Islam In The Middle Ages

East and West, Orient and Occident are words we often see in political debates or cultural articles. History has been a battleground of each, and in which mostly the latter takes over the other. People usually speak of how West is superior to the East and most still believe that it had always been that way in the history. There are many exceptions to this; in the Middle Ages, it was the Orient which had the upper-hand. The Islam took over almost the whole Mediterranean, afterwards European frustration with the East led them to the Western explorations of the New World. Delanty says that the Atlantic expansion greatly strengthened the idea of the West and the European1. Only then around the fourteenth century, the game turns against Orient, and it enters into a spiral from which it has not

The second example I will be looking at is the European view of the Orient, epitomized in the work of Edward Said. Of course, it is important to note that while the Orient idea was largely past into history, it has reminiscents even in our day The most important set of events in the Middle Ages regarding Islam is the Crusades, which gave a sense of territorial identity to an otherwise highly fragmented Europe2. In the unification against the Islamic, or more particularly the Turkish threat, Europe found its identity and that it was compulsory to be unified for survival. Pius II, talking of the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, was one of the first figures to have used the word "Europeans"3. However, the European identity was not only formed in opposition to Islam, but also conflict between medieval Europeans. But my concern here will be with the