Cross-epoch parallels often compare two modern views rather than two real historical sequences

Evidence

A common form of comparison involves the use of modern Western state­ ments about non-modern or non-Western societies, thus, in effect, arguing in a circle. If, for example, we compare the Crusades with current events in the Middle East, and do so on the basis of a modern Western historian of the Cru­ sades, then we are in fact not making a comparison between two sequences of events at different times, but between two modern views, one of the medieval, the other of the present-day Middle East, the first inevitably contaminated by the second. Such a comparison is of little value, since the similarities lie not in the events or situations, but in the eye of the observer. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 717

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Said and the Orientalism cluster: the claim that ‘similarities lie in the eye of the observer’ is a methodological anchor for critiques of knowledge production about the Middle East.
• SEED: Angle for an essay: how Western analogizing of the Middle Ages to the present Middle East reveals more about the observer’s present than about either period.