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The Amalgamated West: Islam and the Western World
The Connected Histories collection within the National Endowment for the Humanities’
Muslim Journey’s Bookshelf packages elaborate depictions of pre-modern Islamic society. The
texts provide conflicting yet interconnected theses regarding Islam and how it interacts with the
Western world. The texts do so through recreating the pre-modern Arab world through different
political lenses as to juxtapose with the Western world. The juxtaposition neither fully reinforces
nor completely challenges this East vs. West construction, but calls for a reexamination of what
it means to be Middle Eastern in a predominantly Western world. Furthermore, it regards the two
as interconnected and ideologically inextricable from each other.
Stewart Gordon in When Asia Was the World remarks on the prominent act of offering
silk robes as a ceremony of camaraderie. Ibn Battuta, Ibn Fadlan, Xuanzang, and Babur, all
documented such ceremonial events in which a figure of authority establishes a relationship with
a subordinate foreigner. Ibn Battuta, frequently receiving such gifts in courts throughout the
Eastern world, shows that this act was not limited to the Asian world: even Christian
Constantinople in the eleventh century participated in this act. Spanning centuries, from
Xuanzang in the seventh century to Babur in the sixteenth century, this act was recognized as a
major public act of a figure of royalty or authority establishing a public relationship with the
receiver. This act, as it is prominent throughout time and across borders, presents a rich and
interconnected component of Asian political culture.
The text’s final travel narrative is that of Tomè Pires, an apothecary aboard a Portuguese
diplomatic voyage. The members aboard attempted to create diplomatic ties with China, but
failed to assimilate to the social norms of the culture. Those aboard waited on the Chinese coast
for a long time before ultimately being executed for the Portuguese invasion of Chinese
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territories further south. The text then unveils a critical disjuncture between Western and Eastern
ideology that necessarily values Eastern ideology as the dominant in this era. Reminiscent of the
book’s title, this gives the Asian world recognition of its richness that is comparable to the
grandeur of the Western world and furthermore reinforces the division between the Eastern and
Western worlds.
However, this metanarrative is challenged by texts such as Marìa Rosa Menocal’s The
Ornament of the World, and Jim al-Khalili’s The House of Wisdom which both expand on the
fusion of the Eastern and Western worlds. The House of Wisdom connects contributions from the
Islamic world to the Western intellectual canon which starts with the translation movement of
Greek texts to Arabic, later from Arabic to Latin. Aside from the claims al-Khalili makes about
the Arabic foundation of much of the modern Western intellect, the text sets up the political
tension of the Abbasid caliphate between philosophy/science and religion. The era of the
Abbasid caliphate brought forth the translation movement and thereby a major triumph for an
intellectual society, known as Mu’Tazilites, who rejected the literal reading of the Quran. It
would not be a stretch, nor any particular strain, to draw the parallels between this and the
Western Enlightenment or Renaissance. In fact, it would not be a hard venture to draw parallels
to the contemporary world, in which there stands much controversy between secular and
religious organizations over social policies. Despite the divide drawn in When Asia was the
World, the failed integration of a cultural symbol in the Asian world by the Portuguese, internal
political differences convey a society not wholly different from the West. So between these texts
are two very different depictions of the East/West construction.
To further complicate this, Amin Maalouf’s Leo Africanus, a literary text, offers a much
different perspective. The protagonist and speaker, who is born in Granada, but predominantly
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identifies with a life of travel and undergoes frequent name changes, offers an unstable world
with constantly shifting borders and policies. He leaves Granada at a momentous point when the
Castilians are forcefully converting, exiling, and executing non-Catholics. The Muslim narrator’s
family then must undergo a major shift in identity. Throughout the novel, the political and social
climates are radically changing, and this shakes up the sense of identity all throughout. What it
means to be a Muslim from Granada changes in the span of a few years, and it is completely
unclear what it is changing into. Different from the texts above which play with the divide
between East and West, this text takes a more disjointed and literary approach in depicting the
East/West construction through the storytelling of a historically specific character and voice at a
critical time in history.
Despite their different depictions of the Eastern world, all these texts share the
achievement of elaborate world-building. They all recreate worlds around a certain political focal
point. Leo Africanus is unique in that it offers not only an elaborate, historically specific world,
but a character struggling to survive in this overwhelmingly dynamic world. In short, it develops
a strong sense of pathos. The text is, insofar as it goes, an immersion into this universe that the
Maalouf recreates. In the form of memoir, it is a literal retelling of this individual’s story;
however, the historical agenda is clear by the naming of the chapters and sections. The sections
are titled, “The Book of Granada,” “The Book of Fez,” “The Book of Cairo,” and “The Book of
Rome.” All the chapters are titled “The Year of…” followed by an attempt to characterize the
year with a significant historical moment, such as the Castilian victory against Granada.
Structurally and thematically, the text is historically specific, while the content is imaginatively
told through literary elements such as dialogue, a distinct voice, and first-person point of view.
This offers an experience with the old Muslim world the other texts cannot offer.
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When Asia was the World offers a similarly engaging yet more historically based
structure in its reliance on travel narratives and the remains of a shipwreck to deliver Gordon’s
depiction of an interconnected Asian world. Each chapter focuses on a specific person, be they
merchant, diplomat, or missionary, and conveys how the many places they visit throughout Asia
function with similar cultural symbols, such as language, the silk robes as mentioned above, and
the diversity of goods in the trade routes. This structure through the ethnic diversity of subjects
and repetition of common cultural symbols succeeds in depicting an interconnected Asian world.
In many ways, the rich culture created in this era is a feat more impressive in grandeur and
eminence than the modern Western world as it lacks modern technologies.
Marìa Rosa Menocal’s The Ornament of the World focuses less explicitly on worldbuilding and more on the significance of cultural artifacts. Using a mosque in New York as a
point of departure, Menocal delivers the idea of pre-modern Umayyad Cordoba as a site of
cultural tolerance which is embodied in the architecture and literature. It is in this political
climate that Jews are able to cultivate Hebrew and openly practice their religion, accepting a
number of converts as well. However, there is a complex exchange in which Christians in
Umayyad Cordoba are in a way Arabized, as is the general population, appropriating the Arabic
language in their scholarship. Christian scholarship in the Muslim word of God alone signifies
the extent to which this world is so unique and complex in its tolerant yet predominantly Arab
ideology. It prompts a reexamination of the modern world, and raises questions such as: to what
extent do cultural and social artifacts shape the Western subconscious? Is it possible that a
mosque in New York suggests that the Western world is in some way Arab?
These texts certainly shake up the sense of the Western identity, as it repositions the
Eastern World and Arabic culture into a different position than the ideological antithesis of the
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West. In effect, the Western world is not entirely un-Arab or un-Eastern and is more
amalgamated than the East/West construct suggests. The binary construct is a recognition of the
clear differences between the Eastern and Western worlds. However, it overlooks the complex
history which created the Western world. In truth, the history has so far engrained the Eastern
elements of the Western world, that they are inextricably fused with it. To regard Islam and
Arabic culture as fundamentally divided from the Western world is a failure to recognize the
world’s complex history and the critical conjunctures that created the modern world.