tension, and binary distinction between the Christian and the Jew, the friend and the enemy, the self and the other. By examining the roles and relationship between Shylock and Antonio, the chapter is able to relate it to other similar and reversed roles that have emerged in literature, particularly those in Walter Scott’s works, Ivanhoe, The Bethrothed, and The Talisman. These works reflect Scott’s task of creating a national history. His Invanhoe shows Richard the Lionheart to have been as comfortable in exploiting and punishing Jews as doing battle with Saracens, a quality that does not make him very much removed from his predecessor Henry II. Thus the chapter explores the politics in Scott’s works: his insistence on the integrity of the refusal to convert, or his refusal to suggest that tolerating radical differences is possible.

This chapter focuses on the nomadic inhabitants of the Roman Near East in general, and then on the Sinai in more detail. It begins by examining the lifestyle of the nomads. Next, the chapter examines the relationship between the Roman authorities and several allied groups, such as the Monophysite Ghassānids, who dominated the nomads of the Roman Near East in the sixth century. This chapter also describes the religious practices of the nomads, as seen through the eyes of Christian authors, both from the Sinai and in the Near East in general. The origins and connotations of the various names applied to the nomads - barbarians, Saracens, Ishmaelites, and Scenitae Arabs - are examined in detail.

This chapter investigates imperial security in the sixth century in the Sinai and the security of the Roman frontiers. In the early fourth century, several forts had been built along the edge of Roman territory facing Arabia, but by the sixth century, most of these were abandoned. However, in response to the perceived danger to monks and pilgrims, the imperial government constructed fortresses in the Sinai and along the pilgrimage routes in the middle of the sixth century. Of these, several authors describe the construction of the monastery now known as Saint Catherine’s as a direct response to the “Saracen threat.”

This chapter moves beyond the chronological and geographic parameters of the rest of the book to describe the broader implications of the Christian application of the word “Saracens” to Muslims. Contemporaries of the Muslim invasion, such as the Patriarch of Jerusalem Sophronius, initially did not comprehend that the invasions were launched by followers of a new religion and called them Saracens, thinking that they were just ordinary nomadic raiders. Once it became clear that the Muslim attacks were something different, the term stuck, and some Christians engaged in polemical arguments with tropes previously connected to the pre-Islamic Saracen image. Authors, such as John of Damascus, wrapped these rhetorical descriptions together into a neat package, defining the standard Christian understanding of Islam for centuries. This chapter also examines the transformations of the Sinai after the Muslim conquest, and concludes with a brief discussion of Christian-Muslim relations.

This chapter examines questions of gender as it analyzes the complicated range of ways in which Rainouart and Orable/Guibourc evoke the Other in the chansons de geste of the Cycle de Guillaume. The chapter notes that ambiguity surrounds the characters’ Otherness, as they are noble Saracens who convert to Christianity, thus positioning themselves simultaneously inside and outside of certain groups. Their constant shifts from outsider to insider and back again raise questions about how we are to understand an epic “center,” particularly when Rainouart and Guibourc are portrayed more favorably than Louis and Blanchefleur—the Frankish king and queen. The chapter concludes that in these rich, complex texts, the Other is never inherently lesser, even while being appropriated, assimilated, or feared.

This chapter examines the formulation of the Christian West’s ideas about Islam and its followers, often described as monsters or members of a monstrous race, as situated in theological texts, religious art, poetry, and the medieval romance. It argues that the Muslims depicted in these texts not only served as important sources of knowledge in the Middle Ages, but also continue to have meaning today. Among the monsters covered in this chapter are the Black Saracen, the Jewish Sarrazin, and the cynocephalus (dog-headed man), all of which are identified with both Muslims and Jews and the Jews’ purported guilt as Christ-killers. The co-identification of Muslims and Jews that is established in the Middle Ages continues in later centuries and influences several Muslim monsters of early modernity.

Chapters 2 and 3 discuss the formation of embargo as a policy and a discourse in 1179–1250s against multiple backgrounds: development of continental common law, emergence of the penitential forum, and papal policies on Christians’ relations with others. Chapter 2 explains the legal structure of the embargo aimed at Muslims and exposes the hierarchy of papal concerns it reflected. The establishment of a degree of papal jurisdiction over Christians’s trade with Muslims was an issue of ‘proper order’ within Christendom inherently intertwined with the pastoral concern with the control over—and the salvation of souls. Second came a concern with the sustenance of Christian communities interwoven with the papacy’s need to accommodate their interests. The effect that Christian trade could have on Muslim military power thus yielded to ‘domestic’ concerns. Given the conceptual and empirical challenges involved, categorical positions on the embargo’s impact on trade flows are not sustainable.