Cultures in Conflict

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Cultures in Conflict

Anna Comnena …5
Usamah ibn Munqidh …15
Al-Bekri and Leo Africanus …23
Marco Polo …33
Jacob von Königshofen …43

P eople often have a difficult time accepting other groups, and this was certainly the case in the medieval period, when nations clung fiercely to their religions and ways of life. The difficulties of travel also made it unlikely that people would come into regular contact with outsiders—except in the highly undesirable circumstance of an invasion or attack.

From the a.d. 300s, as the Western Roman Empire began to crumble, parts of Europe sustained waves of attacks by various invaders; however, the Eastern Roman Empire, better known as the Byzantine (BIZ-un-teen) Empire, continued to thrive in Greece. In 1071, however, the Byzantines suffered a stunning defeat by the Turks, a formerly nomadic or wandering tribe from Central Asia that had settled in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey). As a result, in 1095 the Byzantine emperor called for help from Western Europe.

East-West relations in Europe had long been strained, with the Byzantines regarding the Westerners as uncouth, and the Westerners viewing the Byzantines as arrogant or proud. The groups even adopted separate forms of Christianity: Roman Catholicism under the leadership of the pope in the West, and Greek Orthodoxy in the East. The split became official in 1054—but now the Byzantines hoped to rally Christian support against the Turks, who were Muslims.

As it turned out, the Byzantines got more than they bargained for. The Byzantine princess Anna Comnena (kahm-NEE-nuh; c. 1083–1148) made this clear in her history of her father's reign, which portrayed the "Gauls"—a derisive or mocking nickname used for Western Europeans—as foolish, greedy thugs. Anna revealed a perhaps typical Byzantine viewpoint with her obvious contempt for the Westerners as inferiors of the Greeks.

Given the much more advanced civilization of the Byzantines, it is understandable that she would feel that way, especially because it soon became clear that the "Gauls" were more interested in helping themselves than in helping the Byzantines. Instead of saving the Byzantine Empire, the pope and other Western leaders launched the Crusades, a series of wars intended to seize the Holy Land, or Palestine, from the Muslims who controlled it.

In Palestine, the Westerners rubbed shoulders with Arabs such as Usamah ibn Munqidh (oo-SAH-muh EEBʾn moon-KEED; 1095–1188), who, like their Byzantine counterparts, regarded the Western Europeans—he called them "Franks"—as inferiors. Likewise Usamah's belief in the superiority of his civilization is understandable: at a time when few Western Europeans could read and write, Muslim culture enjoyed tremendous advances in science, mathematics, and the arts.

The Muslims, for their part, were also experienced invaders of other lands: in 1080, just before the Crusades began, armies from Morocco wiped out the splendid West African empire of Ghana (GAHN-uh). Just a few years before, according to the Muslim traveler Al-Bekri (beh-KREE), Ghana had seemed secure in its wealth and power, but already the introduction of the Islamic or Muslim faith posed a challenge to the people's traditions. Farther south was Timbuktu, still a great center of learning when Leo Africanus (c. 1485–c.1554) visited it in about 1526; but later wars between neighboring tribes would bring its glories to an end.

Leo's record of his travels provided Europeans with a rare glimpse of premodern Africa, and inspired fascination with the exotic lands beyond the Sahara Desert. Similarly, Marco Polo (1254–1324) caused a great stir with his account of an even more distant place: China. Because of natural barriers separating them from the rest of the world, until the a.d. 100s the Chinese had assumed they were the only civilized people; the only other groups they knew of were "barbarian" tribes on their northern borders. By the time Marco visited in the late 1200s, the "barbarian" Mongols had conquered China, and his recollections carry hints of Chinese resentment toward the invaders.

Like the Crusades in the Holy Land, which ended in 1291, the Mongol conquests helped spur Europe into a new age of change and discovery. As the Roman Empire had once done, the empire of the Mongols united much of the world under one rule. The Mongols suppressed many tribes and rulers who might have threatened people traveling through their realms, and thus for the first time in centuries, travel between Europe and Asia was relatively safe and easy. But the opening up of the world also made possible an entirely new kind of invasion: one by bacteria or microscopic organism. Carried by fleas who lived in the fur of rats, the Black Death or Plague (1347–51) wiped out as much as forty-five percent of Europe. Many Europeans blamed Jews for causing the Black Death. A passage from the writings of Jacob von Königshofen on this subject provides a particularly unsettling example of cultures in conflict.

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Cultures in Conflict

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