Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

At one time the Middle East was in essence supposed to have caused the European Renaissance. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, it was said, forced Greek literati to flee with their favorite books to Italy where, earning their living as teachers of Greek, they sparked the rebirth of classical scholarship that we know as the Renaissance. Another popular narrative of the past maintained that the Ottoman conquests closed the routes of eastern trade, forcing the Europeans to discover the sea passages to India. In the “westerizatiilization” view of the world, Europe's overseas discoveries and revival of learning were necessary elements in its modernization and eventual predominance.We are now more impressed with the intellectual contributions of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Muslim Spain to the revival of learning than with those of fifteenth-century Byzantine elites. Moreover, we realize that the Ottoman conquests and even the Portuguese arrival in India did not close off the spice trade through the Mediterranean. The scholarly pendulum has swung the other way, and our narratives of rebirth and discovery now ignore the Middle East. The Ottomans no longer have even the villain's part to play in the great drama of the growth of the modern world. The Middle East appears to have been on a different historical track altogether, one that brought it to a destination far distant ... log in or subscribe to read full text