“To Disdain the Truth and Look at Others with Contempt:” Byzantines and Muslims on Latin Pride and Arrogance, ca. 1100–1300☆

Abstract

This essay examines the fundamentals of the Byzantine and Muslim political discourses during the period of the Crusades by analyzing a common political trope, the concept of Western pride and arrogance. The principal argument is that the seemingly stable categories of Eastern political propaganda obscure a massive discursive shift. At the beginning of their encounter with the Latin Christians both Byzantines’ and Levantine Muslims’ discourses on power and their place on the international stage were hegemonical, exclusive and self-referential. Towards the end of the Crusading period and under the steady pressures of Western practices, both societies’ political discourses came to accept as legitimate principles of international politics—such as power as a claim rather than a right, relations based on contract, territoriality and legitimacy of secular rule—that have long been the staple of Western conceptualization of politics, but were initially seen as utterly alien by Byzantines and Levantine Muslims. ☆ The main points of this essay were presented at the annual meeting of the Medieval Academy of America in Miami Beach, Florida, and the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in Spring 2005. I would like to express my gratitude to the organizers of the session at the MAA's meeting, James D’Emilio, Adnan Husain, and Cynthia Robinson, for accepting the paper and for their constructive criticism. I am also obliged to the editor and the anonymous readers for Al-Masāq for their very helpful correction and suggestions that further helped clarify the essay's argument and its presentation.